Games that wildly vary between groups

[TerraDave]

There is some famous quote from Gygax on OD&D vs. AD&D that pops up everyone now and again. It basically says that AD&D is less varied then OD&D, and this is a good thing.

You need enough commonality for things like "organized play" (which has driven the game for a long, long time), people moving to or creating new groups, and yes sharing and developing a common experience.

Going back to OD&D there is a pretty clear cycle for editions: issue the new edition; create a common experience, then watch as both gamers, and TSR/WotC, fragment that experience. Then repeat. Also, each edition strains more and more to bring everything back together and cater to the clear desire for player and DM choice, fueled in part by the last edition cycle.

You could even say that this has led 4E to be a whole new game (smile).

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

A gamer's inability to civilly discuss (or refusal to understand!) another gamer's perspective is a flaw in the gamer, not the game.

Not at all. That's reductionist and a bit dogmatic.

It's not a "flaw" in the game, but nor is it (necessarily) a "flaw" in the gamer.

People expect common experience. When you say you've played baseball or Pinochle or Risk, that sets up an expectation in my head. For 99.9% of games out there, that expectation is going to be almost as good as if we saw the same movie. But when you say "I play D&D" it's more like saying "I play a sport with a ball" than saying "I play basketball." But the human brain is going to treat it like "I play basketball." "I play D&D" sounds very specific and conjures specific contexts in my mind.... but it leaves a lot unsaid. My context and your context are probably vastly different.

"I play D&D" is simply not a very useful frame of reference. But we treat it as if it were, and then do the natural human thing of getting irritable when our expectations get violated. I'm thinking basketball, but if I saw your actual games, I'd be thinking... "Oh! Baseball!"

They're both perfectly fine games, but I'm sitting there talking about basketball while you talk about baseball.... and we never realize it.... because we're using the same words for vastly different underlying experiences.

In the vast majority of my life, if someone violates my expectations that hard, it's safe to assume we're not going to have a lot in common on that issue. It's part of the social compression of information we use successfully every day.

D&D and other PnP games don't fit a pattern that works very, very well everywhere else in life. That is not exactly a problem with the game, but nor is it a fault with the gamer. It's a miscommunication due to the limits of words to convey precise mental states.

 

[Jhaelen]

I remember back in the 80s, talking with other D&D gamers. I heard tales of being attacked by two (2) Demogorgons. I heard about 36th-level cavaliers. And lots of other things that made no sense to me as a D&D gamer. Those people were playing some strange game that had no resemblance to my game other than the names.

That's something I've experienced, too.

When hanging around in my FLGS I'd often get talked at by strangers telling me about the exploits of their characters. I especially remember someone telling me about his barbarian/vampire hunter who was running around killing gods with his two vorpal daggers.

Umm, yeah.

Back then I couldn't help but think that me and my circle of friends seemed to be the only people who played AD&D in a sane way: Magic items were rare and no one ever managed to survive long after reaching the name levels (if they ever got that far).

And to be honest, before 3e came around I felt that (A)D&D was really inferior to almost every other rpg on the market. It was _the_ system for munchkins and fans of hack&slay.
'Real' roleplayers played different systems. And I also felt that almost all of them had better game mechanics.
The only advantages (A)D&D had over most of them were: tons of 'stuff' (monsters, spells, magic items) and being easy to DM.


I disagree about Monopoly being an example of a game with few variations, though. Monopoly is one of the games that you're usually taught by others. There's tons of house rules and everyone I've ever met played it differently. And none of them played it by the book!

When I eventually actually read the rule book I was really surprised how different they were from my previous play experiences.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I'm going to go against the grain here partially.

It can be a benefit to be so flexible. Others have stated many of the reasons. It gives you real ownership of the game.

However, it can also be a significant negative. We have very little common experience of D&D. You can see that all over these forums in fundamental disagreements about how things work, how they are "supposed" to work, what constitutes "fun" within the game space and so on.

It's next to impossible to have an intelligent discussion about early editions of the game with a wide audience because we were all playing such vastly different games, especially if we didn't have access to cons.

Think about common experience. There's the good old watercooler effect. Everyone saw the same episode of Seinfeld and therefore share a largely identical experience of it. This gives a "watercooler" social bonding effect around the experience of watching Seinfeld. Or the recent <insert sports event here>. Or <insert reality show here>. Whatever floats the local next-day discussion boat.

D&D is something very different. Those who were in the same game as you have a very strong common experience that can lead to social bonding. Those who played a similar game to you have some of the same effect. You bump into each other on a messageboard or at a con and there's a simpatico thing going on: "This cat gets what D&D is."

Those who played an entirely different game with ostensibly the same rule set..... when these people meet (especially on the internet) 9 times out of 10 the result is the opposite of social bonding. There's all these accusations of apostasy. Godwin's Law comes into play. badwrongfun is declared. Mass hysteria.

I don't believe there is anything wrong with vastly different experiences with the same game. D&D is (or should be) all about the people playing and thier enjoyment of the experience. All of us who enjoy tabletop roleplaying games have enough common ground to appreciate the activity at its core even if we approach it differently.

Take for example the various threads that have appeared in the past about stupid things PC's have done. These stories about the fatal PC follies are entertaining to those of us in the hobby even if we have never played the game that generated the story. All of us will not like the same exact movies but we can talk about movies in general without all being on an identical page about our choices.

I find it much more interesting that there are so many gaming styles even within as narrow a range as just D&D. Differences and the communication of these differences help bring fresh ideas to people or whole groups that can keep the gaming experience interesting. Sometimes these differences can result in arguments but even arguments approached in a civil manner can be productive.

Here's the thing. If we all try and get on the same page just to avoid arguments then eventually we will run out of worthwhile things to talk about.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm going to go against the grain here partially.

It can be a benefit to be so flexible. Others have stated many of the reasons. It gives you real ownership of the game.

However, it can also be a significant negative. We have very little common experience of D&D. You can see that all over these forums in fundamental disagreements about how things work, how they are "supposed" to work, what constitutes "fun" within the game space and so on.

It's next to impossible to have an intelligent discussion about early editions of the game with a wide audience because we were all playing such vastly different games, especially if we didn't have access to cons.

Think about common experience. There's the good old watercooler effect. Everyone saw the same episode of Seinfeld and therefore share a largely identical experience of it. This gives a "watercooler" social bonding effect around the experience of watching Seinfeld. Or the recent <insert sports event here>. Or <insert reality show here>. Whatever floats the local next-day discussion boat.

D&D is something very different. Those who were in the same game as you have a very strong common experience that can lead to social bonding. Those who played a similar game to you have some of the same effect. You bump into each other on a messageboard or at a con and there's a simpatico thing going on: "This cat gets what D&D is."

Those who played an entirely different game with ostensibly the same rule set..... when these people meet (especially on the internet) 9 times out of 10 the result is the opposite of social bonding. There's all these accusations of apostasy. Godwin's Law comes into play. badwrongfun is declared. Mass hysteria.

Well said.

The key part is this: [re flexibility] "It gives you real ownership of the game." And that is huge! What other game out there can you really say is *yours*?

And yes, the same flexibility has become something of a curse in this newer age of mass communications. 25 years ago, why would I care about how the game was being played anywhere else as long as my own table was rocking. But now I sort of have to care in order to functionally participate in discussions like these; and I'd be required to care were I playing or running a newer edition where interchangeability between games/campaigns has more become the norm (at least as far as I can tell).

As for the argument that poker presents as much variety: I'd posit that the different versions of poker are vaguely analagous to the different editions of D+D. What sets D+D apart is the variance of play experience within a single edition, and I don't think poker can match that.

Lan-"the game I play is mine"-efan

 

[howandwhy99]

Is the variance in play experiences a benefit or flaw in an RPG?

Bullgrit

Old school games, which are a pattern finding game, give this sort of variance. The pattern the referee creates can be varied to the specifications the players desire by prepping the hidden rules beforehand, yet every group is still playing the same game. This occurs no matter the descriptive element atop the pattern and is a benefit to the flexibility of the game.

EDIT:

What other games give such a huge variance in play experiences?

Rules light storygames. Specifically ones where everyone improvises at the table in order to tell a story.

 

[Hussar]

The big difference between rpg's and regular games cannot be ignored - persistence. Almost no other game has persistence between play sessions, particularly on the scale of most RPG's. Because of that persistence, you have to have the ability to move the game in very large numbers of ways, otherwise it would like playing a single game of Monopoly with infinite money. Very boring.

However, that same freedom comes at the cost that we really can't have shared experiences. Because my game that lasts for x number of months will most likely not go in the same direction as your game, even if we have the same number of players and start with the exact same characters and even the same play schedule.

RPG's require the players to be more involved in creating the board than traditional games.

I suppose some of the more Eurogames could be similar to RPG's in this respect. With their non-traditional boards, each game can vary pretty widely, although, certainly not to the extent of an RPG.

 

[Bullgrit]

And yes, the same flexibility has become something of a curse in this newer age of mass communications. 25 years ago, why would I care about how the game was being played anywhere else as long as my own table was rocking. But now I sort of have to care in order to functionally participate in discussions like these; and I'd be required to care were I playing or running a newer edition where interchangeability between games/campaigns has more become the norm (at least as far as I can tell).

Here's a good example of varying experiences.

It's my understanding that AD&D1 was created because EGG cared about how the game was being played anywhere else. He apparently wanted a more uniform play experience versus what OD&D gave.

Back in the old days, it was not uncommon for Players to take their PCs from game to game, (and not just at cons). Writing AD&D1 for uniformity facilitated this. I experienced this concept once or twice in my old days, but I read about it often. I've even read about it recently from people who did it back in the old days, (including anecdotes from EGG, himself).

"I'd be required to care were I playing or running a newer edition where interchangeability between games/campaigns has more become the norm" -- You see this as a recent thing, but not only have I seen lots of evidence that says it is an old thing, I've seen much less evidence that it is a normal thing in recent days.

So here we have an example of two people with not just different experiences with the game, but actually opposing experiences. We can both be right about our own experiences, but we can't both be right about the true nature of the game.

Bullgrit

 

[Hussar]

we can't both be right about the true nature of the game.

That assumes though, that there is a true nature of the game. And it presumes that there is only one true nature of the game. I really don't think you can claim that. There are just too many variables. It's like trying to say that there is a true nature of any artistic endevour.

While there may be similar concepts and some shared ideas, there is no "true nature" to be found.

 

[Hussar]

A later thought occurs.

There's another issue here with why games vary so wildly that has little to do with the rules, and that's group dynamics. You could have two groups playing entirely by RAW who have almost polar opposite experiences simply because of group dynamics.

Someone could think that the game is all about one thing or another just because that's what the DM runs. If you have a DM who runs nothing but combat, then D&D is a combat game. If the DM runs nothing but social encounters, the D&D is high roleplay. Most would fall somewhere in between the two extremes, even though all of them are playing "by the rules".