Champions is hip?

QuoteI really doubt that Edwards would say "All good games are Champions/RQ related" given the "Brain damage" and "child abuse" comments as well as the fact that none of his games are anything like Runequest or champions.

He actually said so on the interview. Wait a moment, I'll dig it up.

QuoteChampions is hip?

In the eyes of the propaganda-spreaders, it is.

Quote from: SettembriniIn the eyes of the propaganda-spreaders, it is.

Who are these people spreading the propaganda that Champions is hip? Ron certainly isn't one- Champions is essentially the past for him, isn't it?- which is by definition not hip.

And not even HERO grognards would claim that, because whatever else HERO is, it certainly isn't hip. Early Champions probably was, because it was ground-breaking, and because it delivered something that you couldn't get anywhere else if that was what you wanted. But those days are long gone, as HERO fans know.

I think "hip" is not really a good choice of words on Settembrini's part.

Anyways, something that never seems to stop being hip with the Swine is to put down D20, and that's what the "D&D was directly influenced by X" argument amounts to.

RPGPundit

How does it put down D20 to suggest that D&D was influenced by Runequest?

But when talking about gaming history, it's cooler and hip for some people to claim ancestry to Champions instead of D&D.
I keep encountering people online, who keep bragging how their formative game was something different from D&D.
It's a subversive thing to claim that RC and D&D 3.5 are outcrops of something else than D&D. It's retrofitting their success and quality to be just a ripoff of the historical "kool kids game". And the textual artifacts do not support this in any way.
RC is compilated BD&D, which is compilated OD&D, 3.x is RC turned to twelve. There is no RQ or Champions or Fantasy Trip in there.

Challenge: I cited from the RC to show, how much 3.x stuff was already there in BD&D.
Show me the RC passage that is supposed to be an outcrop of RQ, Champions or whathevu.

I've never encountered this phenomenon but it does make sense that it would exist.  For example, all the players that I have initiated (bar the first group) have yet to play D&D.  That doesn't mean that they're cool, it just means that they arrived in the hobby within a certain time frame (i.e. largely after the Balkanisation of the hobby into grognards and multi-system deletantes).

Am I less cool because I started out playing D&D?

Honestly, I have no idea where the venom is coming from here.  Some people start by playing some games, others start by playing others.  What's the problem?

QuoteHonestly, I have no idea where the venom is coming from here. Some people start by playing some games, others start by playing others. What's the problem?

That's how I see it too. But the "gaming hipster" is around and will spit his poison.

Where? who?

Quote from: SettembriniYou too, went overboard here.

I'm not going to cop to that, no.

QuoteRQ and Champions were hugely influential, and rightly so. But not for D&D. Period. Everything else is revisionist history. Champions for example leads directly to GURPS and WoD. But those games are character centered superhero extravaganzas. For those point buy onanistic navel-gazing games, Champions is truly the icebreaker and champion.

Your rhetoric aside, I already said I might be wrong about the influence of RQ/Champions on the development of D&D. And all I did in any case was suggest that some of the things you liked about RC D&D were seen first in RQ/Champions. And I already know I was wrong about RQ, in that RQ wasn't the first skills-based rpg. It still might've been influential on the RC though.

QuoteTraveller, GDW or FGU made vastly different games along other lines of tradition, totally seperated from the Champions mindset.

Anybody with an RC at hand will see, that if any non-D&D influence can be seen, than it's traveller. I'm not saying that this is what actually happened. But the text inside the RC, the mindset of "roll and live with the result", the kingdom and fief generation, the magic construction rules, the construct construction rules are way more in the line of the "wargame/universe simulation" approach found in Traveller.

Yes, GDW and FGU games were different lines of tradition from Champions because both companies predate Champions by several years, and both company's trademark rpg products were released before or at the same time as Champions.

And you might well be right about the Traveller thing, except, well:

• that mindset thing is hardly unique to Traveller, or even D&D; and it certainly wasn't absent from RQ or Champions, especially when you think about RQ's deadly fumbles/criticals combat system, or Champions' heavily tactical combat system clearly derived from wargames
  
• magic construction rules?- hmm, again you're straying onto territory where Champions' power-construction system is almost surely the trailblazer
  
• construct construction rules?- perhaps as above too, although I guess early Traveller might've had spaceship construction rules; it's just so long ago that I can't remember.

QuoteChampions/RQ is just a codeword for modern-hip-and cool, for those who actually think those games are. The RC is indeed clearly laid out, but with vastly different aims and goals. It's totally laughable to trace anything in it back to a whole different tradition of games.

Laugh all you want Settembrini, but until you step back from your shrill  anti-Edwards rhetoric and actually address people's real points, you have proved nothing. (And what makes you think that Edwards is the authoritative voice on Champions in any case?) I feel this is important because I think you are in danger of reading Edwards' peculiar interests back into Champions and somehow assuming that Champions is a proto-Forge game. It fucking isn't. Far, far more people have played this game in a way you would recognise with your D&D love than Forgists would with their shite. Hence Edwards' remarks about so many different kinds of Champions (ie. not his), I guess.

I mean, it's clear that the single biggest and most important influence on the RC was D&D. I don't think anyone has suggested otherwise. But the points being made are about the influence of other games on what made the RC distinct from the D&D that went before. I made a few suggestions about specific mechanics that you had mentioned. My point was not to suggest that these had somehow revolutionised D&D, to make D&D beholden to what you obviously regard as alien traditions (perhaps an overreaction to Edwards' line I'm thinking). Rather it was to suggest sources of the stuff that D&D picked up on its way forward from its beginnings. That's all. Cheers.

Quote from: RPGPunditI think "hip" is not really a good choice of words on Settembrini's part.

Anyways, something that never seems to stop being hip with the Swine is to put down D20, and that's what the "D&D was directly influenced by X" argument amounts to.

RPGPundit

Aw fuck the Swine and your obsession with them pundit. Are we supposed to be looking over our shoulders and worrying about what the Swine might be thinking, here of all places? Because that's what your argument amounts to: you're saying that to suggest that later iterations of D&D were influenced by games that came after D&D/AD&D is a putdown of d20 because that's what the Swine say, so we can't say it either. That's shite. And where're the putdowns here anyway?

The D&D article was talking about D&D in the 1970s on the West Coast or wherever it was.  It was talking about how originally, not now and not even in the 1980s but originally, there was no such thing as D&D as each group played a different rules variant.  He then goes on to talk about how that evolved into the game we know now.

By all means critique the article, but at least critique it for what it says.  Ron Edwards didn't say there is no such game as DnD, a quick trip to the gamestore would have shown that as false, what he said was that at the time the game started there was no single identifiable game that was DnD but rather a constellation of homebrewed campaigns with much in common.

As for which games people started with, it's demographics and nothing more.  If you started in the 1970s or 1980s it was probably DnD though Champions in the 1980s was pretty big, if in the 1990s it might well have been Vampire.  Some started with other games like Traveller or Runequest, I know some who started with Gurps, there isn't a value judgement attached to this stuff.  I started with DnD and I think ADnD is a miserable mess of a game with nothing to recommend it and that 3e/3.5e is way too complex to be anything I would call fun.  What of it?  Would my opinion be somehow less valid if I hadn't started out playing DnD?

Two other points.

One.  The Rules Cyclopedia although IMO the best iteration of DnD was a cul de sac.  It's long out of print and ADnD, IMO a vastly inferior ruleset, supplanted it.  The Cyclopedia is not a direct ancestor of anything, it died childless.

Two.  I can't say generally which games influenced 3e, I wasn't there, some think Runequest, many thought Rolemaster, maybe a bit of all of them who knows?  But I do know one game that influenced it, Ars Magica.  Where do you think the stat modifier rules came from?

Anyway, what of it?  It's hardly knocking a game to say that it drew on illustrious predecessors, and Runequest, Champions, Rolemaster, Ars Magica, whichever of them might have had an influence these are hardly titles to be ashamed of.