NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 6179031" data-attributes="member: 3192">It's always been up to every DM to fill out the rest of the "rules" behind the screen. That's not what makes the work D&D anyways, though Gary wanted AD&D's particular version to be the official version for tournament play.  I'm suggesting D&D is about game play rather than storytelling regardless of poor advice in the books. In the same way WWE has been very successful in using the sport of wrestling for theatrical performances, telling of fictional stories, the practices that ignore the rules or change the game objective aren't indicative of what the game is actually about. They are both using the material for a non-game purpose. That's great, but it isn't what wrestling or D&D is about, or as you say the true aspiration. I'm not arguing what's a "truer" practice. They're both fun. First, not all clerics are designed to be supportive. But also, it isn't about what material I use in my game to cover cover player actions that is important. It's that these areas of play can be covered by game mechanics and there is precedence for doing so even 30 years ago. I'd like to see that again (to drag us back on topic).D&D has always been an open game rather than a closed one. In that they are closer to situational puzzles than a single riddle. It has a ton of fixed parameters for moves.  Because increased mastery/personal prowess, basically gaming ability, is the goal, victory conditions are properly left out. If the Rubik's Cube simply gets harder level by level, when does it reach "the hardest level"? Sure, 10th was closest to the end game, but abilities and XP charts still logarithmically increased. Play could feasibly continue forever, but pragmatically game length becomes an issue. Not to mention support material running thin.Again, as with situational puzzles the code is hidden behind the screen. It's up to the players to attempt anything they can imagine to learn more about it and gain proficiency within it all the while, on the edges, increases its design. It's a very different kind of game, if you don't have any experience with it, but inductive reasoning is strongly supported. It's why you want a simulation game hidden behind a screen in the first place.The DMG Appendix is an example for world generation. As the first fleshed out example it's pretty impressive in just what was dreamed up to include, but there are lots of issues that arise if run by the book. Look at <a href="http://blogofholding.com/dungeonrobber/" target="_blank">DungeonRobber</a>, if you want to play something similar online. The appendix version isn't horrible, better stuff can be made. And the online version doesn't include most of the rules from the AD&D game anyways. It's much more limited. But it is a game that focuses on game play (say, Olympic style wrestling matches) rather than storytelling (WWE theatre) as its goal. I'm saying D&D began as a game to be understood as a game and not storytelling, even though the game worlds included simulations of all kinds of narrative worlds. Computer games aren't all that different.Campfire tales was hardly new. D&D kept the popular aspect of wargames, but moved the hard core number crunching behind the screen. Players could still feel the game responding, but didn't need to mentally calculate every last factor. That is what D&D added to wargames. The retention of game play with the opening up of addressing the game in whatever way could be imagined by each player and capably communicated to the DM. Utterly empty space with the group of players (no DM role) having to create everything themselves as the actual point of play isn't what D&D added to wargames IMO nor what the game's objective was. Pong as theater is abysmal, but it was played for hours - addictive like puzzles and games can be. And honestly, it's not that great of a game. I suggest Pacman & D&D were extraordinarily popular for just what makes computer games popular and addictive today: pattern recognition game play. I don't think anyone argues that the true inspiration for Angry Birds is its storytelling.(Is story an aspect of games? Sure, but there are plenty of aspects that don't attempt to redefine games as "actually" themselves. Think politics, economics, education, religion, all sorts of stuff. Perhaps we might treat games as games rather than the attempt to diminish them into the philosophies of narrative universalism not popular since the 80s, but so in vogue in our hobby at the moment.)</blockquote>

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