Quote from: -E.;643454My conclusion is that -- for movies, books, songs, etc... and (probably) for RPGs, the best test is the test of time. D&D passes. And while popularity by itself may not be a virtue, sustained popularity indicates (to me) that a work / game / whatever is effective at connecting with people.

I think that's a mark of quality.

I think that's the fallacy of assuming popularity==quality, and nothing more.

Further I think it's a bad thing no matter where and for what it's applied. History is full of examples where people hung on to outdated and even harmful things because they were popular- and it continues to be full of such examples as we move into the future.

The cycle is self-reinforcing by its very definition: "I think D&D is good because it's popular, therefore I increase it's popularity making it even better...".

Beyond stating that however there's little more to be said. If one buys into the fallacy there's nothing I can do to change that.

Quote from: gleichman;643456I think that's the fallacy of assuming popularity==quality, and nothing more.

Further I think it's a bad thing no matter where and for what it's applied. History is full of examples where people hung on to outdated and even harmful things because they were popular- and it continues to be full of such examples as we move into the future.

The cycle is self-reinforcing by its very definition: "I think D&D is good because it's popular, therefore I increase it's popularity making it even better...".

Beyond stating that however there's little more to be said. If one buys into the fallacy there's nothing I can do to change that.

There are a few working definitions of quality.

• Conformance to requirements for software
• Design within tolerance for certain kinds of engineering
• Defects per million parts for manufacturing processes
• Suitability for purpose along several dimensions for data

I could go on.

While it's tempting to judge RPGs using those, I don't think it can be done. I don't think RPGs have requirements you can test against. I don't think tolerance works, and things like timeliness or completeness that work on data sets are nearly impossible to define for RPGs.

Which is why I conclude we should judge RPGs the way we judge art -- which is either personally / idiosyncratically, or with a canon guarded by critics who provide expert contemporary judgement.

That's how we do it in practice -- critics post reviews of RPGs on the internet.

But without a canon it's hard to distinguish the critics with real insight from the blowhards.

I can only see one operable way out of this: everyone should trust my judgement. I'm a clear thinker who is (nearly uniquely) qualified to judge game-quality by virtue of my scintillating wit, incisive insight, and sublime good taste.

In the absence of a bunch of old, credentialed guys and a formal set of culturally accepted set of games everyone pretty much agrees are of high enough quality to use for judgement, we're left with...

Me.

But that should be enough for anyone, right?

,
-E.

Quote from: -E.;643460I could go on.

I think we both could.

But I also think each of our positions are clear and can be judged on their own merits without endless repeating them. We are both also firmly committed to them.

So let's not and call it good

Quote from: gleichman;643141Hawkings didn't become good at math by preventing the rise of Cthulhu. He did it by doing math problems under safe and boring conditions.

Actually Hawking's calculations and formulae are the only thing preventing the Rise of R'lyeh.

Quote from: CRKrueger;643464Actually Hawking's calculations and formulae are the only thing preventing the Rise of R'lyeh.

Dang it! Now you've done it. The cultists will know who to target!

:eek:

Sigh, our world is not for long now.

Just going by my own gaming experience, players always have something to look forward to, whether it is hitting 14th level so they can Teleport Without Error, or getting 35 Karma Points so they can bond that Power Focus they got from the Universal Brotherhood, or increasing a Cult skill to the requisite ability to begin initiation to a higher mystery.

Now if there are large campaign goals like traveling to the Wyrmtooth Gap and slaying Stonescale the Drake, well characters aren't going there unless they think they have a chance of surviving the trip and the encounter, but that would happen with any advancement system, and is character based.

Skill-based without levels, Skill-based with levels, Level-based without skills, Level-based with skills, I've never seen players change their actions based on mechanical advancement.  In other words, no "Lets take out the bandits first because we're not high enough level to take on the Ogre yet."  It's more along the lines of "Let's get the reward for killing the bandits, so we can buy better armor before we go after the Ogre." ie. an in-character logical plan.

I will say at this point I find I do prefer skill-based systems to level-based though.

Quote from: gleichman;643462I think we both could.

But I also think each of our positions are clear and can be judged on their own merits without endless repeating them. We are both also firmly committed to them.

So let's not and call it good

-E.

Skill based, level based, it's all relative.  RM is a hybrid of skill/level based system, D&D has always been level driven and then RQ has always been skill driven.  Personally it really doesn't matter to me as long as it works properly and the system is logical and intuitive to understand and well laid out in the book, I hate garbled rules, IMO that kills the game over any thing based on the games system.  Currently it seems to me there are more Level based games out there than skill based ones.

Quote from: estar;643143You are trying objectively say X is better than Y in terms of RPG design when it is a preference issue.
(the) hobby and market hasn't agreed with your conclusions since the beginning of its existence. D&D and its variants has never been toggled from its perch as the world's most popular roleplaying game. When the latest D&D proved unpopular what knocked it off its perch? Pathfinder a D&D variant.

To put it another way, D&D 4 was more of a variant system from D&D Classic than Pathfinder was.

JG

If you divorce it from the old D&D context, in which it indicates a package of factors in the context of a character type/class, then "level" just indicates some step in the accumulation of other resources.

Each attribute point in The Fantasy Trip, each skill increase (or so many such, or ratings of key skills) in RuneQuest, so many character points in Champions or GURPS: there are a lot of yardsticks one can use!

Im (more or less) with Traveller on this one. I dont think Level-based systems are inherently flawed or something, but they bother me on a level Skill-based ones dont. Levels (and classes) always felt artificial and boardgamey to me. Childish even. But I keep using em sometimes, for its already cited advantages.

About RQ skill-check system: If I aint mistaken, it was possible to train (= just spend time and money with a teacher) and increase its rating to some degree (75% I think ?). After that it only improved through use. And Lore skills could get to 100% without practical use, because of their academic nature.

Quote from: increment;643225Time for a visit from the tangential historical detail monster.

Arneson's memory does not serve him well here. Less charitably, one could say that Arneson's memory about what was in Chainmail, versus what he invented himself, became decidedly less reliable after Arneson started suing TSR over D&D. (As did Gary's over certain things Arneson did in fact invent.)

Anyway, the contention that Chainmail didn't have armor class is a common enough canard that I put up some documentation about it here - and yes, even the term "armor class" is a Chainmail term:

http://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2012/10/armor-class-in-chainmail.html

Chainmail exhibits all of the qualities that Arneson describes in your quote: because Heroes took multiple hits to kill, because wearing more armor avoids blows, you had the chance to live longer and do more. Arneson did prefer a different approach to hit points, but not the one that D&D ultimately adopted.

While it's always hard to provide evidence that something doesn't exist, I have pretty extensive access to Arneson's unpublished games, notes, etc., and I'm not aware he ever designed a game about, let alone entitled, ironclads. And I did ask him about it myself.

Now that much said, Arneson was a huge fan of Fletcher Pratt's naval wargame, and there is a sort of armor class in Fletcher Pratt (ultimately deriving from Jane) with various thicknesses and resistances to penetration from shells. Probably Arneson is hazily remembering some ACW-based Pratt game he ran once. There's certainly truth in the notion that prior to Chainmail, there were games in various settings that had quantified armor ratings that prevented hits. However there's absolutely no grounds to believe that D&D has hit points or armor class for any other reason than that Chainmail had them.

Enough tangent.

If I haven't said so before, welcome to theRPGsite!