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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 9770854" data-attributes="member: 7023840">....Over the Edge was so good. Tweet & Laws had some amazing designs- it's part of the unfortunate lack of institutional memory in our hobby that they are often (tragically) overlooked when it comes to game design. I'm not really going to comment on this thread, but to explain my joke (which, you know, is like dissecting a frog) I don't really get the idea behind it because "modern" is a confusing term, so it will just end up with people asserting that their own preferences are "modern."Generally, "modern" (in the sense of "modernist") can refer to a specific set of indicators for a movement - modernist literature, modernist architecture, and so on. Heck, people have tried to talk about modernist cuisine - but that term hasn't really taken off since it was first bandied about over a decade ago, and it's really just repacking molecular gastronomy and sous vide under a single rubric. But the problem with labelling any movement as "modern" (or modernist) is, of course, that either you are specifically dating it (by referring to the modernism of the '50s) or you are necessarily dating it (by stating that it is contemporary, and therefore will not be modern at some point in the future).Alternatively, it might be slightly more interesting to discuss what are the hallmarks of contemporary TTRPG design- in other words, how can we easily tell a game is "of today" as opposed to being from a decade (or more) in the past. In the same way that we can easily see signifiers in other areas that let us know that a book, a movie, a TV show, or an article of clothing is likely contemporary. But that would likely lack the enjoyment people get from asserting that their preferences are superior....or maybe not! I'm not the boss of anyone else.Anyway, I tend to think contemporary games have better artwork*, more inclusivity, simplified mechanics, less exception-based rules design, and usually more express "principles of play" (written guidelines for players and DMs about how games are supposed to be run as 'principles' that were either ignored or were considered norms). But that's just off the top of my head.*Better is probably not the correct term- more ... considered? As much as I love the old line drawings in '70s and early '80s products, I think that there is more consideration of how the physical product w/r/t the art than there was in the past. But even if you just look at the mass-market products of D&D, you can just look at the physical product and replace all the text with LOREM IPSUM and generally know what decade it is from- but that's also because general "book design trends" and tastes change over time.</blockquote>

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