D&D 4E Find the Anime/Video games in 4e

[Wormwood]

If D&D had it first, than videogames killed it and took it's stuff.. sorry. It is a videogame convention now.

I'm fairly willing to concede that point.

 

[jdrakeh]

TSR may not have published anything in months, and appeared to be on the verge of collapse, but D&D was still the most popular tabletop rpg.

TSR did collapse and that entire warehouse full of unsold AD&D products from as far back as the late 1970s seems to indicate that, perhaps, the numbers TSR had been reporting were way out of whack and had been for a long time.

 

[kennew142]

TSR did collapse and that entire warehouse full of unsold AD&D products from as far back as the late 1970s seems to indicate that, perhaps, the numbers TSR had been reporting were way out of whack and had been for a long time.

Even if TSR did collapse, it was my experience that D&D was still the most popular tabletop rpg actually being played. Wharehouses full of unsold stuff only means that they produced more than the market would bear, not that D&D didn't exist as a game, nor that any other game had supplanted them from the #1 spot.

 

[jdrakeh]

- Vancian casting represented simulation. . .

It simulated, by design, only the magic of the Dying Earth. So, yes, it was simualtionist but of a very narrow scope. List-based magic isn't, in and of itself, Simulationist. Similarly, removing a Sim element doesn't necessarily mean an automatic shift to Gamism, nor does replacing it with something different. You have to specifically replace it with a Gamist element to affect a shift to Gamism in that regard.

 

[TwinBahamut]

The whole development of roles in MMORPGs is an interesting thing, actually.

The basic ideas of classes built around healing, tanking, causing damage, and controlling enemy movement, all started in Everquest, as far as I am aware. However, Everquest's poorly thought out original design is legendary. None of the class roles in that game were really intended. Most of them were artifacts of the way Everquest was directly trying to emulate D&D, and the terminology and theory behind class roles was created by players of the game who were just trying to make the system work. They were implicitly existing in the concepts of tough fighters, healing clerics, rogues who deal a lot of damage, and wizards who can disable foes with magic.

Roles always existed in the D&D class system. MMORPGs were just the field which made their existence apparent.

 

[jdrakeh]

Even if TSR did collapse, it was my experience that D&D was still the most popular tabletop rpg actually being played.

Well, anecdotal evidence aside, it certainly did have good market visibility and it certainly seemed to be the most popular RPG on the market at the time. I'm not questioning that. What I'm questioning are actual sales figures or, rather, degree of success in terms of actual market earnings.

Hundreds of thousands of (retail) dollars of books that weren't reported as sold but whose existence went similarly unreported for decades until another company bought TSR seems to indicate that there was some pretty creative accounting going on up in Lake Geneva. Have you seen those pictures?

There were literally mountains of AD&D 1e supplements (and core books), Basic D&D boxed sets and supplements, and so on. . . that were printed but never sold. And, of course, this was very likely a contributor to TSR's eventual bankruptcy. I think that the image of TSR as a financial powerhouse was largely an illusion and had been for many, many, years.

. . . not that D&D didn't exist as a game

I never said that. Please, don't put words in my mouth.

. . . nor that any other game had supplanted them from the #1 spot.

I never said that either. Again, please, don't.

 

[The Ubbergeek]

I think White Wolf pulled a Sega in the 90s though, and overtook TSR's position a moment at least with Vampire and their ilk... Am I wrong?

 

[Imban]

Just one example: If I remember correctly, my ol' Vampire and Werewolf Games all featured powers that lasted "one scene"

Per-scene duration is old, yeah, but per-scene usage isn't as much. Flipping through my copy of Exalted, essentially all of the powers are usable at will with an Essence cost, which is an energy bar that refills some over time (and a long time, like hours), and from what I remember of Vampire, they cost blood points (if they weren't free), which was an energy bar that did not fill very fast at all.

I have some gripes with per-scene durations because I like my long-duration buffs (The old 10 minutes/level buffs and hour/level buffs), but they can replace all the round/levels for all I care.

 

[kennew142]

I never said that. Please, don't put words in my mouth.
.....
I never said that either. Again, please, don't.

I wasn't trying to put words in your mouth. Although it may have seemed like it - my bad.

I'm not arguing that TSR didn't collapse and nearly go under, nor that their company wasn't in much worse shape than they had represented it to WotC before the sale. I am just arguing that D&D itself remained the most popular tabletop rpg during this time. I'm not talking sales; TSR's sales tanked. I'm talking about games that were played by actual gamers. Everyone I knew who played D&D kept on playing D&D. We had just as difficult a time getting the average gamer to try GURPS or Runequest during this period as we did before and after. Conventions I was involved in still had more D&D games than anything else. Et cetera....

Some folks in this thread have been arguing that D&D pretty much "left the table" during this period. I never saw any evidence for it.

Back to the topic that started this conversation:

If D&D remained the most popular tabletop rpg (or arguably even if it remained in the top two), and if D&D never gave up the concept of killing things for xp and taking their stuff, then killing things for xp and taking their stuff never left rpgs - and its existence in D&D does not mean that it was reimported from video games.

 

[Remathilis]

Well, as the OP of the original forked thread, let me explain what I meant by it.

I could be glib and say I meant whatever the detractors think is anime/video-game about 4e is. This thread is full of more than enough examples of that. However, there is something more, something beyond Goldern Wyverns and at will magic...

My first thought was summed up eloquently here:

It seems to me that when people note videogame influence, they're usually noting "speed of play at the cost of verisimilitude."

In these discussions, "Anime" tends to be mean = "Non-traditional Western-based Arch-typical Fantasy Tropes." This is the Arthurian knights, the Merlineque wizard, the noble savage, the evil enchantress, the beautiful princess, the spooky woods, and the fearsome dragon. (If you want to see EVERY fantasy trope of the last 50 years on display like a catalog, go read/watch Eragon. I can think of none better at displaying them all simultaneously like that does.) However, things like anthropomorphic races, wizards capable of casual, continuous use of power, spectacular combat abilities that border on or defy physics, and humongous set-piece battles against nigh-impossible foes get labeled "anime" because they are more common in Asian-created fantasy than in its western cousin.

"Video game" then goes onto mean "Game mechanics that simulate game-play, not reality". This is where KM and I agree. Respawn mechanics are terrible for creating a real-life world view of life-and-death, but they make playing the game a lot more fun. Its kinda the same argument that I see made about D&D's oldest game mechanic, hit points (soooo video-gamey ). For as long as the game has been out, HP has been chastised for not being "realistic" and often replaced with intricate hit/damage/body wound systems. However, HP remains because its quick, easy, and fun. However, it drives some people who want realistic combat with broken bones, crushed skulls, and real sacrifice nuts to know that the 200 hp fighter really DOESN'T have anything to fear from 20 goblins. And so it goes.

So both terms end up becoming jargon for "things I don't want in D&D." Anime becomes badwrongfluff, and Video game badwrongcrunch. It becomes almost a straw man to "find the anime/video game" material since a.) both are so massive that there is no single trope that applies to all of it and b.) everyone's threshold for what they consider badwrongfun is different, so what I might not look at as an "video-game inspired element" (quest cards) might, in fact to you, look like WoW incarnate forcing itself upon your game.

And just for the Record: my favorite Anime is Perfect Blue and my all-time favorite video-game is Tetris and D&D has saw fit to borrow nothing from either of them.