Chainsaw Mage
First Post
So this chap on RPGnet went to the Palladium open house, and shared his thoughts about the experience. It prompted a lengthy and fairly positive thread. One post got me thinking about the intricate, crunch-and-balance-heavy philosophy driving D&D 3.5, and made me wonder if what D&D 4e needs is a return to an older style of thought. The post follows:
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After going to the open house, playing in some games and watching others, I honestly and truly think that a major part of the problem that many people have with PB is that they keep looking for the baseline, they official rules, the standard off of which to base things.
I'm flat out telling you that there isn't one. Ever hear Old Geezer talk about how he and the old gang made up rules and just kept trying
until they found something that more or less worked for them? That's Kevin all over. He made a bunch of stuff up, it worked for him because he ran fast and loose, it worked for his players because they had been playing with him for a long time and were fully on board for his play style. They published it, people who have a similar play style like it, those who require exact rules for everything and are not willing to GM on the fly don't like it so much.
Looking for an official standard assumes that there is one, there isn't. Basically it's all house rules, there is little or no 'one true way' or core system, just a home brew Kevin managed to publish and has been slightly tweaking on and off for 25 years now. Some of the tweaks he puts in the books, some he doesn't, but there isn't a ongoing discussion of rules and game balance and how to make the system better, it's just tweaking and saying "maybe this will be cool." Like a shade tree mechanic trying to make his car go faster. I know that drives some people nuts, and I know a lot of people like to think of game designers as calm, careful men who weigh the pros and cons of every rule change before committing them to paper, but it ain't so in many cases, game designers are us, except they manage to make a living at it.
One of the guys I talked with at the OH said "Palladium games are not so much a system as a giant Rorschach test, what you see in them tells little about the system, but a lot about you." I think he's right.
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Is there something to be said for this "fast and loose and damn the torpedoes" approach to the game? Or is it a case of "been there, done that", and now D&D can never go back that way, especially as it becomes integrated with an online component in D&D 4e?
****
After going to the open house, playing in some games and watching others, I honestly and truly think that a major part of the problem that many people have with PB is that they keep looking for the baseline, they official rules, the standard off of which to base things.
I'm flat out telling you that there isn't one. Ever hear Old Geezer talk about how he and the old gang made up rules and just kept trying
until they found something that more or less worked for them? That's Kevin all over. He made a bunch of stuff up, it worked for him because he ran fast and loose, it worked for his players because they had been playing with him for a long time and were fully on board for his play style. They published it, people who have a similar play style like it, those who require exact rules for everything and are not willing to GM on the fly don't like it so much.Looking for an official standard assumes that there is one, there isn't. Basically it's all house rules, there is little or no 'one true way' or core system, just a home brew Kevin managed to publish and has been slightly tweaking on and off for 25 years now. Some of the tweaks he puts in the books, some he doesn't, but there isn't a ongoing discussion of rules and game balance and how to make the system better, it's just tweaking
and saying "maybe this will be cool." Like a shade tree mechanic trying to make his car go faster. I know that drives some people nuts, and I know a lot of people like to think of game designers as calm, careful men who weigh the pros and cons of every rule change before committing them to paper, but it ain't so in many cases, game designers are us, except they manage to make a living at it. One of the guys I talked with at the OH said "Palladium games are not so much a system as a giant Rorschach test, what you see in them tells little about the system, but a lot about you." I think he's right.
****
Is there something to be said for this "fast and loose and damn the torpedoes" approach to the game? Or is it a case of "been there, done that", and now D&D can never go back that way, especially as it becomes integrated with an online component in D&D 4e?
