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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6017340" data-attributes="member: 82106">I think there's a certain amount of truth to what he's saying. If you go back and play OD&D you will find it is perfectly suited to being a dungeon crawl game. In fact it is almost entirely such, almost to the exclusion of RP elements except where they happen to not conflict with the crawl concept. However, I think as soon as the game was released it started to immediately gravitate away from that original concept. Even the Greyhawk and Blackmoor supplements moved away from dungeon/hex crawl. I think the evolution was COMPLETE by the time the game got to around 1985. OA was the first major work that really entirely moved away from the central concept (there is no mention of dungeons at all in that book, it is all about character story and backstory), then moving on to the WSG and etc. The key thing though is it wasn't just a broadening of the environments where PCs would go. The wilderness, the town, and then the other planes always existed at some level. It was a CONCEPTUAL evolution, from episodic adventure that was focused on the activity (IE mapping and looting the dungeon) to story-based play focused on plot and character. I think it is true that to a large extent the SYSTEM never evolved, while the PLAY of the game has. 2e was presented as more of a story centered system, but it failed to incorporate any actual mechanical aspects of that shift. 3e even claimed "back to the dungeon" but again failed to understand the differences between activity focus and story focus in system design.4e I think he correctly states at least has abandoned any pretense of being activity focused and has pretty much swept away the last vestiges of the original dungeon crawl concept in favor of story arcs and encounters. You CAN explore a dungeon in 4e, but 4e isn't ABOUT exploring that dungeon, it is about advancing the story and said dungeon is merely a scene. You could play Basic D&D in dungeons and wildernesses forever and that was the game, you'd go crazy doing that with 4e.</blockquote>

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