He never said that D&D was the bestest g4m3 3v4h, he said that its success demonstrated it was a "successfully-designed rpg."
I mean, the whole point of a game is that it gets played. A game no-one will play is definitely a failure in game design, a game lots of people play is definitely a success in game design. A game which is played by many people is by definition a "well-designed game", in the same sense that a car model which is driven by lots of people for lots of miles is a "well-designed car".
rpg theory is supposed to be about what people like to do in play. If what people like to do in play is stuff that D&D does, then the theory has to address that.
Having an rpg theory which does not account for why people like D&D is like having a theory of sexuality which doesn't talk about heterosexuality. It can tell you a lot, but it's missing a lot, too. I mean, you could just, as GNS does, turn around and say, "well people like D&D because they're stupid or crazy", and likewise there are some in the gay community who say that straights are all stupid or crazy. But in the end we all know that's bollocks.
Theories about stuff have to account for the mainstream of that stuff. Which has no bearing on whether you or I or Jo Bloggs reckon that mainstream stuff is actually any good.
Even my half-arsed
cheetoism accounts for the success of D&D, so surely more well-developed and detailed theories should be able to do so.
The question for Pundit is really whether he still considers D&D to be "well-designed". His comments so far have been "no"; yet it's successful. So he has to either set aside his definition "a successful game must be a well-designed game", or fiddle about with definitions of "success" or "well-designed".
any theory that suggests that D&D as a whole (in any of its versions) was a "bad" RPG is by definition in violation of the Landmarks.
My emphasis. So if Pundit says that he has a theory of gaming showing that D&D is a "bad" rpg, he's in violation of his Landmarks.
Which is not to say that he can't say D&D suxxorz, only that he can't develop a whole rpg theory saying so