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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7907815" data-attributes="member: 82106">And I think this is something that is illustrative about D&D, and about the topic of this thread too.Lets contrast D&D and Traveler. These two RPGs (at least in fairly classic form) arose about the same time. D&D envisages a narrative of power progression of the characters, Traveler does not. That is to say D&D has mechanical power progression, Traveler has NONE (well, barely any, and only as a sort of hacked on afterthought). Now, interestingly, D&D has been through a long set of progressions of development, rules expansion, and redevelopment. Because it IS about increased character power, fundamentally, the options and rules seem to constantly provide for more and more ways to achieve that (regardless of the modularity or design of any specific edition). This has always, so far, lead to situations of 'rules bloat' and scenarios where the publisher finds it expeditious to rewrite the game and start over, effectively.Traveler OTOH is the exact opposite. PCs are basically unchanging, there is no progression in character terms, and thus characters don't really need a lot of extensions to the rules for new ways to add stuff to your PC. While a bunch of supplements were published covering additional career paths (ways to roll up a PC) and loads of added equipment and such, the core game and its basic PC facing options are the same today in 2020 as they were in 1977. The skill rules in use today are a SLIGHT tweak on the original ones, but any PC rolled up in 1977 is fully compatible with the most current versions of the game. In fact 'new editions' of Traveler have mostly focused on variations of the setting and some GM-facing subsystems mostly. The only real reason to even purchase new Traveler books is basically because your old ones wore out. Traveler may leave some 'hook' unused, but it also seems to have escaped all the issues of bloat and whatnot. Yet the game has remained in use and is still a pretty popular and easily available RPG, arguably remaining the leading SF RPG. I agree the power advancement hook is a big part of D&D's appeal, but it also seems IMHO to drive game publishers into a need to keep putting out new PC options, and that eventually breaks the game.I'd argue that 4e, FAR MORE than 5e, is highly generic and modular and suffered much less from this problem. WotC managed to publish over 30 books with 4e content and the game still functions quite well.</blockquote>

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