Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;846099Really, the last person to grind out that "My version is OBJECTIVELY better!" was that assmonkey Topher.

Hey! I'd finally managed to forget that dude, and then you come 'rounds reminding me of the guy like this! Thanx a lot, dude! :rolleyes:

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A thought: Was D&D a victim of its own success?

  I'm not just referring to the oft-cited fact that people started asking TSR for stuff that Gygax, Arneson, et al. thought they should make up themselves. But with D&D becoming the Big Name and the default gateway to the hobby, it meant that the default approach to playing different types of fantasy was more likely to be 'shoehorn it into D&D somehow' rather than 'find or write a new game that does this better.' I think this, along with other factors, wound up shifting the game as it iterated through editions--there were things that were found to not fit the design goals to some extent, but the design goals themselves shifted as the audience grew and changed.

  So what if D&D had not been the Big Game that everyone started with? Would it perhaps have preserved a more distinctive, old-school feel instead of having to be 'all things to all people'?

  Of course, this is all hypothetical until someone builds a hobby-centric time machine.

Quote from: TristramEvans;846073Hell, why does anyone play with suit cards anymore at all anymore now that Magic: the god-damn Gathering exists? Derpa Derpa Doo Evolution!"

Speaking of assmonkeys, in one of Ron Edwards' early essays he said something on the order of "if gamist gamers are interested in the game aspect why don't they just play baseball or soccer?"

I don't remember it exactly, and I really, TRULY cannot be arsed to spend more than the 30 seconds on Google I already have, but it definitely carried the idea that "gamists" should play something other than RPGs.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;846111A thought: Was D&D a victim of its own success?

  I'm not just referring to the oft-cited fact that people started asking TSR for stuff that Gygax, Arneson, et al. thought they should make up themselves. But with D&D becoming the Big Name and the default gateway to the hobby, it meant that the default approach to playing different types of fantasy was more likely to be 'shoehorn it into D&D somehow' rather than 'find or write a new game that does this better.' I think this, along with other factors, wound up shifting the game as it iterated through editions--there were things that were found to not fit the design goals to some extent, but the design goals themselves shifted as the audience grew and changed.

  So what if D&D had not been the Big Game that everyone started with? Would it perhaps have preserved a more distinctive, old-school feel instead of having to be 'all things to all people'?

  Of course, this is all hypothetical until someone builds a hobby-centric time machine.

Partially that, and partially once people said "I don't want the experience that the current version of D&D gives" TSR, and later WOTC, of COURSE was going to change the game to give different experiences.

Just like once my model railroad company makes a model of every steam engine in the history of the world, I'm going to start making diesels.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;846097"What I like is RIGHT!  And what you like is WRONG!"

If D&D has undergone an evolution, then 3rd edition was was a shark turning into a lump of festering shit.

Give it up, dude. Different games are different, not better.  I think 3E sucks so hard the skin comes off my dick; it is a prime example of everything wrong with game design, from "a rule for every fucking ridiculous thing no matter how trivial" to Skip Williams' stated goal to "protect players from the whims of arbitrary game masters."

Where did I say that???

Every edition of D&D was where a bunch of people we called designers took what was before and added or changed something to better fit what they and other gamers wanted to play, or so it was claimed.  Gamers that don't have the previous background, nor actually played with the late Gary Gygax.

The original game was based off fantasy war games, yes?  Then it changed because war gamers had their own version that a lot of the newer 'generation' didn't understand.  So it changed, one could say evolved to adapt to the way gamers were at the time.

Then came AD&D, then 3e and so on and so forth, all of these are steps into changing, adapting to how people played because of experience or simply wanting something different.

5e might seem a step back but it's got a lot of things from all version and is doing things D&D never did.  Like the Proficiency Bonus applying to everything, the Saving Throws based on the stats, rather than it's own chart.

Different.

Does it make it 'better'?  Fuck if I know.  And frankly, I don't think so.  I've played in a few sessions of Rules Cyclopedia, Pathfinder, Castles and Crusades, AD&D (both editions, but mainly 2e, simply because it was the one I started with) and I had fun with all of them.

But whatever, people will read what they want to read, and ignore the rest.  Welcome to the Internet.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;846097If D&D has undergone an evolution, then 3rd edition was was a shark turning into a lump of festering shit.

Give it up, dude. Different games are different, not better.  I think 3E sucks so hard the skin comes off my dick; it is a prime example of everything wrong with game design, from "a rule for every fucking ridiculous thing no matter how trivial" to Skip Williams' stated goal to "protect players from the whims of arbitrary game masters."

  3rd Edition is arguably the reductio ad absurdam of certain elements of the AD&D project, both as undertaken and as perceived by fans--the 'rules for everything' reputation (explicitly cited by Peter Adkison in his thoughts on the design in Thirty Years of Adventure), the 'elite version' of D&D or roleplaying in general, and 'one game to rule them all, one game to find them, one game to bring them all and to the designer's will bind them'.

   4th Edition, IMO, is a mutant offshoot that borrows from numerous parts of D&D's history and that unfortunately zigged where the market zagged.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;846097"What I like is RIGHT!  And what you like is WRONG!"

And your favorite game suxxors! Unless your favorite game is also my favorite game, but in that case you are playing it wrong!

Gotta love the internet.

Quote from: The Ent;846106Hey! I'd finally managed to forget that dude, and then you come 'rounds reminding me of the guy like this! Thanx a lot, dude! :rolleyes:

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Topher was a poster here? That must have been interesting...

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;846097Different games are different, not better.  I think 3E sucks so hard the skin comes off my dick; it is a prime example of everything wrong with game design...

You keep both those thoughts in your head at the same time, do you?

Quote from: Xúc xắc;846166You keep both those thoughts in your head at the same time, do you?

I didn't think it was necessary to label my opinion of 3E as my opinion given the context.

Shall I use larger type and smaller words next time?

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;8461153rd Edition is arguably the reductio ad absurdam of certain elements of the AD&D project, both as undertaken and as perceived by fans--the 'rules for everything' reputation (explicitly cited by Peter Adkison in his thoughts on the design in Thirty Years of Adventure), the 'elite version' of D&D or roleplaying in general, and 'one game to rule them all, one game to find them, one game to bring them all and to the designer's will bind them'.

Yea, can't argue with that. But the alternative was to just take your lumps when the DM was being a dick or find a new DM. And that was as good as never since you were lucky to find a dozen people to even hear of D&D let alone play any of it in the mid-90's AND find someone who knew what the fuck they were doing as a DM. Most likely leaving a group or DM meant you just didn't play D&D.

With the TOTAL codification of the rules it turned into "You can only do this because of X from pg. blah-blah" and at least everyone was on the same damn page. You quickly learned the fast version of "Everything provokes OoAs unless you have a feat. Don't grapple anything bigger than you unless you have specifics for it. And fear high level magic." It was a shit ton of rules but at least you could point to something when the shit-bag behind the screen was being a douche lagoon.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;8460764th Edition, IMO, is a mutant offshoot that borrows from numerous parts of D&D's history and that unfortunately zigged where the market zagged.

Yea, also can't argue with this. I blame marketing and presentation the most.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;846170I didn't think it was necessary to label my opinion of 3E as my opinion given the context.

It's obviously your opinion. It's just really hypocritical to shoot down "Edition X sucks more than Edition Y" by saying "None of them suck because there's no right or wrong; edition Z sucks the most!"

Quote from: Xúc xắc;846174It's obviously your opinion. It's just really hypocritical to shoot down "Edition X sucks more than Edition Y" by saying "None of them suck because there's no right or wrong; edition Z sucks the most!"

There's that distinction between personal opinion and objective fact that seems so hard for some people to grasp.

Quote from: Batman;846171It was a shit ton of rules but at least you could point to something when the shit-bag behind the screen was being a douche lagoon.

Not gaming is better than bad gaming.  If  you don't trust the referee get the fuck out of there.

Not gaming is better than bad gaming.  Always.

Quote from: Batman;846171Yea, also can't argue with this. I blame marketing and presentation the most.

As much as I sounded like I had said that, that wasn't me.  Please attribute it to Armchair Gamer, it's his statement.  Whether or not I agree with it, notwithstanding.