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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 3482207" data-attributes="member: 32164">But there's no reason to have sixty different gaming system mechanics. That's a ridiculous artifact of a game that hasn't figured itself out yet. Mechanically, the games that survive have simple mechanics, relatively easily translatable from one game to the other. For the hundreds of board games, dice games, and card games out there, the mechanics are all still reasonably standard.Roleplaying is one type of game (maybe two, if you want to separate action heavy games from social interaction heavy games), regardless of whether you're playing in a D&D fantasy world, Shadowrun, Star Wars, RIFTS, or something else entirely. As such, roleplaying games should have pretty much ONE system. Because the limiting factor in getting a game together is finding people who know how to play it, either the game has to be ridiculously easy to teach (and RPGs decidedly are NOT), or it has to be that once you learn to play one, you can play them all. Variants are fine. But totally new systems are BAD for Roleplay GAMING, period. Why? Because they take a small market (that's already hard to make money on) and make it even smaller. That's bad.Since D&D is the "World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game," it stands to reason that something about it caught people's attention and held it. My personal guess (and I'm pretty sure WotC agrees with me) is that it was the very simple combat system and the equally simplistic game premise (overcome challenges and get rewards) that did it. Other games had better skill systems, better magic systems, and so forth, but it was D&D's oft-derided "simple" combat system that won the day. Basically, D&D was REALLY good at resolving the most common situation that came up in game.So with d20, they chose to apply that same resolution mechanic across the board. Except for situations where the game has gotten burdened with its own baggage, that approach seems to have worked quite well.The only people who want Vancian magic to remain in D&D are people who already play, and are fans of the system. The rest of the people who play, and other potential gamers, if they could be persuaded to play, just want a magic system that works in the game. Preferably something simple and understandable.They don't care if the game works like classic D&D, Palladium, Shadowrun, or what. But I bet you'd find more of them interested if it was more familiar to the other magic systems they've had interactions with. Since (I'm pretty sure) nobody actually does "real" magic, that means emulating what they've witnessed in fiction of some sort.Millions more people have watched The Dresden Files on TV than play D&D (yes, I know it's a novel series, but more people have seen the show than read the books). Millions more than that have probably read a Harry Potter book, seen a Harry Potter movie, or gone to see The Lord of the Rings. I can't say I know the statistics on players of World of Warcraft vs. Dungeons & Dragons.There's no way of knowing how many D&D players exist. Most of them aren't on Enworld. I imagine most people would be perfectly happy if the magic system changed, assuming that change made the game easier to learn and more fun to play.In the end, they may decide to keep it, but they shouldn't keep it just because it's tradition.</blockquote>

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