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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Irda Ranger" data-source="post: 3695361" data-attributes="member: 1003">Welcome back!Hmm. D&D is just a reflection of the times?  Maybe.  Perhaps D&D has been and has remained the most popular RPG not because of any Platonic ideal of rules, but merely because it was best at reflecting the mood of the community expectations? There are many parallels in other industries.  I'm not sure that's terribly useful to discussion though, as it's mostly a circular argument. Let's focus on the specifics.More action oriented? I don't think so. D&D has always been "kill things and take their stuff." It probably is accurate to say that games & adventures within D&D has become more "constrained" in a video-game way, but let me explain what I mean by that before people jump all over me.I think it is useful to think about the player's expectations regarding the frequency of "power ups", and how easily put to use they are. As mere examples of the genre of video games, Zelda and Metroid were very simple games in many respects (their engines could never have supported hiring a band of spear carriers to help acquire the tri-force, or Link deciding to "fark this" and go on a different quest). Due to their simplicity they were forced to rely on simpler fair to reward players - little glowing things that give you simple bonuses to stats you already have.  Metroid could never supported a Chaotic Evil gun with an EGO of 21 that took over your character and started attacking villagers, abandoning your quest.This trained players in several, related respects.  One, power ups are to be sought, are frequently discovered, and easily put to use. Two, the "mission" is provided by the game, not decided by the player. Three, the world is constrained to what is presented by the game, there is nothing beyond the 'borders' of the story (or, its there, but don't go there - you'll break the game). I've had several experiences where players raised on the NES were (1) completely adrift sitting in a tavern with no quest provided with their ale, (2) get pissy when they kill an Orc and it "only" has 2d4 sp on it (never mind that the village is now safe), and (3) don't make decisions like "fark this, I'm going to Cormyr."(Please don't assume that I'm saying that all people who played the NES/Super NES/PS1,2/ etc. display all of these attributes all the time - I'm just talking about trends here.  Let's make up a number and say that #2 events are up 53%. I'm also pretty sure that this is a video/computer game problem, because I never have these problems with people who don't play computer/video games, or older gamers who do play them but did not during their formative years.)I'm not sure this is actually a good thing. What you're saying is that the rules as written, taken to their logical conclusion, did not result in the world that you wanted; so you hand-waived away the results for ones more favorable to your story / campaign world.Of course, the D&D designers noticed the same thing.  There were gaps in the rules - the magic item creation rules didn't exist to explain where all those items and potions came from, the NWP and secondary skills sub-system was absurd, and the logical conclusion of the rules that did exist did not result in a world that looked anything like Middle Earth.I think that making the rules complete-ish (e.g., Skill Points, magical item creation) rules was a good idea in some respects, but the designers turned right when some of us would rather they had turned left.  Rather than alter the rules to so that they'd result in world that looks like the hand-waivey results we'd been getting all along, they followed them to their logical conclusion to make what we call "D&D being it's own genre", aka, Ptolus and Eberron.  There's really nothing WrongBadFun about this - it's a matter of taste. There are plenty of games / movies / TV shows etc. that I don't like but have lots of fans.  There are also plenty of people who enjoy both; a buddy in my Iron Heroes group also runs a Ptolus campaign.So, D&D has evolved to a higher levels of "completeness" and "internal consistency." This is a good thing. It's a model to be strived for, so that even if you don't like the implied setting, it's still a standard to be held to when creating rules that support an implied setting you'd like to play in yourself. Conan is a better game because D&D has shown that you can have consistent rules which result in the implied setting you were hoping for.</blockquote>

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