Odhanan wrote:Mike Mearls wrote:I have a theory that in the days of AD&D, there were a few things at work that helped shape D&D. In the AD&D days, the rules had enough leeway for DM judgment calls that a group could bend and twist the rules to fit the DM’s feel for how things should work. One DM could hand wave details, while another would do a lot of research and incorporate as much realism into the game as possible. Thus, while the design might have pointed in one direction, DMs can and did alter the game as they saw fit.
With the release of 3rd Edition, we saw a new trend that 4th Edition only strengthened. The rules became more comprehensive and easier to use. A DM was still free to modify them, but it became a lot easier to just use the rules as written. I think that’s when you started to see divisions among D&D players come to the fore. We always played the game differently, but now that we were a little more reliant on the rules those difference became more obvious.
If people play D&D in such a variety of different ways, then what’s left to unite us?
WOW I had not read that one!
Almost a complete countersense. This is almost fabulous in its expression of a parallel reality where rules upon rules liberate people from the use of their dreaded imaginations and making a role playing game your own is a horrible thing for the newbie, not a draw and specificity of the medium.
This is a gem. Brilliant!
Reading this I actual believe I understand what Mearls is talking about.
D&D/AD&D is a game almost completely dependent on the talent of the DM. Great players, bad DM, bad game. Average players, bad DM, bad game, but great DM and you normally have a great game. Mediocre DM, mediocre game on average, almost entirely regardless of the players if they actually want to play.
DMing is both a skill and an artform. Finding people who can manage both is hard. What WotC and Hasbro are trying to do is sell a game that is DM proof and that means taking both the skill and the art from the game. What is left keeps creeping closer and closer to a boardgame and further and further from a game which relies on the imagination of the DM and players, and especially on the ability of a DM to invoke the imagination of the players which may lie buried and dormant beneath the debris of modern culture and education.
So, D&D seems to have reached a point where the game can be played with a modicum of imagination safely wrapped in a cocoon of structure and rules.
I just hope they keep going along this path and put out cool boardgames. I love boardgames and some are incredibly helpful to introduce new players to the freewheeling chaos that is D&D/AD&D. HeroQuest is a fantastic little game and a wonderful starting point that helps seperate the wheat from the chaff. Some people get hooked and some want something more, and those are the people you want in your gaming group.
I would love to have seen AD&D never become popular. Gygax should have been just successful enough to keep playing and writing adventures and working on settings. I don't want or care to have every kid who can play World of Warcraft or Resident Evil or even D&D 4th edition getting involved in the game. I don't want to see people making fortunes with RPGs, though a reasonable living would be nice. I do not want a company like Hasbro, WotC or even the TSR of the 80's and 90's involved in rpgs. Slick and glossy are not positives in my book.
I hope Mearls takes WotC D&D to a boardgame future and leaves rpgs the hell alone. The people, the creative forces involved right here and now are more than enough for me, and if the poor masses of the gaming proletariat never discover pen and paper RPGs or anything better than the pablem fed to them from a corporate teat and are trapped forever in the online world of click and shoot paper thin pale imagination, then so be it. If people keep choosing the blue pill then just be glad you've choked down the red and can handle the utter chaos of an unrestricted imagination.
