One of the slowest to change yes because when there is a huge change to it a lot of D&D fans form rebellions against any major changes... see demise of 4e as proof of that.
Indeed. For instance, 4e made D&D much easier to learn and easier for new DMs to run. I'd never seen new players - new to gaming, not new to the edition - transition to running games so quickly, nor having such a surprisingly easy time of it...
Putting those together, I wouldn't be surprised if the next trend (though it's not really an innovation in mechanics) is a move towards making the game quicker for the GM to pick up and run.
That's be something. ;|
This question of this thread, is this a question pertaining to just D&D, or rpgs as a whole? If it's just pertaining to D&D then it might take years for a new innovation to take hold. Yes D&D is extremely slow to change.
Presumably RPGs as a whole. But, D&D is such a dominant force in the industry (the top two games are D&D and a clone of D&D), that you can't consider RPGs as a whole, without considering D&D. D&D and it's clones and close imitators are in the grip of a somewhat-delayed/long-anticipated come-back of the 80s fad years, and that's got to impact the broader hobby. Whether it'll blunt the demand for more innovative - or sharpen the need to innovate to get attention...?
We have a ton of games available that do some amazing things that D&D just can't do based on how the game is designed (talking latest incarnation here).
Hasn't that been the case for most of the hobby's history, though? (The 3.x era stands out as an exception because of the dominance d20 achieved for a time.)
I think the hobby doesn't move forward so much as people have different problems at the table and different games attempt to address those problems in their own way. But not every solution is something that is going to gain widespread adoption.
That's a fair observation of how 'niche' games got in the 90s, for instance, and that may, indeed, be happening again with crowdfunding enabling more diverse and niche offerings.
D&D is a somewhat of a special case because it has to appeal to the broadest range of play styles possible (which is one reason I think we saw them roll back some of the innovations 4E introduced).
Not the best way of putting it, IMHO. D&D has to appeal to it's own past and it's established player base, and thus the often quixotic playstyles they managed to fit to it over the decades (which, yes, is one of the reasons they had to roll back some of the innovations adopted by 4e - though those innovations may have been made by other games years if not decades earlier). But D&D has never supported a broad range of play styles, it's just that, as it was the dominant game for so long, gamers have adapted many styles to D&D, as best they could.
At least where D&D is concerned this always seemed to be the case.
There's been a strong sense of a pendulum swinging on certain issues. 3e combat was too static, so 4e combat became dynamic and tactical, so 5e combat became fast. Then again, there are other aspects where it's just a straight trend - spellcasting just getting easier an easier with every edition, until, in 4e, it was no more risky or penalized to cast a ranged spell as any other ranged attack (like a bow), and, in 5e, where it's now easier to cast a spell in melee than to use a bow.
The present moment, the zeitgeist seems to be more a la carte (pick the style and approach, or happy medium of approaches, that works for your group).
On the DM side, yes, the pendulum has taken a longer swing from the player-empowerment of 3e & 4e, back to the DM empowerment of the classic game.
But adding VR means that the DM can't just imagine the setting and run up a bunch of stats to use - now he has to turn graphics programmer as well?
Sounds like fun.
The problem I see with evolving RPGs in a "board game" direction is that they run directly opposed to the primary value offered by an RPG over a board game in the first place --- evolving narrative and a sense of control over the narrative.
You can do that while adopting positive aspects of board games: good first play experiences, playability, balance/fairness, relative ease to learn, and, in looking at one of the recent innovations in boardgaming, cooperative boardgames (like Pandemic, for instance) and applying it to D&D:
not needing a DM, or, at least, being much easier to DM or have the potential to spread DMing duties among more than one player.... That'd be a dramatic innovation, if adopted (again, it's already been done, but either by actual board games, or by obscure RPGs).
I've said it before on these forums, but the 100%, pure unadulterated "gamists" who really don't want to engage RPGs on anything other than a tactical challenge level would really better be served moving to something else.
Yeah, there aren't any of those - rather, they already have done just that, if they ever tried RPGs at all.
You can have tactical game aspects AND shared narrative experiences in an RPG, but the farther you go towards the tactical game side, the harder it is to make a workable RPG.
Mere OneTrueWayism. An RPG is both Role Playing, /and/ Playing a Game. Go too far towards either, and you don't have a workable RPG anymore. You may have a great game or an entertaining shared storytelling workshop, but not an RPG.
The people who want the shared narrative aspects simply get frustrated, because they're spending too much time in the tactical portion of the game, and the tactical gamists just start to wonder why it's so much stinkin' work just to get to the "fun parts" of smashing orcs.
And the people who want both wonder why the other two can't get along... ;P
I'd be willing to posit that though there is some crossover between the self-identified "board game" and "RPG" crowds, the flow of cross over is vastly unequal. I'd bet that the vast majority of self-identified "RPG" players would also self-identify as "board gamers." Whereas I suspect only a small minority of "board gamers" also self-identify as "RPG-ers."
I'm in agreement, there. I've generally considered them 'bored games,' in the past, but starting with Catan, board games got more interesting, and once cooperative boardgames came out, I'm happy to be a 'board gamer,' too.
