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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mearls" data-source="post: 2943945" data-attributes="member: 697">Wow! That review is a blast from the past!It was meant partially as a satire, partially as a serious question along the lines of, "Would D&D have been more popular, or even mainstream, if B2 had been better designed?"There was definitely a time when I considered B2 a terrible module. Seven years ago, I had much different ideas of what made a good RPG product than I do today. Of course, seven years ago I wasn't a professional game designer.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Today, I think that B2 is a very interesting model for doing things. I sometimes wonder if this barebones level of design is all that gamers really need. We talk about versimilitude (man, I'm sure I misspelled that), story, detail, and so on, but do we really need a designer to give us that?I'm running a one shot D&D game for a few people this Saturday. On one hand, I'd like to use one of the many, and quite good, modules I have lying around. On the other hand, it's pretty easy to come up with a story, stat out some NPCs, and run something. For some inexplicable reason - maybe it's the wererat rogue minis I have on my computer - I want to run a city adventure with wererats, a chase through the sewers, a fight in a room with a giant waterfall in the middle, a scene with the strange market hidden beneath the city, and another scene in the equally strange tavern in that market.In a way, the more detail that a product offers the harder it is for me to fit the story I want to tell into it. The barebones approach, like the one taken by Wilderlands of High Fantasy, makes it really easy to do what you want.I think part of the reason I'm so excited about the Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classic setting is that it really feels like a setting where I can slot in the different stories I want to tell, along with the existing DCCs.So, I think that B2 is a very interesting design model, one that we haven't really seen in the industry despite the popularity of retro design. It's a good design, and I'd be curious to see what kind of sales numbers a module written in the same style could generate.Of course, ask me again in seven years and maybe I'll have a different answer.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Interestingly enough, that review prompted Dale Donovan and John Tynes to email me (they had very different reactions), and the RPG.net admin at the time (Sandy Antunes?) asked if I wanted to do a column for the site. It sort of helped me break into the business. Ironic, isn't it?</blockquote>

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