mamba
Legend
I addressed this a few posts up, it does nothing innovative outside a creative use of the SRD. To me this is about innovation in TTRPG mechanics, otherwise add 3e for having the SRD in the first place
-
NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
Most influential RPG
- Thread starter RolRàpid
- Start date
Ruin Explorer
Legend
Into the Odd seems cool, but what would you say it's influenced specifically? To me superficially it seems more representative of trends that started before it than influential, but that might just be me.
Not Snarf but I would strongly back L&F as well, because we're talking not "who did it first", but what was influential.
And I think it's hard to suggest that stuff like Microlite20 was particularly influential generally, whereas L&F, I strongly suspect that hundreds and hundreds of itch.io RPGs exist primarily because their creators saw L&F and realized they too could create a very rules-lite RPG.
Also I think what was important is that L&F is specific not generic.
I cannot overstate how important this is to inspiration/influence. A lot of people, they look at something like Microlite20, and just see dead rules and don't imagine doing anything with them. Especially a lot of less mechanically-inclined but otherwise very creative and enthusiastic people.
But you look at Lasers & Feelings, and you see this very specific RPG with these very specific vibes (primarily Star Trek but with shades of nuWho and Firefly and Farscape), and you might think "Well, I don't want to do that, but I would like to create my own specific RPG about this genre or setting or vibe (or combination thereof) that I personally care about". And the rules are so simple that you can immediately start thinking about how you'd make up your own rules for your own specific setting/genre. Which just doesn't happen the same way with "generic" rules.
It also helps that it uses a d6, which is ubiquitous, not the nerdy and less available d20.
Either way, if you just look on itch.io, or especially if you looked in the years closer to when L&F came out, you'd see a LOT of one or two sheet RPGs very clearly inspired L&F, but for different vibes/genres.
I was just wondering if 3e belongs on here for that reason.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
Yeah, I think the SRD and d20 licencing scheme have been pretty influential and important, and I think 3E itself was pretty influential in that there were countless d20 licence games which were basically 3E-based, and like, maybe that's not very interesting, but I do think it was pretty important. Like, how many dozens of RPGs - some which sold pretty well! - exist because for the d20 deal?
Do we separate the SRD and d20 from 3E somehow? It doesn't quite seem right.
That was my single toughest decision in terms of naming a single product. Various forms of rules-lite games have existed since the beginning; I chose L&F as the rules lite game that kicked off the indie revolution in rules lite games that started in 2013 and continues. The idea of "one page" or "rules lite" as a specific type of game can arguably be traced back to that- where the idea is not just that it is a less complex game, but that (to borrow a phrase) the entire rule set should be so small that you can fit it on a single piece of paper.
(Arguably, it's the same reason for Castles & Crusades; C&C wasn't new, per se, but it was the beginning of an influential design paradigm)
J.Quondam
CR 1/8
So it's not the rules liten-ess alone, but the rules lite + genre specificity that really caught the lightning in a bottle? I think that's a pretty compelling argument.
It also just occurred to me to suggest another ultralite that goes way back: RISUS, first developed in 1993, iirc, though i'm not sure when it really got a broader audience, maybe 1999ish? As a genre non-specific rules set aimed toward more comedic and narrative play, perhaps that's why it never spread much beyond its niche, but that niche has been pretty devoted and active. To me, it's long seemed widely known and well regarded across the hobby, but perhaps that's because i've particularly interested in rules-lite games so i noticed it more.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
Yes and don't forget the visual design!
L&F isn't just words on a single page, it's also carefully visually styled in an appealing and somewhat unusual way, right down to the landscape layout and cute spaceship picture. And it says right on it that you should make and share or sell your own L&F hack (I think that text was there originally too), which probably acted as further incitement/encouragement.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
This is a pretty arbitrary line to draw. At a certain point, no one is innovating after the first ancient who rolled knucklebones to create a random result in a game.
If OSRIC hadn't existed, today's market would look markedly different. That it essentially wove classic designs back into the modern space doesn't make it any less influential than the Rolling Stones and other British Invasion bands of the 1960s that were "only" making American blues music more widely popular than they were.
But I am always happy to say that Ryan Dancey is one of the most important figures in the ttrpg space, which feels to me to be a weirdly minority position. I think the 3E SRD and the OGL may be one of the most important inflection points in the history of the industry -- moreso than probably 99% of the games mentioned in this thread.
Similar Threads
