Original blog article here.

Interesting opinions in there, like his view of boxed sets and books. What do you think?

He's perfectly correct. The fact that I didn't follow this advice proves that I'm an egotistical chump.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceHe's perfectly correct. The fact that I didn't follow this advice proves that I'm an egotistical chump.

-clash

I will state what I call him on the GIN..."Captain Obvious". If anything there was a surprises to folks...well, you should rethink getting into this gig.

Bill

QuoteToday, what most designers want to do is make a world.  They’re much, much more interested in being Ed Greenwood than in being Gary Gygax.

It's obvious why he would say that, but that doesn't make it any more accurate.

Quote from: HinterWeltI will state what I call him on the GIN..."Captain Obvious". If anything there was a surprises to folks...well, you should rethink getting into this gig.

Bill

Hey, Bill! Congrats on your Colts! I told everyone the real Super Bowl was Colts vs Pats, and I was right! Great game, and the best team won! Awesome game!

-clash

Luv ya but....



Fuck you and the Patriot bullshit horse you rode in on....

If/When the Pats get in the actual Super Bowl again - than you can say it's...ya know...the Super Bowl.  Until then it's just a playoff game - chump...

And congrats to the Colts - one hell of a game.

Quote from: James J SkachLuv ya but....



Fuck you and the Patriot bullshit horse you rode in on....

If/When the Pats get in the actual Super Bowl again - than you can say it's...ya know...the Super Bowl.  Until then it's just a playoff game - chump...

And congrats to the Colts - one hell of a game.

Why the hostility, James? If you want to rip into me for some reason, you should do it in Off Topic, though. We've diverted this thread enough.

-clash

As usual, Dancey hits the nail right on the head.

RPGPundit

Huh, I read that article a few days ago. What I got out of it was:

a) D20 can be anything you want it to be. Which I read as saying, effectively, if you take the SRD and systematically replace everything that you don't like, leaving the stuff you like, you'll have the game you want...and WotC will get to sell another Player's Manual even if it has next to nothing to do with your game.

In reality I think this is smarter than it appears at first, since by looking at D20 you can probably use it as a sort of "dummy testbed" for whatever systems you really care about, kind of a "lorem ipsum" for game design. But of course if you do this you may not need to tie your game to D20 or even OGL in the end.

b) Books are better than boxes. From a cost perspective this may be true. From a marketing perspective, I have doubts. What I mean is: I suspect there's a certain economy of design which is forced on you if you make a boxed product, and the latter also opens up the possibility of including components like boards, cards, and minis. All of which can help guide play and stimulate creativity for new players.

Look: How to Host a Mystery is not sold as a book.

QuoteBefore the concept of Open Gaming, publishers were forced to create new RPGs when they wanted to publish a game, at minimum because TSR did not license the Dungeons & Dragons game to any 3rd party.  During those years, many people confused the need to make a new game with the value of making a new game.  In fact, many of those games were actually pretty poorly designed.  A designer with an idea for a certain effect like a different way to cast spells, or advance the power level of a character, or express super powers, or any number of other potential RPG mechanics might do a good job of creating a game system to do that thing, but when faced with the task of building all the other parts of an RPG, the designer often rushed the work, resulting in games with many flaws, omissions, and compromises.

This is something I've definitely observed about smaller games: homebrews/Forge games.  They really tend to be one neat concept and everything else is either tacked on crudely, or shoehorned into the one nifty idea.  Understandably, homebrew creators are focused on the bits they find interesting and gloss over the stuff they find unimportant.

QuoteMake your product a book, not a box.  There are good reasons that the industry stopped making boxed games (the biggest reason is that half the RPG business is now in bookstores, and they dislike boxed sets intensely.  Boxes crush, shrinkwrap rips, and boxes don't fit their shelves as neatly as standard size book products do.

A lot of gamers like boxes.  At the very least, it can keep a new gamer from having to figure out where to buy dice.  WotC obviously sees the advantage of boxes as well with the D&D Basic Set, and Player's Kit.  Ultimately, this is one of those statements that says, "We know that customers will buy box sets, but the distibutors and bookstores have more say in what is sold than what customder demmand does."

Thanks for the link.  Some interesting comments.

I'm not using the d20 system because the gameplay will be different from d20.  It's not just a different setting.  

I'm more interested in following in Gary's footsteps than Ed's.

"If you want to design a roleplaying game, you should use d20."

Er, thanks Mr Dancey. That was terribly helpful.

That's not what he said.

Yes it is. He says that if you write a roleplaying game, then it's probably fucked and stupid and a mess, unless you write it with many contributors over some years. As an example of an rpg written by just one person, he gives SenZar - not exactly being balanced about the idea of a sole authour.

Quote from: Ryan DanceyThe games that created and sustained successful player networks like Storyteller and Hero evolved over many years, and had many contributors.  Some of those people belonged to a cadre of designers who grew up together and stayed in close contact as their careers took them through several publishers, and they cross pollinated ideas from game to game, and built a large reservoir of knowledge about what was working and what was not working.

He then goes on to say that you're too stupid and ignorant to be able to write your own game and have it be any good. So you should use d20.

Quote from: Ryan DanceyBefore you assume that you can design a game as good as those people, especially without a thorough grounding in statistics, probability theory, gamer demographics, a good grounding in how to template rules text, and a hundred other niche fields of study uniquely applicable to RPG design, take a while to consider if it would make more sense to use an off-the-shelf system like D20, which comes with very few strings attached.

He goes on to discuss the reasons not to use d20, which boil down to, "if you're going to make a game no-one will like." A game without conflicts, etc - given the context of other stuff he's said, that means, "a game no-one will like."

He then goes on to say that most rpg writers are most keen on setting design, rather than game design, and only design a system to support that setting. He says that most of the settings are best supported by d20.

Quote from: Ryan DanceyFor most world concepts I see [...] D20 is not only a good option, it is almost certainly the best option.

He then goes on to give more specific advice, like "no boxed sets, only books," and "put your efforts into the core books", which boils down to, "do it just like we did d20."

So we can boil his whole post down to,

"If you want to design a roleplaying game, you should use d20."

:shrug:

There are some fiddly bits and all the appropriate caveats in there, but that's what it all boils down to. He wants people to make more d20 splatbooks. He wants to suport the policy of WotC making the profitable corebooks, while smallfry make the unprofitable splatbooks. It's a brilliant marketing policy, the OGL, absolutely brilliant. It's long been a problem for rpg companies that everyone who plays the game buys the corebooks, but not everyone buys the splatbooks, but when spatbooks are released, corebook sales go up; so how do you make sure the corebook sales make enough money to cover the losses on the splatbooks? WotC's answer: get some other guys to take the losses on the splatbooks, leaving WotC with only the profits on the corebooks. Awesome!

It's a brilliant and admirable marketing plan, that OGL.

Don't get what the big deal is. He's right. Most folks like d20 and if you want to be successful, there's a higher chance you will be if you use d20 and some(if not all) of his suggestions.

I seem to like games that nobody seems to play in large numbers. I wish this wasn't the case, not because I can't find people to game with, but because I find I have very little in common, with most of the folks who post on message boards - this is really not a big problem though .

Regards,
David R