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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 4880101" data-attributes="member: 80487">The contrived is likely to bite back in more ways the more of it there is. The 3E system is probably most familiar among D&Ders, and by design it makes trade-offs a big issue and introduction of new skills problematic. To the biggest fans of the game, the "sub-game" of character design may be among its valued assets. To many others, whether inclined to see a skills system as necessary or as needless, the 3E model is a conceptual mold that can be hard to break. That in certain ways it resembles those in many other games reinforces the association.The Fantasy Trip may be instructive. Released (in "Advanced", full-RPG form) in 1980, it combined a number of features commonly dividing "schools" of D&D today: character design with points; a skills system; and detailed tactical combat rules (originally presented in the board games Melee and Wizard). Yet, it seems to be fondly remembered among fans of old D&D who also played it.It does not follow that they want to mix their TFT and D&D; it is quite common to appreciate different things as just that (meat-flavored ice cream, for instance, not being a big seller). However, there may be things to learn from the design in terms of different approaches to similar subjects.SPI's (later TSR's) Dragonquest is another RPG that started out as a combat board game. Discussions of later versions of D&D sometimes get hung up on the notion that if they are also partly of that species, then somehow they are less legitimately RPGs. That is unhelpful, but so is ignoring the influence of that design priority on a game's overall effect.Looked at one way, most RPGs amount to basically "just the same thing", but in practice the differences in detail are significant. There are various allocations of rules comprehensiveness, and of players' time and energy; as processes, they flow in different ways, move to different rhythms.</blockquote>

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