Whew - such a flow of stuff to respond to - I'll try to cover the main areas all in one post.
I think with D&D the issue is it has traditionally been the go-to-game and to get everyone at the table it needs to have broad appeal. IMO D&D ends up in some trouble when it focuses too much on one play style. Personally I don't want the next edition to be designed around my prefered style of play. I'd prefer it be something that people from all kinds of styles will enjoy. That way I can get more people in my gaming circle to the table.
True enough, D&D is apparently seen as a "go-to" game, and I think that leads to a whole slew of problems because roleplaying really is not one, unified activity (even though the activities that comprise it may and, I think, should be kept under the umbrella of a single "hobby").
I wish I could share your optimism that a "compromise system" would bring all the "factions" back to the same table. I don't believe it would. In the "olden days", D&D was basically all there was for fantasy RPGing. With the advent of more coherent, more focussed game systems, however, groups who have always had specific tastes have "seen the promised land" in some of the new systems that have come out. Ask them to go back to the compromised cludges of the past, and my bet is that they won't be interested. The odd game "for old time's sake", maybe, or to meet up with old buddies. But not to actually play the dratted things for any length of time.
Are you saying that having D&D support multiple styles (including those we don't prefer) is claiming it for our own? I don't see it that way, I see it as having a game that can be enjoyed by as many people as possible.
And my post you quoted even said I don't care what the default is, so it could default to yours, and I would be happy. Does D&D really need to be exclusionary for you to enjoy it?
A system cannot, as far as I can see, adequately support multiple styles. The style I play D&D for, as an example, requires a subtle, interlocking system because I seek to challenge
the players to develop tactics and strategies
within the game in response to the game situation. No previous edition of D&D has been even a fraction as good at this as 4E. No system that is good at supporting the other styles discussed here (which mostly require good rules for allocating authority for resolution selection and narration - frankly, allocating it more widely than the DM would help but many "old school" DMs reject this vehemently - and rules for collaborative plot definition) will support this type of play remotely.
My own conclusion is that no system can support all agendas adequately; the best that can be achieved is to support a defined agenda for play really well. This supposes and requires a shift from "one true system" to a (fairly small) selection of "core systems" that, between them, cover all the main agendas for play.
Another common belief that I think is a fallacy is that a specific player can, or will tend to, enjoy only one of the possible foci of play. My experience is that many players can enjoy several different styles; what they frequently
don't enjoy is when neither the system nor the game setup gives them any indication of the desired style, so they begin playing expecting and conforming with their own assumed or previously used style when the rest of the group - or even just the GM - is aiming for a different agenda. Probably, the group or GM are simply assuming that this agenda they are aiming for is the "natural" or "correct" one. such clashes cause deep, often painful, problems.
But then, I wonder...what is the value of the interlocking set?
The value of the interlocking set is that it becomes possible to challenge
the players (rather than the characters) within the scope of the game system. This has a couple of advantages, for certain play styles:
1) Challenging
the players rather than the characters is important for a Gamist agenda for play; if the players are not challenged, they are not playing a 'game', and
2) Challenging the players
within the game system gets away from problems of "playing the GM", "mother may I", favouritism and simple GM delusions about how hard their game is. Everyone may read and understand the system, so everyone has the opportunity to start on a "level playing field" for the challenges they, the players, will face.
4E specifically trumps 3E in this specific regard, because the main avenues for system-based challenge are during actual play, not during pre-play set-up for the game (building characters, etc.). This gets away from systemic preference for those with lots of free time and no life...
D&D is played by lots of different people playing lots of different campaigns. No one interlocking set of rules is going to be able to encompass them all.
Exactly my point. And rules, whatever form they take and whatever agenda they seek optimally to support, are always better at supporting the selected agenda/style if they are focussed and integrated. Hence the current dilemma of the "generalist" game; the "specialist" games will always be better at their chosen style, so those who prefer that style have little incentive to play the "generalist" oeuvres.
No one who wants, say, a narrative combat system is going to be happy with a minis grid, and if you make that minis grid combat system central to the game, you have effectively said, "We only want to attract people who are interested in this." No one who wants a grim-n-gritty system is going to be happy with wahoo levels of HP. No one who wants a magic-light game is going to be content with a game that depends on frequent and ever-increasing magic items. It's stuck. It can't be modified. It's inflexible. And because it takes so much time and effort and development cash to get right, it's not something you want to go back and re-visit very often.
So you develop something with bits and pieces of everything? I don't see that satisfying anybody, I'm afraid.
Perhaps the closest we've been to this ideal is during the heyday of the d20 System, with its hundreds of variants on everything from hundreds of different publishers. Even then, D&D was only D&D, and they only used the core tightly interlocking system, without branching out themselves very much at all.
D20 was a selection of different games with a unifying brand identity. Using d20s for task resolution is not a "system" - it's a mechanism.
No one set of complex rules is going to be good for every group, so it would seem, at the level of publisher, that the ideal would be to produce a huge ecosystem of modular rules, variants, and custom content, none of which goes very "deep," but which is more easily cherry-picked. The "depth" can be added with bonus content (like Dragon and Dungeon magazines), or from house rules, but it would seem that breadth would be the more valuable thing, from the perspective of someone with limited resources to spend on developing rules.
So that I have to formulate the rules I actually want to play by from a morass of ideas that they want me to pay for all of? What am I paying these guys for, exactly? Sorry, I don't see myself, just for one, having any inclination to buy such a mess at all.
That's less relevant in today's games of characters who rarely die permanently, of course. As we've moved from characters who are assumed to fail (an overtly gamist/sim idea) to a notion of characters who are assumed to succeed (a more narrative idea), the distinction between a failure to jump over a cliff and a failure to find the treasure are nearly meaningless.
Um, I think you have this almost entirely around the wrong way. Narrativism is about plot is about characters with motivation ("dramatic need") facing failure to satisfy that need - so failure is "assumed", otherwise you have no story. Gamism is about "stepping up" to the challenge as a player and winning; failure is no fun, but is a risk necessary to make the success fun. Simulationism is really neutral about success or failure, by definition; life happens as it happens, even when it's an imaginary life.
With D&D? Many, even most, of the players have their own book. The players all know the rules; if someone forgets how crits work, almost anyone else can explain, without going back to the book. It gets run sometimes just because that's the fallback default that everyone knows.
This is your excuse for making D&D the "strategic ground" to be seized??? Sheesh - can someone take 4E and make it "not D&D", please? I want to play it because it's a good, Gamist supporting game, not because of some hokey duff like this. We needed to buy new books for the new edition anyway - are you really saying that 'the industry' should mark all the books you should buy to relieve you of having to make a buying decision? Good grief.
Note: I'm not actually sure you
are saying this, actually; you might be just explaining what you see others as doing/thinking. My stated opinion is of the point of view, not the expounder of it.
From the other side, I'm not a bloody game designer. If I wanted to have to consider two dozen different variants to make my game, I'd be one of the people with a 3-ring binder full of house rules. I want a nice set of balanced, workable rules, not to constantly be making decisions on what set of variant rules to be using. As a DM, I want a system that works out of the box.
Yeah, now, this I agree with.
This is where we differ. I find it more fun to have player skill tested. More fun to figure out a riddle myself than roll a skill check. More entertaining to check the statue for secret compartments than just roll a check for the entire room. More enjoyable to come up with a good argument for the titan to aid us than roll some dice and add a modifier.
My dice are on the table largely to resolve combat and an occasional jump or lock pick. Stuff we can't resolve via "what are you doing?" During exploration, negotiations, etc. the dice are just in the way. Back before interpersonal and searching skills were added, we've played entire D&D games without a dice roll and enjoyed them immensely. It took removing the skills from a "modern" version to make us realize how much we like the other way.
I find it fun to have player skill tested, too, but I don't agree that "20 questions", "Mastermind" or "What am I thinking now?" are the only (or even best) ways to "test player skill". I prefer, when playing or running "test the player" games, to frame those challenges within the game system and preferably during the actual play at the table rather than in preparation time. This "defines the playing field" somewhat, and allows clear rules of play to be framed - considerations that are not relevant for "story-seeking" or "daydreaming" play.
