Ryan Dancey on Redefining the Hobby (Updated: time elements in a storytelling game)

[Wulf Ratbane]

Otherwise known as "How to make D&D more boring?"

Please explain how this:

WotC understands the tactical, Gamist appeal that's at the core of D&D, and they're working hard to make D&D do that as well, and as easily, as it possibly can, ideally in ways that MMORPGs/CRPGs don't.

makes D&D more boring.

Take your best swing, I want to see you (knee)jerk this one out of the park.

Or are you just trolling? Going for some sort of unofficial thread-crap record? Is Circus Maximus offline today or what?

 

[DaveMage]

I think in this regard, 3rd edition has gotten it wrong - too many rules; not enough story.

I'd rather have a rule for everything and then cut out what I don't like rather than have a lack of rules and then have to make them up on the spot as I go.

 

[der_kluge]

I'd rather have a rule for everything and then cut out what I don't like rather than have a lack of rules and then have to make them up on the spot as I go.

I'm not suggesting that. I'm suggesting that there are too many unnecessary rules. The game would be just as fun without "spell turning" or reserve feats, or the complexities of the warlock class, or any of the host of other secondary miscellaneous stuff.

I'll take a Planescape boxed set or the Al-Qadim setting book over Bo9S or Races of Stone any day of the week.

 

[buzz]

I hope, that you understand the fact, that the above mentioned activities form just marginal part of overall RPG business. One can take it as kind of a natural experiment with "different brand", "different aprroach" and see, that on global scale (impact on majority of consumers) this does not work. It might work very well for small group of people (several per mille), but if this should replace D&D, we are doomed already.

Anything that is not D&D or WW is a marginal part of the overall RPG business. What I'm trying to point out is that a) they're doing what Dancey is talking about and 2) they have been growing rapidly as a community/grassroots movement. In a time when Dancey and others are talking about how to keep D&D from dying, the indie scene is flourishing.

IIRC, the IPR/Forge booth was the biggest RPG-only booth at GenCon last year; Mearls said that it was their stuff WotC folk were grooving on after the con. This year, there's going to be a whole diaspora of booths spun off from IPR/Forge.

This is where the exciting stuff is happening. These are the games that can't be easily emulated by MMORPGs. Whether they are a formula for industry success, I dunno. That doesn't seem to be their focus. Their focus seems to be taking RPGs in new directions, and getting people excited about playing them.

In the "long tail" that's coming for RPGs, I think this stuff is going to fare very well.

That said, I want the indie and I want my D&D. I hope both prosper as the hobby moves forward.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Rules Light and quick to pick up and play. - The current version is a total failure at this.

I learned to play by reading the old books back in the day. No one showed me. When I started looking at 3e, I was told dozens of times, you'll need someone to show you how to play.

I have had the exact opposite experience. I taught myself to play all editions of D&D. In 1st ed., I had to memorize almost literally the entire Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide, because they were mined with odd rules that didn't follow a central system, were difficult to remember, and had major impacts on play if the situation they were designed to adjudicate ever came up.

In 3rd ed., it took me about 30 minutes to work out the basic system, and another 30 to learn Attacks of Opportunity and special combat actions. After that, it was just a question of looking up spells and feats on a case-by-case basis to understand what they do.

I've turned players away from my AD&D game because I don't have space. Some of them are 3e players that can't find a game. Often they will rant about how bad AD&D is and how it sucks for a while and how if I had a clue and wasn't some silly old fool, I'd be running 3e.

Back when I had spaced, I'd offer them a chance to play. Most of them took it, seemed to have and wanted to play again. They'd come around in time to just maybe AD&D didn't suck so bad after all. Giving them a free old AD&D PHB, usually won my campaign a new player. Several got inspired and wanted to switch back, saying if they DM'd again they be running and older D&D variant. Three got into wanting to learning to DM - old school formats. The one that had DM'd 3e game said he wouldn't run it again, he was going old school from here on out.

All three of them branched out into running their version of AD&D in time. I've lost contact with them but I think that's very interesting because two of them wouldn't touch even trying to DM 3e!

My offensive point is the game (all formats) lives of dies based on having a good fair motivated DM.

While 3e might protect from the bad DM, it's not going to make a bad DM a good one. It trades insperation for protection. Games don't grow without insperation.

If there is a point to this, I've missed it. Exactly how does 3rd edition inhibit my inspiration? What is it about 1st ed. that provides it? I've played both extensively, and I don't have any idea where you're coming from with these vague edition war claims.

What needs to happen is a new rules light version of the game.

What, you mean like 1st ed? Seriously, all you really need to know to start playing 3rd ed., assuming your DM knows what he's doing, is this:

If you want to attempt to do something, ask the DM, roll a D20, add whatever bonus the DM tells you to, tell the DM what you got.

Spells complicate things, but they always did.

WotC needs suck it up and get someone like EGG or EGG himself to write the books in an inspiring way to put the text magic back into the game.

For what it's worth, I always hated Gygax's prose.

The other part, if you want this stuff to grow is start training DM's. Bad DM's have killed more games and ruined more interest than about anything else in the history of the game IMO. Training is something companies hate to do but teaching the core concepts of how to DM effectively is the key. It's not just the rules thing but how to be fair, how to look at a situation, how to think like a DM, when to be die hard BY THE BOOK and when to throw the BOOK out the window in the game of fun and surprise. Printing another stupid book like DMG II isn't want I'm talking about.

Considering that Robin Laws has penned some of the best advice to DMs that was ever written, and that advice was reprinted in the DMG II, I think that you're contradicting yourself.

Face to Face classes or DM classes over the internet. I know I'd pay for that and I'm an old school DM, whos 1st ed AD&D campaign that started in 1981 is running in 2007. Heck, I'd pay for the DM class, even if it was all 3.5 because I know I can always learn more about effective DMing.

This is about the last thing I'd do with my money. I can see where you'd perhaps want some sort of free workshop at a local gaming store as a promotional exercise, but charging people to learn how to use a game--and operating as though this were the standard way to learn it--is probably the quickest way to eliminate existing desire to learn the game.

I wouldn't pay ten cents for a complete set of all the stupid poorly written books that WotC has.

That's nice. I happen to like them. I haven't opened my 1st ed. books in years, except to jog my memory concerning a few pieces of line art.

Boy oh boy, do these Edition Wars posts further the aims of constructive discussion.

"Older is better!"
"Nuh uh!"
"Uh huh!"
"Nuh uh! Gary rules!"
"No way! He sux!"
etc.

 

[heirodule]

And IMO this is where the chinks in the story telling armor start to appear. "Players deliberately strying to put the story off track" ???? Remember - the story is something (supposedly) that happens AFTER the events, then how can they pull the events "off the track". Don't the events create the track?

How does the Star Wars "destiny" mechanic fit into this?

D&D could probably use more, not less, story-hook stuff in the mechanics.

 

[HeinorNY]

I'd rather have a rule for everything and then cut out what I don't like rather than have a lack of rules and then have to make them up on the spot as I go.

Same here.
Lots of rules = lots of options.

Just make the basic set of rules lighter and simpler, so people can learn how to play it and start playing it really fast and go fo what is important: the fun.
Then name all the rest of the rules presented in other released books with a big OPTIONAL RULES tag over them, so people won't get confused and will stop whinning about how "rules-heavy" D&D is...

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I do think he leaves out the tactical player. Perhaps it's because he feels that can be served by WoW better and TRPGs won't be able to compete at that level. Yes, there are a lot of tactical types playing D&D, but I'll be a large number of them like the other elements as well as the tactical element they enjoy.

I think MMORPGs actually fail at tactical play. The variables are too limited, the encounters too routine, and the realtime movement and action system too messy. Give me a tile-based, turn-based tactical game with dozens of sourcebooks worth of options over a single avatar that has a cripplingly limited repertoire of options with which to slog through 500 hours of identical combat situations that require no tactics because combat is automated anyway, any day. Diablo was fun for about the first three levels, after which I just took every character class for a test drive to see what they could do, and then dropped it. It failed to satisfy my desires for complicated tactical combat. I played WoW for a week, and then dropped it as well, when I realized it was just Diablo again, but with more character classes and prettier backgrounds.

 

[HeinorNY]

I'm not suggesting that. I'm suggesting that there are too many unnecessary rules. The game would be just as fun without "spell turning" or reserve feats, or the complexities of the warlock class, or any of the host of other secondary miscellaneous stuff.

Actually the only "necessary rules" are those presented in the PHB.
The other tons of rules were never meant to be necessary, so they can't really be called "unecessary", they were meant to be optional, and more options is a good thing not a bad thing.

That's why I believe WOTC should release their supplementary books with a big warning on the cover: YOU DON'T NEED THESE RULES TO PLAY D&D, USE THEM ONLY IF YOU LIKE THEM. WOTC WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSABLE IF YOU DO OTHERWISE.

 

[freebfrost]

I do not disagree that your total income equals a few million a year. However, I was disagreeing with your implication that the RPGs were doing so. Hell, the only store in our area that bought a Conan book has seen it sit on the shelf for 15 months.

That's a local experience though.

I've purchased the entire Conan line from my local store as well as multiple copies of the Conan core and pocket books for my players. So from my experience, Mongoose is easily the #1 RPG retail producer.

The point being that Matthew is in a much better position to tell us how his company is doing from a global perspective, as opposed to localized perceptions.