Celebrim
Legend
I feel like the realism debate is a total rehash, but I do want to say that over the years there has been a lot of times when I thought I was smarter than EGG - including over the issue of realism.
And the more time I spend gaming and the older I get, the more credit I'm willing to give EGG. All the stuff that I used to think was 'obviously' stupid - like hit points, Vancian magic, alignment, AC, classes, etc. - turned out, after some experience of the alternatives, to be not so stupid.
EGG created his game as he gamed, not with some deep vision, but organicly. It evolved as he learned and it grew. The result is typical of an organic system. It's messy. It's complicated. It's at times illogical.
But it has something that almost all the attempts to replace it carefully crafted from elegant theories about fun and built with (or without) careful math generally don't have. It just works. The fundamental mechanical systems he created have never really been replaced on a wide scale. Lots of people try, but it never seems to work out. The design endures. You can pretty much find it everywhere now.
And the more time I spend gaming and the older I get, the more credit I'm willing to give EGG. All the stuff that I used to think was 'obviously' stupid - like hit points, Vancian magic, alignment, AC, classes, etc. - turned out, after some experience of the alternatives, to be not so stupid.
EGG created his game as he gamed, not with some deep vision, but organicly. It evolved as he learned and it grew. The result is typical of an organic system. It's messy. It's complicated. It's at times illogical.
But it has something that almost all the attempts to replace it carefully crafted from elegant theories about fun and built with (or without) careful math generally don't have. It just works. The fundamental mechanical systems he created have never really been replaced on a wide scale. Lots of people try, but it never seems to work out. The design endures. You can pretty much find it everywhere now.