I don't get the arguments for bioessentialism

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah, but... you aren't doing most of the work, now are you? You don't have skin in the game design, and it is not your product that flops if it doesn't pay off for enough people.

The questions, "Do I personally find this a cool thing to play?" and "How seriously should I consider this as a design for the game I am making?" are two very different questions.

Folks currently make sim games, and games with significant sim elements. Some of them, like Rolemaster and ACKS, do things very much as I've stated. These games continue to be published, which means they continue to make enough money to do so, by the standards of their publishers. So no, it's not all about making the most money or reaching the widest possible audience. There's only one Hasbro in the RPG space.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I am skeptical that you believe this comparison.

I think it is far more apt comparison than cars.

As @Umbran says, this is about understanding and conceptualizing mechanics and achieving goals using mechanics, and we are unquestionably better at that now than 20-40 years ago.

Like I said, we have more to compare to. But most of game design is ultimately about choices, what I want this game to do. In that sense it is more like art.

(Also, as a classically trained artist, you are a being a silly sausage even there, because even people who go on and on about "RETVRN" and "Renaissance art was peak" and so on, actually strongly prefer artistic styles that were the result of considerable learning and technique and improvement and conscious efforts at realism and so on, to the naive styles of before. Like "statue guys" always like the more realist later-Roman statuary rather than like, naive early classical Greek statuary. They always prefer late Renaissance art, even post-Renaissance/Early-Modern art to like, "perspective, I've never heard of it" early Renaissance art and so on. So absolutely even there advancement is a real thing.)

As classically trained artist I obviously do not think renaissance was the peak of art* but I do think that saying that Botticelli's Primavera is worse painting than Matisse's Le Bonheur de Vivre because it is older and "lower tech" would be obviously foolish.

(*I mean everyone knows it was Romanticism.)

We don't know what the goals of the designer of chess were, and honestly if chess is literally your entire and only example, that's not an argument that you can extend beyond chess.

Go, Backgammon? Hell, even Poker is pretty venerable at this point.

And my point was not that we cannot learn anything from the past, obviously people writing books now benefit of learning from Shakespeare, Tolkien, Dickens, Le Guin etc, just like game creators now have a lot of examples of different games which might help them assess what works and what does not. But comparing it to progress of technology is still massively flawed, thus I made my art comparison which I think it is far more apt.

 

[Micah Sweet]

For roughly the same reasons that we mostly no longer dive Model T cars.

Metaphor's a little thick and reductive here.

 

[aramis erak]

Why is "modern design" automatically assumed to be a good or preferable thing?

Because the range of rather ill conceived and/or poorly-described mechanics in a lot of the games of the late 1970's and early 1980s.

This was an era where home computers were poor at editing, layout (even professional) usually involved strips of lead, and RPG's were often written by people who would have failed the English and History classes I had to take for my BA in History. And I do mean failed. The typo rate in AD&D 1e was high enough to at best get a C+ from the History professors and a D from the English. Palladium was a typo a page or more. RuneQuest was better, but still problematic. Traveller was probably the best edited and best laid out.

At a very basic level, most post 1985 games are far better organized, far better written/edited, far more consistent, and often, better laid out... as home/small-office computing had good editors with spellchecking. Desktop layout starting in about 1986, got really good. Page Maker, Frame Maker, Quark Express... and the introduction of the PDF format, replacing the machine inspecific PS and LaTex formats. (Well, PDF is technically a zipfile including PostScript, so, PS is still with us, hidden inside.) Computerization of the flow made design so much easier. (There were some not so good layout programs, too... Print Shop. It was fun, not good.)

There also was the induction of metacurrencies past HP and XP, also in the 80s. MSH had Karma as a metacurrency in 1983. WFRP 1e (1986) added Fate Points. 1991 gave us Willpower in VTM. While their being useful is argued, they brought in new approaches to play, and the VTM Boom was a lot of people brought into RPGing who were not interested in the big 3 visibles: D&D/AD&D, Star Wars (1987 WEG), and Star Trek (1983, FASA).

If nothing else, newer designs have better tools to convey information to users. The many clones of OE D&D are almost all more pleasant to work with... even if the mechanics are the same as OE D&D.

 

[The Firebird]

RE: Chess over time

Chess's rules have changed a lot since the 1200s. And even if the rules of chess haven't really changed much since, say, 1828 (with three-fold repetition, touch-move, white always goes first, and some others afterwards)... the actual play that occurs by those who know what they're doing is vastly different. And Fischer Random Chess/Chess 960 has been growing in popularity with some big name proponents. (My favorite is still bughouse/pass chess/double chess).

I've got a ton to say on this topic, but not the time at the moment.

But for now: I think the interaction between rules and creativity is really interesting and there are a ton of parallels between how these work in art and music and how they work in games. In a certain sense, you can conceive of arts and music as games, with their own rules. These are often unstated and informal--for example, "if you want to convey sadness, use a minor key" or "a concerto consists of three movements, where the second is a slow movement". What people consider creative in these fields is often a matter of breaking the rules in precisely defined ways; Beethoven kicking off the romantic era, for example, by expanding the symphonic form.

The dynamic you see in chess is similar; when people at an elite level feel that certain patterns or structures within the rules are played out or staid, they end up wanting to change the rules. Not overturning them, but again in very specific ways to generate new works building on the old form.

There is a nice connection to Bernard Suits' definition of game in The Grasshopper: "playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles". He suggests games as a form of telic leisure (i.e., an end in their own sake), in the same category as art or music. At least for me, I feel like I see this connection between constraint (unnecessary obstacles) and creativity everywhere in the arts.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Like I said, we have more to compare to. But most of game design is ultimately about choices, what I want this game to do. In that sense it is more like art.

Spoken like someone who isn't thinking hard about how art actually works, frankly.

Artistic techniques don't all magically exist forever. They have to be developed. You have to know they're possible. You have to have the tools and paints and so on to make them work.

In the modern era, we have way better tools, way more options, we can be way more precise in what techniques we apply and how and why than anyone in the Renaissance period. You might have a personal fondness for some Renaissance piece or w/e, but if you like say, really realistic art? We can do that better now. Because we have better and more techniques. We everything they had and more.

Art is hard work. Art requires techniques and skills. You're writing as if just flows magically out of an artist's arse!

The comparison to art is fine - if you acknowledge art is supported by technique and knowledge, and that an artist now has more choices, more options, more possibilities than, say, an artist in 1589. You might not like the decision that a lot of modern artists make, but they're making decisions because they have decisions that they can make.

As classically trained artist I obviously do not think renaissance was the peak of art* but I do think that saying that Botticelli's Primavera is worse painting than Matisse's Le Bonheur de Vivre because it is older and "lower tech" would be obviously foolish.

That's not the comparison though, is it? See above. It's amazing if you are a classically-trained artist that you're having difficulty with this, because you must necessarily be aware that you can make choices neither Botticelli nor Matisse had available to them - in part because Botticelli and Matisse existed BEFORE you in chronological time.

Do you understand what I am getting at here? Because I'm seeing you express fondness for a particularly artistic piece, but I'm not really seeing you arguing against my actual point re: tools, techniques, modes of thinking and so on. Which is the core. We have more techniques. We have new techniques. We have new materials. We have entirely new mediums.

If we apply this to games, now we can choose what kind of game we want to make, and how it works in ways that simply we could not (or not without hard-innovating) in the past.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Metaphor's a little thick and reductive here.

Compared to the constant CHESS CHESS CHESS nah? I'm sorry but D&D (let alone Rolemaster, bless its heart) ain't the chess of RPGs. Nothing will be the "chess of RPGs" for like, 500 years. Chess is only chess because it survived. It's remarkable that it did. We barely know about the bazillions of other games which fell by the wayside. Many of the ones we do know the rules for are pretty awful compared to just your average modern boardgame.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Because the range of rather ill conceived and/or poorly-described mechanics in a lot of the games of the late 1970's and early 1980s.

This was an era where home computers were poor at editing, layout (even professional) usually involved strips of lead, and RPG's were often written by people who would have failed the English and History classes I had to take for my BA in History. And I do mean failed. The typo rate in AD&D 1e was high enough to at best get a C+ from the History professors and a D from the English. Palladium was a typo a page or more. RuneQuest was better, but still problematic. Traveller was probably the best edited and best laid out.

At a very basic level, most post 1985 games are far better organized, far better written/edited, far more consistent, and often, better laid out... as home/small-office computing had good editors with spellchecking. Desktop layout starting in about 1986, got really good. Page Maker, Frame Maker, Quark Express... and the introduction of the PDF format, replacing the machine inspecific PS and LaTex formats. (Well, PDF is technically a zipfile including PostScript, so, PS is still with us, hidden inside.) Computerization of the flow made design so much easier. (There were some not so good layout programs, too... Print Shop. It was fun, not good.)

There also was the induction of metacurrencies past HP and XP, also in the 80s. MSH had Karma as a metacurrency in 1983. WFRP 1e (1986) added Fate Points. 1991 gave us Willpower in VTM. While their being useful is argued, they brought in new approaches to play, and the VTM Boom was a lot of people brought into RPGing who were not interested in the big 3 visibles: D&D/AD&D, Star Wars (1987 WEG), and Star Trek (1983, FASA).

If nothing else, newer designs have better tools to convey information to users. The many clones of OE D&D are almost all more pleasant to work with... even if the mechanics are the same as OE D&D.

Are you assuming that metacurrency is an objectively superior mechanic than not having it in RPGs? Otherwise I'm not sure why you brought it up.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Compared to the constant CHESS CHESS CHESS nah? I'm sorry but D&D (let alone Rolemaster, bless its heart) ain't the chess of RPGs. Nothing will be the "chess of RPGs" for like, 500 years. Chess is only chess because it survived. It's remarkable that it did. We barely know about the bazillions of other games which fell by the wayside. Many of the ones we do know the rules for are pretty awful compared to just your average modern boardgame.

I didn't mention Chess.

 

[Cadence]

Are you assuming that metacurrency is an objectively superior mechanic than not having it in RPGs? Otherwise I'm not sure why you brought it up.

I took it as an example of another tool someone could use. A water-color painter doesn't have to use the newest oil-based paint tech, but it was an option. YMMV.

As far as new things, I assume, for example, there is at least something introduced after 1981 that you like as a mechanic in whatever your current favorite game is and it didn't stop with OD&D, B/X, and the original trio in 1e, for example?