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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5224688" data-attributes="member: 80487">Before getting into those specifics, let us note that you are committing an error that one might have hoped would be too obvious by now. The notion that it is sensible to judge on the basis of chronology has been pretty soundly deprecated, precisely as the supposedly defining and damning flaw of the 'grognard'!  What, like "toss a coin to settle any question"? Yes, obviously it could not be the case that people considered and rejected it in favor of tailoring 'resolution mechanics' to the situation at hand, could it? That's more intuitive?? Yeah, it's a real shame nobody thought of that before Mark Rein*Hagen. (Or was it part of the Ghostbusters game?)Rolling a handful of dice? T&T, 1975. Counting "successes"? Tons of wargames rules-sets before then (including D&D-progenitor Chainmail). 'Exploding' dice? T&T, 1975.I would say that the great recent advances have actually been in making things even more counter-intuitive. It's pretty easy to figure odds in OD&D, even for combinations of rolls. Nowadays, designers seem to consider it not complicated enough if it doesn't require advanced maths -- of which they tend then to demonstrate the tenuousness of their own grasp!I don't see this at all, I am afraid, in terms of what "people have thought of". Good design principles tend to go back a long time. Whether people can afford to apply them is another matter. Heck, computer and printing technology has facilitated publication of a lot of horrible design!Do you mean to insist that, say, the sometimes nearly illegible style of 3e D&D was better than all prior graphic art? How does that fit in with WotC dumping it and going back to an old-fashioned use of type and white space with 4e?What has this to do with the fact that many of the people who produce or enjoy, e.g., OSRIC and Knockspell call themselves 'grognards'? What has it to do with the fact that James Maliszewski, co-proprietor of Rogue Games and creator of, e.g., The Cursed Chateau and Thousand Suns, also writes the 'Grognardia' blog?How does, e.g., Greg Bell fit into this scheme of "every day, in every way ..."? Do you think Gygax never thought of replacing him before TSR had the budget for folks such as those who illustrated Supplement III? Is the Thomas Kinkade-ish work of Larry Elmore superior to the phantasmagoria of Erol Otus except as a matter of personal preference?Is Wayne Reynolds a 'better' artist than Peter Mullen? Is he even better than Frank Frazetta, better still than Howard Pyle, and ever so much more better than Michelangelo? The Blackmoor dungeon campaign began in late 1970, and D&D was published in 1974. The first DMG was released in 1979, Gygax having continued revision of the same basic framework along with additions and revisions that had been published in the Supplements and The Strategic Review/The Dragon. TSR-D&D continued to refer back to that work in later editions, rather than "reinvent the wheel". Millions of people played the games.Maybe some p&p RPGs get more playtesting today, and if so then good on that. On the other hand, I have seen an awful lot of errata.In any case, it is just incredible naïveté to suppose that more extensive playtesting is something "no one had thought of" prior to whatever it is you have in mind!"The game" lacks volition. It is the designer who wants to deliver something -- and focus on that is what design is. This claim of yours is just total nonsense.</blockquote>

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