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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libramarian" data-source="post: 6099494" data-attributes="member: 6688858">Yes! This is what I'm talking about.  That type of adventure is powerfully lame. Fairly or unfairly, this is  what I felt the 4e books were presenting as the game's default adventure  paradigm. The stuff about player-created quests points to something  more interesting but it felt like an inconsequential toss-in idea to me.  I personally would need more advice and structure to know what to do  with that.Haha, I don't think that's pejorative, I think that's right on  the money, for the most part. I can totally see why he would say it's a  serious problem for fantasy RPG design in the context of fantasy  heartbreakers at the time of his writing. My hope would be that today  there are enough alternative fantasy role-playing models and games that  people can take another look at classic D&D and appreciate it for  what it is, rather than backlash against it because they keep getting  frustrated trying to push it out of its natural zone.I think the poster child of D&D heartbreakers would be early Runequest eh? Especially playing in Glorantha where you have this enormously complex mythologically resonant setting and the play experience is still basically dungeon-crawling for treasure. I'm thinking of picking up the reprint of Griffin Mountain to run with the Legend rules, because I've heard people describe it as the greatest sandbox setting of all time--I think I'd be going into it with the right attitude: this is basically going to be classic D&D with more limbs chopped off and a weirder/more interesting setting.No, I don't see how it courts  social contract breakdown any moreso than any other game experience  that's pretty focused GNS-wise. I thought Edwards mentioned it as an example of coherent gamist play in the essay on that subject. But yeah, generally my advice to prevent  that from happening would be to downplay a player's attachment to their  particular character concept and play up the idea of exploring a weird  fantasy world. Character generation is less about "who do you want to  be?" and more about "what toolkit of abilities do you want to take with  you?". It's like the old  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JjhQ1Oi_3k" target="_blank">D&D cartoon</a>  where the players are literally teleported into the game world. You're  almost just playing yourself. That seems to be sufficient to get  everyone on the same page without taking all of the tension out of the  game by overcompensating and being ironic and jokey with it. It's not  necessary to name your male elf Melf or their fourth character Wilson IV  or stuff like that. I read a description in <a href="http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?676099-B-X-Misadventures-in-randomly-generated-dungeons" target="_blank">this amusing thread</a> of Basic D&D being like a boardgame that's allowed to run off the rails, and I thought that was really apt.I think it's  likely you are right about the last part there.I agree. I think maybe some people are so used to irrelevant and  unfocused advice text in games that they just tune it out now, like  advertising.pemerton has observed that the foreword in  Moldvay's Basic D&D is weirdly dissonant with how the game actually  plays. This is true, but I didn't even notice that -- I think my brain  almost immediately recognized it as pointless fluff and ignored it. I  notice when this sort of thing is remarkably relevant and appropriate,  e.g. the intro and Successful Adventures section in 1e PHB, but not when it's useless.</blockquote>

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