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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7680923" data-attributes="member: 4937">I think as a practical matter it is more a matter of what gamers will buy than what gamers will like.  A good example is the current D&D adventure format, which almost everyone seems to dislike and consider less than perfectly suitable for running an adventure.  But I'd guess that the market wouldn't bear the additional cost of publishing the adventure in the most suitable sort of format, so WotC has to publish what they can sell, which is a compromise between the needs of the customers and the needs of the publisher.  As a publisher, you have basically two choices - print crunch or print fluff.  Crunch is basically the engineering.  Fluff is basically the art.  The engineering isn't easy, but it's a lot easier than the art.  Geeks are easy to get excited about rules systems, but rules systems are basically a dime a dozen.  Rules systems aren't purely objective, but they are easier to objectively evaluate than a story.  Printing art carries risk, and the pay back - if ever - is more long term.Maybe we are reaching a point where our rules technology is getting sufficiently refined that the best way to make money won't be to continue reinventing the rules wheel, and instead the big seller will more and more be what you can do with the technology.  Maybe will see rules innovation settle down a bit and see more interactive fiction and world building as the big selling points of a product line.   Paizo is an example of a company where I don't think rules is primarily what gives them a market advantage.  I think their core advantage is that they tell stories with their rules in a way that captures more people's imaginations than anyone else in the market.  One of the biggest mistakes Wotc made with the D&D brand is I think spending too much time rehashing the valuable intellectual property made back in D&D's golden age and not taking the risk of making new content.  Contrast this with what they are doing with their MtG brand, which lacked a lot of IP back in its heyday but which they've consistently been spending money to create fluff - and it's not even an interactive fiction game.One thing I think really defines OSR is actually fluff over crunch, which I think is an observation that runs counter to what may be your first intuition.  I consider OSR to be more of an Indy gaming movement than a retro-gaming movement, though no doubt there is a group that is in it for the nostalgia.  Early Indy gaming was focused I think incorrectly on some of the same false idols that plagued what is now 'mainstream' gaming back when it was new, and that is namely the fetishization of system with ideas like 'system matters'.   While I don't disagree that system matters some, it's always seemed like there was this idea that if you just adopted the right rules, the story would happen and it would be awesome - as if story was something that could be produced mechanically and without some sort of artistic understanding and skill.But you can hardly get more 'crunch doesn't really matter' than suggesting, "You know, we could stop focusing on getting the rules right, use rules so basic that practically every gamer's brain is steeped in them to some degree, and just play this with stripped down 1970's technology and if we tell a good story, it would be fun."  Of course, I think we are still struggling with this new medium to figure out what telling a good story really means and is like, but it would be nice to see that worked on as diligently as we work on rules.I think the chief difficulty I see is that RPGs tend be vastly more influential than they are profitable.  RPGs tend to inspire artists to go and create works of art in different more popular and accessible mediums, but they don't usually accrue benefits to the RPG designers themselves.  I mean, I think you can draw a straight line between Vampire: The Masquerade and Twilight, and I'd be really surprised to find Meyer didn't have at least some exposure to VtM PnP or LARP games, but it's Stephenie Meyer that gets the main reward of that and not say Mark Rein-Hagen.  That sort of thing happens a lot, both directly and indirectly.  Video games show enormous influence from PnP RPGs, but its the more accessible medium that by and large gets the acclaim.  There are any number of novels and novelists that show direct influence from D&D, whether it's Feist's Riftwar Saga, or Moon's 'The Deed of Paksenarrion' or just the general gamification of fantasy that shows up in works by author's like Brian Sanderson or Jim Butcher (speaking of VtM influences).   James S. A. Corey are more famous for their novels than the gaming work that inspired them.  Is Anthony Huso's work as a novelist better or more important than his work as a DM or a game creator, or is it just that it is a lot more accessible - even to another gamer?</blockquote>

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