Quote from: Ian AbsentiaYou mis-stated yourself and you got pantsed.  You just couldn't stand it from me. That's too bad, John.  Take your licks and stop being a twat about it.

Believe whatever you want.  Obviously you think you know me better than I know myself.

Quote from: Ian AbsentiaBeyond this, the analogy wears thin.

Analogies are rarely perfect but you can either try to work with them and understand what the person is trying to say through them or you can fight them and focus on where the analogy doesn't quite fit and miss what the other person is trying to say.  Nitpicking the way a person words an analogy helps further the conversation how, exactly?

Quote from: Ian AbsentiaKyle has a point with his MARP games, games that do seem to be qualitatively "better" than other games on the market, and are frequently recognised as such, but that don't gain significant popularity or wide-spread play.  Now, roping that inconvenient analogy back into things, they may have a seminal influence on the design of later games -- an adaptive trait is passed on, even if the game it came from eventually failed.

You seem to think I have a definition of "superior" and "inferior", with respect to role-playing games (and evolution), that I don't have.  The reason why Kyle has a point with MARP is that the definitions of "superior" and "inferior" that some people do use is questionable.

Quote from: Ian AbsentiaSo...what does all this have to do with D&D?

The question was whether 4E is really D&D or not.  I felt it would be useful to look at how scientists classify animals and decide that an ant is in the same order as a bee but they are not the same species.  How do we decide when a new edition is essentially the same game or not?  Instead, we got side-tracked on nit-picking about my wording of an analogy.

Quote from: JimLotFPIs this true, really? OD&D seems like it was cooked up in a lab by madmen who really weren't giving much thought to the outside world.

And the language in the original AD&D rulebooks seems to indicate that the hardcovers were meant to resist what people all over the place were doing to D&D (not that it worked, haha)...

The initial audience was Gary Gygax's collection of wargaming buddies in southern Wisconsin. The rants found in sections of the AD&D seem to be an overreaction based on the sentiment of  "Look guys this is how I run and play this game"

Certainly the initial edition wasn't designed for a general audience of the kind late 80's TSR or WoTC would understand it. But it was designed for an audience. Remember D&D was born in a wargamer culture and in particular the wargamer culture of the upper midwest. Gary and Dave built a game to appeal to themselves and their friends. One that happened to have enough elements and flexibility to appeal to a whole lot of other people.

Quote from: Kyle AaronAbyssal Maw - Uncle Ronny popularised his phrase "fantasy heartbreaker". I want to popularise my phrase, the MARP game. Much Admired, Rarely-Played.

HeroQuest, OSRIC, Burning Empires, Sorcerer, AD&D1e, Jorune, Classic Traveller...

They're all MARPs. Lots of people talk about how awesome they are, but sweet fuck all people play them. Whole mailing lists spend quite literally years discussing the finer points of the games, building up house rules for them... but they don't play them.

Older games still may work as well as they always do, things have changed over the years and generally for the better. In general modern role-playing books are better written and better organized. Note this is different than being a better game. There are exceptions of course.

This weekend I picked up a set of the AD&D 1st Ed core books in the original covers (I had only the newer covers) just for old time sake I tried making up a character. Throughout the process I was reminded of some of the reasons why I found later editions of D&D and GURPS so appealing. I.e. a lot less page flipping. I found myself wishing that I had my OSRIC pdf with me to make things easier.

For many other players they don't know about OSRIC or only have access to the original books. Hence they are stuck with the original presentation in order to run a game.

Quote from: estarThe initial audience was Gary Gygax's collection of wargaming buddies in southern Wisconsin. The rants found in sections of the AD&D seem to be an overreaction based on the sentiment of  "Look guys this is how I run and play this game"

Certainly the initial edition wasn't designed for a general audience of the kind late 80's TSR or WoTC would understand it. But it was designed for an audience. Remember D&D was born in a wargamer culture and in particular the wargamer culture of the upper midwest. Gary and Dave built a game to appeal to themselves and their friends. One that happened to have enough elements and flexibility to appeal to a whole lot of other people.

This is true and there's like several developments that spun off from this:

* You had the wargamer culture- which came from military and research hobbyism

* You had an initial commercialization of that. Commercialization masks some of the key features of the original culture.

* ...followed by being picked up by a *youth* culture. That picked it up in the late 70s/early 80s.

* at this point is where the wargamer and youth culture coexist for a period.

* that eventually matures into a true gamer culture sometime during the 1990s. True gamer culture is large enough and diverse enough that people can join it, and leave it, and it remains the same.

* but portions of gamer culture continue to age, and some members of which declare themselves to be grognards. But scratch the surface and you find these guys aren't quite as old as the original wargamer culture at all. They're actually just members of that early youth culture. The real grognards are dying off.. by actually dying. They are that old.

* Some of the original youth culture (now quite old in some cases) is going back and rediscovering some of the old artifacts of the wargamer culture..It's buried under the commercialization way back in step 2! And sometimes the commercialization itself is a feature of what can be discovered. We suddenly see stuff we didn't appreciate early on. (This is definitely me).  

This can lead to one of two reactions:

Each person self-asseses and comes up with (roughly) one of these statements:

1) "I look at what is going on NOW and I cannot identify with it. I am from an earlier age."

2) "I look at what is going on NOW and it fits right in. What is all the shouting about?"

Quote from: Kyle AaronI want to popularise my phrase, the MARP game. Much Admired, Rarely-Played.

Awesome! It's got everything GNS has an more!

* Invented Jargon
* Useable as an insult
* GNS was "Games we like", "Games we don't like" and "Games we don't understand" -- this narrows that down to "Games we like" and "Games we don't like"
* No use in helping design new games
* No use in enjoying the game you and your group is already playing
* Completely ambiguous: "Well, around here that's a MARP!"
* The polar opposite of "Cheetoism" -- Who cares what your group likes, and what your group is playing -- it's what's selling the most copies in FLGSs worldwide that counts!

Forward to Adventure! -- MARP
Dogs in the Vineyard -- MARP
Jeff Rient's OD&D Game -- MARP
Whatever you're playing that Kyle isn't -- MARP

Let's make even more acronyms:
Oopgiloo -- Out Of Print Game I'd Like to Own Ok?!
Gilp -- Game I'd Like to... Play.

"Hey, look it's a copy of Brown Box D&D!  Oopgiloo! Oopgiloo!"
"Why? That game's a MARP! Marp! Marp! Marp!"
"I don't know guys, I think it's a Gilp. Gilp! Gilp! Gilp!"

...

Kyle... please stop.  Why do we need this? :confused:

Quote from: StuartOopgiloo -- Out Of Print Game I'd Like to Own Ok?!

I'm going to use this.

Quote from: JimLotFPI'm going to use this.

Make sure you bend at the knees, jump up and down, and wave both arms above your head. :haw:

Wow.  I was offline last night.  This thread turned out to be a bigger cluster than I had anticipated when I encouraged James to start it.  James, please don't let the nabobs here discourage you from completing your essay!  Some of us are patiently listening to the signal through the noise.

Question for the peanut gallery: Suppose Wizards put a big "D&D" stamp on a bar of soap and declared "There it is!  This is the new D&D!"  Would anyone still feel honor boound to remind us that Wizards legally owns the trademark and can do whatever they want with it?  Or would they finally get the point that some of us are more interested in discussing the artistic/philosphical/moral dimensions of the question "What is D&D"?

Yes, I am throwing fuel on the fire while simultaneously holding out hope for some productive discussion here.  I am large, I contain multitudes.

... read OP, moved on to my own rambling

I'm in the sobering situation of having been on both sides of the fence on this one.

On one hand, I roll my eyes at asswipes from Dragonsfoot who go on with BS like refusing to call D&D 3e "D&D", calling it "D20 Fantasy" instead.

On the other hand, what I see in 4e does not seem like D&D to me. It does not maintain many conventions and tropes that have existed and grown in the game since 1e, up to and including 3e.

I could be the next generation of asshat. But I like to think of myself as a more rational person that the Dragonsfoot asshat. In this, I have come to the sobering realization that when one makes the determination of whether or not something "is D&D", there are two modes of thought:
1) D&D as a trademark
2) D&D as a personal perception of what constitutes D&D.

Attempts to entertain some objective middle ground that calls the "current edition of D&D" "not D&D" without conflating it with some personal definition of what constitutes D&D is, well, indefensible. So admit it's personal and move on.

Caesar, you are of course absolutely right.  Much of what I hear about the new edition does not appeal to me.  If it turns out as I expect other people will play it, love it, and no doubt wonder what the hell is wrong me.  No hard feelings.  I asked James to start this thread, not because I expect him to provide us with any universal truths, but because I want to hear his opinion.  Apparently, even the introduction to his opinion is so inflammatory that people are reacting... strongly.

Quote from: John MorrowThe question was whether 4E is really D&D or not.  I felt it would be useful to look at how scientists classify animals and decide that an ant is in the same order as a bee but they are not the same species.  How do we decide wh en a new edition is essentially the same game or not?

Well, if we locked OD&D in a room with D&D 4e, and got them to mate, would they produce fertile offspring?

I think we all can agree that OD&D and 4e are not going to be the same games. They won't play the same, and they won't have the same rules. I mean, a game is a game, and if you have two games side by side with different rules, they are not the same. I don't see any debate in that. IMO 3.x wasn't the same game as OD&D.

The real question is whether aesthetically they are so different, and again I'd say yes. If you locked OD&D and D&D 4e in a room, not only could they not produce fertile offspring, but they probably wouldn't mate in the first place because they are so removed from each other that they wouldn't even recognize each other as viable mates.

Having said all of that, I don't think it matters one bit to people who like 3x and are eager for 4.0. There is definitely a generation gap here. I think what frustrates some of us is that what makes a game "evolutionarily successful" isn't just dependent on the cultural climate (even though that is a big thing) but it is also dependent on the company marketing it.

In other words, a new edition needs to come not just when your target audience has changed, but also when you've sold about all the books that is economically feasible, and it is time to do a reboot to sell all those core books and Forgotten Realms splat books all over again, but retooled to the new edition. About that time the company marketing such a game needs to get the rhetoric going that the earlier version is flawed, and that the next logical evolutionary step is a "better" game. Why do they use that method? Because our culture has a misconception about what evolution is (as evidenced earlier in this thread) and it is something people understand (wrongly). I mean, technology changes all the time right? My Mp3 player keeps getting better, so why not D&D?

Quote from: jrientsQuestion for the peanut gallery: Suppose Wizards put a big "D&D" stamp on a bar of soap and declared "There it is!  This is the new D&D!"

Or at least the latest recommended playing aid. :haw:

!i!

Quote from: Caesar SlaadSo admit it's personal and move on.

Our perceptions of D&D are personal, but they aren't absolutely unique. There are sub-groups of players whose personal preferences about play style and content are similar enough that they recognize one another and can say "that guy plays like me, but that guy doesn't."

I think it's useful to identify these sub-groups of play styles, and how they tie in to the various iterations of D&D.

For instance, my group's playstyle has the following characteristics:

• Rules light
• Lots of GM fiat
• Non-heroic
• Lethal
• Dungeon-centric

There are some D&D rulesets that support my style of game better than others. However, none suit it perfectly. That's why I'm house-ruling my own system to incorporate elements of several versions of D&D.

Still, I do think it's worthwhile to find out what James and others feel is essential to D&D, and I think using OD&D as the point of departure can show us how the game evolved and where some of us grew more or less compatible to the various editions.

Quote from: Goblinoid GamesWell, if we locked OD&D in a room with D&D 4e, and got them to mate, would they produce fertile offspring?

I think we all can agree that OD&D and 4e are not going to be the same games. They won't play the same, and they won't have the same rules. I mean, a game is a game, and if you have two games side by side with different rules, they are not the same. I don't see any debate in that. IMO 3.x wasn't the same game as OD&D.

The real question is whether aesthetically they are so different, and again I'd say yes. If you locked OD&D and D&D 4e in a room, not only could they not produce fertile offspring, but they probably wouldn't mate in the first place because they are so removed from each other that they wouldn't even recognize each other as viable mates.

Having said all of that, I don't think it matters one bit to people who like 3x and are eager for 4.0. There is definitely a generation gap here. I think what frustrates some of us is that what makes a game "evolutionarily successful" isn't just dependent on the cultural climate (even though that is a big thing) but it is also dependent on the company marketing it.

In other words, a new edition needs to come not just when your target audience has changed, but also when you've sold about all the books that is economically feasible, and it is time to do a reboot to sell all those core books and Forgotten Realms splat books all over again, but retooled to the new edition. About that time the company marketing such a game needs to get the rhetoric going that the earlier version is flawed, and that the next logical evolutionary step is a "better" game. Why do they use that method? Because our culture has a misconception about what evolution is (as evidenced earlier in this thread) and it is something people understand (wrongly). I mean, technology changes all the time right? My Mp3 player keeps getting better, so why not D&D?

Well said.

Quote from: James MaliszewskiIn that case, I shall move on.

I would. But because you design games. Designers creating these sorts of threads about rival products can look...curious from the outside.

Seanchai