Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
L&L 3/11/2013 This Week in D&D
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6104085" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>Yeah, when I say "less sophisticated" I don't mean that disparagingly either. I'm not sure I'd quite equate dungeon crawl with the strictures of haiku, but yeah limits and structure are one way to focus creativity. I make functional pottery, it has to work, no abstract sculpture. Its a discipline that forces you to express things in more subtle ways. OTOH I don't think there's anything subtle about dungeon crawls, they're just a format for play which can enhance enjoyment by making the conventions of the game more clear, bringing it down a bit from "anything goes" and invoking a whole set of table conventions and expectations which allow the game to run smoothly and easily without a lot of negotiation. And yeah, I'm sure you can do subtle and clever things in a dungeon.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I don't know. I think that the majority of people are happy with "story-light sandbox dungeon hack & slash" but they're not generally the thought leaders or long-term players. My experience is people START there but a year or two of dungeon crawls and you're ready to move on. I think there are a lot of people who are now nostalgic for their first D&D game, and they've forgotten how all that hack & slash got thin after a while and needed some meaty exploration, plot, narrative, and developed mood and setting to stay interesting. </p><p></p><p>MtG is irrelevent. The point is D&D is the INDUSTRY flag-ship RPG, and WotC's flagship (and really only) RPG product. I think that the game needs to remain vital and fresh if it is going to continue to pull all those other products along with it. A stale game that is designed to be barely more than a parlor game isn't going to cut it. The gaming community around it will die eventually and move on to games that do give that kind of depth and offer new and fresh material. You can't sit still or you will die, and if the game dies then the rest is like a hollow tree, it will just rot away and shed limbs until nothing is left. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yeah, I dunno. Vornheim doesn't do that much for me. I think Zak is just one of those people that annoyingly is so into his hip thing that everything else needs to be dissed. It smacks of a deep insecurity or something, I dunno. I mean I could have fun for an evening or two with some people wandering around doing random Vornheim chart lookups, but it is going to get old fast. If that is the only sort of thing that D&D is supposed to be doing and the rules aren't supposed to help support any other type of play except 'crawls' of whatever sort its a dead game to a lot of us. Again, I think there real picture is subtler than trads vs indies. There are good elements of D&D, keeping them is fine. If there's no reason to change how something works or what it means, great, don't. OTOH experimentation and change are what keep something living and vital. I think that's where the majority of people are if they think about it. I think it is only really a question of where exactly you draw your lines. 4e was bold, but it is still IMHO D&D. I think they did what needed to be done and it should be built on. Its fine to consolidate on that now, and narrow the gap between 4e and other editions, but that's not what DDN is. If all it is is 'trad service' then it will fail, even if most people don't care about anything but dungeon crawling the game will still die simply because it is stagnant. Creativity leaves stagnant things behind, and creativity is the real magic of D&D.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 6104085, member: 82106"] Yeah, when I say "less sophisticated" I don't mean that disparagingly either. I'm not sure I'd quite equate dungeon crawl with the strictures of haiku, but yeah limits and structure are one way to focus creativity. I make functional pottery, it has to work, no abstract sculpture. Its a discipline that forces you to express things in more subtle ways. OTOH I don't think there's anything subtle about dungeon crawls, they're just a format for play which can enhance enjoyment by making the conventions of the game more clear, bringing it down a bit from "anything goes" and invoking a whole set of table conventions and expectations which allow the game to run smoothly and easily without a lot of negotiation. And yeah, I'm sure you can do subtle and clever things in a dungeon. I don't know. I think that the majority of people are happy with "story-light sandbox dungeon hack & slash" but they're not generally the thought leaders or long-term players. My experience is people START there but a year or two of dungeon crawls and you're ready to move on. I think there are a lot of people who are now nostalgic for their first D&D game, and they've forgotten how all that hack & slash got thin after a while and needed some meaty exploration, plot, narrative, and developed mood and setting to stay interesting. MtG is irrelevent. The point is D&D is the INDUSTRY flag-ship RPG, and WotC's flagship (and really only) RPG product. I think that the game needs to remain vital and fresh if it is going to continue to pull all those other products along with it. A stale game that is designed to be barely more than a parlor game isn't going to cut it. The gaming community around it will die eventually and move on to games that do give that kind of depth and offer new and fresh material. You can't sit still or you will die, and if the game dies then the rest is like a hollow tree, it will just rot away and shed limbs until nothing is left. Yeah, I dunno. Vornheim doesn't do that much for me. I think Zak is just one of those people that annoyingly is so into his hip thing that everything else needs to be dissed. It smacks of a deep insecurity or something, I dunno. I mean I could have fun for an evening or two with some people wandering around doing random Vornheim chart lookups, but it is going to get old fast. If that is the only sort of thing that D&D is supposed to be doing and the rules aren't supposed to help support any other type of play except 'crawls' of whatever sort its a dead game to a lot of us. Again, I think there real picture is subtler than trads vs indies. There are good elements of D&D, keeping them is fine. If there's no reason to change how something works or what it means, great, don't. OTOH experimentation and change are what keep something living and vital. I think that's where the majority of people are if they think about it. I think it is only really a question of where exactly you draw your lines. 4e was bold, but it is still IMHO D&D. I think they did what needed to be done and it should be built on. Its fine to consolidate on that now, and narrow the gap between 4e and other editions, but that's not what DDN is. If all it is is 'trad service' then it will fail, even if most people don't care about anything but dungeon crawling the game will still die simply because it is stagnant. Creativity leaves stagnant things behind, and creativity is the real magic of D&D. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
L&L 3/11/2013 This Week in D&D
Top