Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?

[FreddyNoNose]

I remember Call of Cthullu as mostly running away from the monsters rather than fighting them.

Incidentally I've long found CoC easier to gamemaster than all but the "Basic" (1977) or "Classic" (1994) versions of D&D .




Despite being closer to Chainmail, and it's wargame roots, I found the pre 2e D&D I played, to be more about exploration (and running away from the monsters), and less about combat than the 5e D&D I now mostly play.

There was lots of running away before 2nd edition. The whole moving ahead of the party stealth wasn't just for surprise, it was scouting so you could avoid. You had spells light dancing lights to lead the enemy away from you.

[Jay R]

I remember Call of Cthullu as mostly running away from the monsters rather than fighting them.

Incidentally I've long found CoC easier to gamemaster than all but the "Basic" (1977) or "Classic" (1994) versions of D&D .

Of course. Running away is easier to adjudicate than combat.

[Tanarii]

Of course. Running away is easier to adjudicate than combat.

All you have to do is determine who has the slowest speed, and they die.

[2D8HP]

Of course. Running away is easier to adjudicate than combat.

All you have to do is determine who has the slowest speed, and they die.

You don't want to run away?

Well follow only if ye be men of valor! For the entrance to this cave is guarded by a creature so foul, so cruel, that no man yet has fought with it... and lived! BONES of full fifty men lie strewn about its lair! So! Brave knights! If you do doubt your courage or your strength, come no further, for death awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth....





....Warned you, but did you listen to me? Oh, no, you knew,, didn't you? Oh, it's just a harmless little bunny, isn't it?

[FreddyNoNose]

You don't want to run away?

Well follow only if ye be men of valor! For the entrance to this cave is guarded by a creature so foul, so cruel, that no man yet has fought with it... and lived! BONES of full fifty men lie strewn about its lair! So! Brave knights! If you do doubt your courage or your strength, come no further, for death awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth....





....Warned you, but did you listen to me? Oh, no, you knew,, didn't you? Oh, it's just a harmless little bunny, isn't it?

Look at the bones.

[Coventry]

...No. Just no. Equivocation fallacy, big time.

We may have to agree to disagree, here. But I will make an effort to explain my thoughts, first:

As I understand the history of D&D, it sprang from some players looking for something different than making unit-level decisions in a war game. Instead, they wanted to act out the actions of individuals that were part of one of those units, and Gygax and friends basically saying "okay, let's try it and see how this goes."

None of that applied to me. Instead, the idea of acting out the actions of another person happened first in life. As a child, I variously played "house", "superhero", "cowboys and Indians" and other unstructured role-play games. Sometimes with others, sometimes alone. That is fairly common behavior - not every child does that, but many do.

I was introduced to D&D several years later. I had been exposed to some low-grade war gaming in the form of Chess and Stratego, but it while I was learning D&D that I discovered the kind of miniatures war game that spawned D&D.

So "acting" those scenarios as a child is a much stronger foundation of the game to me than war gaming is. If the OP wants to get away from the war game with D&D, I hinted that a broader scan of the options provided might show that what they want already exists without having the change D&D, itself.

Since I posted, others have chimed in with various options that I was unaware of, which may suit the OP preferred gaming style far better than this old game ever can. Being unaware of them does reinforce your "basically unknown games" swipe. But who cares if they are unknown today? There was a time when D&D was unknown - not that very long ago.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

I feel I should clarify it was a rhetorical question to set the stage for the conversation. In the original draft I had a spoiler with: The answer is no.

Still it seems to have sparked the conversation none the less. I don't have much to say beyond that right now, because I agree with almost everything said.

To MarkVIIIMarc: You will be glad to no my GM doesn't run war-game like systems. Actually that is part of what opened my eyes to it in the first place. However what do you mean by both ways.

Hello Cluedrew,

The way I read your OP I believed you to be upset with how much combat there is in D&D. So I assumed it was due to problems in games you are involved in.

By both ways I meant both COMBAT HEAVY and INTRIGUE/ROLE PLAYING sessions are entertaining. Sometimes the process of or wondering if it is time to fight or not to fight is the best of all.

[Knaight]

The only ones of those games that I'd heard of before are Toon and FATE. FATE is basically Roll to Dodge with an ego, while Toon is...a cartoon. And still focuses more on combat than it should need to.

That's more indicative of what you've heard of than the design space though - everything listed is pretty well known among the indie community, Fate is huge by non-D&D standards, and thus people familiar with RPGs in a broad sense tend to be aware of them. These games are getting designed, and they're reaching positions as high up in the industry as can reasonably be expected for a game that doesn't have the benefit of tracing back to the early 1980s where the games were sparse enough that keeping up with about all of them was doable. They're getting designed, and the failure is in marketing.

The problem is that better marketing them is a major challenge. WotC has more money than the rest of the industry put together, probably several times over. Once you remove the other bigger games with a combat focus (mostly White Wolf's work, which is frequently presented as not combat focused compliments of being slightly less combat focused than D&D) the entire rest of the industry has basically no resources. So we're faced not with changing the territory by cutting the war game roots, but by mapping the territory that is already there.

[Cluedrew]

I wonder if the OP even likes DND. If he does love it, he shouldn't want to make a drastic change like this. If he doesn't like it the way it is, there are plenty of other options including making his own game.

Other that it plays really slowly I would probably be in a D&D campaign (player or GM). Although one of the goals for my homebrew system is faster resolution so there is that.

By both ways I meant both COMBAT HEAVY and INTRIGUE/ROLE PLAYING sessions are entertaining. Sometimes the process of or wondering if it is time to fight or not to fight is the best of all.

That is true, and maybe some of my old D&D DM's played years ago did go to heavy on the combat side or something. In more recent (non-D&D campaigns) some of my favourite moments have been in or around combat, but they also approach combat in a different way. More "what does this mean for the story" and less "how many more spaces can you move", which also has the advantage of being faster. And they have more detailed mechanics for other parts of the game too.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I don't think that's how it works. Adventure RPGs have comfortably found their niche and are good at doing what they do for people who want to do just that. As long as people like Adventure RPG, Adventure RPGs can continue just as they always did.
And heroic adventure is a genere with incredible staying power. It's the oldest known stories of human culture and they have never gone out of fashion in 4000 years. I don't see it disappearing anytime soon and leaving RPGs as a medium without a genre.

Nobody is stopping anyone from making RPGs that go in other directions, but there is no obligation to stop playing the games we enjoy for other games we don't enjoy for the sake of ideology.

I've never heard "adventure RPG" used to describe any game played with physical dice, so you'll need to provide more explanation for that one. And your other points don't just miss the ball on this one—they're not even playing the same sport.

TRPGs can do that combat-focused stuff, but there is essentially nothing in that genre that video games can't do better. Leave that stuff to the video games and let TRPGs focus on what makes them unique. Think of it like video game cutscenes—they can add to a game when used well, but if you try to build all of your big games around them, you're hamstringing yourself.

-snip-

I didn't think I'd need to explain this point further, but here we are.
It's true that actors "play a role," but there are several critical differences between that and a role-playing game. They generally boil down to the role and identity of the author and audience. In theater, the actors are an "author" of the play, in the sense that they are one of the people who create the work and affect how it is perceived by the audience; the audience, in turn, is a third party who plays little to no role in the play. On the other hand, RPGs have a more muddled relationship between author and audience; the players (and arguably GM) are both author and audience. Both this dual role and how the audience can directly affect the course of the story are two of the defining traits of tabletop RPGs.
Saying that RPGs have their roots in Greek theater is like saying movies have their roots in medieval carpentry; some of the elements of the former are certainly helpful for properly engaging in the latter, but the two have little enough in common that there's nothing special about that particular comparison.

That's more indicative of what you've heard of than the design space though - everything listed is pretty well known among the indie community, Fate is huge by non-D&D standards, and thus people familiar with RPGs in a broad sense tend to be aware of them.

...You completely missed my point, didn't you?
Let's make another video game analogy. The indie video game community is full of story-focused games, with occasional games built around a single unique mechanic thrown into the mix. Franchises are rare, and often treated with disdain by the more "serious" indie gamers, who may see such efforts as "selling out". E3 happened recently; go look at the coverage and see if you can keep a straight face while you tell me the indie scene is representative of the entire industry. And it's even worse for TRPGs than video games, given the relative sizes of their indie scenes to the market as a whole (in part due to TRPGs' reliance on physical media*, in part due to their lack of a Steam/Itch.io/etc equivalent).
Of course, this isn't unique to interactive media. In every medium—film, theater, music, literature, visual art, everything—smaller, independent projects are always going to be different than the norm. That's why they're indie—or, at least, why they're the indie works which don't get overshadowed and crushed by the major ones.

The problem is that better marketing them is a major challenge. WotC has more money than the rest of the industry put together, probably several times over. Once you remove the other bigger games with a combat focus (mostly White Wolf's work, which is frequently presented as not combat focused compliments of being slightly less combat focused than D&D) the entire rest of the industry has basically no resources. So we're faced not with changing the territory by cutting the war game roots, but by mapping the territory that is already there.

Indie projects in other media have solved this problem easily. Whether we're talking about the Sundance festival or itch.io, Minecraft or One Punch Man, they have found ways to reach large enough audiences to be recognized, and sometimes even to rise out of the indie category and into "true professional" projects.
These games you mention not reaching their potential audience is a problem. Mind, I'm no casual D&D-playing pleb; I've heard of plenty of small, unrecognized RPGs—from New Gods of Mankind to Witch Girl Adventures, from Monsters and Other Childish Things to Pendragon, from Bleak World to Bunnies & Burrows, Ars Magica to Cthulhutech—just not the ones mentioned here. But that's the problem—they're small, unrecognized RPGs, not representative of the industry. And, again:

"Ex Machina had a strong female character. Sexism isn't a problem in movies anymore! Never mind that it's clearly still an issue in most of the big movies, there's an example of a movie that doesn't have the problem, so it's solved!"

I'm not sure it would be possible for there not to be scattered examples of RPGs that aren't combat-focused, or that lack any problem which might be affecting the medium. But giving examples of games which exist doesn't change the fact that those examples are not representative of the medium as a whole. The idea that individual counterexamples could be of use in a debate like this puzzles me; the idea that "too war-game-ey" is a problem that could exist on the level of an individual game doesn't make sense to me. Going back to a previous analogy: Even a video game based entirely on cutscenes can work. (Look at Her Story, for instance.) But if nearly every game was like Her Story, the industry would have a problem. The fact that the major TRPGs all fit into one niche—a niche the medium is not well-equipped to handle, no less—is definitely a problem.

(P.S. There's also how if I don't know the games, I can't make detailed arguments about them. I work with what I got. I'm willing to guess that at least some of the games mentioned are just nominally non-combat-focused or vague RtD-ish structures.)



*As with all of this post, I mean in practice, not in theory. I've seen

[Ninja-Radish]

D&D may not be the game for you, OP. Nothing wrong with that, there are plenty of other rpgs out there that have nothing to do with war games and that minimize combat. Might want to check some of those out.

[Acquaintance]

I think it would be a good idea. There is little in the wargame vein which video games can't do better, and focusing on the wargame side of things weakens the aspects of TRPGs that video games simply can't emulate well. The question of whether it's possible/practical is a separate matter entirely...

...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.

I agree strongly with much of what you say. But I do think you are overly cynical in regards to tactical combat in RPGs in relation to computer games. A game like Divinity Original sin might emulate D&D quite well and even provides a multiplayer mode explicitly meant for that task, but is still forever unable to deliver the joy of sitting around a table with friends. And it requires a working computer while still threatening to become obsolete one day due to aging technology. I can't stick it on a shelf and hope my grandchildren will find it.

Physical RPGs will always have some benefit over computer versions, and I think they do have their place. D&D going the way of the dodo would be a great loss, even if it spawned a rennaisance of less violent games.


BUT! Combat in games is a great annoyance.

"Ex Machina had a strong female character. Sexism isn't a problem in movies anymore! Never mind that it's clearly still an issue in most of the big movies, there's an example of a movie that doesn't have the problem, so it's solved!"

This metaphor is quite apt. It might not be exactly as bad as you posit in regards to indies, but it is true that even a lot of them feature combat exessively. To my understanding FATE treats social encounters almost as combat! 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.


Expanding on your point, I think the inequality of scale between D&D and indies does matter immensly. Most people who know about roleplaying know about exactly one game and that is D&D. They might have heard of others, but brand recognition will push them towards the dragon as their first game if they don't have any guides. D&D being a pretty niche game is really problematic in this regard, as many people either fail to get the experience they seek or are forced to houserule heavily or buy another system. (Although it can be argued that most people finding fault in the rules of D&D is part of the reason for the blooming indie sphere. DMs are essentially mini-designers)

I run a D&D game for a group of friends who told me they wanted this specific game. They had heard of it from youtube and were exited mostly to roleplay and have fun. The first session was essentially one long combat encounter as we learned the rules, and afterwards they asked to not have to fight as much. Since then I've pretty much avoided combat entirely and had much more fun in the process. They speak of their characters as "my strong overprotective barbarian" then "my lvl 4 BAR". I think another game might have fit us better, but now we have the books and are learning the system.

I'm of the opinion that D&D should profile itself as the dungeon crawling game rather then the big roleplaying game, that or try to develop more in the direction of not fighting stuff. This game probably shouldn't be everyone's or even a majority's first journey into tabletop roleplaying.

[woweedd]

I agree strongly with much of what you say. But I do think you are overly cynical in regards to tactical combat in RPGs in relation to computer games. A game like Divinity Original sin might emulate D&D quite well and even provides a multiplayer mode explicitly meant for that task, but is still forever unable to deliver the joy of sitting around a table with friends. And it requires a working computer while still threatening to become obsolete one day due to aging technology. I can't stick it on a shelf and hope my grandchildren will find it.

Physical RPGs will always have some benefit over computer versions, and I think they do have their place. D&D going the way of the dodo would be a great loss, even if it spawned a rennaisance of less violent games.


BUT! Combat in games is a great annoyance.





This metaphor is quite apt. It might not be exactly as bad as you posit in regards to indies, but it is true that even a lot of them feature combat exessively. To my understanding FATE treats social encounters almost as combat! 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.


Expanding on your point, I think the inequality of scale between D&D and indies does matter immensly. Most people who know about roleplaying know about exactly one game and that is D&D. They might have heard of others, but brand recognition will push them towards the dragon as their first game if they don't have any guides. D&D being a pretty niche game is really problematic in this regard, as many people either fail to get the experience they seek or are forced to houserule heavily or buy another system. (Although it can be argued that most people finding fault in the rules of D&D is part of the reason for the blooming indie sphere. DMs are essentially mini-designers)

I run a D&D game for a group of friends who told me they wanted this specific game. They had heard of it from youtube and were exited mostly to roleplay and have fun. The first session was essentially one long combat encounter as we learned the rules, and afterwards they asked to not have to fight as much. Since then I've pretty much avoided combat entirely and had much more fun in the process. They speak of their characters as "my strong overprotective barbarian" then "my lvl 4 BAR". I think another game might have fit us better, but now we have the books and are learning the system.

I'm of the opinion that D&D should profile itself as the dungeon crawling game rather then the big roleplaying game, that or try to develop more in the direction of not fighting stuff. This game probably shouldn't be everyone's or even a majority's first journey into tabletop roleplaying.

Having the biggest brand recognition in the business isn't exactly their fault, is it?

[kyoryu]

To my understanding FATE treats social encounters almost as combat!

I would argue it's the inverse - Fate treats combat the way it treats everything else.

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 believe that's Diaspora (based on Fate). That's not how most Fate games deal with social encounters.

I'm of the opinion that D&D should profile itself as the dungeon crawling game rather then the big roleplaying game, that or try to develop more in the direction of not fighting stuff. This game probably shouldn't be everyone's or even a majority's first journey into tabletop roleplaying.

It *is* the big roleplaying game, regardless of its suitability for the task (which I am not placing any statement on, one way or the other).

As far as the OP goes - cut the wargame roots if you want to. Others won't if they don't want to.

[2D8HP]

I've never heard "adventure RPG" used to describe any game played with physical dice...

I don't remember "adventure RPG", but I do remember "Adventure Game", briefly being an alternative designation for games like D&D, and Traveller, mostly be Tim Kask's Adventure Gaming magazine in the early 1980's.

...I've heard of plenty of small, unrecognized RPGs—from New Gods of Mankind to Witch Girl Adventures, from Monsters and Other Childish Things to Pendragon, from Bleak World to Bunnies & Burrows, Ars Magica to Cthulhutech—just not the ones mentioned here. But that's the problem—they're small, unrecognized RPGs, not representative of the industry....

I've only heard of four of those games, but one of them is a favorite.

[Anonymouswizard]

Having the biggest brand recognition in the business isn't exactly their fault, is it?

No, but it's arguably problematic for the industry. Not for D&D to have the biggest brand recognition, but for it to have essentially all the brand recognition.

To people outside the hobby the hobby is basically D&D and nothing else. So most people trying to get into the hobby, at least 95% of them, will buy a game and that game will be D&D. They'll spend over £100 on books and more on dice, get together a bunch of friends and play. If we assume half the people introduced like it enough to keep playing then we can have numbers.

Now, out of those who are still playing, most of then we'll likely not hear about other games, or only hear about one or two. I've previously presented games to groups that I find interesting, only to be turned down because they're not D&D (literally the reason). Only successes: Shadowrun and Dark Heresy with a bunch of 40k geeks.

The line that sticks out to me it's 'Starfinder will be to science fiction as D&D was to fantasy' or something along those lines. Paizo or whoever was doing their advertising could rely on the fact that most of the people who saw their adverts wouldn't think about Traveller or any of the other science fiction games already out (which is a shame, as looking into it later has got me genuinely interested in Starfinder as a more serious Spelljammer).

(Also I find D&D's model of the corebooks with no legal PDFs annoying, so I've switched to 2e in the he cases I run D&D. Almost everybody else has one book with all the core rules, even if you really want more books to play you don't need them, and offers legal PDFs).

[BayardSPSR]

No, but it's arguably problematic for the industry. Not for D&D to have the biggest brand recognition, but for it to have essentially all the brand recognition.

To people outside the hobby the hobby is basically D&D and nothing else. So most people trying to get into the hobby, at least 95% of them, will buy a game and that game will be D&D. They'll spend over £100 on books and more on dice, get together a bunch of friends and play. If we assume half the people introduced like it enough to keep playing then we can have numbers.

Now, out of those who are still playing, most of then we'll likely not hear about other games, or only hear about one or two. I've previously presented games to groups that I find interesting, only to be turned down because they're not D&D (literally the reason). Only successes: Shadowrun and Dark Heresy with a bunch of 40k geeks.

The line that sticks out to me it's 'Starfinder will be to science fiction as D&D was to fantasy' or something along those lines. Paizo or whoever was doing their advertising could rely on the fact that most of the people who saw their adverts wouldn't think about Traveller or any of the other science fiction games already out (which is a shame, as looking into it later has got me genuinely interested in Starfinder as a more serious Spelljammer).

(Also I find D&D's model of the corebooks with no legal PDFs annoying, so I've switched to 2e in the he cases I run D&D. Almost everybody else has one book with all the core rules, even if you really want more books to play you don't need them, and offers legal PDFs).

It doesn't help that unlike a lot of the smaller RPGs, D&D seems to make no effort whatsoever to connect people with the rest of the hobby at large. I've never seen a D&D-sponsored anything that said "for a different style, you might like Torchbearer" or something. It's always "here's how to do D&D, the only RPG that exists, slightly differently if you really want to."

[Jay R]

I don't remember "adventure RPG", but I do remember "Adventure Game", briefly being an alternative designation for games like D&D, and Traveller, mostly be Tim Kask's Adventure Gaming magazine in the early 1980's.

It was a PR stunt - an attempt to improve D&D's reputation with semantics, but without addressing any actual issues.

For awhile, I wore a button to conventions that said:

I'm not an
"adventure gamer"
I'm a
Wargamer.

[Anonymouswizard]

It doesn't help that unlike a lot of the smaller RPGs, D&D seems to make no effort whatsoever to connect people with the rest of the hobby at large. I've never seen a D&D-sponsored anything that said "for a different style, you might like Torchbearer" or something. It's always "here's how to do D&D, the only RPG that exists, slightly differently if you really want to."

It also doesn't help that D&D markets itself as a do anything fantasy RPG. I could run a fantasy game with steampunk elements and Victorian era technology with D&D, and many people do, but I have Victoriana which is built to do exactly that. Now I do own other RPGs that don't mention other systems or sponsor anything that suits, but they all say 'right, we do this. If you want this, use this book.' they don't ever say 'this is how to run hard science fiction with Rocket Age' or 'how to run
n a peasant life simulator with Exalted'.

Although D&D is owned by a different kind of company to must RPGs. Most RPG companies understand that if I want to play something else I won't play their game, but when I do want what their game offers I'll spend money on it (seriously, I've spent more on Cubicle 7 published games than almost any other company because they give me what I want). WotC seems to be in a situation where they need everybody (or at the very least 'lots of people' for the roleplaying industry) to be playing D&D in order to keep going, because D&D is unlikely to make anything near Hasbro money otherwise. I suspect that's part of the reason for continuing the three book core and suggesting that everyone owns the PhB (do other games even do that anymore? Because the idea of everyone owning the rulebook is a bit alien in the groups I play in, it's generally just the GM who has it. One book for the take functions well, especially if you have a session zero and a board/card game people can stop in and out of*).

* So that the mechanical part of character creation can be done one at a time, happened when I played Pathfinder in a one book group.

[Knaight]

To people outside the hobby the hobby is basically D&D and nothing else. So most people trying to get into the hobby, at least 95% of them, will buy a game and that game will be D&D. They'll spend over £100 on books and more on dice, get together a bunch of friends and play. If we assume half the people introduced like it enough to keep playing then we can have numbers.

More than that, most of them won't get into the hobby. They'll try, see that they need to shell out $100 on books and then read 960 pages, and decide that roleplaying games aren't for them, even though there's a good possibility that plenty of them are. There's an artificial winnowing to the point where almost everyone in the hobby either likes or liked D&D, and that's the marketing problem I was talking about. The games that have detached themselves from the wargame roots are out there, people just need to find them - a process far more difficult than it needs to be.

[kyoryu]

More than that, most of them won't get into the hobby. They'll try, see that they need to shell out $100 on books and then read 960 pages, and decide that roleplaying games aren't for them, even though there's a good possibility that plenty of them are. There's an artificial winnowing to the point where almost everyone in the hobby either likes or liked D&D, and that's the marketing problem I was talking about. The games that have detached themselves from the wargame roots are out there, people just need to find them - a process far more difficult than it needs to be.

D&D (and Pathfinder) are the games of first contact for the *vast* majority of players. People that like them stay in the hobby, people that don't, quit.

The problem with that is that D&D is a pretty specific beast that takes a high amount of learning before you can start playing. It is absolutely not "drop in" friendly, even compared to older versions of D&D.

What the hobby needs, if anything, is a mass-audience friendly party-game like version of an RPG that is easily learnable and doesn't have the stigma D&D does. The closest I know to this is Fiasco.

[Jama7301]

Just to chip in on how D&D's hold on the Marketplace is pretty all consuming, and even learning about new games can be a pain.

I first looked at a D&D book in 2004, bought my first PHB in '07. I didn't know there were non-D&D based fantasy games until 2015, when I learned about Dungeon World.

I have friends who are into the hobby, but none of them have heard about any non-D&D games, until I brought up Dungeon World.

Where I live now, there are 3 places where I can get RPG books, two gaming stores and a Barnes and Nobel. From the B&N, I can get D&D books, and Pathfinder books, and maybe one Shadowrun book.

Of the two game stores, only one of them has anything beyond that scope, and that's because they carry two or so World of Darkness books, and occasionally something like a GURPS book or Numenara. Otherwise, they only have D&D 5e, 3.5, or AD&D (I think. Not sure on the edition of the older stuff they have).

Not having the ability to even flip through a new game system is kinda rough. It makes finding anything pretty hard, if you're not involved in a community like this one. In the past year of lurking/lightly posting here, I learned about things like 13th Age, Burning Wheel, Exalted, which all sound different, but kinda neat in their own ways. Dungeon World is a game I would have loved to known about for longer than I already have.

D&D crushes everything that isn't Pathfinder in terms of shelf-space and advertising. it makes the argument of "There are games out there that do what you want" seem a little... not empty, but they don't feel great to me.

I just wanted to share some anecdotal stuff about this. I don't have a solution, because there's no easy fix to make D&D more 'inclusive' to different playstyles, and raising awareness for game systems that aren't D&D comes down to word of mouth, because they can't compete with Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast for shelf/advertising space.

[Knaight]

D&D (and Pathfinder) are the games of first contact for the *vast* majority of players. People that like them stay in the hobby, people that don't, quit.

Exactly, with the tiny caveat that once people are in it's not that uncommon for them to find something else, and realize that they don't actually like D&D anymore.

D&D crushes everything that isn't Pathfinder in terms of shelf-space and advertising. it makes the argument of "There are games out there that do what you want" seem a little... not empty, but they don't feel great to me.

That's why the argument is "the games are there; we need to vastly improve the marketing somehow so that people can find them".

[Tanarii]

The problem with that is that D&D is a pretty specific beast that takes a high amount of learning before you can start playing. It is absolutely not "drop in" friendly, even compared to older versions of D&D.

Eh. I used to regularly drag brand new players to AL tables I was running. It's easy enough, they just need a little hand holding to make sure they don't choose a complicated class, and instead start off with something simple. In 5e, that usually means starting them off with any non-full caster, or with a Warlock.

All they really need to know is their ability score modifiers and their attack bonus and AC. They do tend to forget their skill proficiency, but that's not a big problem in 5e (unlike 3e), since everything is an ability check first and DMs are supposed to judge what DCs to set based on characters not being proficient anyway. It's easy enough to ask a more experienced player to nudge them to remember to add proficiency bonus when it applies.

Mainly though, this isn't the old days. A far larger portion of children are into science fiction, fantasy, and anime (science fantasy?). Many play card games, most play video games (including sometimes CRPGs). Although for some reason TRPGs are still considered the last bastion of the uncool & nerdy. /shrug

[Jama7301]

That's why the argument is "the games are there; we need to vastly improve the marketing somehow so that people can find them".

Gotcha.

Truthfully, trying to keep up with some of ya'll on here, and the threads is quite the task. Kinda intimidating at times, because it's easy to mix things up.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Eh. I used to regularly drag brand new players to AL tables I was running. It's easy enough, they just need a little hand holding to make sure they don't choose a complicated class, and instead start off with something simple. In 5e, that usually means starting them off with any non-full caster, or with a Warlock.

All they really need to know is their ability score modifiers and their attack bonus and AC. They do tend to forget their skill proficiency, but that's not a big problem in 5e (unlike 3e), since everything is an ability check first and DMs are supposed to judge what DCs to set based on characters not being proficient anyway. It's easy enough to ask a more experienced player to nudge them to remember to add proficiency bonus when it applies.

Mainly though, this isn't the old days. A far larger portion of children are into science fiction, fantasy, and anime (science fantasy?). Many play card games, most play video games (including sometimes CRPGs). Although for some reason TRPGs are still considered the last bastion of the uncool & nerdy. /shrug

Chiming in here, I teach about 10 teenagers a year how to play 5e and most have the basics down within the first real session. Yeah, if we were playing 3.P, there might be more problems. Even then, the basic rules are simple. It's the details that are complicated and you can ignore most of those most of the time.

[Cluedrew]

To Jama7301: I started this thread and I have trouble keeping up with it.

Anyways, one thing that just occurred to me is maybe I could rephrase my point as "is D&D being the iconic role-playing game a problem". Now don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed games of D&D, but I am also a war gamer as well as a role-player. D&D is a game that is really both a war game and a role-playing game and if come at it for one of those two things you aren't going to get as much out of it.

So for all those people who are just here for the RPG, D&D isn't great. And yet they often have to go through it to get and discover all the other games that would suit them so much better. And not everyone makes it that far, or just assume that it can't get any better.

[Anonymouswizard]

Gotcha.

Truthfully, trying to keep up with some of ya'll on here, and the threads is quite the task. Kinda intimidating at times, because it's easy to mix things up.

Let me think.

I first played D&D in the early 2000s (my dad running the red box).

First read a PhB about a year later. First owned one the year after that.

Bought my first have book in about 2006/2007, I think.

First really discovered non D&D games were a thing around 2011 (had played Savage Worlds earlier, but didn't realise how many there were) didn't yet into them seriously until 2014 when a friend invited me to get husband's campaign of Unknown Armies (most of the group hadn't played together before, became the best group I ever had).

From about 2014 to now my RPG collection has massively expanded to include the core rulebooks to a lot of systems, and I regularly get RPG books as presents. These days I'm one of the more widely played Anointed my RPG friends. I almost never ruin D&D anymore.

And there's still times I can get lost in the discussions here, especially when older games are brought up. Don't sweat it, you'll catch up with us eventually.

Also, if you ever want a non D&D system to ruin something people here will be certain to help you out (although it might be best to clarify 'not GURPS', otherwise it can take over the thread).

[Mordar]

I've only heard of four of those games, but one of them is a favorite.

It's Bunnies & Burrows, right? Right?

- M

[pwykersotz]

Yeah, I have to agree with the others. A new system is a good idea. Try Dungeon World. I love what it does to combat. In fact, I'm currently hacking 5e to use the move resolution system instead. It's a lot of fun, whether it succeeds or not!