Other fairly recent, high-quality, professionally-produced, original fantasy RPGs?

[mearls]

Firesnakearies said other RPGs change very little. Mike says that grognard capture explains this.

But grognard capture causes RPGs to change a lot. That's the whole point of grognard capture. The grognards take over and move the game beyond its core, doubling the size of the rulebook, making it increasingly complex, and likely (but not always) making the game less accessible to newbies.

I think I can tell that what was actually meant was: a) other RPGs have grognard capture, which causes the RPG to preserve vestiges of their earlier editions, and b) D&D has been brave enough to discard un-fun vestiges and "refine" itself.

I thought about this a bit yesterday, and something clicked for me. D&D does rely on grognard capture, but it tries to channel it into newbie friendly avenues.

Grognards want all the cool stuff they had in earlier versions of the game, along with more new stuff to play with. That's the root of the ever growing core rulebook.

D&D cheats this by redefining its rules. That gives grognards the fun of playing with all sorts of new stuff, while also keeping rules bloat down. Rather than add new rules to the game, D&D's new rules replace old ones.

Now, that runs the risk of alienating people who liked the old rules just fine and who don't like the new rules. If you do a good job, though, you make people on both sides of the fence (newbie and old guard) happy. Of course, you can never make everyone happy, but your goal is to make enough people happy.

Now that said, an update that keeps the core intact is fine, but I think it's bad in the long term. If you look at 3.5 compared to 3.0, folks adopted it pretty much wholesale. You don't see anyone making a 3.0 game a la Pathfinder. A new edition that follows that model can work, but I think it's more of a short term strategy.

Looking at 3.5, you see the seeds of added complexity - weapon sizes (every weapon now has seven versions), buffs measured in minutes rather than hours (players have to recalculate stats on the fly from encounter to encounter). If you can't change the core, but you do want to change something, by definition you have to add rather than subtract rules.

Of course, all my theorizing overlooks the inherent contradiction of producing editions that rewrite rules. Good businesses listen to their customers, and you could easily argue that many of D&D's customers would want an incremental, compatible update.

When I think of that, I remember an anecdote I picked up back during the dot.com bubble. Back when the minivan was on the drawing board, the sales execs thought that it was a terrible idea. All their data showed that customers wanted a better station wagon. Of course, the minivan proceeded to eat the station wagon alive.

The point of the story is that people ask for what they know. They didn't know what a minivan was, so they couldn't ask for it. But it also means that you have to be thorough and confident in such a change. Hence, both 3e and 4e after it went through rigorous, long development and playtest cycles.

 

[TarionzCousin]

When I think of that, I remember an anecdote I picked up back during the dot.com bubble. Back when the minivan was on the drawing board, the sales execs thought that it was a terrible idea. All their data showed that customers wanted a better station wagon. Of course, the minivan proceeded to eat the station wagon alive.

The point of the story is that people ask for what they know. They didn't know what a minivan was, so they couldn't ask for it. But it also means that you have to be thorough and confident in such a change. Hence, both 3e and 4e after it went through rigorous, long development and playtest cycles.

So, you're saying that 4E is the minivan of RPG's....

 

[justanobody]

So, you're saying that 4E is the minivan of RPG's....

Strangely I don't recall a "dot.com bubble" back when the VW van was on the drawing board.

Must be another attempt to retcon facts to mold history to what people want to believe rather than reality.

I would say 4E is more like the AMC Hornet myself.

 

[Staffan]

The classic vertical expansions in RPGs are D&D's box sets, each of which aded horizontal elements too, but in a way that was staged to allow gradual introduction (with some exceptions -- skills and weapon mastery). A more recent example is White Wolf's Scion, which was split into three hardbacks by "level:" specific stages of character power.

The problem comes when trying to combine vertical and horizontal expansion, and make sure they keep up with one another. Both BD&D (I know the term is not technically correct, but it's the easiest way to distinguish it) and Scion had a pre-defined and limited vertical expansion, and got it out of the way relatively quickly. BD&D, IIRC, didn't have all that much in the way of crunchy expansion (more adventures and setting stuff).

But let's say you're in an alternate reality where 4th ed gets released with both vertical and horizontal expansion planned, so the core books only cover the Heroic Tier (with a bit of MM spillover into Paragon, say up to level 13 or so in order to give the PCs a decent challenge, just like BD&D had some stuff about 3rd level spell in it).

So, you release the Heroic PHB with eight classes up to level 10. You are planning to release the Paragon PHB, taking them up to level 20. You are also planning on releasing PHB2, with eight more classes and a few more races.

Where do you put the Paragon-level stuff for the PHB2 stuff? Does it get to share space with the PHB1 races and classes in the Paragon book, or does it get released along with the Heroic-level stuff in the PHB2? Or does it get ignored completely, or maybe there's a fourth book to cover that?

And what happens when you get up to PHB3, 4, and 5, as well as an Epic-level tier as well?

I think that's why most games nowadays focus on creating a complete structure from low to high level in the core books, and mostly horizontal expansion in supplements. Sure, the core books might be a bit bottom-heavy (compare the number of CR 5 or lower monsters in the 3e MM to the number of 15+), but you still have the structure to play from the lowest to the highest levels.

 

[tsadkiel]

Strangely I don't recall a "dot.com bubble" back when the VW van was on the drawing board.

Must be another attempt to retcon facts to mold history to what people want to believe rather than reality.

Mike said he heard the story during the dot.com bubble, not that that's when it happened.

 

[justanobody]

Mike said he heard the story during the dot.com bubble, not that that's when it happened.

Well it was hard enough to come up with a vehicle to relate to bad design as I see in 4th, wherein a minivan is of more use than a hornet.

Sometimes analogies just don't fit too well.

 

[Phaezen]

Out of interest, has anyone had a look at the Anima RPG?

Phaezen

 

[Aus_Snow]

No, I haven't. But here are some threads on RPGnet. Hope they're useful.

[Anima: Beyond Fantasy] Who picked it up? - RPGnet Forums
[Sell me on] Anima - RPGnet Forums

 

[eyebeams]

The problem comes when trying to combine vertical and horizontal expansion, and make sure they keep up with one another. Both BD&D (I know the term is not technically correct, but it's the easiest way to distinguish it) and Scion had a pre-defined and limited vertical expansion, and got it out of the way relatively quickly. BD&D, IIRC, didn't have all that much in the way of crunchy expansion (more adventures and setting stuff).

But let's say you're in an alternate reality where 4th ed gets released with both vertical and horizontal expansion planned, so the core books only cover the Heroic Tier (with a bit of MM spillover into Paragon, say up to level 13 or so in order to give the PCs a decent challenge, just like BD&D had some stuff about 3rd level spell in it).

So, you release the Heroic PHB with eight classes up to level 10. You are planning to release the Paragon PHB, taking them up to level 20. You are also planning on releasing PHB2, with eight more classes and a few more races.

Where do you put the Paragon-level stuff for the PHB2 stuff? Does it get to share space with the PHB1 races and classes in the Paragon book, or does it get released along with the Heroic-level stuff in the PHB2? Or does it get ignored completely, or maybe there's a fourth book to cover that?

And what happens when you get up to PHB3, 4, and 5, as well as an Epic-level tier as well?

I think that's why most games nowadays focus on creating a complete structure from low to high level in the core books, and mostly horizontal expansion in supplements. Sure, the core books might be a bit bottom-heavy (compare the number of CR 5 or lower monsters in the 3e MM to the number of 15+), but you still have the structure to play from the lowest to the highest levels.

First answer: You don't release multiple core books. I'm sure 4e's doing it because it worked well for 3e, but I have a feeling an ever decreasing number of people will buy PHB 3, 4 and 5.

Second answer: You keep full advances in supplements, where applicable, in ways that clearly reference core vertical material. This was the tactic for some new classes in the GAZ series. Since the core books also include new core rules, full advances in supplements don't impact core sales.

Third answer: The thing that *hasn't* been tried yet are multiple, cross compatible vertical streams. For example, let's say you want to advance into highly customizable characters with lots of options, but your buddy wants a simple character who can stand beside the party as an equal without too much career tracking or bookkeeping. The answer: Release books for each, whose rules can be used with each other.

I was actually considering this with 3.5. I thought of developing a Fighter variant that didn't require heavy thoughts about feats but who could just fight well, all the time, perhaps with d12 HD and constant BAB and damage bonuses. This would be ideal for certain kinds of players, and could be integrated beside the standard Fighter - you could have both in the same party.

Executing this would be difficult, but it's not unprecedented, especially if there's a cool new system in each stream.

Right now though getting into D&D requires dropping almost twice as much money as an XBox 360 game, for the privilege of trying to figure out how to play. You can help yourself learn by dropping a wad of cash on the Basic game first, instead -- and then have it outmoded by three books that already have all that stuff in it, which feels like a ripoff and creates a disincentive for beginners to get it when they see all the veterans who never touched it.

Instead, I think D&D would have been far better served with one book with everything you needed to play for 5-10 levels, greatly scaled back complexity (with room to fill it in later) and a comprehensive introduction to the game, all for *less* than that XBox game. This 128-164 page book should have come with a CD of player and DM tools (with a pretty interface, but nothing too complicated), a cardstock battle board that works with dry-erase markers, a screen and some dice. It should include an adventure that gets continued in the next 2-3 vertical sets, and some pregens to run right away -- and advice for customizing those pregens.

Right now we have three big books devoted to a rules system that is excellent, but filled with difficult to remember instances (modifiers, mostly) and expressed using clipped terminology that's difficult for the average person to grasp. I find the remarks about 4e paying attention to new gamers kind of funny, because 4e is to my mind the least beginner-friendly version of D&D *ever*. Am I really supposed to think new gamers were thought of when the powers got written up almost entirely in contractions? I like 4e fine, but man: It's a game that requires some seasoning as a gamer to appreciate. If you yanked out everything that was based on, "We made a cool effect, and hung it on a thin narrative excuse" you'd end up with a much simpler game -- the game that should be the first version of D&D that people encounter.

 

[thedungeondelver]

I know a lot of people hate MMO comparisons, and hate Blizzard, and hate WoW, and I get all of that. I'm not terribly pleased with any it, myself. But D&D (and the legion of D&D-clones) is like EverQuest, circa 2001-2003 or so. It's a good brand, for now. It's the king of the jungle. It's the default. But wait until the "World of Warcraft" of tabletop RPG brands comes along. Who is going to be that "Blizzard"?

$

Pen and paper? Nobody. It's not 1974 any more and it never will be again.