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Message: <blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 8665416" data-attributes="member: 86653">Here are some random thoughts.Early dominance. D&D came out of wargaming and pulled from free Kriegsspiel to give us the open-ended style of play we recognize as RPGs. The rules were also light, maybe even sparse, and meant more as an open-system toolkit for the referee to customize and play in whatever style or mode they wanted with the people at their tables. It was also a game about fantasy literature. As such, it kind of captured the hearts and minds of many in those two fandoms. Others despised it or turned their noses up at it. But it was new, cool, and just structured enough that the really imaginative people in those communities could grab on and do anything with the game.Mainstream popularity. When Gygax shafted Arneson and screwed him out of royalties by making AD&D, he turned his back on the free Kriegsspiel ideals and went from an open system that could do anything to a closed system that was meant to be played a specific way and do a specific thing and do it exhaustively. This pivot turned the game from something you needed to engage with imaginatively and customize into something that you could just pick up and play (after slogging through the Old High Gygaxian). I don't mean that this dumbed down the game, but it did remove the need for that extra level of tinkering and creativity, paving the way for mainstream success. Helped in no small part by the early adopters and the various moral outrages.Continued dominance. I think D&D was just the big dog up through 3X. It did it's thing, it dominated the market and with the OGL it go a lot of other games and designers to simply get on board mechanically. It had completely captured the market. But then 4E came out. It was more game than RPG. It shifted what it was kind of drastically. Not just away from what people expected of D&D and RPGs, but it basically transformed itself back into a wargame with vestigial RPG components. One of the big reasons I think 5E is so popular is that they went back to first principles...and they remembered some of the history. 5E is the juggernaut it is because it doesn't try to be unique. It doesn't try to be amazing at any one thing. It does everything kinda meh at best. So it hearkens back to the early days. The lighter rules let the players and referees do whatever they want with the game and make it work however they want. Not that it's rules light, just lighter for a D&D game.I think this is a constant tension in games. Especially D&D. Over-design the game and it becomes too specific and unplayable...decreasing your audience. Under-design the game and it becomes too loose and generic...decreasing your audience. The only way to solve that is to find the middle ground. Specific enough but playable, loose but broadly focused.</blockquote>

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