Is a popular non-D&D traditional fantasy RPG possible?

[Fifth Element]

First you have to have a good game. And not good in a way that is "We are better then D&D because" but good as in "This is whay it is good" and never need to mention or subtley insult the other game.

Very true. If you don't do this, you're into heartbreaker territory. There's nothing that puts me off a new game more than marketing text that reads like "this is how it's different than D&D".

 

[Mercurius]

Very true. If you don't do this, you're into heartbreaker territory. There's nothing that puts me off a new game more than marketing text that reads like "this is how it's different than D&D".

You mean Wyverns & Labyrinths doesn't work for you?

D&D is so hard to "defeat" or "emulate" because it has legs in all four spheres that will trample you if you don't out-strip it.

However "exotic" or "specific" is a mighty broad brush. Centaurs as PCs or Not-Medieval Implied Setting, for the Fantasy Heartbreaker fans. Exalted is "exotic" and "specific" as well: are you worried about your market being cannibalized there?

My sense is that you'd have to do both--cover a wide swath of territory and styles (like your four spheres and more) AND carry a specific flavor and exoticism. This is why I mentioned Shards of the Stone: It was one large world with many "realms" of different tones and textures, more different from each other than, say, the regions of the Forgotten Realms. Most campaign settings seem to play the real world analogue game; you have your core fantasized medieval Europe, then a Northern wilderness, then a middle eastern region, ancient Egypt, etc. Shards exemplifies what I think could work: A similar level of diversity (as FR and others), but not as real world analogues.

I mean, that has been done to death. I think someone would have to come up with the right flavor, or combination of flavors, that was both familiar and exotic at the same time.

Ok..that helps some. I would think if the world is somewhat traditional (tolkienesque) the mechanics would really need to be original, something to pull gamers in.

Honestly though I just don't think it would happen; possible but highly highly improbable. It would always come down to why would people play this game vs the many other fantasy RPGs out there already.

Yes, highly improbable. Still, it is fun to think about. Your last sentence finds the core, imo, as well as supports what I was saying before. Not only would the setting have to be something truly unique or different--or "traditional fantasy" done so well that it seemed fresh and new--but the system would have to somehow be both simple and open-endedly complex.

And it may be, as someone said previously by mentioning Magic the Gathering, that some new element would be required, something that broke the boundaries of table top RPGs. An "evolutionary development," so to speak.

 

[Ydars]

Oh; another thread descends into a morass of edition wars again! How surprising (NOT). Also, if some people are wondering why other people get annoyed when phrases like "grognard", "fantasy heart-breaker" etc get tossed about, it is probably because they are an insulting way of saying "oh; that old idea. We are so sophisticated we have heard all this before". If you have; fine, don't post.

To actually ANSWER the OP; A game that beats the pants off of D&D is clearly possible, but the company that launched it would have to already have considerable resources, so it is not something an RPG start-up is going to do; it has to come from someone established and possibly in the "left field" much like WoTC themselves were. I believe it will happen one-day and that the RPG industry will be all the better for having 2 massive companies instead of one. It might stop the complacency in WoTC for a start; I completely agree with all who have stated that 4e is no where near as polished as I would have expected.

Ironically, such a game would have to take up the ground that D&D has ceded; the generic fantasy system that can be used to play ANY type of Fantasy game without serious modification/house-ruling. I would argue that 4E actually steps away from this most basic of D&D's former design goals and is now a game about very powerful, potentially non-human PCs, in a very high magic setting. It is a great game; it just cannot now be used to emulate many important and enduring fantasy troupes; like the farm-boy cum hero story-arc, though additional material may plug this gap. Yet D&D was never truely generic; it always had a certain flavour that I found turned me off of early editions.

What would I like to see in such a D&D competitor;

1) It must be generic enough that all types of fantasy can be played using it, including low or no magic games, possibly including historical games.

2) It must have a very powerful and streamlined system that is simple enough to be very usable by the DM but powerful enough to be interesting to the players.

3) Equal "rules share" should be paid to combat and non-combat game elements, to include social interactions and use of non-combat related abilities, yet these sections should also be able to be completely disregarded by those who just want to play like Hong.

4) Roleplaying should actually be mechanically rewarded for once; I would like to see rewards for PCs who generate stories for themselves and then complete these stories and also for fixing the PCs into the setting and to pre-existing relationships with other PCs.

5) I would like to see more reference to and understanding of real-world weapon combat. There are TONS of really cool moves and combat styles found in historical sources that no RPG has ever tapped into.

6) The reason for mentioning the real world alot in this is that I think RPGs might become more main-stream if they could be used to teach history or maths or other subjects in schools. This might be the marketing angle I would adopt if I were producing such a system.

7) I would also like to see more information for Dungeon masters about economics, trade, and historical references as aids to world building. Sure; some people would ignore this, but there is a danger the rest of us might actually learn something.

8) The generic game would also do well to develop several well fleshed out worlds; a low magic, gritty realistic setting; a high-magic, more D&D type setting and something more original and then have a cosmology that allows people to jump between them (like in Feist's books).

9) The game must be heavily supported; as well as WoTC do D&D.

10) Magic and other elements must be made, mechanically and in terms of feel, to be mystical and unpredictable, not like a branch of science.

Are all the above achieveable; I think so, but it makes such a game highly unlikely and so it might be some time before such a product emerges.

 

[apoptosis]

O
Ironically, such a game would have to take up the ground that D&D has ceded; the generic fantasy system that can be used to play ANY type of Fantasy game without serious modification/house-ruling. I would argue that 4E actually steps away from this most basic of D&D's former design goals and is now a game about very powerful, potentially non-human PCs, in a very high magic setting. It is a great game; it just cannot now be used to emulate many important and enduring fantasy troupes; like the farm-boy cum hero story-arc, though additional material may plug this gap. Yet D&D was never truely generic; it always had a certain flavour that I found turned me off of early editions.

What would I like to see in such a D&D competitor;

1) It must be generic enough that all types of fantasy can be played using it, including low or no magic games, possibly including historical games.

2) It must have a very powerful and streamlined system that is simple enough to be very usable by the DM but powerful enough to be interesting to the players.

3) Equal "rules share" should be paid to combat and non-combat game elements, to include social interactions and use of non-combat related abilities, yet these sections should also be able to be completely disregarded by those who just want to play like Hong.

..

Honestly I think many games have a lot of these qualities. I think it would probably take a lot more than this to get significant number of people to play it.

I dont think there is that much room for a generic fantasty RPG that tries to do everything well (gritty, low magic, high magic). Those end up never doing anything well. but everything somewhat mediocre.

To get gamers (and nongamers) to play It would have to approach the game in a very very novel way.

Maybe i am a pessimist or optomist (depending on what side of the stream your on), but I just dont think anything will displace D&D as the fantasty RPG.

In the end I think it would take a company with a lot of resources that has a marketing genius that could convince a lot of people that playing RPGs is actually cool and not social stigma..

 

[Mercurius]

Wow, Ydars and apoptosis, you two summed everything up rather well (And to be fair, Ydars, about half of the posts in this thread did actually answer my original, the other half being skirmishes in the Edition Wars and various semantical-pedantical debates...not a terrible ratio, I suppose).

I really resonate with almost everything Ydars wrote, much of which I've mentioned in various posts in this thread, but also feel that apoptosis added some key points: Namely that any such game would need incredible marketing to do well, and it couldn't be too generic, although Ydars touches on this with the many settings idea.

But Ydars, the limitation of D&D 4E is what I find disturbing: That you can no longer (easily, at least) play the "off the farm" style game, and other variations that were once more possible. I do believe that 4E in many (most?) ways is an improvement over 3E, which was an improvement over 2E, etc, but that 4E has become more specific, more stylized along a certain vein, which I feel--and got flack for believing--caters more to a younger crowd (not meant in a pejorative way, despite what Hobo thinks).

In some sense 4E needs a 4th tier of game play, a "0-tier" before Heroic. But even then, once you get to Heroic and beyond your character cannot but be a high-powered CRPG-like avatar (another influence being Hong Kong movies and through it, Exalted).

D&D 4E allows us to play Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but it doesn't allow us to play A Game of Thrones or The Belgariad or any number of classic fantasy books and their equivalent power level.

To be clear once more, I DO like what 4E has to offer, it just seems more limited than before--perhaps by taking away certain limits for characters, or making them easier to bypass. I still don't have a fluent understanding of the rules but I just don't see how some of the things we're talking about can be "pasted" back on. It seems like 4E bypassed a whole "tier" of more mundane RPGing.

But again, apoptosis has a very strong point in emphasizing marketing, flavor, and the need for such a game to introduce something new, probably something that hasn't quite been done before--and possibly something mechanical, that is having to do with how the game is played (e.g. Vampire's introduction, or popularization, of LARPing; Amber's dicelessness; Everway's use of cards; etc).

I would also like to add that I think if a game were to really reach into a non-gaming crowd, the rules system would have to be very "rules lite," at least at its core, but also have a more advanced optional set that was both completely compatible and translatable to the basic core, and infinitely customizable. Gamers don't realize how complex RPGs are until they try to explain the rules to a non-gaming spouse or friend or relative; non-gamers would need something very basic. Yet most gamers, especially D&D players, like at least some degree of crunch.

In conclusion I would say that the bottom line is that the game would have to be able to do everything, but also be quite specific: a fractal model, if you will, which could "zoom" in and out, microcosm to macrocosm, simple to complex. The old and out of print game Aria comes to mind: If someone could pull that off, I think we might have something.

 

[Desdichado]

Oh; another thread descends into a morass of edition wars again! How surprising (NOT). Also, if some people are wondering why other people get annoyed when phrases like "grognard", "fantasy heart-breaker" etc get tossed about, it is probably because they are an insulting way of saying "oh; that old idea. We are so sophisticated we have heard all this before". If you have; fine, don't post.

No, they're not insulting. Grognard and fantasy heartbreaker as succint, not insulting.

To actually ANSWER the OP; A game that beats the pants off of D&D is clearly possible,

Theoretically, sure. But very improbable. Time and time again folks have tried to challenge D&D's supremacy, and nobody has managed to do so. White Wolf was the only company to even make some significant headway in that direction in the mid-90s, and they did that by staking out brand new territory, not in trying to out-D&D D&D itself.

The reason D&D style fantasy RPGs are called fantasy heartbreakers is because they don't offer enough to challenge D&D in the market. There's no compelling reason to switch to them unless you happen to have a group that's excited about the idea.

I know it sounds cliche to say so, but the breadth of material available for D&D and the "network externalities"--i.e., the fact that almost anyone can find D&D players while it's often difficult to find players for other games, are obstacles that no game is going to overcome simply by being good.

The OGL has actually possibly opened the door for D&D like games that aren't fantasy heartbreakers, because they at least overcome the first obstacle I mentioned there (other OGL material is fairly compatible) and somewhat alleviate the second (similar enough that many players will play it) and think a few endeavors like Castles & Crusades, and hopefully Pathfinder turn out to not be fantasy heartbreakers.

But in many ways the odds are stacked against them. Even such "you think they'd be hits" games as the Warcraft and EverQuest RPGs are really just fantasy heartbreakers too, when you get right down to it.

I believe it will happen one-day and that the RPG industry will be all the better for having 2 massive companies instead of one.

That seems an extraordinary thing to believe. It hasn't happened in over thirty years, and now the entire market is shrinking, making it more difficult than ever that it could happen.

It might stop the complacency in WoTC for a start; I completely agree with all who have stated that 4e is no where near as polished as I would have expected.

Ironically, such a game would have to take up the ground that D&D has ceded; the generic fantasy system that can be used to play ANY type of Fantasy game without serious modification/house-ruling. I would argue that 4E actually steps away from this most basic of D&D's former design goals and is now a game about very powerful, potentially non-human PCs, in a very high magic setting. It is a great game; it just cannot now be used to emulate many important and enduring fantasy troupes; like the farm-boy cum hero story-arc, though additional material may plug this gap. Yet D&D was never truely generic; it always had a certain flavour that I found turned me off of early editions.

Make up your mind; did D&D cede that ground, or did it never cover it to begin with? IMO, it never covered it to begin with. That hasn't hampered its success any, though. Your complaints about D&D today could easily have been made ten or fifteen years ago and been just as true.

1) It must be generic enough that all types of fantasy can be played using it, including low or no magic games, possibly including historical games.

Why would that make it more successful, though? As I said above, genericness has never been indicative of success in this industry. GURPS is just about the only system that styles itself truly generic, and while it's been successful enough, it's still modest compared to D&D and I don't think that the market demands more genericness than that.

2) It must have a very powerful and streamlined system that is simple enough to be very usable by the DM but powerful enough to be interesting to the players.

That all sounds nice, but it's extremely vague. What exactly does it really mean?

3) Equal "rules share" should be paid to combat and non-combat game elements, to include social interactions and use of non-combat related abilities, yet these sections should also be able to be completely disregarded by those who just want to play like Hong.

You mean like D&D today?

4) Roleplaying should actually be mechanically rewarded for once; I would like to see rewards for PCs who generate stories for themselves and then complete these stories and also for fixing the PCs into the setting and to pre-existing relationships with other PCs.

You'd like to see that. What's your basis for thinking that that's what "the market" itself wants to see?

5) I would like to see more reference to and understanding of real-world weapon combat. There are TONS of really cool moves and combat styles found in historical sources that no RPG has ever tapped into.

Same as above.

6) The reason for mentioning the real world alot in this is that I think RPGs might become more main-stream if they could be used to teach history or maths or other subjects in schools. This might be the marketing angle I would adopt if I were producing such a system.

No, they wouldn't. Do you see marked success of such "stealth schoolwork but we're calling it games" in any other market? It's a niche. A tiny portion. Educational video games, for instance, or educational movies, are a tiny speedbump compared to juggernauts like Super Smash Brothers, Grand Theft Auto or Spongebob.

People don't want to spend their entertainment time being educated, by and large. Some parents may want their younger kids to do so, and that's a big part of what drives the market for this kind of thing, but once they're old enough to figure out that just plain playing is funner than "learning while you play" it starts to fall apart.

7) I would also like to see more information for Dungeon masters about economics, trade, and historical references as aids to world building. Sure; some people would ignore this, but there is a danger the rest of us might actually learn something.

You sure are proposing an awful lot of content that even you admit people will ignore.

That's not a good sign for the success of your hypothetical venture.

8) The generic game would also do well to develop several well fleshed out worlds; a low magic, gritty realistic setting; a high-magic, more D&D type setting and something more original and then have a cosmology that allows people to jump between them (like in Feist's books).

Like 2e, you mean? Like one of the main things that's commonly held to have been a contributing factor of the failure of 2e to maintain TSR's solvency, as a matter of fact?

9) The game must be heavily supported; as well as WoTC do D&D.

Chicken, meet egg. To be heavily supported, you need to be successful. Development and printing of new books ain't cheap, and you've got to be generating capital to do so. Then again, if this is an element necessary for a game to challenge D&D, it needs to be heavily supported before it can start being successful.

Catch-22.

10) Magic and other elements must be made, mechanically and in terms of feel, to be mystical and unpredictable, not like a branch of science.

Why? What makes you think that's a contributing factor to a game's success?

Are all the above achieveable; I think so, but it makes such a game highly unlikely and so it might be some time before such a product emerges.

See; here's the reason people are "tarring" this conversation with the fantasy heartbreaker brush. It's not because they're being insulting, as you claim, it's because you fit the classical definition.

You've got a laundry list of things you would want to see in your Holy Grail game system, but you show little to no understanding or even awareness of what the market wants, of what other gamers want, of what's successful today and why, of what's been a failure in the past and why...

Seriously, that's classic 100% fantasy heartbreaker territory there.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Any company that does have the power to compete with D&D will not. It simply isn't profitable. Fighting WOTC for the RPG market is like shooting a guy to get his IPod.

Despite the fact that you may not like WOTC, they rule the RPG market. It's not like some guy is gonna produce a new game system from his basement that is better then D&D. Even if he does so, how is he gonna market it? How is he gonna get it into the hands of players? How will he convince them it's worth playing?

Instead of hoping for some miracle system, why not consider things already out there? GURPS is a great example of a thriving system. Note that Steve Jackson Games also makes most of its money via a card game. Paizo and Pathfinder may be what your looking for. If the stars align just right, they could become a rival to WOTC some day.

 

[radferth]

So, for those of us who would like to see someone with a system we prefer challenge WotC for dominance of the generic fantasy RPG market: we need to invent a card game that can bankroll Paizo's RPG line. Any ideas?

 

[Maggan]

Any company that does have the power to compete with D&D will not. It simply isn't profitable. Fighting WOTC for the RPG market is like shooting a guy to get his IPod.

While I do share your sentiment, that must be one of the worst analogies in the history of EN World. I think it more apt to say it's like shooting YOURSELF to get a guy's Zune.

Seriously though. It won't be the mechanics that makes or breaks a new, market dominating roleplaying game. It'll be the marketing and distribution.

Whether or not there are, for example, dragonborn or not, is not a factor in this. The problem is not that multiclassing in 4e is different from earlier editions.

It's the concept of pen and paper roleplaying that's the hurdle. So any game that wants to be successful on a D&D scale needs to clear that hurdle, and that has, IMO, very little to with actual game design (given that the game doesn't suck on a fatal level, of course).

Marketing and distribution, those are the keys.

/M

 

[Particle_Man]

As with most of the words I use, I meant it loosely--not as a strict definition, but to paint a general picture. More specifically I meant secondary world fantasy with different races/peoples, magic, pre-industrial, etc. But it doesn't have to be elves, dwarves, dragons, etc--although I would think it should include the option for those.

Note one big problem with Fantasy Hearbreakers is the Not-Elves. These are character races that have many of the characteristics of D&D Elves, but are given a different name, so they are "obviously" not elves, and thus this game is different from D&D and everyone will want to play it because it is better than D&D and it will make me a million dollars and wait what do you mean no one is buying it?