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2017-06-26, 09:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2015
Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
I try to ignore typos when I can but this one I feel should be clarified. That's run, not ruin right? There has been a spike of typos in your posts recently.
To PhoenixPhyre: I can get a group going with Roll for Shoes going in about 2 minutes. I think one should always go for the minimum complexity for the particular concept. Some concepts do have a higher minimum, Roll for Shoes doesn't have the infrastructure to run many kinds of games. Great for quick and silly games though.
To pwykersotz: But isn't Dungeon World just D&D ported to the move system anyways?
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2017-06-26, 10:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2016
Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
I have no opinion on the OP, but I thought it was really interesting reading about how big D&D is in other countries. In my country the two big TRPGs are Call of Cthulhu and Sword World 2.0. D&D is pretty small here.
Last edited by Fach; 2017-06-26 at 10:08 PM.
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2017-06-26, 10:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2015
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Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
In the 1990's I remember B&N had almost no shelf soace for D&D (if any), but lots of Vampire, and other WoD stuff.
One time they had some Castle Falkenstein books (a gonzo gaslamp fantasy/steampunk setting game. I think you'd love it Anonymouswizard).
Anyway, just because D&D, and Pathfinder are the big dogs now, they weren't always, and may not be again (I certainly remember a time when three other games were more popular).
Well... I did pay the 25 cent fee to take the shinkwrap off and read the rules.
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2017-06-26, 11:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2016
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2017-06-27, 12:09 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2008
Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
This model depends on people being initiated in though. I taught myself how to play 3.5* by the book, then taught a bunch of players. It was tricky, and while I got through it pretty easily I was also twelve at the time and had the free time to get it right. Even then, it took moving from D&D early to really get anywhere.
*Ish, I had the 3.0 PHBI would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.
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2017-06-27, 12:12 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2010
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- Western Washington
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Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
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2017-06-27, 07:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2009
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- In my library
Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
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2017-06-27, 09:09 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2015
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2017-06-27, 09:31 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2009
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- In a castle under the sea
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Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
There are two points you argue here:
1. You can't play a VRPG with friends.
2. VRPGs will be invalidated some day by advancing technology.
To point 2 I simply say "DOSBox". There are enough games and programs for modern OSs that people will want to play that, even without any attempts at compatability made by GOG, Valve, etc, you'll still be able to play some form of a game you loved in 20-30 years. The odds of being able to find some way to play D:OS with your grandkids are at least as high as the odds of being able to find your old RPG books.
Point 1 is both factually incorrect and would be irrelevant if it was. Believe it or not, there are plenty of local co-op games still on the market—including ones focused on combat like D&D! Obviously, you can't play every game with friends, but that doesn't mean that video gaming as a whole doesn't support that kind of play. More importantly, though, most RPGs are utter failures at producing that kind of camaraderie-ey experience when compared to games designed for that kind of thing. Cards Against Humanity (and Apples to Apples, of course) is probably the archetypical example of the "social game" which has proved itself more than capable of filling that niche. Whenever I play, I share laughs and groans with my friends and family far more than when at the gaming table.
Moreover, in my experience combat is the worst part of an RPG for that kind of camaraderie. Sometimes you come up with neat strategies, but I've found that nearly all TRPG combat boils down to executing the same general tactics in new situations...with those tactics usually not even focusing on teamwork beyond "meat shields go in front to keep them from reaching our squishy guys". In my experience, combat usually works at least as well (and much, much quicker) if people focus on what they're going to do next turn and then pay just enough attention to make sure nothing critical changes, as they do if they treat it as a social experience. The game actively discourages using combat as a social experience if you're engaged in it!
The way a stranger explained it to me, should you wish to woo someone you draw up a map of metaphorical zones and then attack them with arguments and posturing to get them where you want. It sounds completely unlike any social interaction in real life, but I often see indies who try to tackle social rules using combat interactions as their guideline.
I've yet to find a good system for social interaction; most generalize it to a single dice roll*, while a few others try to shoehorn mechanics that the designers are familiar with into something they weren't designed to represent. I think it's telling that the first place I look for specially-designed social mechanics is Steam, rather than RPG.net.
*Which at least makes sense for games where most everything is a single dice roll (insert New Gods of Mankind plug).
Which makes sense from a business perspective—gotta maintain that monopoly—but I can't help but wonder if they'd do better in the long term by trying to cultivate that market instead of maintaining a stranglehold on it.
Might as well say Or "Getting rid of poverty is easy—the money is there, we just need to vastly improve our economy somehow so that people can earn it".
Since other people are bringing up their gaming history, I figure I might chime in with my two cents.
When I was in middle school, my brother and I were enamored with some free browser-based RPG, and talking about it was apparently a catalyst for my father to introduce us to TRPGs. He had some old 2nd-edition Shadowrun books from when he used to game with his friends in high school, but decided to buy a couple D&D 3.5 books instead. This was despite the fact that he had to learn the 3.5 rules, and wouldn't have had to learn the Shadowrun 2.0 rules. This probably says something about the prevalence of D&D that even an experienced gamer thought it would be a good first game.
D&D is still the RPG I've had the most practical experience with, though Shadowrun (old and new) and GURPS are also certainly contenders. I've also played a fair number of cobbled-together half-systems in forum-based games, as well as Roll to Dodge, which has fewer rules and more elegance than most of those. I'm also trying to get a New Gods of Mankind campaign together, because it seems like the writers of that game sat down and tried to think of something that a tabletop RPG would do better than any other kind of game, and (as you may have gathered) that matters to me.
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2017-06-27, 09:59 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2008
Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
I never said it was easy, just that the defect was in the distribution chain and not the production chain. Poverty has analogs there - we grow more than enough food to feed the world, there's more than enough clean water for everyone, and yet lack of clean water kills people by the millions and over a billion go hungry. "Grow more food, clean more water" doesn't solve that, because the problem is in the distribution chain and said chain will still be broken when there's more resources to distribute.
I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.
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2017-06-27, 10:39 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2010
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2017-06-27, 08:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2015
Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
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2017-06-28, 05:56 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2014
Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
As far as the games without their roots in the wargame, there is for now one solution:
Spread the word, introduce people to them.
I've spread these games, by current count by my best memory, to...
I wanna say 15 people.
All but 4 of which had no Tabletop RPG experience at all before I introduced it. I'm also trying to get involved at my FLGS as a GM for games people haven't heard of before and might like to play.
In short, I'm helping.
I can't help but not really care when people complain about a situation that exists and then do a combination of "Nothing," and complaining that none of the solutions fix everything fast enough for their tastes. Welp, Rome wasn't toppled overnight. Nations and Corporations have this in common. They also aren't built overnight, either.
Introducing competition into a near-monopoly is a monumental task. There's no point on pointing that out and saying there's no quick solution. There's no quick solution to removing a mountain, either. But it can be done, and has been done, and why not try?
I've personally bettered the hobby by 14 people and I'm planning on more. Not much, but with enough others like me (the Rollplay guys, for instance, 2nd largest tabletop roleplaying show on Twitch/Youtube and they play a wide variety of games, introducing them to thousands of people at a time) you start to get somewhere.
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2017-06-28, 07:10 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2008
Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
This has been my approach* - I've introduced somewhere in the vicinity of 25 people, a number greatly inflated by getting into these games younger when everyone had free time (by which I mean junior high for me and elementary school for the youngest players).
*Approach in this case is defined as "incidental side effect to doing nerd stuff with friends", I'm not doing this out of some sort of obligation to the hobby.
I'm not sure if I'm intended to be in the group described as doing nothing and complaining about solutions being slow, but I will say that it's worth identifying the problem and the lack of quick solutions even without having a slow solution in place. The understanding is valuable on its own, and problems are easier to solve when they're understood.I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.
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2017-06-28, 08:05 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2006
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- Poland
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Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
Vast majority of video games in general are about combat, so it's not about role-playing only.
I think it's about general humanity's dreams and excitement about violence/hunting getting satisfied somehow.
In a safe manner, as a bonus, of course.Avatar by KwarkpuddingThe subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs—I was a man before I was a king.
Whoever makes shoddy beer, shall be thrown into manure - town law from Gdańsk, XIth century.
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2017-06-28, 09:13 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2009
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- In a castle under the sea
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Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
In my experience—which I'll freely admit has a heavy weighting towards the indie game scene—TRPGs have a much stronger inclination towards combat focus than video games. Looking at the games I have currently installed on Steam (which is even more slanted away from fighting-ey games)...only about one in four are focused on direct combat, or about one in three if you count grand strategy games, and another one in three don't have so much as a single punch thrown. Even adjusting for how terrible I am at actiony games and how much I seek out novel games, that's a decent ratio. Out of the TRPG campaigns I've played in the past couple years...most are D&D, a couple were Shadowrun, one was in Monte Cook's World of Darkness, and I'm in the middle of trying to set up a New Gods of Mankind game. Most of the D&D campaigns (which generally follow published adventure paths) have felt at least as linear as your typical CoD campaign, and while the Shadowrun and WoD games had some room for investigation and subtlety, I have a feeling that combat would still be a central tool even if the other players hadn't been going at it like CoD.
Though speaking of Steam...maybe what we need is some kind of Steam equivalent for RPGs, some way to easily find and play interesting-sounding RPGs. But that's a topic for another thread...
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2017-06-28, 09:54 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2012
Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
.....what? I have played several different RPGs and its pretty easy to completely ignore your above gripes pretty easily. Yes and in D&D as well.
its called roleplaying. I recommend you actually get into it and enjoy it before bashing a style of game.
Let me go into each individually
Soldiers marching to War. Been there and done that, how hard is it to again just RP the diplomat going to the various baronies trying to get an economic trade agreement that screws your own country over cuz you wanna get rich? NOT VERY HARD AT ALL.
The Never-Ending Battle. Uhm? Have you ever played an RPG? most people I know do not just say herp-a-derp let me do all the adds. They actually take time into their character's thoughts and style in regard to ANY sort of conflict.
Downtime. this is where RP shines. you can go and do what you want and have a blast. Or you can be a bore and say 'over it, wanna do the kills nao plox'
Front line & Special Units. this makes no sense to me on what your complaint is. so I am going to pass over it.
Balance for the War God. Balance is wrong..? I do not get your argument.. Oh yeah hey I get it you want a game where X, Y, and Z class are all completely and utterly worthless but W class is super awesome and kewl. Most people do not want that they have a concept in mind when they start a game and are going to be miffed if they find out the game honestly only supports 1 very specific type of concept and the others mechanically just do not even work. akin to in D&D.. but then the fighter as sucky as he is in game mechanics also is not allowed to do attacks by the rules themselves.
Missed Who for the What. Never in my life have I seen this argument... ive been RPG-ing since 87... people have always described their character as a rugged huntsman survivalist who is alone due to his anger issues or when asked 'what does that mean' a ranger2/barbican 1 or 15 points in forestry 20 points in combat and 5 points in the combat rage ability.
I think all of your complaints are invalid completely and you just need to either a) start roleplaying when you play a roleplaying game or b) play with others who roleplay when playing roleplaying games instead fo whatever kinda group you are playing with now.
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2017-06-28, 12:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2015
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2017-06-28, 12:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2017
Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
I hope it'll work that well. It'd suck if many of the amazing games we have today dissapear due to something like
windowsMicrosoft deciding to not allow such things. But I prefer to be on the safe side; physical media is more resistant to the touch of time. It's very difficult to predict what will happen in the future tech market. Plus, I'm certain my descendents won't go through my steam library, same as I haven't listened to my parents' LPs. Hiding a rulebook somewhere curious relativs would find it seems a safer method of exposure. But I'm with you on combat not being very good in TTRPGs, so this is a moot point.
I had completely forgotten about Co-op games! Really, I was only thinking about multiplayer. They really are underrepresented though. I wish game devs would realize that there might indeed be a market for a TV-based roleplaying game. But I don't know of any such games.
And I do think it really is a different experience to be analog; maybe I'm just a romantic in this manner.
Thinking back to the fights I've been in I can nothing but agree with the lack of camraderie. Characters don't really develop in battle, most likely because the only characteristics they call upon are their physical stats and combat abilities. Never have any player at my tables roleplayed in combat; the stakes are too high. I understand that games like The Riddle of Steel, where your ability to fight is enchanced by your beliefs and motivations, might help with that particular problem.
As for tactics, my thoughts is that it has something to do with the limiting nature of a battle grid. It might allow for detailed movement to have an accurate measure of ground covered, but without giving fear, perception and cover prominence in the combat system tactical choices will be very limited. Maybe it can be said that the recent editions of D&D have in this respect moved quite far from their wargame origins.Last edited by Acquaintance; 2017-06-28 at 12:28 PM.
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2017-06-28, 05:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2015
Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
Considering it has to do with caster/martial disparity and a thread on that topic had just gotten locked I was a little vague here. Characters seem to be designed with different (and unequal) dynamics in mind. And by different dynamics I mean active and passive, the "front line" often is geared towards only holding the line while the "special" ones have a lot of tools to suddenly change the flow of the entire fight.
Balance for the War God. Balance is wrong..? I do not get your argument..
Missed Who for the What. Never in my life have I seen this argument...
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2017-06-28, 05:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2015
Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
I pronounced Alcove as Aclove for years. At least I had some idea that it was a dent in a wall with things in it. Most of the time I just figured out the meaning by osmosis of context. I know there were a few I got horribly wrong, but details don't leap to mind. But I sure remember Aclove's pronunciation, because I still remember the confusion on everyone's faces when they finally had to call me out on it. :)
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2017-06-29, 12:35 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2014
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2017-06-29, 07:22 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2015
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- San Francisco Bay area
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Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
Reading Gygax certainly expanded my vocabulary!
If AC love is wrong I don't want to be right!
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2017-06-29, 01:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2014
Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
Look into Apocalypse World playbooks.
Brainers are worthless in combat 99% of the time.
So are Skinners, Maestro'd, Savvyheads, Angels, Waterbearers, News, and any playbook that isn't the Gunlugger, Battlebabe, Faceless, Chopper, or Hardholder. (And the last two only sorta.)
But every playbook has the potential to entirely change the nature of the game world simply by being chosen for play, let alone all the other things they do.
I would recommend it.
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2017-06-29, 03:30 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2014
Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
If you were part of the group I'd have made that more explicit.
There is an important difference, I feel, between discussion the nature of a problem in hopes of locating a solution, and bemoaning the current status as the only possible status/decrying all solutions as insufficiently perfect.
I have no problem with the former. I roll my eyes heavily and repeatedly at the latter.
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2017-06-29, 03:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2016
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Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
I don't think the wargaming roots are a problem. Some roleplayers like combat and DnD is very combat focused, then we have the others that don't like that combat focus. The problem is that DnD is often the gateway for people to start roleplaying and therefore many new players think RPG's are about combat.
DnD has always encouraged 2 things, loot and combat.
You get XP for killing things. Through XP your character grows stronger.
You get loot for killing things. Through loot your character grows stronger.
If you look at the DnD parts of these forums there are always plenty of posts about character builds. Character build is a term I use in computer games where I like to min/max, when I'm roleplaying I use the term character concept. Those builds always focus on combat and classes are even rated for their combat viability.
The entire ruleset when I started was about combat, exploring and loot. I don't have my 2nd ed. PHB anymore but I vaguely recall non weapon proficiencies as a skillset....If you were lucky you would start with 4 of them. In the redbox which I started with, there was no mention of skills IIRC. It was only mentioned in Mystara supplements.
This colored my early games which were about killing and looting. It wasn't until I got in contact with other systems that weren't all about killing and looting that I started to get into the noncombat aspects of roleplaying.Last edited by RazorChain; 2017-06-29 at 03:54 PM.
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2017-06-30, 07:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2015
Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
My favourite system is a Powered by the Apocalypse system, and I have read many of the Apocalypse World playbooks as well. So yeah, I think I get what you are going for.
And honestly, my favourite warrior character was in that Apocalypse World Hack. Because she was the only combatant in the whole group and had to fight where everyone else couldn't. Not they didn't pitch in, but she still had to hold the line while they improvised. Not having to be able to fight made being a fighter meaningful again.
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2017-06-30, 11:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2009
Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
As stated, this says more about your personal experiences than it does about the RPG industry. Further, no one is claiming that the issues that exist with D&D aren't issues, but they are saying that the fundamental change in the industry has or is in the process of happening, and that the primary list of complains in the OP are really complaints about D&D, and even further, very specific forms of D&D. A more apt analogy is that the OP is complaining that the movie industry needs to cut its action movie baseline in favor of other things because action movies make up the summer block busters, and this thread is pointing out that if action movies aren't your bag, there's a lot of movies out there that do other things, even if they're not summer block busters.
Basically every TRPG on the market gives more focus to its combat rules than other types of conflict. And why wouldn't they? That's what the market clearly wants, based not only on market data but on playtests and observing player stories and basically everything else.
TRPGs have pigeonholed themselves, and it's going to take some serious work to dig them out. But hardly anyone cares enough to even start digging. If anything is going to kill this medium, it's apathy towards change.
Some of this is because simple combat is the most basic and easiest to develop conflict. Of the 3 main conflicts, "man vs self", "man vs nature" and "man vs man", MvM is the most common one to start stories with because it's simple to develop. It requires very little setup, it requires very little plotting and it's easy to understand. Even basic fairy tales tend to focus on this, because it's simple for children to grasp the concept of one person harming another. See also comic book super heroes. The deeper concepts of self destruction and societal pressures are harder to grasp and take more legwork to produce a workable story from. As a result, those themes are explored in more "advanced" versions of media, and in RPGs that publish more than their core books, a lot of that additional material is covered in later books.
But from a new player (and new GM if you have a game that requires a GM) it's much easier to start with a "these people over here are bad, stop them with force" scenario than a "this dystopian society has created all these subtle insidious pressures on you and your loved ones, vive la revolution!" MvM scenarios are (or can be) small, compact and isolated. If a scenario doesn't work, get rid of those people, bring in new ones. MvN scenarios are sprawling things, and if they don't work, you have to change the whole setting. And MvS scenarios are usually introspective, they can be done in a group TTRPG (something like Monster Hearts), but they can also wind up being dangerously personal. Think about how uncomfortable it is when that one guy won't stop acting out his sexual or power fantasies in D&D. Now imagine new players trying to role play out an introspective Man vs Self conflict, that could get uncomfortable or offensive really quick.
Nothing to add here, just really quoting for emphasis because this is the truth.
But what is the RPG medium as a whole if not the combination of all the pieces of that industry. D&D does not an industry make. It's one part of the industry, and yes it's a big part, but to go back to my previous analogy, summer blockbuster action movies are a big (if not the biggest) part of the movie industry. But I don't think anyone would take you seriously if you came into a forum and said "the movie industry needs to drop its action oriented roots, and the small smatterings of films that aren't action oriented don't change the fact that the medium is all about action movies"
Frankly this isn't D&D's responsibility and it's not really something you see other mediums do. Yes, movie theaters run trailers, and books will often have ads for other books by the publisher, but those are often done by the publishing houses or the sellers, not by the individual films and studios. Jason Bourne movies don't have end credit sequences that say "hey, if you didn't like this film, check out Life of Pi or The King's Speech"
But you have hit on something here, which is that the RPG industry, unlike many other industries doesn't seem to have a central "industry hub". TTRPGs are all over the web, blogs and forums and all sorts of things, but they're also very niche. Blogs are dedicated to one game, or one or two similar games, forums are dedicated to either one genre, or often one game. Even general forums tend to consolidate. Look at GitP here. We have an RPG forum, a D&D5 sub, a D&D4 sub, a D&D3 sub and then an "everything else" sub, and the top level RPG forum tends to be about 80% general D&D.
Where it's the TTRPG's Gamespot.com? Its Gamestop? Where is its polygon? Where is the TTRPG's movie reviewer column in the NYT? The closest things we might have are rpgnow.com and maybe EnWorld. And let's face it, even as generic as the EnWorld front page might be, look at the forum, in the general TTRPG section, we have the following sections: D&D5, RPG General, D&D AL, Pathfinder/Starfinder (more or less D&D3), Older D&D, Star Wars, Character Builds and Opt. (almost entirely D&D), EnWorld Publishing, and RPG Ratings. So 5/9 sections are pretty much D&D.
I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that unlike almost any other medium or hobby, TTRPGs requires heavy personal investment in a single system. Let's face it, ours is a nerd hobby, which means to get the most out of it, you have to learn the little details, and people only have so much time to devote. Switching movies, video games and books is easy by comparison. But switching systems means learning completely new rules, new assumptions and often finding completely new players. So rather than go wide, TTRPG fans like to go deep. That's why character build forums exist, because it lets people invested in a particular game dig deeper.
But for the new person getting into TTRPGs, it means they're often faced with deciding on one thing they want to get deep with. D&D is the "lingua franca" for TTRPGs, so that's what most new people get or are brought to first. Not because it's the best, but because if you're only going to be able to invest in one, it's the most likely to pay off for you as a player.
I'd say our FLGS's can go a long way towards that. They've done really well bringing board games into the public eye with open gaming areas with a big library of games players can just come and sit and play. We need something sort of equivalent for TTRPGs. The problem is, unlike a board game, TTRPGs take a lot of specialized knowledge to run, and a lot of upfront planning. Which means your FLGS really needs essentially "pro" DMs to have enough breadth, and to do that, means they need to charge money, which in turn raises the barrier of entry again. The other strike is that a lot of the "non-D&D" rpgs out there aren't always set up for simple drop in and drop out play. Some are (Fiasco comes to mind), but others work best over long time periods (even D&D, at least the newer versions to a large extent) which makes coming up with "samples" for players much harder. It's easy to hook a player on some basic "boff-an-orc" playing. It's a bit harder to rope them into the complexities of say Vampire in a single shot.
Frankly, rather than the wargame roots, the hobby really needs to shed it's "nerd" roots. Don't get me wrong, I'm not disparaging anyone's love for the details, or for the character building mini-games or anything like that. But it's truly ridiculous that most TTRPG core books are in the near 200 page plus range. Compare the average board game rule set. And yes, TTRPGs do more, but even something like Fate Core is 20 PAGES of stuff just to build your character, not even to understand the rules. (for reference, Traveller (84) is 13 pages, by Mongoose 1e, you're up to 43(!) pages, not counting skills. FAE is a mercifully short 5 pages, which compares well to 4e D&D's ridiculous 163 pages)
My point here is that whatever game we come up with to supplant D&D as the gateway drug has to acknowledge, and be ok with the fact that 90% of the people who ever touch it will never sweat the details and that's OK. It's ok for the folks that want to dig deep to be able to nerd out (I love me some GURPS) but that has to come AFTER we've hooked them, not before. Personally, I think maybe what we could use is something similar to the D&D AL / Pathfinder Adventure Paths sponsored gaming thing, but for PbtA games. There's enough PbtA hacks to cover almost every genre, the playbooks tend to be almost as good as a pre-gen while still giving the players some choice, and the whole action/reaction flow of the game, with the common language moves (as opposed to specialized terms) tends to (with a good GM) keep it flowing without needing to get bogged into the details. I envision a sort of week schedule at FLGS locations where each night is a different genre in a PbtA game, rather than a different "game" as it were, with an eye towards pushing the converts either to that nights' PbtA game, or the other games that seek to specifically (and nerdily) emulate that genre better.
You're experience is very different from mine. I've found (even in D&D combat heavy games) that camaraderie and teamwork is in plenty of abundance. Then again, it probably depends largely on whether one is gaming to play RPGs, or gaming to socialize. I tend to game to socialize.
I think another thing we have to break away from as an industry (and again, this is largely an issue because we're a nerd hobby) is this idea that we can't make mistakes. Don't get me wrong, if you find you're making a mistake, and it could make things better to correct it, then by all means correct it. But if you're having fun, and you're playing your games and everything is going swimmingly, mistakes or no, it doesn't matter. What matters is you're gaming. Mistakes are house rules, nothing more, nothing less.
It seems rather unfair to state on the one hand that one can't use the indie RPG scene to describe the state of RPGs and the RPG industry, but then on the other hand use the indie video game scene to describe the state of video games and the VG industry. Either indie's count or they don't. I'm of the opinion they do. The question is, what can we come up with for the TTRPG industry that makes finding the indie stuff easier too? We already sort of have a "steam", it's rpgnow.com.
I think rather than a "steam" we need the TTRPG equivalent of mobile apps, and of Nintendo. First thing, we need the "mobile apps" equivalent to pick up the casuals. Something small, simple, that you can get people playing without them having to commit to being a TTRPG player (how many mobile game players call themselves "gamers"?). We need the Nintendo of the TTRPG world to. The company that's not concerned with what the industry as a whole is doing, they're concerned with making their own fun, first party off the wall stuff, but with the clout and exposure to get shelf space next to the dinosaurs (yes I know technically Nintendo is older than the Sony and Microsoft and (modern) PC gaming scene, but in this context dinosaur is referring to the size and pondering slowness)
A last thought, I think we need to put some serious effort into stamping out gate-keeping in the industry. Edition flamewars are not just internally destructive, when they leak into the public they're off-putting to those looking to get in. Fate, or PbtA, or Mouseguard, or GURPS or D&D, or Dread or CoC, it shouldn't matter. By the book, or a comedy of errors and mistakes, it shouldn't matter. Causal and silly or deep and introspective, it shouldn't matter. And yes, heavy combat focus, or investigation or politics, it shouldn't matter. What should matter is that you're playing, that they're playing, and that we're doing everything we can to make it easier for them to play. Even if that means sometimes we go out of our way to learn something new and play it. We're the old guard, and we're the computer, we have a responsibility to help give new players the steps to get into the community. I'm not saying if you love D&D, or you love FATE and someone comes along and wants to do Hero that you have to give up FATE and D&D. But I'm saying maybe invest in some HERO, learn it, give the player a chance to play (and be honest that you're learning too) and then help give them the resources the community and the industry has to let them find more and let them fly.
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2017-07-03, 05:34 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2009
- Location
- In a castle under the sea
- Gender
Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
I've seen too many books ruined by mistakes or misfortune to think for a moment that physical media is particularly resistant to the touch of time. And, again, there's the possibility of the books simply being lost.
Plus, I'm certain my descendents won't go through my steam library, same as I haven't listened to my parents' LPs. Hiding a rulebook somewhere curious relativs would find it seems a safer method of exposure.
And I do think it really is a different experience to be analog; maybe I'm just a romantic in this manner.
As for tactics, my thoughts is that it has something to do with the limiting nature of a battle grid. It might allow for detailed movement to have an accurate measure of ground covered, but without giving fear, perception and cover prominence in the combat system tactical choices will be very limited. Maybe it can be said that the recent editions of D&D have in this respect moved quite far from their wargame origins.
The problem isn't the UI, it's the CPU. People can only grok so many possibilities, and can only be bothered to roll so many dice and check so many numbers.
This brief descriptions makes it sound like Apocalypse World has the "decker problem" on steroids, with every PC having things they're good at which don't overlap in any way, leading to the Waterbearer getting a chance to shine in water-bearing challenges while the rest of the party plays on their phones and waits for the challenges their characters can help with.
Pure Appeal to Antiquity.
I started with that kind of experience, too. There's nothing wrong with it! But RPGs can be so much more than that, and right now the games which support that are being hidden by the ones which don't.
b4k4:
Spoiler
I'm not convinced that this is true, but there's not much I can do to explain why beyond pointing to my previous argument in confusion. Though I will note that, in the real world, there are plenty of non-action-blockbuster movies which make it big in movie theaters (rom-coms and anything by Disney*, for instance).
*You know what I mean, don't drag Star Wars and Marvel into this.
Some of this is because combat is also one of the harder things to adjudicate without rules, in part because acting things out for combat is difficult, but also because most people don't have experience with combat, where as things like suspicion, argument, debate, trading, haggling, begging, and leading are things that many or most people have at least passing familiarity with and its general effects. Now we can argue over whether more rule space should be dedicated to these things, but most game makers are approaching this from the "I don't need to give you rules on how to adjudicate an argument, because most people already know how to do that".
But even without that, your analysis is flawed. It relies on two separate assumptions, each with its own flaws:
1. People playing RPGs have sufficient experience with the kinds of non-combat challenges their characters would come across, but not combat.
Spoiler
On the surface, this makes sense, but it kinda falls apart on closer examination. I mean, anyone with rough friends, football experience, siblings, etc has some familiarity with the gist of fighting. Obviously it's not the same thing as fighting dragons with swords, but non-combat challenges don't much resemble our real-world experiences, either. A typical gamer may have negotiated a compromise between friends disagreeing about where to go for lunch, but that's not quite the same as negotiating a compromise between rebel factions disagreeing about how to overthrow the evil emperor. A gamer may have convinced a friend to upgrade his gaming console, but that's not the same as convincing your captain to upgrade his ship's weapons. A gamer may have asked someone join them at prom, but that's not the same as asking someone to join them in the fight against evil. In fact, the differences in both cases are much the same; similar actions, but with less at stake.
2. The combat rules of typical RPGs are intended to help gamers get a feel for/properly simulate what combat is actually like.
Spoiler
Ah ha ha no. If this were the case, simulationist combat would be the norm, if not the only game in town. Go find some super-detailed, ultra-realistic combat system and try it out; it's probably going to play quite differently than what your group is used to, and chances are it won't be as popular. (Some groups like that, most don't.) The complaints that they have will hint at the real reason the combat mechanics are what they are—it's fun. Tabletop RPGs are based off of war games (as the title of this thread points out), and most of those made gross oversimplifications for the purpose of having a more fun experience.
And it's not as if you simply can't make more interesting mechanics for non-combat things. Look at Last Word, for instance. Its conversation system is a bit bare-bones, but entirely functional and (in my opinion) fun to play. I've thought of several possible ways to take those concepts and tweak them for various types of games. Or if you're into something more mainstream, you could probably take some of Phoenix Wright's mechanics, or look into the more sim-ey dating sims. Those mechanics are out there; tabletop RPGs just have to be willing to learn from electronic ones.
(Yes, I know the games I listed aren't all RPGs.)
Still there are plenty of games that dole out rules on plenty of other things. Heck going all the way back to the beginning, Traveller delegates 15 pages of the 129 page rule book (The Traveller Book) to personal combat, and another 7 pages to starship combat. That's 17% of the rules, and it's actually less than that because those sections include things like general information about being wounded and how the gravity wells of planets affect ship movement. An equal 22 pages are dedicated just to the building and running of starships outside of combat.
Second off, your analysis is incomplete. Weapons get five and a half pages in the equipment section, armor gets two and a half, but computers and communicators get one each. Two of the nine drugs are explicitly combat-oriented, as are two of the three available modifications to drones. (Not to mention that about two and a half of the ship-design pages—one-quarter of the entire section!—are for combat equipment, and that the "running of starships outside of combat" section brings up things like pirate encounter rates, hostile boarding actions.) But this kind of raw content count isn't a good source of analysis on its own. The D&D 3.5 player's handbook spends three pages describing attributes, and three or four each describing gods and alignments. (I'm counting from memory, so I might be a page or so off. Doesn't affect my point that much.) This makes it sound like attributes, patron deity, and alignment are more or less equally important, which they obviously aren't; one is among the core mechanics of the whole game, while the others have limited to minimal effect on a character. So let's do a more detailed analysis of Traveler to see if it's really so non-combat-oriented.
Spoiler
Take the Encounters and Dangers section, for instance. Nearly five pages about wild animals (which you'd think would be a nonissue for space-age folks, given how rarely wild animals have been able to harm prepared humans for the past millennium or two), roughly one page about other survival difficulties like weather and disease...which also includes information directly relevant to combat, like how venom works and how many times you can attack in combat without getting fatigued. Then you have a page on healing, which can go either way, and information on NPCs and potential encounters or missions. Those should be an excellent way to determine how the designers expect the game to be played—it's a list of suggested adventures and obstacles, for crying out loud! Let's start with the patrons. Out of the seven patrons described, three initially appear to be intelligence-oriented (surveying planets, investigating murders, tracking smugglers), two are openly combat-focused, one is based around trade, and one is incredibly vague without any of the twists. But those twists are key, especially considering how at least half of the adventures would be boring without them. ("You deliver the cargo safely. Mission complete.")
Twist Analysis:
Spoiler
Half of the Planetologist's twists directly lead into violent dangers—two have hostile bugs, one has active sabotage. Two others have heightened tensions between the Scouts and the patron, which presumably blossoms into some kind of conflict, and while this isn't necessarily violent, I have trouble seeing how the players could care about or get involved in bureaucratic disputes or whatever.
Two of the Spy's twists refer to pirate attacks, one casually (as though saying "of course there are pirate attacks"). Not to mention that, despite me classifying it as an intelligence-oriented mission, it directly pits the players against a criminal organization, and the way everything is written heavily suggests that the designers expect some kind of violent confrontation—especially since the mission is explicitly described as "a lot more dangerous than Kemble initially suggests".
The Eccentric Noble is three separate missions—one with two variations, one with three. One is simply entertaining a bunch of nobles and one is just spiriting him away without anyone noticing, but one revolves around getting the characters to protect him from an assassin without their knowledge and three are based around a hunting expedition.
The Miner's mission is explicitly combat-oriented, unless you expect the PCs to try and negotiate with the people blowing up their own people's ships for political reasons.
The Merchant's mission is pretty terrible, if you're trying to argue that combat isn't a focus of Traveler. A smuggling mission can go so many directions, and yet...two involve the spawn of "a savage alien predator" escaping their mother's cage; two involve being tracked down by an Aslan "hunting party" (who are presumably not going to broker a deal for it, given that they're called a hunting party...and the twist specifically mentions that the buyer will be pissed if the party gives it away, giving an easy out); and out of the last two, one has the party lead to an "ancient automated defence system".
The Starport Administrator's mission is a murder mystery...yet rather than focus on little details like what clues the PCs can use to find the killer, it focuses on who the killer is and what he'll do next. Which, you know, fair play, but that makes it seem like the adventure is less about gathering clues and putting the murderer behind bars than it is stopping the assassin/serial killer/pirates/psion from completing their nefarious plans. The one which really stands out as maybe not being this is the "crime of passion," but that's so vague that I literally can't think of anywhere to go from there. Like, what evidence would the PCs be able to find that points to this cleaning lady above anyone else, and why wouldn't onsite security have seen it first?
The Desperate Peasant's mission is literally "help me with this coup".
And let's not forget the encounters!
Spoiler
Starport encounters: Seventeen mundane. Three potential combats. One environmental danger. Two combat adventure hooks. Two trade adventure hooks. One smuggling adventure hook. Five vague/potential adventure hooks. Three security encounters. One bureaucratic obstacle. Three random guys bothering the PCs.
Rural encounters: Wild Animal x6. Nineteen mundane. One potential combat scenario. Two environmental dangers. Two vague/potential adventure hooks, one implying physical danger (ie, combat). One security encounter. One hunting party. One escort quest. One technological irritation. One set of unfriendly locals.
Urban encounters: Twenty-three mundane. Four potential combats. One vehicular crash involving PCs. One environmental danger. Three vague/potential adventure hooks. Two security encounters. Two random guys bothering the PCs.
Oh, and roughly a third of the given NPC statistics are for thugs, guards, and security officers. Moreover, they comprise most of the NPC types with multiple "levels". Now, you might argue that of course combat-focused NPCs are going to get more statistics; statistics are for combat, you don't need to know how hard it is to kill someone you're just bartering with. But that's another point entirely—why are so many of Traveler's core rules focused on combat, if it's so focused on out-of-combat ship maintenance? (Three of six Characteristics have primary combat applications, while only one has a primary social application.) And why are so many of those latter rules so simple, with so few player choices to make? I mean, you can choose to skip maintenance or mortgage payments, but the game makes it clear that these are bad ideas. The same goes for the fairly extensive trade rules; for all their detail, they basically cover if a given trade is available and how much the purchase price will be, with the only player input being what they want to try and die rolls. Yawn.
TL;DR: While Traveler is not focused on violent conflict to the same extent as D&D, it receives more attention and mechanical depth than any other type of conflict.
Some of this is because simple combat is the most basic and easiest to develop conflict. Of the 3 main conflicts, "man vs self", "man vs nature" and "man vs man", MvM is the most common one to start stories with because it's simple to develop. It requires very little setup, it requires very little plotting and it's easy to understand. Even basic fairy tales tend to focus on this, because it's simple for children to grasp the concept of one person harming another. See also comic book super heroes. The deeper concepts of self destruction and societal pressures are harder to grasp and take more legwork to produce a workable story from. As a result, those themes are explored in more "advanced" versions of media, and in RPGs that publish more than their core books, a lot of that additional material is covered in later books.
2. "Man versus Man" does not automatically mean "man beats up man". It can also refer to ideological conflicts between different factions which result in bickering and blackmail but not actual violence, or to people on the same team arguing about the best way to handle their mutual goals, or even to antagonistic haggling.
3. Your example fails on a deeper level; while it's certainly true that low-quality comic books, literature, etc, often focus on physically violent conflicts, you hardly have to look to find counterexamples. Violence is the lazy author's solution to a lack of conflict; most manage to work other kinds of conflict in there.
4. I have never seen any such "additional material" covered in a way which detracts from the combat focus of a game. Which isn't surprising, since that would require rewriting many core systems for an experience (one which most people playing RPGs aren't in the market for).
But what is the RPG medium as a whole if not the combination of all the pieces of that industry. D&D does not an industry make. It's one part of the industry, and yes it's a big part, but to go back to my previous analogy, summer blockbuster action movies are a big (if not the biggest) part of the movie industry. But I don't think anyone would take you seriously if you came into a forum and said "the movie industry needs to drop its action oriented roots, and the small smatterings of films that aren't action oriented don't change the fact that the medium is all about action movies"
You are...you're serious?
First off, it's not just D&D, it's all the second-tier titles and most of the minor ones. Shadowrun, Mutants & Masterminds, even GURPS all have an unhealthy fixation on one type of conflict to the exclusion of all others. Second...well...I've already effing covered it, and your only response is "Here's an analogy which totally fits better, makes sense, and isn't basically the same!" So stop asserting that you've explained away the existence of systemic problems.
I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that unlike almost any other medium or hobby, TTRPGs requires heavy personal investment in a single system. Let's face it, ours is a nerd hobby, which means to get the most out of it, you have to learn the little details, and people only have so much time to devote. Switching movies, video games and books is easy by comparison. But switching systems means learning completely new rules, new assumptions and often finding completely new players. So rather than go wide, TTRPG fans like to go deep. That's why character build forums exist, because it lets people invested in a particular game dig deeper.
Sure, you need to spend time learning mechanics and whatnot whenever you pick up an RPG, but isn't the same true of everything? It's just that tutorials and exposition are considered part of the experience, while learning RPG rules isn't.
You're experience is very different from mine. I've found (even in D&D combat heavy games) that camaraderie and teamwork is in plenty of abundance. Then again, it probably depends largely on whether one is gaming to play RPGs, or gaming to socialize. I tend to game to socialize.
Which is a problem in and of itself, I guess. If RPGs can't figure out what role they want to play, and decide on one that fits the medium, they're gonna have a bad time.
It seems rather unfair to state on the one hand that one can't use the indie RPG scene to describe the state of RPGs and the RPG industry, but then on the other hand use the indie video game scene to describe the state of video games and the VG industry. Either indie's count or they don't. I'm of the opinion they do.
First, I was describing all of my TRPG experience and all of my video gaming experience. I wasn't excluding all the indie TRPGs I've played, because I've never even had a chance to play any indie RPGs (aside from some D&D knockoffs).
Second, and more importantly, equating the indie scenes of TRPGs and video games is deeply fallacious. D&D is an industry titan whom everyone else gets the scraps from, and even the second tier of TRPGs is chock-full of long-running franchises (GURPS, Shadowrun, World of Darkness...the only newcomer of comparable scale which I can think of comparably easily is FATE, and I still argue that it's more like a set of make-believe guidelines than typical RPG systems). A world with Minecraft, or even with Undertale, is a world whose indie video game scene is far more vibrant, healthy, and relevant than our indie TRPG scene.
The question is, what can we come up with for the TTRPG industry that makes finding the indie stuff easier too? We already sort of have a "steam", it's rpgnow.com.
We need the Nintendo of the TTRPG world to. The company that's not concerned with what the industry as a whole is doing, they're concerned with making their own fun, first party off the wall stuff, but with the clout and exposure to get shelf space next to the dinosaurs (yes I know technically Nintendo is older than the Sony and Microsoft and (modern) PC gaming scene, but in this context dinosaur is referring to the size and pondering slowness)
A last thought, I think we need to put some serious effort into stamping out gate-keeping in the industry. Edition flamewars are not just internally destructive, when they leak into the public they're off-putting to those looking to get in. Fate, or PbtA, or Mouseguard, or GURPS or D&D, or Dread or CoC, it shouldn't matter. By the book, or a comedy of errors and mistakes, it shouldn't matter. Causal and silly or deep and introspective, it shouldn't matter. And yes, heavy combat focus, or investigation or politics, it shouldn't matter. What should matter is that you're playing, that they're playing, and that we're doing everything we can to make it easier for them to play. Even if that means sometimes we go out of our way to learn something new and play it. We're the old guard, and we're the computer, we have a responsibility to help give new players the steps to get into the community. I'm not saying if you love D&D, or you love FATE and someone comes along and wants to do Hero that you have to give up FATE and D&D. But I'm saying maybe invest in some HERO, learn it, give the player a chance to play (and be honest that you're learning too) and then help give them the resources the community and the industry has to let them find more and let them fly.
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2017-07-03, 07:34 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2008
Re: Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?
Who put the trailers and book ads there isn't really the main point though - they're there, and we could absolutely use something similar in tabletop RGPs.
On the other hand, plenty of much smaller games exist. Nemesis is pretty rules heavy but still only clocks in at 50 odd pages, and you've got your Wushus and RISUSes. It's a visibility problem, and while it would really help to have a company like WotC do this (and it's not like WotC wouldn't benefit) the games are there.
Heck, at this point it would be nice to bring it back. D&D and Advanced D&D coexisted for a while, and at this point only Advanced D&D is still around, renamed to just D&D. WotC releases nominally "Basic" stuff every so often, but a "Basic" D&D that's still something like 300 pages isn't even remotely in the needed niche. A slim paperback book of about 30 pages would probably do wonders for both the hobby as a whole and WotC's D&D finances (while still a drop in the bucket compared to the money printing license that is MtG).I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.