Game design has "moved on"

[Janx]

I agree with Mishihari and billd91 here. I joined an OSR group a a few years ago and briefly flirted with the OSR online community...but, man. There's just no comparison. IME, they are extremely and openly hostile to anything "new" or even vaguely critical of the old. The almost religious zealotry and dogmatism about what constitutes "true" D&D, and indeed role-playing itself, is quite off-putting, to me. 2e Is my favorite D&D as well, I'm playing in an Old School group, and I feel more welcome and respected here than on any of the OSR sites I visited. (Heck, this site is better that WotC's forums, IMO.) So, kudos to Eric and all the mods for putting together and maintaining such a nice community.

wow. not sure how we switched from game design -> miniatures -> EN World hates Pre3e.

Since we live here, I reckon we can't see if we're meanies.

Burt considering Gary Gygax himself came here and would post and answer questions, I reckon EN World wasn't so hostile to pre-3e that the pre-3e man himself wouldn't come here.

Now it's certainly likely that each edition has its zealots on this forum. And those zealots over-defend their position, which may make things seem hostile. Any zealot who leaves EN World for a purer pasture is going to be surounded by like minds, and thus think the old forum was a land of hatred. Never realizing they were part of the problem.

I think most of us can handle talking cross-edition and forgive a bit of bias as we read somebody else's words. I like 3e. I started in 2e with a 1e PH due to shipping error. I didn't like the writing in 1e because it made it harder to get started. My view on 1e doesn't invalidate any of the fun everybody else had with it, and there was a lot of useful material in those 1e books.

 

[SkidAce]

I believe he said he was more welcome here, not the enword hates anything.

 

[Umbran]

Yeah, Janx, I think you got him wrong. He's saying EN World is *better* for him than OSR sites, not worse.

 

[Janx]

Yeah, Janx, I think you got him wrong. He's saying EN World is *better* for him than OSR sites, not worse.

yeah, I quoted the wrong guy. I'm getting sisdexlic in my old age. I meant to quote the guy prior quoting greylord and the "EN is hostile to pre-3e" part.

 

[Iosue]

But in BECM or 1e terms, 5' square wasn't part of the game. Wasn't part of the consciousness playing the game.

Moldvay Basic, p. B61.

PLAYING SURFACE: Combats are easy to keep track of when large sheets of graph paper, covered with plexiglass or transparent adhesive plastic (contact paper), are used to put the figures on. The best sheets for this use have 1" squares, and the scale of 1" = 5' should be used when moving the figures. With water-based markers or grease pencils, an entire room or battle can be drawn in just a few seconds. When the battle is over, the board may be wiped off, leaving it ready for the next combat. Dominoes or plastic building blocks can also be used to outline walls and corridors. When using figures, the DM should make sure that a solid table top is used, so the figures won't fall over when the table is bumped."

That's Moldvay, in 1981, describing combats run on a grid and battlemat with 5 feet to the inch.

I've never understood the whole debate, though. TSR-D&D was not meant to played with minis and battlemat. It was not meant to be played theater of the mind. It was a game invented by gamers -- that is, people who gathered regularly to play a wide variety of games, including miniature wargames -- and targeted at gamers, no few of which would have access to and interest in using miniatures during their games. Whatever floated your boat. Play purely pen and paper -- the game supported that. Use miniatures only for marching order and general reference -- the game supported that. Use minis on open space with tape measures -- the game supported that. Use minis and a grid with facing rules -- the game supported that. I mean, Arneson used miniatures, and Gygax did not. It doesn't get much more basic than that.

 

[Bedrockgames]

i started gaming in 86-87 and was pretty young at that time so my persepctive has always been a little muddled. But my impression growing up when miniatures were widely available through ral partha and similar companies, is miniatures were used sometimes, but often quite differenlty than they came to be used in 3E and 4E (where things were a bit more standardized). I knew guys who used roll out hex maps or grids for sure (scaling varied considerably though) but most of my groups used miniatures simply for basic position, keeping track of who was still alive and who was dead, marching order, etc. It wasn't until about 97 or so that i connected with a group who religiously used the mat to track every step and piece on the board.

In terms of what Gygax and company intended, I don't know and will leave that to people who were there at the time or have looked into it deeply. My sense from the early books is it was quite mixed and didn't necessarily match how we might approach miniatures today (just read the white box and chainmail, and that was certainly a very different approach to the game than I expected to see).

 

[MJS]

Thanks for the link! Led me into a fascinating trail of blog posts and discussions.

In general my view would be that Rob was inspired by the totality of what roleplaying games could be and wanted to swallow the whole lot through D&D. Whether such a vast vision could have succeeded in the market we'll maybe never know, but I think the narrower focus selected for the TSR line post-1977 probably had the clearest potential as a business. In a sense, his dream came true in the myriad of games and systems and worlds we now have available - as much toolkit as anyone might wish for, and more coming every day! Not all truly original, of course, but that's the world, for you...

One thing I do find odd is that he speaks of RPGs exclusively as a business of the GM being the "creative" and administering to the players. That is a model that I have become gradually disenchanted with, and moving away from it seems to me to be one of the truly original developments in roleplaying in recent years.

Finally - he really did inherit a writing style from Gary, didn't he!

Somewhat yes, after all he was very close to the Gygaxes growing up.
Your last point is one I'm not sure about. To me, DMing is all about creativity, improvising, and design. I don't catch a vein of "administering" to players from Robs writing. (i'm not sure what that statement implies) What I get is - the RPG is a creative art and game, and running modules is in opposition to the original philosophy.
One thing I don't see, and that Rob might not know or be able to gauge, is how many of us old DMs purchased, and love, modules, but never ran them as such. I have a pile of the things, which have served as inspiration , even partial templates, but I have never run one. I suspect this is fairly common.

 

[Umbran]

Play purely pen and paper -- the game supported that. Use miniatures only for marching order and general reference -- the game supported that. Use minis on open space with tape measures -- the game supported that. Use minis and a grid with facing rules -- the game supported that.

I think we also tend to get muddled in our definitions. To me, there's a difference between "can be easily used with/without" and "supported".

For instance, at one workplace, I could call the IT shop, and get support for configuring Outlook for my e-mail - the IT folks actively helped, and made instructions readily available. Thunderbird was usable, but not supported - if I had a question about Thunderbird, I had to figure it out for myself, but nobody had an issue if I did so. Some other e-mail clients were actively prohibited - they would not work, and that was on purpose.

 

[Balesir]

Your last point is one I'm not sure about. To me, DMing is all about creativity, improvising, and design. I don't catch a vein of "administering" to players from Robs writing. (i'm not sure what that statement implies) What I get is - the RPG is a creative art and game, and running modules is in opposition to the original philosophy.

Yes, I got the modules run counter to creativity bit - and I partly agree - but I got the strong impression that the "creative" one was supposed to be the DM. The players were there to experience the DM's genius - to have the "adventure" administered to them. That may be an overstatement of the message, but it's one I got quite strongly; the "creatives" are the DMs - players are consumers, not creators.

One thing I don't see, and that Rob might not know or be able to gauge, is how many of us old DMs purchased, and love, modules, but never ran them as such. I have a pile of the things, which have served as inspiration , even partial templates, but I have never run one. I suspect this is fairly common.

I have run modules, when pressed for time or otherwise engaged, but I have certainly bought a lot more just for ideas, inspiration and to read as a sort of story. If I'm running a module, things seldom work out as per the original outline assumptions, anyway!

 

[MJS]

Yes, I got the modules run counter to creativity bit - and I partly agree - but I got the strong impression that the "creative" one was supposed to be the DM. The players were there to experience the DM's genius - to have the "adventure" administered to them. That may be an overstatement of the message, but it's one I got quite strongly; the "creatives" are the DMs - players are consumers, not creators.


I have run modules, when pressed for time or otherwise engaged, but I have certainly bought a lot more just for ideas, inspiration and to read as a sort of story. If I'm running a module, things seldom work out as per the original outline assumptions, anyway!

Well. I am a genius DM, so I don't know what to say here. The players are there to experience my genius, and I theirs. D&D players have to be highly creative, or they die. DMs are players. And so on. But whomever is running should be rspected as fellow mad genius.

I do fantasize running Lost Caverns of Tsojconth at a convention one day. That and Horror on the Hill I purchased new back in the day. Or maybe an LA module if I can grok the system enough to convert to OD&D or 3E. I love modules, speaking of which, I have to finish some work on one for tomorrow...