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Message: <blockquote data-quote="schnee" data-source="post: 7325309" data-attributes="member: 16728">The Forge had a great term a while ago, how 'D&D launched a thousand game designers who want to make D&D, but to fix this ONE THING with D&D', called a Fantasy Heartbreaker. It's just what people do. Everyone thinks design is easy, their ideas are fantastic, and everyone can do it. And they want the game to match some internal idealized state that has nothing to do with the playability of the game, or the amount of fun to be had, but fits some aesthetic standard only they hew to."How many designers does it take to change a light bulb?""1,001""1 to change the bulb""1,000 to say 'oh I would have done that differently by..."It was also telling that the first wave of 'not D&D' games always took an entirely different direction than D&D. For example, the Chaosium system that was used by Runequest, and other oddball licenses like Stormbringer and Drakar och Demoner. Didn't like the idea of hit points? It made those a fixed small number, and all skill was represented by higher percentages to dodge, parry, or successfully use a shield. Didn't like d20 and having to roll high? It used d100 and roll under! Didn't like the idea of a skill improving even if you didn't use it? You only got the chance to improve if you used a skill successfully! Don't like the linear progression of skills? Your odds of improving the skill were inversely proportional to the skill rank (thank you roll under), so you improved along an s-curve - a bit slow, then quite rapidly, then more slowly until it was impossible to get that last few %.Did that make for a more fun game? Um, not really. Some parts seemed 'oh this is better', but it ultimately bogged down just as badly in different ways and had a very different 'feel' that enabled a low-magic game much better and made a 'high fantasy' that much harder to do, and never had as much support.Then there are systems that are just plain worse. Rolemaster, for example. You spend 4-5 hours meticulously generating a character, with glorious granularity. Finally, a game that lets me build the character I exactly want, instead of shoe-horning me into a rigid class! A Rogue with a smidgen of ritual magic capability,  Then, you roll a critical, and you consult one of the dozens of fine-grained critical charts - with explicit, gruesome injuries tailor-written for the weapon size and damage type! Ooh, my dagger popped out his eyeball, for +2d6! Ooh, my battle axe broke his shoulder, reducing his (combat stuff) by 50%! It's really funny and great until you realize each round takes 5x as long because you're looking through so many charts. Then, someone rolled the first critical fumble, and literally disemboweled your character and you take extra damage each round from stepping on your own intestines. This was in the first combat. Oh, TPK. Oh, 4-5 more hours each to make the next party. And that party lasted half a session of gaming before the fighter was basically put out of commission for a game-time week. Never played it again.So many games try to be different in so many ways, but it's hard to make a game that's good, and then after it's good, it's hard to make a game that's substantially better, and most people are looking for the game to offer hints and structure and roles and generate delightful surprises, rather than being amorphous clay that forces you to become the sole creative force. There's a reason GURPS - the supposed 'ultimate scaling RPG that worked for every single type - was boring and never really took off. Most people who like to drive don't want to build their car, they want to pick a cool one, pick a few features, and drive. Most people who want to play don't all want to create entire characters from top to bottom, they want to pick an archetype that fires up a familiar bit of their imagination, choose an eye color and hair style, and go kill stuff.</blockquote>

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