Evolution of Rules, is it really a good thing or not?

[n00bdragon]

I have never, anywhere on the internet, heard the claim that 5e was innovating "too much". Claiming that all criticism of it is knee-jerk grognardism is just as bad a strawman and as claiming that about everyone who complained about 4e.

OP doesn't convince me that he knows the difference between liking something because it is has respectable qualities and liking something simply to be a hipster.

 

[pemerton]

Unlike chess, which is limited to pieces on a board, TRPGs allow just about anything to happen. We need rules for at least some of these things, or the game will devolve into players and GMs endlessly debating about how to adjudicate events in the game.

One innovation in RPG design has been to realise that if you focus the rules on structuring those debates, rather than modelling the things that are happening in the gameworld, you can get more play bang for your rules buck.

 

[Li Shenron]

They ["modern games"] blatantly have not "evolved for the better" in any measurable objective way. People will throw around jargon/specialized subcultural terms and acronyms and "game design theory" like it's something real. None of it is "better" or "evolved." Just different "rules" that different people came up with for different ways, they happen to like better, of playing make-believe.

Evolution in technology is always better at something, although it might at the same time be worse at something else (think about how chemistry has improved basically all crafting industries, but caused new problems related to health and pollution).

Games can be classified as technology also, but only partially, because their ultimate goal is entertainment or "fun" which is subjective. There is no way to tell in a vacuum whether a BECMI specific rule or as a whole is better than 3e or 4e equivalent rule or as a whole, because while you could say "rule X is better at simulating case Y realistically", you cannot say "simulating case Y realistically is better than not" without considering its costs, e.g. overcomplicating the game to the point that someone starts believing that simulating less cases is in fact better in general.

OTOH, most of the changes each new edition or revision carries, are caused by emerging problems. For instance, using tables for attacks worked, but its slowness of use gradually became annoying to many, and provoked the change to THAC0. That worked better for most people, but after a while it still felt unnecessarily complicated, and was changed to increasing AC. This to me is an example of good evolution, because the benefit is for everyone.

There are however other cases where rules should better expand rather than simply change. E.g. an older edition's high lethality (a feature, not a bug) eventually was seen as a problem by a lot of people who simply wanted a different way of playing, where your PC lasts for long so that you can develop a story and some strategies. However this risks invalidating the previous way of playing. The problem could be solved by forking into 2 different games. But there can also be a not so dramatic solution to allow the same game to support both, and this is probably to be found in the 5e concepts of dials and modules. If the game simply shifted from one style (high-lethality, short-lived characters, focus on fear of danger) to the other (low-lethality, long-lived characters, focus on character development) then IMHO this would be something else than good evolution, because it benefits some at the expense of others.

Considering that if we didn't have innovation, we wouldn't have D&D - as it's a innovation to a miniature wargame...

Sure but that was a whole change of concept, like from land vehicles to airplanes. I think we're more talking about the evolution of airplanes now.

 

[Dungeoneer]

It's also true, as someone else pointed out, that tastes in games DO change. Forty years ago your choice of games was pretty much between Monopoly and rules-heavy miniatures war games. Things are different, now. There has been a huge proliferation of TRPGs, of course, many of which feature mechanics to encourage role play (and despite the term 'role playing game', Gary Gygax really had very little concept of what that would come to mean). There have also been a lot of exploration of the tabletop space outside of RPGs. We've got Eurogames and their ilk. There's a whole generation of people that have grown up playing that kind of stuff.

The fact is that we DON'T play TRPGs today the same way we did in 1974. And it's okay if the rules 'evolve' to reflect that.

 

[Umbran]

They ["modern games"] blatantly have not "evolved for the better" in any measurable objective way.

Beware the absolute statement! Unless you're a mathematician, they tend to be hyperbolic, and hyperbole will betray you in the end.

Don't put yourself in the position of saying you know all - now you've put that line in the sand, and may feel a need to defend it, even if you really recognize that it is factually unsupported or inaccurate. At the same time, you've laid claim to knowledge or authority that others don't recognize you as having, which someone will want to question. Those two, combined, tends to lead to an argument grounded in egos, rather than a discussion grounded in reason and supporting evidence.

 

[steeldragons]

Uh...kay. if you say so...though I don't understand why you felt the need to. "Better" is a subjective term...it is comparative. Something is only "better" compared to something else...which, in and of itself, is subjective. There is neither ego nor hyperbole here. Something can not be objectively "better" than something else. Anything is only "better" to those who deem it so...subjective. That has nothing to do with my "claim to knowledge or authority" for others to acknowledge or not. You can take that as "reason and supporting evidence" or not. It doesn't matter to me nor change the veracity of my statements.

 

[am181d]

Dungeons & Dragons was designed and written by Arneson & Gygax. They are the authors of the game, and everything that follows is a different game by different authors, called D&D by the power of greed and nothing else.

So to clarify, all the people who've worked on D&D over the last 30+ years have done so out of "greed and nothing else"??? None of them were people who genuinely liked the game and wanted to make it better?

I think it's fair to call that "demonstrably false."

You're also twisting basic definitions to the point of uselessness. For instance, you're implying that 2nd Edition isn't REAL D&D, but it is a different game that is ALSO called D&D.

So what do you call Poker or Chess or Monopoly or Basketball??? These are all games that have gone through numerous changes since their initial creation. Is the version that you play today somehow not the REAL version? And are these versions the result of "the power of greed and nothing else"?

If you're not cutting off people's heads and tossing them into baskets, you are not REALLY playing basketball*.

(*Probably not how basketball was originally played.)

 

[the Jester]

"Better..."

Better is a very subjective thing, especially when talking about gaming, where the whole darn topic is subjective to begin with! Just because I prefer D&D to Toon doesn't make D&D better, it just expresses my own preference.

As time goes on, rules (especially) sometimes get polished into what I perceive as a better state, but others may disagree. Occasionally, you'll find something that almost everyone agrees on (e.g. switching AC from descending to ascending), but that's pretty rare, and even then there are probably a few holdouts somewhere.

Modern iterations of a game are, I think, prone to reflect the tastes of the audience of the time. They usually try to fix what are perceived as the problems of the prior edition or version, but there are usually people who like those old problems as is and dispute the idea that they're problems at all!

So, are they better? I think it's a very rare instance indeed when you can point at one version of a game and declare it objectively better, short of a reprint that fixes typos and the like, and I think it's pretty clear that plenty of people prefer their tried and true, older version of a given game. So objectively, no, a new, more modern iteration is not generally going to be flat out better than an older one. But it's more likely to be to the taste of current players, and the novelty factor will often entice people who are satisfied with the version they're playing to try the new one out (and possibly adopt it).

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

RPGs are a young form of game, and there has been a lot of experimentation and changes in design to meet the various evolving needs of the genre and the businesses that support it.

Within any specific game, each edition is a response to the last. No version of the game has been without issues. So, in some ways, newer is better. But, each edition has also introduced new problems, and eventually the changes add up to a point where it's hardly recognizable as the same game. As a result, the new edition of D&D is responding to that as well, and trying to reach back into its roots more.

So, yes. The evolution has been a good thing.

 

[Baron Greystone]

In response to the question in the Subject Line:

No. No, it's not.