I don't get the arguments for bioessentialism

[Ruin Explorer]

But does this mean we produce better art? It obviously doesn't.

We have more choices though, so we can achieve more specific effects. That doesn't make it inherently "better", but it does make us able to do things that Renaissance artists could not. We have choices they didn't.

And games are not pure art. Suggesting they are is beyond reductive, so is not a tenable position for an argument complaining about "reductive". They're a mixture of art and mechanics, and mechanics matter a lot.

My photographer friend recently lamented how the finer nuances of working with the film cameras are about to become lost art, and that of course is very recent.

That supports my actual argument. I am surprised you do not see how, but it seems like you're arguing past me, not with what I'm actually saying.

It is foolish to think that we today know everything Leonardo did, or indeed even what Gauguin or Picasso did, let alone artists of ancient Greece or Egypt.

We don't have to know absolutely everything to know vastly more. Yes there may be specific odd techniques that we don't know - in fact I can think of a couple - but even those, we can achieve the exact same effect via different methods, because even if we don't understand exactly how it was done with the materials of the era, we understand what was done, and what result it gave. So again, you're complaining about being reductive whilst being reductive.

It is quite possible that with the advent of AI, the genuine skills to create the art that we have today will be lost to history too.

And that would be a huge problem. Hell the same could happen to TTRPGs. Some people here seem to want it to, even!

But that's not the case with TTRPGs and mechanics. We haven't lost anything yet. Come back in 100 years and maybe we will have. We're in a golden age. This is film cameras in like, the middle of last century.

 

[Bill Zebub]

This was an era where home computers were poor at editing...

A little off-topic, but a couple of years ago I was contributing to a 5e product, and I wrote a utility that would parse PDFs for stat blocks, and then check to make sure all the numbers aligned with the rules of the game, flagging things like attack bonuses not adding up to expected values, etc., and even sanity-checking CRs. It was very useful! It caught all sorts of human/transcription errors.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm sure they have. And sometimes the revisions to games are indeed about "making them work better" in a sense that the game did not do what the designer wanted as well as it could. But often revisions are not really about "better" or "worse" rather about changes in what we want the game to do in the first place. Like for example I don't think the differences between 3e, 4e and 5e of D&D are mostly about better or worse design, rather than different design goals.

... exactly my point... why are you arguing with me as if this wasn't what I'm saying?

My point is that you literally could not have made 5E in 1984, because people didn't have the ideas and reactions and concepts that they do now (or did in 2014 rather). You couldn't have made 4E in 1984 either. Because these are the products of learning and choices and development.

4E isn't better - but it couldn't have been done - and achieves tactical gameplay that no 1980s RPG even comes to close to achieving, because they just hadn't worked on that yet.

You seem to have conflated my argument with the one I explicitly rejected lol, that modern == better. I said that was trash, and I wouldn't argue with it or for it. If that what you think I'm saying, well, that's resolved. My argument is modern == more options and choices and techniques available.

 

[CellarHeroes]

Isn't GURPS pretty much on life support? It's a great game, I cut my teeth on 3rd edition in the late 80s, even played a little 4th edition in 2005, but it doesn't seem anywhere near as popular as it was in the 90s. It used to be that I could walk into my FLGS and see tons of GURPS sourcebooks for sale. Other than Powered by GURPS games like Hellboy, I don't think I've seen a GURPS book in a game store since Clinton was president. Even my 4th edition GURPS books were purchased from Barnes & Noble.

I don't know about being on life support...but I do see some GURPS action still going on at the Steve Jackson Games website. I have also seen more GURPS games advertised at VTT sites than I would've expected.

I agree, they aren't taking over FLGS bookshelves like they used to, but that can be true for any game that also offers a digital version.

I never played 4e, because I didn't see the point in changing editions and possibly having to convert my sourcebooks...3e already had everything I wanted in a game of that style. Plus, I was waist-deep in D&D 3e at the time.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I never played 4e, because I didn't see the point in changing editions and possibly having to convert my sourcebooks...3e already had everything I wanted in a game of that style. Plus, I was waist-deep in D&D 3e at the time.

This was the huge challenge 4E faced and why I think that, despite liking 4E a lot, it was the wrong game to release in 2008.

3E wasn't even a decade old, and 3E had exploded with huge 3PP support. So many people were "waist-deep" in 3E at that time.

And 4E comes along and say "Nah throw that all away, we've got something better!". And I don't think that was maybe an entirely stupid marketing campaign in the sense that, what else are you going to do if you've designed a wholly incompatible game? You need to convince people that it's time to change.

But the trouble was, they didn't have a fully compelling argument, the supposed "digital advantages" were theoretical (many never materialized until 5E ironically), they tried to cut off/limit 3PP support (bad idea, as it was a lot of what people liked with 3E), and they were essentially overreaching. Overreaching at Hasbro's command, I should note - Hasbro and/or WotC high-ups had said any 4E had to make $50m/year*, and 4E as we got it was kind of a hail mary attempt to do that. If they had succeeded, i.e. got the 5-10m 3E players to all buy 4E books and subscribe to the 4E digital tools, they'd have won big, easily got their $50m.

But they didn't.

* = "Or what?" you may ask. Or D&D would be put into the IP vault was apparently the answer. 5E was another hail mary pass. 5E's designers were like "Please don't vault it, we can make you money whilst costing you very little!". And of course history shows that hail mary paid off - not quite immediately, but particularly from 2017 onwards D&D became an increasingly huge money maker for WotC for a time.

 

[CellarHeroes]

This was the huge challenge 4E faced and why I think that, despite liking 4E a lot, it was the wrong game to release in 2008.

3E wasn't even a decade old, and 3E had exploded with huge 3PP support. So many people were "waist-deep" in 3E at that time.

And 4E comes along and say "Nah throw that all away, we've got something better!". And I don't think that was maybe an entirely stupid marketing campaign in the sense that, what else are you going to do if you've designed a wholly incompatible game? You need to convince people that it's time to change.

But the trouble was, they didn't have a fully compelling argument, the supposed "digital advantages" were theoretical (many never materialized until 5E ironically), they tried to cut off/limit 3PP support (bad idea, as it was a lot of what people liked with 3E), and they were essentially overreaching. Overreaching at Hasbro's command, I should note - Hasbro and/or WotC high-ups had said any 4E had to make $50m/year, and 4E as we got it was kind of a hail mary attempt to do that. If they had succeeded, i.e. got the 5-10m 3E players to all buy 4E books and subscribe to the 4E digital tools, they'd have won big, easily got their $50m.

But they didn't.

Oh...I should clarify...too many games with too many editions being mentioned.

I didn't see the need to switch to GURPS 4e for those reasons. In addition, I was heavily invested in D&D 3e at the time.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

... exactly my point... why are you arguing with me as if this wasn't what I'm saying?

My point is that you literally could not have made 5E in 1984, because people didn't have the ideas and reactions and concepts that they do now (or did in 2014 rather). You couldn't have made 4E in 1984 either. Because these are the products of learning and choices and development.

4E isn't better - but it couldn't have been done - and achieves tactical gameplay that no 1980s RPG even comes to close to achieving, because they just hadn't worked on that yet.

You seem to have conflated my argument with the one I explicitly rejected lol, that modern == better. I said that was trash, and I wouldn't argue with it or for it. If that what you think I'm saying, well, that's resolved. My argument is modern == more options and choices and techniques available.

You jumped on my comment lambasting the car comparison, which was obviously "modern is better," effectively defending that comment. So if you did not agree with that comment, you might have wanted to express it more clearly.

 

[Staffan]

Have all of them had revised versions over the years? Were any of the changes in the mechanics? Will they never have revisions to any mechanics in the future?

Rolemaster had a pretty big revision in the mid-90s with Rolemaster Standard System. It was still mostly the same game, but character creation became more detailed, with skills being split into Skill Categories and actual Skills (so in RM2, you'd get 3 ranks in Broadsword for +15 on top of stat and such, but in RMSS you'd have 3 ranks in both One-handed Edged weapons for +6 and 3 in Broadsword for +9). I remember they also changed parts of the magic system – RMSS gave you many more power points, at least at low levels, and had you learn spell lists rank by rank instead of spending a big chunk of points to learn 5-10 levels of spells at once. The basic structure of spell lists and such still remained the same though.

I think there's a new version in the works or released over the last few years, but I'm not up to date on how things are going with that.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

you might have wanted to express it more clearly

I might want to express a lot of things more clearly, but unfortunately I'm kind of a verbose idiot so... wait... I'm not sure where I'm going with this!

But I think we're on the same page now lol.

 

[Corinnguard]

This was the huge challenge 4E faced and why I think that, despite liking 4E a lot, it was the wrong game to release in 2008.

3E wasn't even a decade old, and 3E had exploded with huge 3PP support. So many people were "waist-deep" in 3E at that time.

And 4E comes along and say "Nah throw that all away, we've got something better!". And I don't think that was maybe an entirely stupid marketing campaign in the sense that, what else are you going to do if you've designed a wholly incompatible game? You need to convince people that it's time to change.

But the trouble was, they didn't have a fully compelling argument, the supposed "digital advantages" were theoretical (many never materialized until 5E ironically), they tried to cut off/limit 3PP support (bad idea, as it was a lot of what people liked with 3E), and they were essentially overreaching. Overreaching at Hasbro's command, I should note - Hasbro and/or WotC high-ups had said any 4E had to make $50m/year, and 4E as we got it was kind of a hail mary attempt to do that. If they had succeeded, i.e. got the 5-10m 3E players to all buy 4E books and subscribe to the 4E digital tools, they'd have won big, easily got their $50m.

But they didn't.

4e wasn't better, it was too different and didn't look or feel like its' predecessor for anyone who was into 3e/3.5e. So when Paizo came out with 3.75e D&D (aka Pathfinder 1st edition), fans of 3e flocked to it. Changing from one edition to the next one should be gradual. Something old and familiar with something new and/or updated. 4e was too abrupt?

At any rate, WoTC realized its' mistake and created 5e, which used some 4e elements but looks a whole lot better. It's too early to tell if 5.5 will be better.