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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TrippyHippy" data-source="post: 6350174" data-attributes="member: 27252">Yes it does. It’s called ‘providing a backstory and reason to adventure’. Pretty  much every RPG has had something like that ever since D&D. To then stick a formal label on such a thing and call it an ‘innovation’ is no such thing at all. It’s a shame that these others never saw fit to acknowledge the innovations present in Ars Magica, however, and openly scorned Rein-Hagen’s Vampire:The Masquerade. Over The Edge tends to get a lot of credit from the Forge community, but largely because it fits into their own preconceived ideas of what innovation is. The actual stated purpose of OtE’s game system (a variation of the D6 system in most respects) was to be a simple system - and was never claimed to be something ‘revolutionary’. Tweet criticises his own work in relation to new games all the time, and all power to him for doing that. It doesn’t legitimise these games as being special or superior in design though. No, I think people who make self-aggrandising claims are bad. If their work was so influential, you’d think they’d have the confidence to let other people make these claims about their games, rather than writing essays in their own books and websites about it. I don’t find essays that are broadly saying “your gaming experiences are invalid; I know more about your own game experiences than you do” are especially useful. I’m sure you can find quotes from Ron Edwards on all sorts of things, however, as he wrote an awful lot of opinion, but his own games - Sorcerer and Trollbabe - are nothing like as impressive as he has frequently claimed them to be.   The issue is not whether Ron endorses games or what preferences anybody has - it’s how he chooses to arbitrarily categorise them - and deride people or groups or game design for not playing in the manner he sees fit. Of these, two are hardly indie games, unless you consider Margaret Weiss/Marvel and WotC to be independently owned in any way. HeroWars/Quest was originally written in 2000 and, despite being cited by The Forge as a game they like, was actually commissioned primarily to play in the Glorantha setting due to ownership complications of the RuneQuest game at the time. It wasn't an ‘indie’ game as such - although it wrote a lot about narrativism in relation to it’s design as opposed to RQ. It is notable that many gamers awaiting on the upcoming Guide to Glorantha (systemless by design) are choosing RQ6 as their game system of choice again, rather than HeroQuest. I’d be interested to see how HeroQuest fares in future publications, seeing that RQ is largely under the charge of Moon Design again. I would say the same thing about D&D4e and Dungeon World in the light of 5e’s release. In the case of Burning Wheel, well personally, I don’t like it at all. I have attempted to play it, but find a lot of it’s mechanics counter-intuitive and flatly not worth the effort. I did like Marvel Heroic, and recognise some ‘indie’ ideas in it, but the best thing about it was that it didn’t waste any effort in trying to make claims about how revolutionary or brilliant it’s system was - it just got on with explaining how to play it in a fun way. Unfortunately, that game’s license has now gone the way of the dodo - ironic enough if you still think it was ‘independently’ owned. In the case of 4E, flatly, it largely goes to the heart of what I feel was wrong with the ‘indie movement’ - narrow, inflexible game precepts and an arrogant assertion that gamers had somehow been playing the game wrong all the years before. If that is the indie movement’s ‘legacy’ claim then I thoroughly endorse that view…but now it’s been superseded by 5E. In short, what legacy?</blockquote>

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