Legends and Lore: A Different Way to Slice the Pie

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm thinking of effects like Combat Superiority/Combat challenge - which make sense in any system. One OA per round gives a conversation like:

Orc 1: I'll push the little guy out the way - I won't get through by myself - the guys either side are fighters, but if we dogpile the li'l gap one of us is sure to get through.
Orc 2: WTF? Really??

Just make CS and CC a fighter ability that lets you take an OA if a marked, adjacent enemy shifts or makes an attack not including the fighter as a target and one that means fighter OAs that hit stop moves (but not shifts). Job done.

Yeah, and again, what's actually wrong with that? As it stands now any character can OA 4 orcs in a row as they each go past. In 6 seconds its a bit hard to imagine making multiple telling attacks. Beyond that I don't think it is a problem from a game-perspective either. I don't think in that sense it would be a problem for a fighter to be able to OA multiple times, but OTOH if the game is being substantially revised anyway there's not a huge reason to allow it either. The benefit is simply reducing all the off-turn stuff, and exempting fighters (and by extension probably other defenders too) you're injecting a good bit of it back in. I don't know EXACTLY how it would be handled in an alternative fashion that provides sufficient defender stickiness, but I think it would be a useful concept to explore in terms of streamlining combat.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I am worried for the future of the game when a bunch of talented amateurs come up with better ideas riffing in a thread in their off-time than a veteran designer can do while he's being paid.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I am worried for the future of the game when a bunch of talented amateurs come up with better ideas riffing in a thread in their off-time than a veteran designer can do while he's being paid.

Eh, it is easy to make suggestions, and at worst we we're building on a LARGE amount of work done by better designers than ourselves. This is all theorycraft. It gets WAY harder when you try to put it all together and make an actual working game, trust me. Nor is it really rocket-science to make a game that basically works. The hardest part is making a game everyone is happy enough with to all play and have fun with. There's a whole other level that the pros are at which we'll never touch. lol.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

My point is though, that there are folks in this thread with better ideas than a supposed "pro." Make of it what you will, that's my opinion.

 

[Incenjucar]

Much of it is that there a lot of conservative and progressive forces in the game now (not in the ethical or political sense). Because RPGs have been around so long, there are people whose views of what D&D should be were cemented before many of the current players were born, and those views have been enforced so long that they will not change, or are at least very resistant to change. Further, there have been so many other games, RPG and otherwise, which have changed the views of much of the audience (of all ages), and added new players from completely different backgrounds with different interests, tugging them game into new and wildly different directions.

As is somewhat to be expected, many of the people who are designers are themselves of the conservative circle; they're older, most of their memories with the game are with the old editions, and their experiences were likely mostly D&D, since there were fewer alternatives available for a greater percentage of their play experience. This can lead to them preferring old ideas by default, and gives them a strong connection to those players who are similarly locked into a preference for the older style of things (which can include brand new players, mind you).

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Yeah, I get why this is the case - I'm almost an "old guy" too

But I clearly fall into the camp that likes new ideas - a progressive, I suppose. Maybe it's selfish of me, but for those who want the same old ideas and ways of doing things, games already exist for that.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Much of it is that there a lot of conservative and progressive forces in the game now (not in the ethical or political sense). Because RPGs have been around so long, there are people whose views of what D&D should be were cemented before many of the current players were born, and those views have been enforced so long that they will not change, or are at least very resistant to change. Further, there have been so many other games, RPG and otherwise, which have changed the views of much of the audience (of all ages), and added new players from completely different backgrounds with different interests, tugging them game into new and wildly different directions.

As is somewhat to be expected, many of the people who are designers are themselves of the conservative circle; they're older, most of their memories with the game are with the old editions, and their experiences were likely mostly D&D, since there were fewer alternatives available for a greater percentage of their play experience. This can lead to them preferring old ideas by default, and gives them a strong connection to those players who are similarly locked into a preference for the older style of things (which can include brand new players, mind you).

Yeah, I don't know that IME there's a lot of correlation between age and opinions about the game. I started playing in '75 for instance, yet I have no special fondness for old fashioned early period D&D. I can appreciate it for what it is, but that doesn't keep me from being interested in 'modern' RPGs or unfriendly to newer ideas. I find that to be mostly true of other gamers I play with as well, a lot of whom started in the early 80's or earlier.

I'm not convinced that there is a particularly great increase in ideas about RPGs or vastly different diversity now than there was in the early days. The whole hobby grew FAST in the beginning. D&D first came out it '74 and by '76 there were dozens of RPGs, and by '78 there were 100's, if not 1000's and virtually every existing design of RPG had already been tried. Some concepts took a while to mature and get much traction, but they were around and we were aware of those concepts. Narrative story-telling games were definitely less developed back then, but they have certainly been quite present since the early 80's. There really hasn't been anything 'new under the Sun' in RPG design since then, just waxing and waning popularity of different styles and some gradual polishing of implementations (and a LOT of improvement in writing quality, settings, etc).

Some people seem to pick up their first game they like and they're set in stone from then on and want to constantly recapture the same exact experience. Other gamers like to explore a lot of different concepts and are pretty flexible. If a 'stick to what I like' type started with Basic then we call them "Grognards" or "OSR fans" or whatever. If what they happened to start with was 3.5 then they tend to get labeled 'h4ters' or whatever. They're just people who want a specific type of experience. The opposite type are the people that are always out there trying new games and tinkering. The two can overlap or be the same person too in some ways. I've run into people that will play ANY RPG except if you want to play a fantasy RPG with them Basic D&D is IT, nothing else will do, etc.

Now, its hard to say what categories the WotC devs fall into. What we can say is it is tough to go from basic concepts and brainstorming to a solid production game. I think it is fair to say though that the people at WotC are well-versed on the history and different concepts of RPGs. Whether Mike Mearles is really some kind of "OSR Grognard" or something I don't know. I doubt it. I think to be a successful pro you really can't be that narrow. All of those guys have produced a pretty wide variety of games. They have the tough job is all, trying to make an actual game product out of ideas and make it pleasing enough to all camps that it will make money. By contrast coming up with interesting ideas in a forum is trivially easy. Anyone that doesn't like them will just go read something else or post an "I don't like that". It all doesn't ever have to work and the downsides of all our clever ideas rarely show.

 

[Balesir]

I can't XP Abdul right now, but "Hear him, hear him!" Words of truth.

As to "there is more choice around now" - colour me unconvinced. I can think of plenty of RPGs that are no longer around that were "alternatives to D&D". Some of them died because they were, um, less than good - others just didn't have the financial backing to get another edition.

Edit: yet others are still around, in some form - RuneQuest, Traveller, Call of Cthulhu...