adembroski3 said:
In terms of pure debate, mythusmage, you are capable of handling most comers, I can see that, but I'm not understanding your motivation here.
Are you trying to "win" or render a convincing arguement. It sounds more like you are seeing this as a competition.
Need everything be a competition?
My goal here is to persuade. Not everybody, not all the time. So long as I can get people to, even if only for a brief moment, to take a new look at the subject, I have 'won'.
My goal here is nothing so inconsequential as winning a contest. My goal is to, in some small way, change the world.*
As far as my view, the primary reason RPGs are on a downturn is the "dork" stigma attached to them. They will *never* be mainstream, and I doubt most of us want them to be. Though none of the gamers I've ever played with actually represent the stereotype, the stereotype exists none the less, and this hurts the industry.
Never? There's always the possibility the horse could learn to talk.
Still, I do agree regarding the stereotype. But, a more accessible set of core books would certainly help there. The easier you make D&D® to understand, the less an impact the 'dorks' will have on the general public.
[qoute]I don't believe it's the rules that hurt D&D, by any means. The rules are a tool, nothing more. That said, I can see your argument perhaps from a perspective that you might not have expected, and that is by looking at the presentation of those rules.[/quote]
My bone of contention is indeed in how the rules are presentetd. But, not in the way you think. Read on, macDuff.
The authors of the 3.0 Core Rulebooks put an emphisis on the "return to the dungeon", it was a big advertising point. It was the central theme going into the release of 3rd edition, and the them did not lessen with 3.5. This, in my opinion, hurt D&D.
Here we see the misapprehension. You talk of 'focus', not presentation.
I don't think the majority of gamers WANTED to return to the dungeon. To me, at least, the whole thing kinda felt like reverse evolution. We had evolved the game from a fantasy skirmish game, little more than Warhammer with less figures, into an infinately deep engagement involving personaes and motivations. However little RP exists in a given game, it's likely that there is more than what existed when Gygax was running his players through Castle Greyhawk.
Yet this is what WotC seemed to be pushing. Lets go back to the stone age! We're sick of sophistication! We're tired of progress! Lets pack up some meat, park the car on the side of the road, and go find a cave to paint pictures on the wall in for the rest of our lives!
Yet now the game had something it hadn't before, a focus. Something 2e had sorely lacked, what with its aimless gallivanting around all over the place. People like to have goals, and not everybody is ready to devise their own.
The rules are not holding back D&D. The rules are abstract and unrealistic, but I have yet to come across a practical and realistic ruleset. It is the manner in which those rules are presented that is the problem.
By their very nature the rules to any game must be abstract. It's in the implementation where they can be brought to life.
Where realism is concerned, I've noticed that a number of people have mistaken my point regarding real life. I'm not talking about making D&D® more realistic, but pointing out that in many particulars the game is more like real life than it is literature, video games, or theater. That is, given the restrictions placed upon the setting by the rules, things can happen in D&D® much as they happen in real life. In short, "The Sword" can break at the start of an adventure, and when it does break you have to deal with it. This makes RPGs neither inferior or superior to literature, only different.
Alan
*I once founded a Jewish sect in a distant past life, so I've had some experience in this. Said sect has long faded away.
