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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Huw" data-source="post: 3162452" data-attributes="member: 33093">Unfortunately, I disagree with everything Garfield says here, though I can understand how he's drawn his conclusions.First, the people who are good at a game are not going necessarily going to be good at modifying. I'm a huge fan of chess variants, and there have been numerous "improvements" suggested by Grandmasters throughout chess' history, yet last big change to chess rules (i.e. not counting en-passant or modern drawing conventions - which Garfield probably was thinking of, as they do improve the game for experts) was the boost to the queen's power. Similarly, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_chess" target="_blank">changgi</a>, or Korean chess, made several changes to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangqi" target="_blank">xiangqi</a>, or Chinese chess, but most people familiar with both will say that xiangqi is the better game. Changgi, with numerous long range pieces and highly mobile pawns, is "munchkinned", and encourages defensive, slow play.Secondly, many games have becoming more accessible to casual players. Garfield's own Magic: the Gathering is one of them, and I think D&D is another. Simple example: when I was DM'ing 1e and 2e, I had new, casual players who weren't interested in learning the rules. They kept asking "is high or low good?" (and in pre-3e D&D, ICYDNK, some numbers went up, some went down). When I DM such players in 3e, it's easy - the higher the better. The result is they get more into the game, rather than just rolling the dice when asked.For a traditional game which has got more accessible and increased the role of luck, compare <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachisi" target="_blank">pachisi</a> with it's modern variants ludo, parcheesi, sorry, frustration, etc.</blockquote>

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