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<blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 6845688" data-attributes="member: 85870">In relation to the OSR conversation, I don't know that you can necessarily say that something isn't &quot;innovative&quot; just because it's based on existing properties / mechanics. &quot;Innovation&quot; can often be a reconfiguring of an existing thing into something that makes it greater than the sum of its individual parts. For example, Fantasy Craft is clearly &quot;retro&quot; in the sense that it looks to &quot;core&quot; D&amp;D 3e-isms as the starting point for its inspiration --- but Fantasy Craft radically deviates from that starting point. Fantasy Craft to me is a vastly more coherent, greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts representation of &quot;D&amp;D 3e.&quot; It feels very innovative in that regard. But there is also that sense of innovation in bringing something to effect that simply didn't exist before. None of us knew we really wanted an &quot;iPad&quot;/tablet until we saw it as a working concept and said, &quot;Yeah, actually, we all really want that.&quot;To me one area that could use more innovation is in social conflict resolution. I realize there are probably games out there with excellent social conflict mechanics, but none of those have been imported into a &quot;popular&quot; game.But that also brings up a point --- have we all just accepted the fact that trying to mesh or import competing types of resolution mechanics into different systems just creates chaos? For example, would anyone be willing to import a fantastic social resolution mechanic into D&amp;D if, when using those mechanics, it abandoned the d20 and instead used a 3d6-roll-under* just for that subsystem? I think [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] brought this up earlier; we seem to be very tied to the notion of &quot;unified mechanics&quot; as somehow being the most elegant, or &quot;user-friendly&quot; way of developing systems. *I personally dislike GURPS-style 3d6-roll-under mechanics, but that's another story.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="innerdude, post: 6845688, member: 85870"] In relation to the OSR conversation, I don't know that you can necessarily say that something isn't "innovative" just because it's based on existing properties / mechanics. "Innovation" can often be a reconfiguring of an existing thing into something that makes it greater than the sum of its individual parts. For example, Fantasy Craft is clearly "retro" in the sense that it looks to "core" D&D 3e-isms as the starting point for its inspiration --- but Fantasy Craft radically deviates from that starting point. Fantasy Craft to me is a vastly more coherent, greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts representation of "D&D 3e." It feels very innovative in that regard. But there is also that sense of innovation in bringing something to effect that simply didn't exist before. None of us knew we really wanted an "iPad"/tablet until we saw it as a working concept and said, "Yeah, actually, we all really want that." To me one area that could use more innovation is in social conflict resolution. I realize there are probably games out there with excellent social conflict mechanics, but none of those have been imported into a "popular" game. But that also brings up a point --- have we all just accepted the fact that trying to mesh or import competing types of resolution mechanics into different systems just creates chaos? For example, would anyone be willing to import a fantastic social resolution mechanic into D&D if, when using those mechanics, it abandoned the d20 and instead used a 3d6-roll-under* just for that subsystem? I think [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] brought this up earlier; we seem to be very tied to the notion of "unified mechanics" as somehow being the most elegant, or "user-friendly" way of developing systems. [SIZE=1]*I personally dislike GURPS-style 3d6-roll-under mechanics, but that's another story.[/SIZE] [/QUOTE]

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