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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TerraDave" data-source="post: 5114595" data-attributes="member: 22260">Am I reading some denial here?D&D was clearly a pioneer in exploiting the dynamics identified in the article, which I why it has been ripped off so much over the years. Lets break this down:The “good” parts:Skill mastery, choice, complexity, reward. All there. An alternate reality in which to escape. Oh ya! Obviously other activities combined (some of) these things before 1974, but I don’t think anything did it quite like that. At least for that tiny part of the population that could get into it. The “medium” part:You might call it variable reward. I call it gambling. And for most people that is gaming. And they like it. This leads to an interesting tension in games. There are always those die-hards, who tend to be very influential, that don’t like randomness. They want games to be like chess, so their brilliant strategies can shine. Then there is the rest of us. In the forums here, there is yet another article on the “grind” in 4E. One problem with grind is time. But the other part: predictability. A lot of people feel that 4E combat is not variable enough (and as I think about it, there is also thread on how it is not deadly enough). The “bad” part:This is using the various bits above to condition people into stupefying repetitive behavior. Do you find yourself sitting around, rolling dice over and over? Or (gods forbid) playing out similar melo-dramatic situations over and over? I am exaggerating. A bit. Obviously it isn’t as bad as the examples (or playing the slots, which hooks far, far more people, but is actually sort of fun). But D&D has always been a fairly elaborate way to make rolling a d20 to hit a monster, over and over again, an interesting thing to do.</blockquote>

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