So what exactly is the root cause of the D&D rules' staying power?

[prosfilaes]

Name recognition.

That's it. I guarantee that if nobody had heard of Dungeons & Dragons, and the name everyone had heard of was something else, we'd be having this discussion about a completely different game, and D&D would be in a position like Tunnels & Trolls or Rolemaster or something.

...

D&D's core rules systems aren't superior to other game systems. Most people could find, or be presented with, a system they would find they like better.

I don't think that's the end all and be all of it. Sure, I can see having this discussion about Tunnels & Trolls or Rolemaster or GURPS*. But setting and genre matter; offer something too weird like Empire of the Petal Throne or Gamma World, it could have been first, and lit off the RPG industry, but it would have been surpassed by something more normal. I don't know if it had to be fantasy; maybe it could have been Traveller or Hero, but I don't think the Cthulhu Mythos (at least not at the time) or steampunk or cyberpunk or Western or too-odd science fiction would have sustained the game. Fantasy that had a large element of Tolkien pastiche was possibly the best chance for the first RPG to have massive staying power.

* I know, G(eneric)U(niversal)... but the 3rd edition rule book could stand alone as a fantasy game, albeit human only. In an environment where GURPS was first, it probably wouldn't have spent as much time being weird, because more of its players would have been interested in standard fantasy, and its players wouldn't have been running from D&D.

 

[prosfilaes]

Another hint, I suppose, should be the continued popularity of Pathfinder. A large portion of the player base is basically still playing an extension of a rules system that came out 18 years ago. (Holy cow, that's a little crazy to think about).

By the same token, though, 3.x / Pathfinder are case positive of my point. You have to be willfully blind to look at 3.x / PF and say it's this amazingly engineered, well balanced system. My experience with Pathfinder was fun, but at no point when I was GM-ing it would I call it "elegant."

I suppose it's telling, though, that when given the choice between 4e, sticking with 3.x (Pathfinder), or branching out to something new, a substantial portion of the player base stayed with Pathfinder. By the time 4e rolled around, I was darn good and ready for something different. 4e ended up being exactly the wrong kind of different, so I went looking elsewhere.

Elegance is overrated. No matter how you write the rules, I'm going to have to look up exactly the modifiers on attempting a 15' long jump with a 15' running start across cobblestones, and when I do I can look at the exact rules for jump. (Okay, so I may not have to if the rules don't have those modifiers.. but then you're sacrificing simulationist properties for elegance.)

Why should an 18 years old system be bad? I'm writing this on a Unix system whose basic rules were laid down almost 50 years ago. I'm writing this in a language whose basic rules were laid down 900 years ago. They work, and the advantages of fixing the inelegant features ("fixing", of course, being something that will be accompanied by much screaming and arguing about whether the new way is in fact better, and almost certainly once the ink is dry a consensus will form on at least one feature that is objectively worse) outweighs the cost of fixing them. If it works, don't fix it.

Unlike you, when I opened up my first 3.5 PHB, it wasn't after playing D&D for many years. I'd played a bunch of AD&D 2E, then played GURPS and Hero and flipped through and drooled over any number of other games. I came back to D&D with 3.5. And so many of the problems 2E were now gone, and so many new options were out there to explore. Why, after four years, should I spend a lot of time looking for and pushing a new system? 4E didn't do what I wanted, I'd spent some time learning the costs and values of various other systems, why not stick with a slightly modded version of the system I knew and enjoyed? So far I haven't found a system that does better at offering me a generic fun gaming experience, so I stick with it. I could go to Burning Wheel or Savage Worlds or Dungeon World, but I don't know those games, and I don't have anyone to play them with. I could go to 5E; it's likely I will end up playing some 5E out of availability. I'm indecisive on a lot of the differences, and the system I have works, so why should I learn the quirks and designs of a new system?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Few systems offer the same base 6 attributes. Is Champions 14 attributes (Str Dex Con Body Int Ego Pre Com PD ED Rec End Spd Stun) comparable to D&D? What about Tri-Stat's Mind, Body and Soul attributes? Or FATE's "choose your own" system?

I would say yes, they are comparable, because they can all be contrasted with stat-less systems. Over the Edge, for example, doesn't have stats in it; it only has the sort of free-form aspects which are typically associated with FATE. (On the other hand, FATE actually does have stats, in the form of skills - at least one of which determines how many HP you have.)

Experience in many games is awarded in 1-3 points per session to be spend as build points improving a character (Champions, GURPS, Uni-system). Is that in any way equivalent to D&D level system?

Yes, it is. You earn it for doing stuff, and you spend it to become more powerful. The differences are mostly cosmetic. You can't look at GURPS, or at D&D, and say that either one doesn't have an XP system, because there are other RPGs which actually lack XP of any kind. Exquisite Replicas is an example of a game that doesn't have any sort of experience system.

 

[prosfilaes]

But I think it’s also because of how effective many of its elements are, and how often they’re replicated. Video games have lifted just about everything from the game, and they’ve exposed so many more people to these concepts than D&D itself. And just about every other game mentioned in this thread has one or more elements taken from D&D....Hit Points, Armor Class, Character Class, Experience Points, Attributes, and so on. So much of game design still can be traced back to D&D by Gygax and Arneson.

I don't believe that most of those elements are taken from D&D. Attributes, even numeric attributes, were not invented by Gygax and Arneson; it's hard to say who invented the idea, but William Sterne named IQ in 1912. Hit points were not first published in D&D; they were called "defense points" in Chainmail, and while that was Gygax, I doubt it was the first place the idea of having a numeric count of damage done to an object was made. The idea of classes and distinct careers goes back to prehistory; this guy is a cleric and that guy a fighter is not something invented by Gygax. Put together, it gets more distinctive, but no, if a game has a line on their sheet for Intelligence, it's not because Gygax and Arneson were totally amazing game designers, it's because intelligence is something we were quantifying (or trying to quantify) in real-life humans for at least sixty years by the time D&D came around.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I don't think that's the end all and be all of it. Sure, I can see having this discussion about Tunnels & Trolls or Rolemaster or GURPS*. But setting and genre matter; offer something too weird like Empire of the Petal Throne or Gamma World, it could have been first, and lit off the RPG industry, but it would have been surpassed by something more normal.

(Emphasis mine.)

There is no way to make that statement with any objective certainty. Seriously, depending on whose study you read, being first to market has between a 60-70% correlation of a product’s success, across all markets. Being #1 is a powerful advantage,

D&D was my first RPG, followed closely by Traveller, TFT/ITL, and Champions (which became HERO). My favorite iteration of D&D was 3.X., but HERO is my favorite system, bar none. We veteran gamers have the perspective to see things in other games we prefer.

But most of those outside the hobby don’t have a clue beyond D&D in the TTRPG market. To the world at large, D&D = all role-playing games. The game’s name is genericized as the blanket name for the hobby. Hell, my mom does it, and she knows better.*

So, unless there’s a reason for them to know otherwise, most new entrants to the hobby will probably ask to be taught how to play “D&D”.

And that is what being first gets you: squatter’s right’s on huge chunks of mental real estate.





* I hope.

 

[Aldarc]

In watching the Fate playthroughs, I felt much the same way---"These are really great ideas, I love the compel/tag aspects, and the concept of the mutability of the fiction . . . but man, the skill tree and task resolution stuff in Fate really isn't to taste."

In case you are curious, the skill system is one of the most flexible and customizable parts of Fate. If you look through the different variants, you can see people do all sorts of things with it. Fate Accelerated drops skill lists entirely in favor of six Approaches that are not about what you can do but about how you do it (e.g., Forceful, Flashy, Clever, etc.). Some games replace skills with Professions, which operate akin to a cluster of skill packages: e.g., Aristocrat, Fighter, Scholar, Scoundrel, etc. Some drop it in favor of ranking your aspects (e.g., +3, +2, +1, etc.) as quasi-skills. Atomic Robo modifies the skill tree with skill modes.

D&D was my first RPG, followed closely by Traveller, TFT/ITL, and Champions (which became HERO). My favorite iteration of D&D was 3.X., but HERO is my favorite system, bar none. We veteran gamers have the perspective to see things in other games we prefer.

Any particular set of reasons why?

Not putting you on the defense here, but I am genuinely curious about other game systems. Even if I don't necessarily like the system, simply being more familiar with a system (and its strengths, weaknesses, quirks) allows me to at least recommend it to someone who perhaps would find the game system enjoyable.

 

[Nagol]

In case you are curious, the skill system is one of the most flexible and customizable parts of Fate. If you look through the different variants, you can see people do all sorts of things with it. Fate Accelerated drops skill lists entirely in favor of six Approaches that are not about what you can do but about how you do it (e.g., Forceful, Flashy, Clever, etc.). Some games replace skills with Professions, which operate akin to a cluster of skill packages: e.g., Aristocrat, Fighter, Scholar, Scoundrel, etc. Some drop it in favor of ranking your aspects (e.g., +3, +2, +1, etc.) as quasi-skills. Atomic Robo modifies the skill tree with skill modes.

Any particular set of reasons why?

Not putting you on the defense here, but I am genuinely curious about other game systems. Even if I don't necessarily like the system, simply being more familiar with a system (and its strengths, weaknesses, quirks) allows me to at least recommend it to someone who perhaps would find the game system enjoyable.

Hero is my favorite system too. From my perspective it has advantages and drawbacks. I'll go with drawbacks first.

Drawbacks

• Out of the box, it is more a toolset for the GM to create a game -- the powers, modifiers, skills, and perks should be tweaked to conform to the genre/table style of game you are looking for.
• As a system, it is intimidating to new players. There are a lot of different powers, modifiers, skills, and perks for a novice to peruse.
• It requires math (addition, multiplication, and division) to create a character. Simple mistakes happen somewhat frequently.
• At higher levels of power, a lot of dice can end up in play 20d6 (or more) can end up as a typical damage roll.
• The game somewhat rewards system mastery. If two people try to make a character to the same conception, it is likely one will be objectively better (better chance to hit, more damage output, better utility abilities) than the other.

Advantages

• Almost any character conception can be modeled in the game engine.
• Once characters are created, the bulk of the rules are not necessary at the table. Almost everything necessary for the player to know is on the character sheet.
• It can support almost any genre and simulate almost any other game engine (with GM investment to create the appropriate tweaks). I say almost any only because there are a few comedic and or horrific games where the tweaking would become excessive.
• Once a player becomes experienced, the rulebook is only necessary for edge-case choices. Base character construction is relatively straightforward.
• Success is based around a bell-curve (3d6, low numbers are good).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Any particular set of reasons why?

1) Even though it is notoriously crunchy, you mostly only only encounter that during character creation. So while it can be difficult to create a character, the game comes across as a breeze to play.

2) Similarly, you almost never need the rulebooks in session- 95% of what you need is on your character sheet.

3) I’ve yet to come up with a PC concept I couldn’t model in it, regardless of genre

4) the way things are modeled make sense (to me and some others). Best example: Autofire rules. Many modern games- like Mutants & Masterminds- think it is better to simply add extra damage to a single attack to simulate using many attacks, like a machine gun or a super-speedster’s rapid-fire punch. While it is faster, it ignores how sometimes those autofire attacks are distributed among multiple targets.

5) the game is truly generic and universal. Unless the GM issues campaign-specific rules, the “Jedi” you make for a sci-fi game could be used as a “mystic warrior” in a fantasy game, simply by changing the character’s name. The truncheon-wielding City Watch could be similarly reskinned as a mall-security rent-a-cop. Not only can that be a great time saver, this also means that genre blending is easy. You want a campaign with Space Marines falling through a dimensional warp into a realm of high fantasy, then its as easily said as done.

 

[billd91]

4) the way things are modeled make sense (to me and some others). Best example: Autofire rules. Many modern games- like Mutants & Masterminds- think it is better to simply add extra damage to a single attack to simulate using many attacks, like a machine gun or a super-speedster’s rapid-fire punch. While it is faster, it ignores how sometimes those autofire attacks are distributed among multiple targets.

Which brings up another interesting strength of Hero (and Mutants and Masterminds). There are typically multiple ways to model something - each with a somewhat different feel. A speedster's ability to attack multiple foes could be done with an Area modifier to a power in either game, with Auto-fire in Hero/Multi-attack in M&M.

One real eye opener was an issue of Different Worlds in which various authors statted up X-Men in different rulesets. Cyclops was done in Champions with an Endurance Battery (second edition, I think) because, essentially, he is one - storing solar energy and converting it into his optic blasts. They took a relatively obscure (at the time) aspect of his powers and were able to build it really well with the Champions ruleset.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't believe that most of those elements are taken from D&D. Attributes, even numeric attributes, were not invented by Gygax and Arneson; it's hard to say who invented the idea, but William Sterne named IQ in 1912. Hit points were not first published in D&D; they were called "defense points" in Chainmail, and while that was Gygax, I doubt it was the first place the idea of having a numeric count of damage done to an object was made. The idea of classes and distinct careers goes back to prehistory; this guy is a cleric and that guy a fighter is not something invented by Gygax. Put together, it gets more distinctive, but no, if a game has a line on their sheet for Intelligence, it's not because Gygax and Arneson were totally amazing game designers, it's because intelligence is something we were quantifying (or trying to quantify) in real-life humans for at least sixty years by the time D&D came around.

This all may be....but in most instances, the line connection people would make would be to D&D. Some of these elements may have existed prior to D&D, in wargaming or what have you....but the assembling of these into a game, and then that game serving as a source of inspiration for many games that followed is more my point.