Quote from: Peregrin;467623Textually, yes.  But OD&D can be played as a game at the table, it just requires some foreknowledge and implementation of procedures by the GM, not all of which are made clear by the text, some even going unmentioned.  Which is why you ended up with a bajillion different versions of OD&D being played all over the country, why you ended up with Tunnels & Trolls and Runequest, and why TSR finally decided to create AD&D to "standardize" play.

Remember, we're talking about the game it took Tim Kask two weeks of solid reading to "figure out", even with the advantage of having played it.

What I see is that the context is different, that OD&D was basically created with a specific audience in mind, 1970s miniature wargamers with a specific knowledge of the Chainmail rules, which in itself implies that the referee takes charge of the game and treats the rules as the base from which to rule fairly, rather than the entirety of the game confined within the boundaries of the text and box.

This is, by the way, a trait that role playing games share with wargames precisely because of this historical connection, that a TRPG is not, ever, a finished product right out of the box. That it is not a guide on how to use a toaster or the sum of all possible rules one plays by. Nor should it ever be.

The D&D audience evolved. The game itself saw an evolution via its supplements. AD&D represented the compilation of all the scattered material in a single corpus of rules with expensions, suggestions, etc. which in fact created a specific, different, game experience IMO, "Gygax's expended D&D game" as it were. In parallel, Holmes was basically restating the basics of the game for the changing audience of the game, including children who had never seen or played a wargame, let alone Chainmail, in their lives.

As for OD&D being played in a zillion different ways all over the country, some would actually call it a feature that was a lucky first strike for role playing games and jump started the entire hobby, instead of some sort of conceptual flaw according to some PhD in Bat Penises.

It's all a question of context.

There are bits and pieces of truth in what you say (the needs to standardize what D&D was and wasn't, to define the game through the AD&D corpus of rules for TSR, I believe), but you're taking this in a direction that is really puzzling.

Quote from: Peregrin;467607Can there ever be any hard evidence in a hobby that generally concerns itself with fictional events that we envision in our head?  I mean, prettymuch all of our experiences are subjective, and you've got multiple layers of subjectivity.  Not to mention that this hobby in particular has a shitton of baggage and is extremely insular.

There's hard evidence in psychology (without using brain scans and whatnot), someone just has to crack the nut.  I'm used to dealing with evidence from dead people, so I don't know how to gather this kind of data...but I know it can be done.

QuoteAs for OD&D being played in a zillion different ways all over the country, some would actually call it a feature that was a lucky first strike for role playing games and jump started the entire hobby, instead of some sort of conceptual flaw according to some PhD in Bat Penises.

It's all a question of context.

I don't think Edwards would disagree about that being a lucky strike, I think his concern was mostly with the way those bajillion other methods for play got shoved out of the way by the juggernaut of AD&D and "mainstream" games that attempted to standardize gaming paradigms.  A lot of the stuff the Forge does isn't really all that new or groundbreaking, it's just that it was lost when diversity was tossed under the rug when the hobby moved towards big-name companies with standardized rulesets and "official" supplements rather than focusing on hobbyist efforts.

Anyway, my saying that OD&D isn't a "game" isn't meant to down it, or other systems, at all, it's just a neutral statement.  I think that OD&D, as the "non-game" Gygax once called it, is in some ways far more powerful than any of the games that came out for decades after, simply because it was an idea they had, distilled down to its essence because of economical constraints, and then unleashed onto an unsuspecting hobbyist market.  Giving people that idea and saying "use this", with the expectation that they'd be running organic home-campaigns, IMO leads to more interesting things than handing someone a set of hardback books and saying "learn this".  

The problem comes about when you're trying to sell this thing to people who don't know what to do with it (or it's just ending up in their hands), and these people are approaching it with the expectation that you can run the game out of the book without layering your own procedures of play on top of it.

Guys with a wargaming background, or who really engage with the text?  No problem.  They're able to fill in the gaps within the spirit of the rules and run great games.  People who are more casual about it, or who aren't already gamers?  Not so much.  Hello Tracy Hickman and the horrible GM as Storyteller trend that would taint the hobby for years to come.  If the spirit of the rules had been more clearly communicated in a way regular folk could understand --discussions of actual play and social/table issues -- rather than the minutiae, perhaps it could've been avoided.

Quote from: joewolzThere's hard evidence in psychology (without using brain scans and whatnot), someone just has to crack the nut. I'm used to dealing with evidence from dead people, so I don't know how to gather this kind of data...but I know it can be done.

I can see behavioral psych being used because of its practical applications, but last time I saw it brought up, TTRPGers got all up in arms about it because they feel it oversimplifies things compared to cognitive stuff.

Quote from: Peregrin;467617It's an attempt.  OD&D's faults lie more with never actually describing the procedures of play (hence AD&D and Basic as attempts to rectify this).

... have you ever actually read the OD&D rulebooks?

They arguably do a better job of laying out a specific procedure of play than any edition of D&D since 1991 has achieved.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;467644... have you ever actually read the OD&D rulebooks?

They arguably do a better job of laying out a specific procedure of play than any edition of D&D since 1991 has achieved.

I've read them, yeah, but I did so with the experience I've already had with RPGs.  Like I said upthread, it took Tim Kask two weeks to figure out the game even after playing once or twice under an experienced DM and communicating with Gygax directly.  The procedure is there if you know how to muddle through the text, ans is arguably more visible because there's less cruft around it, but it was made much clearer in Basic.  Even then, it still requires a fair bit of dissecting for the non-gamer, especially when compared with something like the '79 edition of T&T.

Discussing post-1e/Basic D&D and its identity crisis would require another thread, though.

To be honest, the discussion around GNS has had some value in articulating certain techniques and concepts that I hadn't completely worked out on my own, or seen fully developed elsewhere. E.g., I think some of the discussions and essays helped clarify for me the interest of the moral dimension of player-character decisions, as opposed to purely tactical or instrumental decisions.

But the main theoretical innovation of GNS was the idea of coherence under the three categories. Most everything else was cribbed from elsewhere, while coherence in play and coherence in design was new--and pretty much rubbish as a general theory.

Quote from: Peregrin;467633I think that OD&D, as the "non-game" Gygax once called it,

I am always in awe seeing how many Gygax preachers manage to conveniently forget the many contradictory things the guy said.

QuoteGiving people that idea and saying "use this", with the expectation that they'd be running organic home-campaigns, IMO leads to more interesting things than handing someone a set of hardback books and saying "learn this".

I had the same feeling with RQ3.

Quote from: Imperator;467660I am always in awe seeing how many Gygax preachers manage to conveniently forget the many contradictory things the guy said.

I didn't invoke Gygax because of the infallibility of his word, I invoked him to reiterate the fact that these ideas are not new and you don't have to be crazy to think them.  Obviously his own opinion changed quite a bit, but the notion of OD&D not being a full-fledged "game" didn't come from nowhere or Crazytown.

Quote from: Peregrin;467663I didn't invoke Gygax because of the infallibility of his word, I invoked him to reiterate the fact that these ideas are not new and you don't have to be crazy to think them.  Obviously his own opinion changed quite a bit, but the notion of OD&D not being a full-fledged "game" didn't come from nowhere or Crazytown.

Sorry for not being clear. I was not talking about you, but pointing the fact that every Gygax evangelist I've seen always ignores something the old man said that clashes frontally with his ideology of the day.

Quote from: Peregrin;467663I didn't invoke Gygax because of the infallibility of his word, I invoked him to reiterate the fact that these ideas are not new and you don't have to be crazy to think them.  Obviously his own opinion changed quite a bit, but the notion of OD&D not being a full-fledged "game" didn't come from nowhere or Crazytown.

Gygax was trying to articulate ways in which RPGs are different from traditional board games.

You are trying to articulate how D&D isn't an RPG.

Quote from: Peregrin;467663I didn't invoke Gygax because of the infallibility of his word, I invoked him to reiterate the fact that these ideas are not new and you don't have to be crazy to think them.  Obviously his own opinion changed quite a bit, but the notion of OD&D not being a full-fledged "game" didn't come from nowhere or Crazytown.

I think gygax's point wasn't that d&d was less than a regular game, but that it was more. The reason i play rpgs and not Sorry is because rpgs are full of so many more possibilities. I think some rpgs can be more focused than others (and if you like more focus that is great-i run sessions like that once in a while) but my experience is most people are attracted to the broadnesd of the game. It is great that you have a game which can focus on tactics, exploration, investigation, role play etc sometimes all in the same session. I dont consider such a game incoherent. For me that is a pretty rich game.

Quote from: pawsplay;467740Gygax was trying to articulate ways in which RPGs are different from traditional board games.

You are trying to articulate how D&D isn't an RPG.

How one specific version of the text is not a game by one specific standardized definition, not that it's not an "RPG" in the historical context of the term.  I'm saying that applying the term "game" to a toolkit can be misleading in some contexts and cause problems for people expecting it to be a complete set of instructions on how to play.

In otherwords, I'm saying exactly what Gygax is saying, except I don't extend the definition of game as broadly as he does.

Holy Christ, dude.

Quote from: BedrockBrendanI think gygax's point wasn't that d&d was less than a regular game, but that it was more. The reason i play rpgs and not Sorry is because rpgs are full of so many more possibilities. I think some rpgs can be more focused than others (and if you like more focus that is great-i run sessions like that once in a while) but my experience is most people are attracted to the broadnesd of the game. It is great that you have a game which can focus on tactics, exploration, investigation, role play etc sometimes all in the same session. I dont consider such a game incoherent. For me that is a pretty rich game.

That was not Gygax' point at all.  And not my point.  You can do all of those things in a "focused" game, too.  I consider Basic D&D to be a relatively focused game.  Maybe someone missed the part where I said that.

This is why I wanted to bow out of the discussion, because without everyone having read (or being familiar with) the content of the Forge discussions, let alone the previous threads on this very site, the discussion itself becomes "incoherent."

I have read their essays. But i think fundamentally what they are talking about is focus and they choose to recognize three categories of focus. I would argue it goes well beyond those three. That you could just as easily focus on rp, immersion, investigation, etc. It is all where you put the lense and how useful that lens is. For me, the forge lens just isnt that useful for my games. One thing to keep in mind, just because people dont adopt edward's vocabulary and just because they insist on using edward's terms as they are commonly used rather than as he would have us use them doesn't mean people are ignorant of his arguments.

If edward's essays are useful in your games i say stick with it. Where i think people are getting irked is you are using a very particular definition of game and doing so to make the point that people who play differently than you aren't playing games at all. Personally it doesn't bother me that you like this stuff.

QuoteIf edward's essays are useful in your games i say stick with it. Where i think people are getting irked is you are using a very particular definition of game and doing so to make the point that people who play differently than you aren't playing games at all.

Please re-read what I wrote, that's not what I'm saying at all.

Quote from: Peregrin;467753Please re-read what I wrote, that's not what I'm saying at all.

If you want to clarify your position, please feel free. It is possible i am misinterpreting your position (and it is an 11 page thread).But re-reading your statement you seem to be saying what i suggest. My impression is you are saying rpgs that aren't focused on a particular goal arent real games.