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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5284225" data-attributes="member: 80487">For those who may still honestly not understand, a fact of life is that different people have different preferences that exist independently of, and often prior to, the existence of any particular rules-book with "Dungeons & Dragons" (or anything else) on the cover.Another fact of life is that the different games were designed  by different people with different objectives corresponding to different preferences in the demographic of potential players/ DMs/ purchasers.A fact of game design is that, however modular they may be, it is the interaction of the parts that makes the game. Changing one changes the effects of others.A special problem in the case of RPGs is that many people have difficulty even recognizing as game-design elements at all things that can be much more fundamental than the "mechanical" details. The euphemism "play style" tends -- along with "fluff" -- to belittle all higher-order concerns as insignificant.A special problem in the case of D&D is that many people mistake the brand name for the game. This is a problem because the publisher's business model is based on periodically selling a different game. It must be sufficiently different to warrant purchase by those who already have the last one but either (a) want something different or (b) want to "keep current". Even as it is really, in practice, quite important to some people that it is not so, they like paradoxically to insist that "the game remains the same".The original generic "dungeon game" is a very broad basis for comparison by which one theoretically could say that, e.g., "AD&D is just another version of RuneQuest". This is in fact not how the line goes. Overwhelmingly, the favored claim is that something or other is (in all that "really" matters) just like the seminal Dungeons & Dragons game.Like it or not, though, that game had certain characteristics. From Day One, quite a few people have in fact not liked those characteristics. They did not like the set-up. They did not like the goals. They did not like the plays. They did not like the penalties.They might still like a "dungeon game", in a sense that can be as loose as liking the imagery that can as readily make the same "Euro-style" board game design either that or a "farming game" or pretty much any other kind of game that may be in vogue.That sense does not go very far as a helpful distinction. The success of D&D led to a flood of games in one way or another "about" dwarves and hobbits stealing gold from dragons and other beasties in subterranean mazes.When we get down to actual game design, that is so superficial that it can often be left to the art department. "File off the serial numbers" and you get ... well, an awful lot of what we have gotten over the past 36 years.There are much more important questions as to what the game is about. For instance, is it about mapping a level in order to identify hazards and points-scoring objectives? Is it about going in, potentially over several tries, to bypass or beat the hazards and score the points? Is it about maximizing the points scored per "life", when loss of the life is an ever-present risk?There is, from what I have seen and heard, an interesting phenomenon in the video-game world. A game such as Gauntlet, which is potentially endless, can still fascinate many players whose tastes in games developed in the 1980s. People without that background are much more likely to lose interest as soon as they realize that there is no final "boss" to beat, no way conclusively to "win the game".There is a clear difference in context between the arcade, in which continued play requires either skill or cold cash, and the console or PC environment. There are doubtless other influences as well. To a certain extent, human beings tend to be naturally inclined to conservatism. A view that is popular has an inertia, a tendency to remain popular because it is popular.When the makeup of the significant population changes, what is popular can change. When something that was formerly the province of a narrow demographic appeals to a different and larger demographic, the change can be both thorough and sudden. (The same can happen in reverse, which may have been one factor contributing to the decline of video arcades.)At the same time, there can be a sense that some things are nonetheless "proper" because they are traditional. It may be hard for people to see how some things really are not working for them, because they have a vested interest in the prestige associated with traditions.When a whole complex of concepts is associated with a high-value name, this can get very problematic. I expect that most readers can think of examples from the fields of politics and religion.The bottom line for most people is that it is not the name but the qualities that determine whether the phenomenon is ultimately pleasing. Each of us desires certain ends, which may be opposed to another's desires. Different means are conducive to different ends.</blockquote>

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