A wild comparison. Gamma World is a very specifically focused game. I love it, but it isn’t a game that is going to meaningfully compare to the generic fantasy game.
In 4e you have constantly changing bonuses or penalties, some of which stack and some of which don’t.
Everything is relatove, but experience and observation auggest that rolling more dice is very fun for most people.
My experience World of Darkness is entirely in watching the Critical Role two parter where Taliesin Jaffe had made all of the characters for his players, so maybe that was just an example of very slick GMing on his part because the resolution mechanic seemed very smooth and elegant for the players who were clueless about the rules (Sam Riegal, per his usual tradition, had done zero homework going in).
It's probably the best idea in D&D since ascending AC...and probably before.
A/D comes to 5th via 4th from 3.5 (Bo9S). It's interesting to see it appear in more PbtA games also, e.g. Stonetop (so you sometimes roll 3d6 and keep the two highest/lowest).
The latest iteration of Traveller also uses the same mechanic as PbtA you describe here.
Okay, I can actually see that!
Yeah I noticed Advantage-style mechanics popping up a lot. Definitely agree with @Parmandur that it's 5E's big contribution to game design.
Pathfinder used it to its IMO best effect; as a sometimes food game change and luck mechanic instead of the smothering blanket that ate any other design.
Yes, I think that you are very right about the lack of analysis paralysis, as all of those games, regardless of their many differences, provide a pretty clear narrative structure in which a player can move. "What would Conan the Barbarian do...?"
The more the merrier.
I don’t know about that, but I do like it.
...except the argument you're talking about isn't circular.
An over-simplification is not the same as a circular argument. Whether it is correct or not has nothing to do with the syntactic structure (which is the case with a formal fallacy like circularity.)
The intrinsic qualities people have repeatedly argued were relevant to 5e's success were quickness, lightness, being traditional, etc. I specifically cited all of those things. People haven't brought up any other intrinsic qualities, or I would have attempted to address them as well.
People have specifically and repeatedly claimed that it is the lightness and quickness of 5e that made a huge difference. I cited a game that is light and quick. If that's a bad citation, people should be mentioning those other qualities too.
I didn’t say it was special. I said it was simple and like B1E, it was easy to pick up and just play it unlike later editions that are more complicated. My answer was simple and not circular at all. The core of the game is an uncomplicated adventure game that is easy to understand and play. Like the original version/s. The thing that makes it “special” is that it has maintained interest for going on ten years and has grown every year for ten years. Has little to do with the game and everything to do with the marketing and the spirit of the times. Bing bang boom, poke your nose, Bob’s your uncle. No more complicated than that.Well, again, this seems like a circular argument: you are justifying that it was special by pointing to this unique behavior, but that doesn't distinguish special circumstances from special nature.
Did it stay afloat because it was special, something totally unheard-of or nigh-unique in the gaming space, or did it stay afloat because its circumstances were special?
Part of the reason I just can't see it as being particularly special is that...it's not like there haven't been quick-run, "light" versions of games, nor of D&D specifically. 4e had GW7e, which even sold in stores as a boxed set thing. Shadowrun 5th Edition had Shadowrun: Anarchy. D&D had Basic. Etc., etc. There have been attempts in that direction, and none of them took off even remotely like this has.
Conversely, 5e isn't that simple by tabletop standards. It's absolutely not the simplest version of D&D ever made (which, again, would either be some early-edition thing or GW7e.) It has a whole bunch of weird legacy holdovers, like the claimed but generally invisible difference between "divine" magic and "arcane" magic, or saving throws as opposed to static defenses, or ability scores that are never used except at character creation (or for half-feats, I guess?) It's guilty of quite a lot of semantic overloading, particularly the terms "level," "action," and "check." It's absolutely nothing like the simplicity of ultralight games, particularly with à la carte multiclassing and the tracking of how levels in various (sub)classes stack together for that purpose.
So...it's not that having a particularly simple system option makes that big a difference. 3.0 was quite a bit simpler than 2.0, but it didn't have the staying power that 5e has, and other, even-simpler systems (like various extensions of Basic) did not capture that lightning in a bottle the way 5e has. What gives?
My only conclusion is that the special circumstances--which I don't think anyone here denies that those circumstances were special--played an enormous role in permitting this to happen. The rules were not irrelevant. But whatever 5e was, it couldn't have succeeded as much as it has without those special circumstances--because previous efforts in that direction, which didn't have those circumstances, weren't any different from other examples.
Hence why I said 60% (or a little higher) was circumstance, 40% (or a little lower) was innate character. The special circumstances made all the difference, and in their absence, it doesn't matter what kind of game 5e was, it wouldn't have succeeded the way it has. With their presence, even a game that differed moderately to significantly from 5e (such as 4e*) would still have done well, though I freely grant that it might not have done as well. But, as I said, I could be argued down to a 50/50--that it was equal parts being the game for the time, and being the time for a game, whatever that game happened to be. I absolutely would not go any further than 50/50 though.
*Though honestly it's really funny. People--some of them the very people who are participating in this thread--have previously tried to convince me that no, there's actually plenty of 4e in 5e, that there's such strong similarities that it's difficult to understand how someone couldn't see them. Yet now, when it's important that 5e be different from 4e? The two couldn't be more dissimilar. Funny that similarity is only present when it's useful and absolutely denied when it isn't...
Edit: Hey, magic post 1234! Just something funny I noticed
You talked about how it did well...in a thread titled "Is 5e Special"...and specifically cited how a certain characteristic (quickness of play) was, in your opinion, important for why 5e avoided the "crater[ing]" other editions experienced. You may not have used the word "special," but what else were you trying to say?
Well then, I guess we agree? I'm still confused as to why you said what you said, but if what was meant was "5e had tons of marketing (some of it provided for free by others) and an advantageous climate," then that's all I've really argued for.
Yeah this screams “trying to win points in an argument”, which I don’t engage with if I can help it.
I didn’t engage with the argument at all. I challenged one example, because it’s a bad example.
Familiarity only works as a major factor early on. Most players aren’t old enough for those things to be familiar from past editions.
Considering my comment originally was my ruminations on the idea of 5e being special and essentially saying “right idea, right time like the early years” then your comment was a bunch of hot air to refute me because you thought I was calling it special. The misunderstanding is on you to figure out here because your brain is the one that inserted the word “special” into my post. My only “failure” could be wading into a 60 page post and not being buggered enough to read the whole blamed thing to know what you’re arguing with everyone about at this juncture.
