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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5413847" data-attributes="member: 80487">Neither do I!As I have said many times (perhaps not in this particular thread), there is a feedback loop. There are, quite apart from preference, practical logistical considerations.And They're All Made Out Of Ticky-TackyAlso, it's a boondoggle to equate "contemporary RPGing" with D&D, or any other particular game. If the hobby really were just a homogenized pudding, then we should have no use for such particularity as actually naming one glop or another.I don't go trying to "evangelize" Issaries, White Wolf, etc., into changing their games into D&D -- and I'm not seeing a lot of good coming from the opposite phenomenon. That "One True Wayism" is a pernicious weed in the hobby/industry.Female Dwarves Have BeardsThe shift to dependence on the commercial presentation was, as a practical necessity, afoot as early as the influx of 1977 due to the wide publication of Holmes Basic and the MM.What the shift in commercial presentation has done is impose the selection pressure I mentioned, and thereby ensure the demographic in question. It increasingly deprecates the old game -- if that gets mentioned at all -- and pushes the railroad as the right way to play.Welcome To The PartyThe fundamental stumbling block, the notion of "the adventure" as a prearranged sequence of events orchestrated by the DM, seems widely already to have become not merely doubleplusgood but so "essential" that doing without it is almost literally unthinkable. People try to get out of that mental box, but can barely touch the edge before falling back in.Those who are able to grasp it often find this oldest of modes revolutionary. "Look at the Wilderlands! Look at the West Marches! Look at Kingmaker! Look at Points of Light!" The excitement is gratifying, because that's akin to the kind of excitement that got me and many others into D&D in the first place. It's also an indication that TSR and WotC have not just 'lost' but *buried* what made the brand.</blockquote>

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