Is there a need for a simplified D&D?

[mmadsen]

My mom bought me an '81 Basic set for Christmas at Sears. SEARS for crying out loud!!!

Why won't I pick up the current D&D Basic Game? Because it's not "D&D for people who don't like full D&D". It's "A small part of full D&D and we hope it convinces you to go out and buy full D&D".

So, how is "a small part of full D&D" not "D&D for people who don't like full D&D"?

 

[Mouseferatu]

Pot, meet kettle.

Not at all. Akrasia wasn't saying that Basic should replace D&D, or that D&D was useless, and there was no need for it. Some people have been saying, however, that there is no need for a Basic version, and that people who want one don't understand what D&D is. That's very clearly not correct, as proven by the many people who enjoyed the old Basic set--and as proven by the very existance of this thread.

Nobody (except possibly Diaglo ) is claiming that D&D shouldn't exist as it does. The discussion is whether we a Basic D&D should exist also, not instead. I don't understand the hostility toward the idea. I myself love D&D as it is, and I'd also like to have a Basic set available for the proper occasions. Yet people are reacting as though it's been suggested we replace D&D with something simpler, and that's just not the case.

 

[Mouseferatu]

So, how is "a small part of full D&D" not "D&D for people who don't like full D&D"?

Because it's not a full game. You can't pick it up and play an entire campaign with it; it only goes to 2nd level.

That makes it a wonderful introductory set--which is what it was intended to be. But it doesn't do much for people who just want a simpler rules set across the board.

 

[buzz]

The people who think D&D is D&D because of the complexity have obviously never played the previous version of D&D, but only played AD&D1/2 and 3e. "Only" 20-30 pages of combat rules is a joke. Gimme 20-30 pages of rules total and fill the rest out with monsters, spells, magic items, and setting info.

20-30 pages of rules with "the rest" filled out with monsters, spells, magic items, and setting info (all the but the last one being "rules", too), and you've got a game that is already *way* beyond something that appeals to the "Monopoly and Clue" crowd.

Not going for the "Monopoly and Clue" crowd is what marginalizes this hobby. This attitude is what keeps people away in droves.

No. What keeps people away in droves is that RPGs, even as a general concept, only appeal to a certain number of people. The whole idea that RPGs would be really popular if only there was a rules-lite system aimed at the masses is a fallacy. There have been plenty of rules-lite RPGs, by both big publishers and small, and none of them ever brought in Joe Average in droves. Citing games from the '80s boom that didn't sell a fraction of what D&D did doesn't disprove this in the least.

Joe Average can walk into almost any major bookstore and find RPGs, generally including comparatively "lite" systems like Vampire. Joe Average doesn't buy them becasue Joe Average is not interested.

Why shouldn't people just be able to sit down and enjoy a RPG every other month? Why do all RPG's have to be these complex behemoths?

Many people enjoy RPGs on a regular basis, and there are plenty of RPGs that are not complex behemoths. There are also many games with RPG-like aspects (Clix, D&D/SW mins, Dungeoneer, TCGs) that have a cheap buy-in and fast start-up time.

In what way is going for a broader market bad?

It isn't, necessarily. But chasing Joe Average is a fool's errand; you end up dumbing down your game so that it doesn't appeal to gamers, yet it's still too alien from the get-go for Joe Average to care. The point is to simply get exposure so that you find those poeple who are gamers but maybe just don't know it yet.

TSR's Basic sets were its top sellers for years. You can pretty much mark TSR's decline starting in '94 when they stopped producing introductory style games, like D&D, Star Frontiers, and MSH.

I think TSR's decline started long before 1994, and I think it really didn't have anything to do with whether they had boxed intro games or not. TSR's business mistakes are legion. IIRC, BD&D never sold in the numbers that AD&D did. But it's possibly irrelevant, because TSR made so many blunders that it's hard to point to, say, Star Frontiers being cancelled after a few yers and say "See, *that's* when everything went wrong."

It's pretty simple - boxed sets marketed to a mass audience do well, and boxed sets marketed to a select audience (think of all the 2e campaign specific boxes) do poorly.

This is not the case, to the best of my knowledge, and you're confusing a lot of factors. The 2e campaign settings had problems mainly due to the fact that TSR was cranking them out at a ridiculous pace, splintering their own market. OTOH, the high-profile bookstores near me didn't seem to have an easy time selling the D&D Basic Set and Star Wars intro set; they sat on the shelves forever.

The "nostalgia" argument against OOP games is bunk. I haven't been living in a hole for 10 years. I still buy and play RPG's new and old. I know what kind of game I like, and 3e aint it.

Why is D&D flawed, then, if it's just a game that you don't like? Is it "too complex" or is it just more complex than you prefer?

I don't look at old editions with rose colored glasses; I look at them and see a game more suited to my needs. It would be nice if more RPG companies produced games that suited my needs - they'd definitely get more of my money that way.

I'd reccomend that you either take a look around at games other than D&D, or else consider that you simply like those old games better than the stuff you see today.

I dunno. WotC know how to run a business. If producing boxed, staple-bound RPGs was really profitable and brought in a lot of new blood, I thnk they'd be doing it.

 

[Dark Jezter]

Not at all. Akrasia wasn't saying that Basic should replace D&D, or that D&D was useless, and there was no need for it. Some people have been saying, however, that there is no need for a Basic version, and that people who want one don't understand what D&D is. That's very clearly not correct, as proven by the many people who enjoyed the old Basic set--and as proven by the very existance of this thread.

Nobody (except possibly Diaglo ) is claiming that D&D shouldn't exist as it does. The discussion is whether we a Basic D&D should exist also, not instead. I don't understand the hostility toward the idea. I myself love D&D as it is, and I'd also like to have a Basic set available for the proper occasions. Yet people are reacting as though it's been suggested we replace D&D with something simpler, and that's just not the case.

Actually, my comment was in regard to Akrasia implying that buzz had an "irrational desire to defend his favorite version of the game at all costs", even though Akrasia routinely critisizes 3.x while defending older editions and products.

To me, it looked like Akrasia being hypocritical; acting as though defending 3e and pointing out the shortcomings of 1e aren't acceptable, but doing the exact opposite is just dandy.

 

[buzz]

The (Moldvay) Basic and (Cook) Expert rules added up to 128 pages, and covered everything you needed to run a campaign up to level 14.

Which is fine, but it's still way beyond what Joe Average wants out of a game to play with the kids on a Friday night.

Even 1st edition ADnD, while full of rules (with different resolution mechanisms), differed from the 3.x in that you could IGNORE huge chunks of those rules in order to make the game run more quickly and smoothly without breaking the game.

I don't think there's any reason you can't ignore chunks of any ruleset if you want to. I'd also argue that many of the huge swaths of 1e that regularly got ignored made the game even more unbalanced and wacky.

I also don't see how this would make 1e any less complex, especially if we're talking about newbies (which, admittedly, the original poster was not). I mean, complex as it is, 3e at least makes some basic sense. 1e, otoh, was pretty dang confusing. I mean, the player's book didn't even really tell you how anything worked.

Your response to those people who would like a "rules lite" (or simply "lighter" or more "modular") version of DnD is simply that those people don't understand what "DnD is" (apparently lacking your ability to grasp the Platonic Form in question). But this response fails to recognize the actual history of the game.

I think it's debatable whether BD&D would even really count as "lite" by current definitions.

I dunno. I think that 3e is basically as complex as it needs to be while still appealing to the largest number of gamers.

 

[buzz]

Basic/RC DnD IS 'rules lite'...

...in comparison to 3e, sure. Basic/RC is not, in itself, a "rules lite" RPG, though, by any stretch of the imagination.

As for 1st edition AD&D, yes it was not a rules lite system. However, unlike 3.x, you could easily ignore many of the rules (e.g. weapon speeds and proficiencies, armour modifiers, intiative, etc) without in any way 'breaking' the system. In contrast, 3.x is not modular in this way. Ignore one aspect of the system (e.g. feats), and the game falls apart.

I mentioned in my last post that I don't agree with this.

So is an irrational desire to defend one's favoured version of the game at all costs, and to denigrate critics of the game as victims of "rose-coloured-glasses-syndrome", etc.

I'm not out to denigrate, nor to "defend" (as I didn't know this thread constituted an "attack"). I think it's important to have some perspective, however. The idea that 1e or RC was "lite" is just something I don't think is true.

For you, not everyone.

Right. But to make a semantic point about "need," it's obvious that 3e doesn't "need" to be "lite"-ened. It works fine, and people seem to be buying it en masse. Whether there is a "want" by some for a rules-lighter version of it is another issue. My assessment is that this "want" is not siginficant enough to warrant WotC splitting their core RPG product into two competing game lines.

Unless they want to go out of business like TSR did.

Thankfully, other companies are free to step up to the plate and profit from niche markets like this.

Ugh...

Say what you will, the minis games teach most of the crunchy bits and involve at least some choice, plot, and character-identification. They're also comparatively cheap and easy to run.

 

[MerricB]

Why won't I pick up the current D&D Basic Game? Because it's not "D&D for people who don't like full D&D". It's "A small part of full D&D and we hope it convinces you to go out and buy full D&D". Been there, done that, have the T-Shirt to prove it. Not interested!

That's fine. IMO, however, the new Basic D&D is what Basic D&D should always have been: an introduction to the standard game.

I detest the idea of there being two different systems passing themselves off as the same game. AD&D and the Basic D&D lines had some significant differences, and it just got worse as time went by.

Cheers!

 

[Ourph]

So, how is "a small part of full D&D" not "D&D for people who don't like full D&D"?

In the same way that Risk is not "a small part of full Axis and Allies". They are two different games. One is fairly simple. One is fairly complex. Yet both are complete games.

 

[Akrasia]

... even though Akrasia routinely critisizes 3.x while defending older editions and products..

Rubbish.

At most I have claimed that 3.x is not perfect for every kind of game/campaign (including fantasy "DnD-style" games).

I play 3.x myself, and think it is very good for a certain style of gaming. It is not the style I most prefer to DM. But I am happy to play 3.x with a good DM.

I just think 3.x is not very good at handling the fast-paced and plot-focused kinds of games I like to run as DM. Various aspects of 3.x constrain my style -- unlike other versions of DnD, or other systems.

But I have never rejected 3.x altogether, or claimed that some other system is superior across the board.

To me, it looked like Akrasia being hypocritical; acting as though defending 3e and pointing out the shortcomings of 1e aren't acceptable, but doing the exact opposite is just dandy.

3.x doesn't need to be defended here. This is not the point of this thread. The point of this thread is whether or not a "rules lite" version of (or alternative to) 3.x would be a good idea. Some people have argued that it would not be, and some people (including myself) have argued that it would be.