[WotC's recent insanity] I think I've Figured It Out

[mattcolville]

I have written no such thing.

I think you'll find, looking back, that I said you suggested it. It's implied. If you agree, that we used to have rules for this stuff, and now we don't, but we should, then what is your previous comment in aid of?

 

[Argyle King]

Yes and for the majority of it's history, D&D was one of them.

The game shall remain the same!

No it can't. YOU can do it, but the game isn't aware that there is any ambition besides "more levels."

I've seen other people use things such as skill challenges to handle those things. The results weren't what I would personally consider satisfying; however, those people seemed content. As such, I don't feel it's entirely accurate for me to say it can't be done. I would say it is extremely difficult (and maybe impossible) for the system as is to provide the depth I personally like in those aspects of living out my character's imaginary life; however, I don't feel I can honestly say it's impossible for some number of people to satisfy their own personal desires for those roleplaying aspects.

"Main focus" is something you invented. I feel as though the *absence* of even the *awareness* that there is, or could be, or should be, a thing called "ambition," meaning the desire of the players, some players, to interact with a world outside the encounter and have an impact on it, is a flaw.

Because without that, all you've got is Descent or Warhammer Quest or the Castle Ravenloft boardgame.

I can't argue with the Descent reference because I've often made that comparison myself. Truth be told, one of the things I use instead of the WoTC tiles when playing D&D are pieces from Descent dungeons.

As for the 'main focus,' I don't fully buy that I invented that concept. Maybe I invented my own term for what to call it, but there are certain ideals about gaming upon which D&D is currently built. The same can be said for previous editions as well as other rpgs systems. It's by design that certain elements of the D&D experience have been given more attention, and other elements have been given less (or virtually no) attention.

 

[Ariosto]

What happens next has in fact been very explicitly up to you since 1974.

Read the booklets, for goodness' sake. Arneson and Gygax tell you that it's up to you! They discourage you from trying to "have us do any more of your imagining for you". They encourage you to "decide how you would like it to be, and then to make it just that way!"

"Write to us and tell us about your additions, ideas and what have you. We could always do with a bit of improvement in our refereeing."

That was standard operating procedure in the hobby/industry. Even when it came to historical subjects, it was expected that Joe and Bob would each have his own "house rules". When at Joe's, you do as Joe does. Trying to make binding prescriptions would be like herding cats. All one could do was share a description of one's own experiments. How much less was the prescriptive -- or, worse, proscriptive -- stance tenable when "everything herein is fantastic"?

 

[Stormonu]

Back in the 1970s, it was safe to assume that attracting followers (which presumed there was some benefit to doing so, something for those followers to *do*) and building a keep (ditto) were safe things for a typically motivated player.

The game assumed that wars were being fought somewhere and that when it was time for a war to be fought in your game, you'd use whatever wargame you liked. That was something outside the Encounter to engage with. We don't have that anymore.

Our 2E group had some castle builders in it; in 3E I had some players organize an army, and knew of a player who started his own in-game business. You could go beyond the rules in 4E to do this, but some guidelines or actual rules to do this I'm guessing would be appreciated.

I do miss stuff like Battlesystem, and I've seen many a 3E thread about wanting to do mass combat stuff. Can't speak for 4E on this.

 

[Ariosto]

The Striped Mage of Greyhawk got that name because a p.c. as a prank painted the Mage's tower like a barber's pole. The Mage turned out to be not pissed but pleased, and kept the paint job.

There was no house-painting sub-game in the D & D booklets.

 

[BryonD]

Let's imagine I knew the answer to that. Do you think it would be relevant to the issue? If someone says "there were never rules for that," responding to the fact that there WERE by saying "well, we always ignored them," is moving the goalposts, I think we can agree.

Rather than moving the goalposts I see it as keeping an accurate assessment of where the goalposts truly are.

You are certainly correct that the rules were there. But in context of the debate and how the game was actually experienced that rule was nearly meaningless. And highlighting it as important distorts the conversation.

IMO

 

[Mercurius]

I think one of the reasons that you are getting a reaction about your statement is that "old" people have said the same thing about "young" people since the dawn of civilisation*.

At least that's my impression. I don't work with young people though, so I don't know if we have at long last reached that point in time where young people will lose their imagination completely.

No, I don't think they'll lose their imagination completely but I do think that there are more tools and cultural influences that encourage imagination loss than there were, say, thirty years ago.

Imagination is, in my opinion, one of the most precious, intrinsically human qualities. It cannot be destroyed but it can be neglected and through neglect, atrophy. My obversation of students is that they are hungry for inspiration, for real imaginative experience not just simulated imagination (e.g. TV and video games).

In some sense our culture has taken a step forward in that play is more accepted than it was forty or fifty years ago. Back then children grew up and didn't play; or rather, their version of play was reading the sports page or assembling porcelain figure displays or playing golf or poker. Play was for kids - and so were myths and imagination. Now we have all kinds of variation of adult play, including tabletop RPGs. Play has been, to some extent, legitimized. Adults love stories, love to play.

So it isn't all bad. I just worry about a future in which movies have entirely replaced books and video games replaced storytelling games (including TTRPGs). That would be a grim world indeed.

TaiChara tells the truth, Mercurius, about what's going on. Kids (and other people, too) are grooving on the collaborative, socially mediated construction of story-telling games.

It's "the other" direction of development from MUD, not the one that gets you EverQuest and World of Warcraft.

Sounds intriguing but I'm honestly not sure what you (and evidently TaiChara) are talking about. What sort of story-telling games are you referring to?

This is an old problem in the FRP business. The latter may well turn out to have thrived on a "generation" that in the long run is not the rule but the exception.

The first generation did their own thing and made it up as they went along. (I could say "we", as that's the scene to which I was introduced and the ethos that still seems natural to me.)

Besides there not being another option if they were to play the games that had yet to be created, they saw making them as part of the fun.

Gary Gygax was glad to let Judges Guild have a license to produce supplements because he didn't think there would be much of a market for them. After all -- to the minds of the early fantasy gamers -- making up that stuff was part of the fun. It would be like paying someone else to go eat the candy one had bought for oneself!

He also was not at first (or later) a pusher of conformity. In fact, he wrote a letter to the prominent APA Alarums & Excursions in which he said that conformity would never be TSR's policy so long as he had a say.

Well, as it turned out there was a big market for "have us do more of your imagining for you", and for "conformity in major systems" (and increasingly 'minor' details as well).

Even after the publication of the first four volumes of AD&D, he wrote in The Dragon against the idea that D&Ders should be subject to an endless flood of supplements and revisions demanding purchase to "keep current". He admitted that purely as a business man he relished the prospect -- but also that the pecuniary was not the sum, or even the first, of his values.

He was a game maker (and, more broadly, entertainment producer) by personal vocation, not as a convenience in the "higher" calling of pure capitalism. He was never likely to give it up for commodities or real estate or electronics or software or soda pop.

Now we've had such a scheme for long enough to exert quite a bit of selection pressure on who is into the game and who is not.

That a good portion of those who are not into it happen to be doing their own thing and making it up as they go does not dismay me!

Interesting stuff, Ariosto. You describe why I think that early phase, the early 70s up until maybe the AD&D hardcovers came out in '77-'79, was the Golden Age of RPGs. Not only was everything new and fresh, but there was an emphasis on create-it-yourself. DM's Fiat ruled the day and didn't even need to be named, afaict, because it was simply how you did things. In other words, the rules were meant to serve the imaginative experience; imagination wasn't meant to flavor the rules, as may be the case now.

Somewhere along the way D&D stopped being a grassroots movement. It definitely was up until the end of the "Golden Age" in the late 70s, and was to a certain extent through the "Silver Age" of the 80s. One big step away from that may have been when Gary Gygax left; another was when WotC bought out TSR; another was when Hasbro bought WotC. This doesn't mean that there aren't real gamers involved; I would guess that every designer at WotC is a gamer, loves to play. Maybe I'm overly pessimistic to say this, but it would seem that the bottom line is profit margin, not what makes for fun gaming. It is a strange, depressing assumption that Americans make that this has to be the case, that profit can't come after quality.

What I think we have is a case of D&D perpetually unable to fulfill its potential. What I think we need is to find again a kind of Edenic early 70s inspiration, yet with the wealth of the last 40 years of game design experience. Remember that slogan from Necromancer Games I think, "3rd Edition Rules, 1st Edition Feel" - or something like that. How about "5th Edition Rules, OD&D Feel." That would be the shiznitz!

 

[Stormonu]

So it isn't all bad. I just worry about a future in which movies have entirely replaced books and video games replaced storytelling games (including TTRPGs). That would be a grim world indeed.

To a degree, I find books overrated. Wherever possible, I'd rather watch a (decent) movie version of something. Sitting down for 16+ hours of reading vs. 2 hours of watching a movie I feel is a much better expenditure of my time.

What I think we have is a case of D&D perpetually unable to fulfill its potential. What I think we need is to find again a kind of Edenic early 70s inspiration, yet with the wealth of the last 40 years of game design experience. Remember that slogan from Necromancer Games I think, "3rd Edition Rules, 1st Edition Feel" - or something like that. How about "5th Edition Rules, OD&D Feel." That would be the shiznitz!

Most of my gaming was in the 80's, so going back to the 70's would not be a good trip for me. Going to OD&D would be before my (D&D playing) time, and I wouldn't have a reference point.

 

[billd91]

You are certainly correct that the rules were there. But in context of the debate and how the game was actually experienced that rule was nearly meaningless. And highlighting it as important distorts the conversation.

Considering the group I played with did actually use and experience those rules, I'd say that highlighting them as important doesn't distort the conversation at all.

The game shall remain the same!

I don't think anybody wants the game to stay exactly the same. Maybe keep the same scope, or even widen it, rather than narrow it...

 

[Mercurius]

To a degree, I find books overrated. Wherever possible, I'd rather watch a (decent) movie version of something. Sitting down for 16+ hours of reading vs. 2 hours of watching a movie I feel is a much better expenditure of my time.

I love movies too, from fun-but-vapid action adventures to warm-and-fuzzy "rom-coms" to mind-fux like Inception (which my wife and I just watched; I'm still reeling a bit!) to subtle explorations of the human condition. But movies cannot go to the depth that literature can; it is partially a time thing - 16+ hours of reading can cover a lot more territory than 2 hours of watching - but it is also an immersion thing, a capacity for depth and subtlety, and perhaps most of all, the fact that with a book you, the reader, are creating a world.

Most of my gaming was in the 80's, so going back to the 70's would not be a good trip for me. Going to OD&D would be before my (D&D playing) time, and I wouldn't have a reference point.

Me too - I started in 1982 or so. But I'm going upon what I understand of the early years, the "Golden Age," which was well characterized by Ariosto's post. It wasn't that it was perfect or that the game was better, but what I'm pointing at is the feeling of freshness and possibility. I imagine that it must have been very exciting being part of something just starting, discovering new territory, forging a veritable civilization.

So when I talk about "5E Rules, OD&D Feel" I'm talking about combining the best of 40 years of game design with a feeling of inspiration, vitality, and potential. Cutting edge rules designed to serve the free play of imagination create and explore infinite worlds...