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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reynard" data-source="post: 4678013" data-attributes="member: 467">The RPG, especially since the explosion of PDF publishing, is a wonderful medium for  a "personal vision" design paradigm (whether that is literally one person, or a small group all on the same wavelength). Many folks have already done great work with their own games, and since there's no shelf space issue to be concerned with everyone who has an RPG inside them can put one out.The problem I see, though, is that too much "indie" RPG design is built specifically around being NOT D&D -- more particularly, being NOT CORPORATE D&D. This, i think, is too bad, because what it does is throw out the baby with the bathwater. It's as foolish as specifically designing NOT WoD -- the other juggernaut of the industry.  That D&D is as popular as it is speaks to more than the success of TSR's or WotC's marketting departments.  There's something in the genre, in the play, in the cultural structure of the game that makes it valuable, and worth examining through independent design.  One of the reasons I love the OGL is that it allows people with a vision of what D&D would, could or should be to produce just that.This isn't to say all RPGs should look and play just like D&D.  Rather, looking and/or playing like D&D should not be an anti-goal of independent game design and development.I wrote for Exalted for a while and contributed a sizable chunk to the Gamma World d20 PHB before real life (read: 2 kids) kind of sucked away that "spare time" I used to use to write.  Recently, though, I have really considered leaping back in to the fray.  i have played with other forms of game design and have a couple ideas that are well on their way to being good prototypes, but I always find myself gravitating back toward the pen and paper RPG.  Now , of course, with the state of the industry -- particularly the D&D third party industry -- it doesn't look like there's really anywhere to go as a freelancer.Uh, oh.  I've started rambling.  So I'll stop and just give Jack some XP.</blockquote>

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