From a conversation I had on another board:    

Quote[Poster pyratejohn:] It was a helluva romp in the 70s. The choices were D&D in the white box, Traveller in the black box, or if we wanted something really bizarre, EPT in the colorful box!

Quote[P.I.:] You know... it's stunning. Between them, those three games cover so much ground, everything since has been footnotes and elaborations.

And it's probably almost true. Maybe add RQ to the mix (was it around in the 70s, I mean in published form?), and that's pretty much IT.

No?

There´s still the Champions line of tradition. Point based character centered stuff is it´s own paradigm.

I'll just say that I think you're painting with a very broad brush here and leave it be.

-O

Cave paintings already had believable depictions of human groups, there really was no need for that trendy goth Night Watch painting.

The fax machine is just a waffle iron with a telephone attached! - Granpa Simpson

More seriously I agree, sort of. I think most of the changes and innovations we've seen in RPG's in the last 35 years have been fairly minor. To insiders the hobby may have transformed it's potential with Forge-influenced, indie games, but to non-hobbyists it's still a group of people sitting around a table pretending to be people they aren't with the aid of a rules system. I think the biggest changes have been more tonal than anything else.

Quote from: SosthenesCave paintings already had believable depictions of human groups, there really was no need for that trendy goth Night Watch painting.

False analogy. I'm not saying people have been playing RPGs since time immemorial. If anything, I'm saying we're in the Paleolithic 30 years after the first bison painting and all that's been added since is antelopes. On an unrelated note, what's so weird about prehistoric painting is the near or total absence of human figures.

How is point-buy a new paradigm rather than a variant of chargen? I'm not being ironic, just honestly curious.

The only way your statement can be true is if you so thoroughly genericize discussion of RPGs as to make it futile.  And I'm talking solomn in Ecclesiastes style "Everything is meaningless, there's nothing new under the sun" levels of futile.

Which is another way of me saying that's a load of utter shit.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityHow is point-buy a new paradigm rather than a variant of chargen? I'm not being ironic, just honestly curious.

No, my point was that paradigms don't matter. Those "footnotes and elaboration" are what it's about. I never understood the need to do something for novelty's sake. One reason I don't like most modern art. At least the cave painters didn't know better...

And it's probably almost true. Maybe add RQ to the mix (was it around in the 70s, I mean in published form?), and that's pretty much IT.

No?[/QUOTE]RQ was first published in 1978.  Tunnels & Trolls in 1975.  Both of these were easily more popular (or at the very least more widely known) than Empire of the Petal Throne.  And then there was Arduin in 1977. I'm sure I'm missing one or two others.

Honestly, the landscape wasn't as barren back then as you may think.  Bear in mind that people really weren't looking for diversity in their roleplaying experience, they were simply looking for roleplaying itself.  Many of the games were clearly derived from one or another, and their popularity was derived more from regional availability than from design philosophy.

As to footnotes and elaborations, I don't think that's quite true.  By the mid- to late-80s, the popularity of roleplaying games as a whole had gained enough of a customer base that people started to really experiment with themes and mechanics.  Dice pools (which might be traced to T&T), different genres, character templates -- some genuinely innovative stuff.  Really, not everything was nailed down inside the first five years or so.

!i!

QuoteRQ was first published in 1978.  Tunnels & Trolls in 1975.  Both of these were easily more popular (or at the very least more widely known) than Empire of the Petal Throne.  And then there was Arduin in 1977. I'm sure I'm missing one or two others.

Honestly, the landscape wasn't as barren back then as you may think.  Bear in mind that people really weren't looking for diversity in their roleplaying experience, they were simply looking for roleplaying itself.  Many of the games were clearly derived from one or another, and their popularity was derived more from regional availability than from design philosophy.

I think I should clarify my position.

I'm not saying the landscape was barren at all, I'm saying it was great. Even so, I'm not saying "harhar 70s games own yu0" either. For most of my gaming life I myself have played other games/versions than those three or four.

All I'm saying is, fellow gamers, when we step back here for a moment and survey the path traveled so far, well, then not a whole lot has happened since. A new mechanic here, a new subgenre there.

It just struck me that those who claim the first radically new creative push came with some of the indie games may have a point even though I may not care for the direction into which they're taking it.

Sosthenes, why don't you tell me what you do professionally, so I can mock that briefly and we can return to the more narrow subject of the thread?

Quote from: Pierce InverarityOn an unrelated note, what's so weird about prehistoric painting is the near or total absence of human figures.

If you'd ever drawn a person, you wouldn't be surprised. Unless you draw it "right" or they're a professional model, people are likely to complain ALOT. Prehistoric portraitists probably got hit in the head with heavy rocks.

On a slightly more on-topic note, why does stuff need to be new? If the old stuff rocks about as hard as an RPG can rock, won't differentiating from that... cause your game to lose something, I guess? I dunno.

Quote from: beejazzIf you'd ever drawn a person, you wouldn't be surprised. Unless you draw it "right" or they're a professional model, people are likely to complain ALOT. Prehistoric portraitists probably got hit in the head with heavy rocks.

Riiiiight...

beejazz, I'm an art historian. It's what I do. Your solution to the riddle is... bolder than I dare to be.

Don't mind me; I'm just lamenting personal experience on the matter. The fetus in my avi thought the picture looked nothing like him... go figure.

You know, if you ask me, everything since Cops & Robbers and Cowboys & Indians is just footnotes and elaborations.

On a more serious note, you're just engaging in a mental exercise of line-drawing.  Nothing's keeping you from drawing the line at Cops & Robbers (a game of let's pretend that's trivially not around a table or using dice) or war-gaming.  The white box is just elaborations on Chainmail, after all...

I'll argue that the line you've drawn for those three games is an arbitrary one.  I'd also note that you haven't provided a functional definition for "footnotes and elaborations", and that there are many broad elements of game design (point-buy, universal mechanics, dice pools, etc.) which represent revolutions in their own right and which are trivialized if referred to as a "footnote".

-O

I realize it's tough to decide when to call some mechanic or setting element a new paradigm or just a variation.

That doesn't mean that lines can't be drawn or that the activity of drawing lines in general is unreal or reductive. Chainmail was a miniatures rules set with a special section on fantasy units. Brown/white box was an RPG.

So, between them, what did the boxes provide?

Chargen: classes and levels / skill-based lifepaths
Unified task resolution (Travellers' Digest article for CT)
Game world: encyclopedic / episodic
Genres: Scifi, fantasy, mix thereof plus pseudohistorical (EPT)
Playstyles: powergaming, hyperimmersive, exploratory
Adventure types: puzzle solving, kill things take stuff, purely social interaction, mix thereof

I mean, that's something. I'm perfectly willing to add another game or two to the list, and/or to push the cut-off date forward a couple of years. That's not my point. My point is: the general framework was established in the first few years, and since then--for the past twenty years at least--not a whole lot was added. Possibly excluding some indie games... and whatever else is yet to come.

I asked Sett about point-buy, and now I'm asking about dice pools: what exactly do these add that significantly changes the framework?