Video game influences on my D&D

[JohnSnow]

I'm actually all for anything that allows D&D to be more than "20 minutes of fun crammed into 4 hours of play."

That's an old comment made by, I believe, Ryan Dancey's girlfriend (or was it wife?) back when 3e was being developed.

For example, I used to play with a DM who disliked 3e because of the prep time involved and the ingame time spent on combat. He was more fond of the game's storytelling aspects because he found the rules stuff "boring." His solution, which worked for him, was to opt for a rules-lighter game and concentrate more on the storytelling aspects. To his credit, they were very good games.

I would like to see the game focus on making the game mechanics more "fun." As an example, I often hear the complaint that combats take longer to resolve in Iron Heroes (my preferred d20 fantasy ruleset). And that's true. They do take a little more time. But they're a whole lot more fun. Part of that is the concept of combat options and resource management that Mike Mearls cribbed from, yes, video games.

Overall, I'd say the combat takes maybe twice as long to resolve (at most) but it's about 4-5x more fun. And anything that raises the fun quotient in RPGs is a Good Thing(TM) in my opinion.

Although I'm still fond of the holy trinity of Tolkien, Leiber, and Howard.

With a little Stackpole, Martin, Butcher, and Micronauts thrown in where appropriate.

 

[shilsen]

shilsen, is it appropriate for me at this juncture to say that I love you with all the fire of a thousand suns, and that I want to sire my (other) family of children with you?

No?

Promises, promises...

 

[WizarDru]

I'm actually all for anything that allows D&D to be more than "20 minutes of fun crammed into 4 hours of play."

That's an old comment made by, I believe, Ryan Dancey's girlfriend (or was it wife?) back when 3e was being developed.

Actually, it was from Dave Wise's wife. There was no mention of this being during 3e's development, afaik. Here's the actual quote from Dancey from Mike Mearl's blog:

Many RPG sessions consist of a very limited amount of "roleplaying game", surrounded by a lot of argument, community dialog, eating, and other distractions.

Dave Wise, who was one of my Brand Managers at WotC, and was a talented writer and editor for TSR, is married to the person who first made the observation, after watching his gaming group, that D&D seemed like 20 minutes of fun packed into four hours - which was her way of saying "shouldn't this game be more fun, considering the work and time everyone seems to be putting into it?"

I agree with her. It should be more fun.

We suffer the inefficiencies of the current RPG systems becuase they're better than other options: cops & robbers, playing house, or improv theater. But that doesn't mean that we should be satisfied. A lot of the work that went into 3E was focused on making the game more consistent because consistency is a hallmark of efficiency. 3E is just demonstrably easier to play than 2E because of this level of consistency. Even so, we may have produced a net effect of subtracting 5 minutes of "non fun" and adding four minutes of "fun" at best. That still leaves a massive gap for improvement.

This is the kind of stuff that can be studied. The one-way market research room is invaluable. Watching players try to use the rules as written is one of the hardest, but most useful things the writer of those rules can do. Iterating through versions of the rules looking for a way that allows them to be expressed effectively, and testing that effectiveness, is one of the things that WotC earns credit in my book for pioneering and being willing to invest in over the long term.

There are so many other areas that need work though. Psychological profiling so that the DM knows what kind of players are in the group, and how to craft a session to maximize the fun for that mix of players would be fantastic.