Quote from: Brad on June 08, 2023, 02:10:56 PM

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on June 08, 2023, 02:05:31 PM
People who want to make a completely different game should make a completely different game, and not tie themselves to D&D.  The only reason to do what you suggest would be a rather cynical attempt to capitalize on the existing network effect while keeping nothing that had created it in the first place.

Sounds like you're familiar with the current crop of SJWs, sir. Remember in Ye Olde Dayes when a bunch of people looked at D&D, decided it was crap, and made games like Runequest, Tunnels and Trolls, Chivalry and Sorcery, etc.? Who has time for that? Just mold D&D into your ideal Seattle-esque 21st century circle-jerk and reap the benefits of the name.

Your suggestion, does seem to be more popular.  I have seen it on display, somewhere?

I wish that all editions of D&D were available for purchase, without edits or warning labels.  Hardcover, Print On Demand.  Tell WOTC to make it happen.

Quote from: MeganovaStella on June 07, 2023, 11:38:45 PM
It is my opinion that in order to make a better game, a game must be topical.

I think you're mixing up "better" with "more popular." You're suggesting that games should be following trends. But that's the exact opposite of what D&D did, and, well, D&D is D&D. The first and biggest ever RPG.

Back when D&D was first published in the early 70s, it was very much NOT topical. Fantasy literature at the time was dominated by big Good-versus-Evil high fantasy cycles riffing off of Tolkien. D&D, however, was thoroughly informed by Gary Gygax's own subjective taste in literature and entertainment: history, military wargaming and sword and sorcery fantasy, the latter mostly from 1920s and 30s pulp publications, with a smaller smattering of more "modern" S&S. He explicitly avoided high fantasy in the game's sensibilities, with only a few token elements such as Tolkien's races offered grudgingly to satisfy fans' demands.

And despite how unlike Gary's design choices were compared to the 70s' predominant concept of fantasy, it still became D&D, the single most popular RPG ever. Which, come to think of it, also proves that even popularity does not have a guaranteed correlation with topicality. Following the trends might give you short-term success, but it also rob you of the chances of long-term persistence; that is reserved for trend-setters, not followers.

I think people here are kinda misunderstanding what the problems with D&D are.

The root problem with D&D is a bigBrain word; technical debt. Parts of the D&D fanbase really likes their legacy system compatibility and will make the designer's lives miserable if there's too much hassle making their favorite 30 year old module run, and the more you change, the harder it gets to run old modules without having to practically rewrite the whole thing. This is kinda why OSR is a thing in the first place; most OSR games are about going back to D&D's roots, which is a nice way of saying you're abandoning the technical debt the system has collected over the last 20 years.

I also think it's worth noting that improving the game is rarely one of WotC's goals when making a new edition. That makes it sound like the designers have been working all along on improving D&D, which is just not the case. The reality is more that external factors and a fall in sale prod WotC to start work on a new edition, and the design team needs to give the marketing team some "improvements" to sell the product with. This typically means that the designers do the least amount of work on the system they can (doing more could cause technical debt problems), and they largely rely on the marketing team to make up the difference and make a proverbial mountain out of a mole hill. And external factors do play in. One of the goals when going from 3.5 to 4E was to ditch the OGL, and one of the goals going from 4E to 5E was to return to the OGL to recover some sales.


The shame is that all this could be solved pretty easily by splitting D&D into multiple product lines because one-way compatibility is, in fact, a thing, and this would let WotC experiment with odd D&D flavors without necessarily committing to them in the long run. But WotC is too afraid of splitting the fanbase to actually do that.

Quote from: Premier on June 08, 2023, 06:16:13 PM
I think you're mixing up "better" with "more popular." You're suggesting that games should be following trends. But that's the exact opposite of what D&D did, and, well, D&D is D&D. The first and biggest ever RPG.

Back when D&D was first published in the early 70s, it was very much NOT topical. Fantasy literature at the time was dominated by big Good-versus-Evil high fantasy cycles riffing off of Tolkien. D&D, however, was thoroughly informed by Gary Gygax's own subjective taste in literature and entertainment: history, military wargaming and sword and sorcery fantasy, the latter mostly from 1920s and 30s pulp publications, with a smaller smattering of more "modern" S&S. He explicitly avoided high fantasy in the game's sensibilities, with only a few token elements such as Tolkien's races offered grudgingly to satisfy fans' demands.

And despite how unlike Gary's design choices were compared to the 70s' predominant concept of fantasy, it still became D&D, the single most popular RPG ever. Which, come to think of it, also proves that even popularity does not have a guaranteed correlation with topicality. Following the trends might give you short-term success, but it also rob you of the chances of long-term persistence; that is reserved for trend-setters, not followers.

Marvel's Conan comics were popular in the 1970s, as were umpteen literary knock-offs of Conan. A few years later we got the Conan film and umpteen movie knock-offs, too. And there was more original S&S like Elric and Fafhrd/Mouser. So S&S wasn't unpopular in the 1970s, it was undergoing a revival that had started in the 1960s.
I'm sure Tolkien & high fantasy sold more books, but S&S sold a lot more comics. And don't underestimate the importance of superhero comics, a huge influence on D&D that is often overlooked. D&D definitely did draw from older and less popular sources, but it also drew from contemporary influences.

Quote from: Premier on June 08, 2023, 06:16:13 PM
Back when D&D was first published in the early 70s, it was very much NOT topical. Fantasy literature at the time was dominated by big Good-versus-Evil high fantasy cycles riffing off of Tolkien.

   I don't think those start hitting until the late 70s/early 80s--Sword of Shannara was 1977, Edding's Belgariad starts in 1982. TSR throws their own hat into the ring with Dragonlance in 1984.

   When Gygax was writing, I think the S&S reprint/revival was in full swing, as S'mon points out. In my experience, most editions of D&D tend to have strong contemporary influences, or at most be a few years behind the times.

Quote from: MeganovaStella on June 07, 2023, 11:38:45 PM
It is my opinion that in order to make a better game, a game must be topical. Not topical in the sense of 'must reflect current opinions', but topical in the sense of 'fit the generation's expectation of what fantasy should be'. Whether it be Dying Earth or Naruto, DND is a fantasy game and so should be what the people imagine fantasy to be.

To stretch one's net far, one should then support multiple editions of the game at the same time. A 70s edition game, an 80s edition, a 90s edition, an 00s edition, etc. Of course, WOTC won't do this because they're too fucking lazy. But then WOTC should die.

eh. If your "topical" means "'fit the generation's expectation of what fantasy should be", then give Gary his flowers because that's exactly what D&D has been (at least since BECMI). Each individual DM/group engage their fantasy expectations via the unique setting the DM uses or creates.

Blackmoor isn't Greyhawk isn't Mystara isn't Ravenloft isn't Pelinore isn't Hyperborea isn't Lankmar isn't The Forgotten Realms isn't Spelljammer blahblahblah. Each setting is its own type of fantasy, similar but different.

D&D has more published settings than any other rpg but the overall thing was for DMs to make their own settings so their group could do whatever kind of fantasy they liked. This is you blaming D&D for your own lack of imagination 

Quote from: MeganovaStella on June 07, 2023, 11:38:45 PM
It is my opinion that in order to make a better game, a game must be topical. Not topical in the sense of 'must reflect current opinions', but topical in the sense of 'fit the generation's expectation of what fantasy should be'. Whether it be Dying Earth or Naruto, DND is a fantasy game and so should be what the people imagine fantasy to be.

I disagree a lot.  A good GM should always be on the lookout for all kinds of inspiration but not limited by others' expectations.  The effort should be to make a fantasy game that takes you out of this world and any expectations you have and puts you in a world of wonder and secrets to unlock.  The real value in fantasy isn't "i have magic" but "I might experience something amazing."

I run an on-again-off-again campaign for some kids.  (9-14yo)  They bring in a lot of their ideas of fantasy but that's not the part that gets them going.  Sure the 11yo loves being a martial arts master.  What he talks about is the time he got to make friends with a sea monster to take down some void pirates.  The idea of making friends with a "monster" blew his mind.

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 09, 2023, 10:46:08 AM

Quote from: MeganovaStella on June 07, 2023, 11:38:45 PM
It is my opinion that in order to make a better game, a game must be topical. Not topical in the sense of 'must reflect current opinions', but topical in the sense of 'fit the generation's expectation of what fantasy should be'. Whether it be Dying Earth or Naruto, DND is a fantasy game and so should be what the people imagine fantasy to be.

To stretch one's net far, one should then support multiple editions of the game at the same time. A 70s edition game, an 80s edition, a 90s edition, an 00s edition, etc. Of course, WOTC won't do this because they're too fucking lazy. But then WOTC should die.

eh. If your "topical" means "'fit the generation's expectation of what fantasy should be", then give Gary his flowers because that's exactly what D&D has been (at least since BECMI). Each individual DM/group engage their fantasy expectations via the unique setting the DM uses or creates.

Blackmoor isn't Greyhawk isn't Mystara isn't Ravenloft isn't Pelinore isn't Hyperborea isn't Lankmar isn't The Forgotten Realms isn't Spelljammer blahblahblah. Each setting is its own type of fantasy, similar but different.

D&D has more published settings than any other rpg but the overall thing was for DMs to make their own settings so their group could do whatever kind of fantasy they liked. This is you blaming D&D for your own lack of imagination 

Nailed it.