When I first started gaming, I was still at school, and we used to run sessions of Marvel Super-Heroes, Palladium FRP, AD&D 2e and Paranoia in our lunch breaks.

If the 80s designs hadn't supported a reasonable amount of play in an hour, it's pretty likely I would never have got in to role-playing properly. So yeah, I support this design goal.

Quote from: Melan;523000Like the designers can't help but complicate the rules as a default, or present relatively simple rules in a way that looks overcomplicated.

Well, keep in mind these guys work for an almost-Fortune 500 company.  The monetary goal is to sell a fuckton of product, (which conventional wisdom says splatmill, which means crunch) the design goal is to make a game that theoretically doesn't need any of it past the basic book.

I don't envy the dance they're doing.  

I wish people would remember that Paizo is the Empire that Adventures Built.

Quote from: CRKrueger;523027Well, keep in mind these guys work for an almost-Fortune 500 company.  The monetary goal is to sell a fuckton of product, (which conventional wisdom says splatmill, which means crunch) the design goal is to make a game that theoretically doesn't need any of it past the basic book.

I don't envy the dance they're doing.  

I wish people would remember that Paizo is the Empire that Adventures Built.

I agree, but I also have been espousing a theory of simple base game design (something a bit more complicated than 0D&D, but not by much) with a matrix of 'advanced rules' about 6 wide and 2 deep.

Roleplay/meta-Social/Milieu-combat/equipment-magic-technology/urban-skills/feats.

Basically advanced rules that graft onto the basic rules engine, in a pick and choose presentation that basically just gives the GM ideas for house rules, since we all know the GMs will do that anyways.  There are a lot of ramifications but it would basically, from a big picture sense, allow D&D to avoid the 'we play this type of game instead of that type' that it fell into in the latest iteration and allow it to own both.

and then they should do the same modular approach to locale and adventure creation.

But again, my opinion.

Quote from: Grymbok;523007When I first started gaming, I was still at school, and we used to run sessions of Marvel Super-Heroes, Palladium FRP, AD&D 2e and Paranoia in our lunch breaks.

If the 80s designs hadn't supported a reasonable amount of play in an hour, it's pretty likely I would never have got in to role-playing properly. So yeah, I support this design goal.

Yup, its exactly the same with me.  We got quite a lot of play into near-daily lunch-hour games.

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Quote from: LordVreeg;522937I think aiming for the basic game unit to be an hour will limit the scope of the rules and the roleplay a little too much.

Since that isn't what Mearls wrote, I'm forced at this juncture to conclude that you're illiterate.

Thus, of course, further written communication with you regarding this topic would be pointless.

Ciao.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;523616Since that isn't what Mearls wrote, I'm forced at this juncture to conclude that you're illiterate.

Thus, of course, further written communication with you regarding this topic would be pointless.

Ciao.

Right.
Hubris blinds you, Justin.  Mearls says that he's trying to benchmark a system that makes the adventure the base unit of DM design; and one that aims for a complete adventure in an hour.  Try adding logic to your literacy; it will do wonders to your comprehension.

Meanwhile, I will mull this over. I, like others here, did play in school during hour breaks, so my point as not that this is impossible or that it can not be; my point is that I don't think creating a game when this is the base unit for game session design is the best idea.

Of course it makes sense to build that.

It is MUCH easier to create the core of a game where you can actually make characters in 10 minutes, and play for an hour or two and have a fun time doing it; and then add to that whatever might be necessary for ongoing long campaigns; than it is to create a game where character creation takes two hours and it takes you 90 minutes to run a battle encounter with three kobolds, and then try to make that work as a drop-in casual game system.

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Consider, for example, the huge number of long-term campaigns that have been run using B/E D&D.

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