What do other RPG designers think?

[Blood & Bones]

Whether we do so professionally or as an amateur, I suspect that a good number of us in this community have written and published RPG material before; whole games or just adventures. Still others are serious house-rulers, who tweak and adjust games so much that new material from the same publisher needs to be "adapted" to their game to be used.

Regardless of what stripe or type you are, as individuals who like to tinker under the hood or rebuild engines from scratch, we have a slightly different perspective on the process of game development. What do *we* think about the process that WotC is taking? How do we think it's going?

 

[Blood & Bones]

... I'm liking how this pole is turning out... The professionals and the amateurs seem to agree, while house-rulers seem split on the subject. However, I would really love to know WHY?

 

[jadrax]

Well if you think about it, in very general terms they are actually completely the opposite in terms of their prime goal.

House-rulers are all about making a game as specific as possible to exactly match one style of play and no other.

Designers (professional or amateur) are all about trying to get as many people to buy into the game as possible.

 

[Harlekin]

Most amateurs and professionals on EN-World are OGL-designers, so that they are happy with a new game that is similar to d20 is not that surprising.

I would also be curious how you distinguish professionals and amateurs?

 

[Derren]

Not sure if he even is a designer

DnDNext: Is this REALLY how you should design a game? | The Douchey DM

 

[MatthewJHanson]

I would also be curious how you distinguish professionals and amateurs?

I wondered this also. I called myself a "professional" because I make some money off writing RPGs, but it is far from my full-time job.

 

[Harlekin]

I wondered this also. I called myself a "professional" because I make some money off writing RPGs, but it is far from my full-time job.

I called myself an amateur for the same reasons. But your classification makes more sense, otherwise there would be damn few professionals.

 

[Yora]

I'd say as a professional you rely to some degree on an income from the work, while for amateur any profits you make are a welcome but unexpected bonus on the side.

 

[Abstruse]

I'd probably call someone like Matt James a professional, Mike Shea an amateur (he has a couple of books out on gaming and has written guest columns for WotC as well as a pretty popular blog, but still has a day job), and someone like me maybe a homebrew guy (I rarely actually play or run the games I make, but I love tinkering around with the parts of a system to see how much I can stretch or pull out before it breaks...like a magicless Shadowrun system with space opera themes, a 1/3rd edition d20 game I worked on for a while which was 1st ed style rules and gameplay with 3rd edition ease of use (but stopped when I realized Basic Fantasy already did it as well as if not better than I ever could), and an attempt at re-creating the old HeroQuest board game). But since the systems I make aren't ever intended to see the light of day, I don't know if I'd even count myself which is why I haven't responded to the poll.

Litmus test: Do you make enough money in game design to have to legally claim it on your income tax (whether you actually do or not)? If yes, you're a professional. If no, keep going. Do you earn enough money per month on average to buy at least a single used video game? If yes, you're probably an amateur. If no, you're probably a homebrew.

 

[am181d]

Well if you think about it, in very general terms they are actually completely the opposite in terms of their prime goal.

House-rulers are all about making a game as specific as possible to exactly match one style of play and no other.

Designers (professional or amateur) are all about trying to get as many people to buy into the game as possible.

In my experience, House Rulers are a lot more forgiving of a game's design, because "I'm going to house rule it anyway." I don't think House Rulers are expecting 5e to look exactly like there home game.

(Though there might be concern if the 5e design is DIRECTLY at odds with what they want to do. For me, 4e was hard to house rule, because every class has 30 pages of meticulously balanced powers accompanying it.)