Interesting Ryan Dancey comment on "lite" RPGs

[Campbell]

I don't understand this. *Mearls* claimed that, after 5 years of existence, only 2-3 people were competent at designing for d20. He also claimed that D&D was unquestionably "the best" system out now.

In reply, Nephew's point was that *if* D&D was indeed "the best system" out there, it seemed strange that only 2-3 people could design competently for it.

It was a pretty effective point IMO.

Although hyperbole was involved I believe Mearls was indicating that he believed that few of the current band of d20 designers are capable of doing design work for d20, and that a number of those that are capable of doing d20 design work do not participate in such an endeavor publicly because they have more profitable avenues for their skillsets.

While I do not believe that Mearls' assesment is completely correct, I do believe there is an element of truth to Mike's observations. Like you I believe that the exodus of numerous companies away from the banner is a 'Good Thing' although for slightly different reasons. What I'm seeing is a group of designers that never really wanted to design d20 products moving back to an area that is within their forte, designing games that fit their expectations of what a roleplaying game should look like, rather than trying to force their design philosophies on a game system that is not fitting for the type of work that they'd rather do. Additionally I see what Mike is talking about in reguard to the brain drain all the time in my experience checking out numerous campaign websites for both Fantasy HERO and D&D where I see design work that is evidently much more solid than a lot of what I see out there on the d20 market as it exists today.

Addendum
Of course, I have no more knowledge of game publishing market than any other gamer. I also do not presume to speak for Mr. Mearls. I am merely relating my interpretation of his remarks, which retains some favorable bias since Mearls has produced outstanding material that I make almost weekly use out of.

 

[Turjan]

My point was that many companies have moved *away* from d20 (and many d20 companies have gone out of business). *More* non-d20 games are being published these days. Hence the strategy of marginalizing non-d20 games does not appear to have been successful. (Although I suppose that one could claim that the publication of these games is compatible with support for them being at "the lowest possible level" -- but I doubt that.)

I'm afraid that you are not right as far as the failure of marginalizing the non-d20 games goes. The crisis of the third party d20 publishers was followed by a crisis of many other, non-d20 game companies. GURPS seems to do fine, but others, like HERO Games or WW, seem to have slight problems. The very small game companies are not more than a ripple on the water.

 

[Psion]

I don't understand this. *Mearls* claimed that, after 5 years of existence, only 2-3 people were competent at designing for d20. He also claimed that D&D was unquestionably "the best" system out now.

In reply, Nephew's point was that *if* D&D was indeed "the best system" out there, it seemed strange that only 2-3 people could design competently for it.

It was a pretty effective point IMO.

Well it might have been. If he said designers.

He said users.

You are presuming to guess what he really meant. I don't find an statement that wasn't made, or was gutted by being mispoke, to be too "punchy."

If he really meant that at all.

 

[MerricB]

The intent of the d20 System is to make D&D-like systems much harder to sell successfully when they differ markedly from D&D 3E.

(The case in point is Palladium).

C&C seems to be to take some of the best bits of the d20 System (namely Task Resolution), and thus the difficulty of learning C&C is lesser to those already familiar with 3e. (The converse is likely also true).

The real effect of the OGL is to create a pool of reusable mechanics, thus lessening the need to come up with new ones just for the sake of it, and thus increasing the difficulty of learning a new game.

When a designer creates a new game, he or she now has the choice of using the familiar mechanic of d20 - and thus making the new game more accessible to existing gamers - or of doing something completely different.

In the instances when something different is actually the right thing to do, then there is no problem. d20 doesn't detract from that.

However, there is a real barrier to doing a D&D-like game that doesn't take advantage of the d20 system.

Cheers!

 

[Campbell]

The following is what Mearls actually said.

[font=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica]The first wave of print d20 companies are mostly gasping for air. Simply put, with one exception they failed. Nobody in the RPG business understands how open source works. I can count on half of one hand the number of people who understand d20 enough to build products for it.

Now the question becomes what exactly Mearls meant by "build products". One interpretation might be that Mearls was talking about the quality of design work being done within the 'd20 industry'. Another, and in my opinion more interesting, interpretation could be that Mearls was talking about the types of business decisions d20 companies have been making since 2000, as in how product lines are conceived, developed, and marketed in the aggregate. This is also a stronger position to take. The question then becomes what should d20 companies do on a strategic rather than tactical level to both serve the market and reliably perform at higher profit margins. One area that I would like to see d20/OGL companies improve upon is the use of other companies' OGC as a jumpiing off point where previous work has been done. I believe there is a fair amount of unnecesarry reinventing the wheel goiing on.
[/font]

 

[Psion]

My point was that many companies have moved *away* from d20 (and many d20 companies have gone out of business).

This is true, but consider that it got a lot in the business who remain in the business. It's primarily people who put out crap who aren't publishing anymore.

Considering the mounds of d20 material that were out there a few years ago, there was nowhere to go but down. So I am not sure this says anything significant about the game or strategy itself. Especially considering that the levels to which d20 ebraced EXCEEDED the expectations of the WotC.

*More* non-d20 games are being published these days.

More than what?

Hence the strategy of marginalizing non-d20 games does not appear to have been successful.

Perhaps not; that would be unrealistic IMO. But was that ever the strategy? The closest I heard was a few high quality systems dominating the market. I don't think it was ever seriously considered that all non-d20 games would be marginalized.

 

[Akrasia]

Well it might have been. If he said designers.

He said users.

You are presuming to guess what he really meant. I don't find an statement that wasn't made, or was gutted by being mispoke, to be too "punchy."

If he really meant that at all.

Here is what John wrote:

"How can D&D now be the best game in the RPG world, if no statistically significant portion of its users really grok it, even after 5 years of play? If essentially no one in the subset of players/GMs who became d20 writers really understand the game, how many of those who didn't become writers do? Or is just that they only can grok it well enough to utilize published materials written by the select handful that truly understand how the machinery works underneath the hood?"

So, yeah, you might be right -- perhaps I did read too much into his comments. OTOH, I *do* see how his claim here follows from what *Mearls* stated.

 

[Akrasia]

...More than what? ...

More than a few years ago.

We have a new version of WFRP out now, that appears to be doing quite well by all reports. GURPS 4e also appears to be doing quite well. According to Nephew, Ars Magica 5e is thriving. And now Mongoose is planning to publish a new version of Runequest (the main rival to D&D back in the day).

I'm no "industry insider", but the range of non-d20 options seems much healthier now than merely two years ago.

(And hey, I've got nothing against the OGL. I like both True20 and C&C -- both games made possible by the OGL.)

...
Perhaps not; that would be unrealistic IMO. But was that ever the strategy? The closest I heard was a few high quality systems dominating the market. I don't think it was ever seriously considered that all non-d20 games would be marginalized.

You might be right. I interpreted the following quote somewhat differently:

" ... should eventually drive support for all other game systems to the lowest level possible in the market ...

I guess I would think that the "lowest level possible" would be lower than what is available now. But that's just my interpretation.

 

[Akrasia]

I'm afraid that you are not right as far as the failure of marginalizing the non-d20 games goes. The crisis of the third party d20 publishers was followed by a crisis of many other, non-d20 game companies. GURPS seems to do fine, but others, like HERO Games or WW, seem to have slight problems. The very small game companies are not more than a ripple on the water.

You might be right about this. And I'm certainly no "industry insider".

But WFRP 2e seems to be doing reasonably well. A new version of Runequest wil be coming out soon. Ars Magica 5e is a success (acc. to Atlas president John Nephew). So not everything looks bleak in the non-d20 world.

 

[RyanD]

Earlier in another thread I asked what designers should do about rules creep. As part of your answer you suggested that gamers simply refuse to buy all the new rulebooks the publishers (including WOTC) keep throwing at us. But if we don't buy these products, then how will the new rules gain sufficient notoriety to actually improve the system?

They don't have to gain sufficient noteriety in the player community. They have to gain sufficient notoriety in the design community. Even better: They have to gain sufficient notoriety at Wizards of the Coast.

That may be easier than you think. A lot of people at WotC play a lot of RPGs, and they actively look at lots of RPG products. I suspect that they have dissected in some detail most of the top-selling D20 products, and probably a lot of the top selling PDF only products.

I also think there's a difference between "a whole bunch of feats" and a tightly focused design effort to improve a specific area of the game. (Note in my example, I suggested source material for unqiue cultural reference). Innovating in areas that D&D is weak in (mass combat, non-combat challenge resoution, environments other than forests and caves, etc.) allows a DM/player group who needs that resource to add it without major disruptions to the rest of the game, and it is the kind of thing likely to pique WotC's interest.

I also suspect that we're nearing a time when one or more groups push to make a publisher independent "reference platform" for D20 that can be produced as a PDF document and revised more often than the core D&D rulebooks are. A quarterly "build" akin to the distribution of Linux would do nicely. Once that process starts, and a significant design community aggregates around it, that "reference platform" becomes a one-stop-shop for WotC as they consider things to add to the core of D&D. Such a reference platform would be designed to be a playable D20 RPG that could be used (per the OGL) by any publisher who expressed an interest, which means that such an effort may have a commercial application to provide some kind of funding to support a higher-than-volunteer-only level of development.

That's the kind of thing the OGL enables that we didn't have before.