I sincerely think that there's a whole generation of gamers who never had any exposure to games outside of 3e/4e, who got most of their information from online, and who genuinely have no idea that it's not the only way to play.

You add to that the generation of game designers who are mouthing off about their personal game issues in the form of snarky rules books, and it's easy to get the impression that there's only one way to run a game.  So when you get a book like Apocalypse World (which I genuinely enjoy), the assumption is that it's this whole new way to running games, when really it's just the way lots of people have played for years.  

The problem become when it's codified too tightly. I can pull ideas and tools out of it, but unlike D&D or Call of Cthulhu, you pick up a game of AW and you're tied into that particular mode. It doesn't accept deviation. That's all well and good if you're into it. If you're not, it drives you nuts.

Quote from: Haffrung;693902Dungeon World sounds like good fun, and it offers some excellent models for enemies and campaign threats. But the "ZOMG it's so innovative" stuff is comical. It just shows how many RPG mavens and forum wonks have little experience with anything from before about 1998.

The vast majority of bile spewed at early TSR D&D these days reads like it is secondhand canned stuff, being regurgitated as objective truth.

Quote from: JonWake;693903The problem become when it's codified too tightly. I can pull ideas and tools out of it, but unlike D&D or Call of Cthulhu, you pick up a game of AW and you're tied into that particular mode. It doesn't accept deviation. That's all well and good if you're into it. If you're not, it drives you nuts.

That's why I'm more likely to pull things like fronts and threats from Dungeon World into D&D than I am to play Dungeon World.

From what I have seen/heard/read, the very thing its fans like about DW - the "codified moves" - is what would turn me off.

I like my games to be open-ended without a codified list of moves available to the players. I simultaneously also like for the actions available to be within the game-world rather than meta-actions. This generally requires a refereed game with a process simulation. That's a game like OD&D.

Why refereed? What differentiates a refereed game from an un-refereed game is the open-ended nature of actions which the players of a refereed game can undertake. This hearkens back all the way to the Kriegspiels of the German Military. Consider a wargame like Axis & Allies. A&A is a simulation of World War II, but it's a simulation totally restricted by its rules. The German player cannot, e.g., maintain Germany's alliance with Russia and focus on Britain. The US player cannot research and drop the A-Bomb. The rules don't allow it. But you could imagine a refereed WWII game, run by a referee, wherein that could happen, even if rules for it weren't written in advance.

The reason games like D&D focus on being "process simulations" is two-fold. First, in a well-designed process simulation, the players don't have to know the rules very well - they can just describe what process they undertake and it will translate.

Second, a well-designed process simulation gives the GM the best means to extrapolate into any activity in a way that will be plausible given the rest of the system.  

D&D-like process simulations stop working as well when the philosophy changes to one wherein player improvisation outside the boundaries of the rules is no longer possible. At that point you're better off with a more abstract, high level simulation.

To use the computer design analogy from earlier, in a game like DW, the players are doing code in a high-level programming language. But in a game like OD&D, the players are not doing code at all, they are just giving User Requirements while the DM is converting those into code and compiling it in real-time.

Quote from: Archangel Fascist;693684As someone raised on D&D 3e, I feel abused.  

As soon as someone says something like that and really means it, it invalidates anything else they could say forever.

You decided to play a game and felt abused?

Games aren't people. They can't come to your house and kill you if you break off the relationship.  If you feel "abused" by a game, it's your own fault.

Whatevs.

Quote from: Brad;693883What I've gotten from this discussion so far: because Dungeon World explicitly says so, the players are more empowered than when playing D&D and are, in fact, roleplaying.

So all I have to do is include a rule in a D&D-like game that says the same thing and I'm done, right?

To start with. Then make the roleplaying an important element in your support products. You need to create an atmosphere around your D&D-like game saying "hey it important to play a character".

My Majestic Wilderlands supplement is riddled with stuff that a person focused on playing a character can use. Very little of it are actual mechanics.

My Scourge of the Demon Wolf is an example of how I accomplish this for an adventure.

And both books rely on classic editions.

Quote from: silva;693723I have the Moldvay edition here. Isnt it considered OD&D ?

Not.  Even.  Close.

Not.  Even.  FUCKING.  close.

Say all you like about the editions you have, dude, but you've just conclusively proven you know FUCKALL about OD&D.

Quote from: silva;693773Regardless of handwaving one or another roll, in D&D (as in most trad rpg) you still have predominately rules where hard numbers affect hard numbers. In other words, a mechanical, idiossincratic, mini-game that pushes fiction aside and makes you think predominantly in terms of cold numbers. ("Whats my damage code? And my armor class? And my saving throw? And my attack bonus? And his weapon speed? whats the enemy movement rate in feet? And his level? And whats my hit probability with the bow? Is a 2d6 sword better than a 1d10+2 one ?").

While DW/AW tend to keep players decision making more grounded on fiction. So if you want to flank the enemy, you just roll and do it - no need to translate the intention to the "mini-game" terms (whats my movement rate in feets? Whats my emcumbrance? Do the enemy deserve a aweness roll? Etc).

So, while a "Flanker" trait in D&D would sound like "once per day you may roll dex to flank an enemy. If sucessful you may ignore your emcumbrance and increase your movement rate by +5 feet for the next 2 turns", in DW such a trait would be "roll Dex. If sucessful you flank the enemy".

Notice that the first case disassemble the player intention into the mini-game idiossincratic language, while the latter simply keep it at the same language as the fiction. The result of such a system is that the players dont need to "break" the fiction for tactical decision making, thus making the process much faster (because there is o need to translate/retranslate) and preserving suspension of disbelief (since you dont need to get ou of character to take mini-gamey decisions).

Look!  It's made of straw!

Quote from: estar;693855How that different than any particular edition of D&D, GURPS or Fantasy Hero?

If a player says I walk across a gravel field in all of them they won't achieve surprise. If they say "I attempt to sneak across the gravel field" then that is resolved accordingly with a good chance of failure due to the difficulty.

The difference lies in what happens at the end. If you successfully sneak across the gravel field and achieve surprise, in DW you just do damage, you don't then roll to hit, see if you hit, and then roll damage.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;693905The vast majority of bile spewed at early TSR D&D these days reads like it is secondhand canned stuff, being regurgitated as objective truth.

And not all that original as I relate in this blog post.

From an old usenet post.

QuoteIn a possibly vain attempt to get some discussion on this group, I will now come out of the closet
publicly and say I think that Advanced Dungeons and Dragons is a very poor excuse for a game. Gary Gygax has no conception of how books are actually used in a play situation, and a very poor ability to understand hand-to-hand combat. Further, the magic system is totally counter-intuitive. Finally, the importance of magic items (as well as the ideas of class and level) depersonalizes characters, leading to a "rogue"- type environment. (Oh yes, the description of gods in terms of hit dice, etc., is totally useless to the DM, and the unarmed combat system is an atrocity; sorry to have forgotten these.) The only reason that AD&D is the most popular FRP game around is that it has a major lead on the others--unfortunately, TSR has not used this time to improve the rules, only to lengthen them.

The only game I know of that's worse than AD&D, aside from basic D&D, is Tunnels and Trolls. Both RuneQuest and The Fantasy Trip provide much better alternatives, and I am told that SPI's DragonQuest (now owned by TSR) is hard to learn but very smooth once one learns it. I strongly recommend that any AD&D player buy RuneQuest and play a few games before further glorifying their rather primitive game.

I suppose I should be afraid to sign my name,
Tim Maroney (unc!tim)

Quote from: silva;693773So, while a "Flanker" trait in D&D would sound like "once per day you may roll dex to flank an enemy. If sucessful you may ignore your emcumbrance and increase your movement rate by +5 feet for the next 2 turns"

Wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

So wrong that the light from "right" will not reach it until twenty quadrillion years after the heat death of the universe.

In D&D, if there WERE a "Flanker" trait (a which what the who where now?) it would be, "My turn?  Okay, I move to the flank of the enemy."

Boom.  Done.  You've flanked him, and before D&D was taken over by stupid shits who didn't actually know how to play, everybody had a "facing" so flanking actually meant something.

If you're smart, you say "I'm going to flank him on his unshielded side," too.

Quote from: Bill;693817I am curious; was it really an intentional reaction, or just an attempt to make the older rules more logical?

I greatly prefer the pre 3E versions of dnd; just curious if the 'reaction' was planned or just happened.

Actually, as near as I can tell 3E is a reaction to the fact that D&D was not only no longer being played by wargamers, or written by wargamers, it was now being written by people who did not UNDERSTAND wargames.

For instance, "Attack of Opportunity."  Something that most wargames cover in a paragraph, Star Wars d20 needed two and a half pages for, and still did a sucky job.

Quote from: apparition13;693916The difference lies in what happens at the end. If you successfully sneak across the gravel field and achieve surprise, in DW you just do damage, you don't then roll to hit, see if you hit, and then roll damage.

So that it? Automatic hit on surprise or to be more general a good result on a action involving a non-combat skill?

Don't get me wrong I understand the appeal  but the mechanic is not that original. And can lead to its own particular weirdness.

Quote from: silva;693773While DW/AW tend to keep players decision making more grounded on fiction. So if you want to flank the enemy, you just roll and do it - no need to translate the intention to the "mini-game" terms (whats my movement rate in feets? Whats my emcumbrance? Do the enemy deserve a aweness roll? Etc).

All of which is true in OD&D and AD&D 1E.  "You don't need to know the rules, just tell me what you want to do" is, in fact, one of the MAJOR reasons the game took off like wildfire.

If you're going to make broad, sweeping statements, know what you're talking about first, or be more specific about which editions of D&D you're bitching about, cuz you're just making yourself look like a big ol' boober.

Also, most D&D players, and, in fact, the vast majority of RPGers I've met over 40 years, don't give two shits in a rain barrel about "staying in the fictional space."  They're playing a GAME.

Also also, "the story is whatever the players did."  "This is the story of some people who died young."

Quote from: Old Geezer;693919Actually, as near as I can tell 3E is a reaction to the fact that D&D was not only no longer being played by wargamers, or written by wargamers, it was now being written by people who did not UNDERSTAND wargames.

For instance, "Attack of Opportunity."  Something that most wargames cover in a paragraph, Star Wars d20 needed two and a half pages for, and still did a sucky job.

My opinion that the prime goal of 3E was character customization and more tactical detail in combat. And yes I agree that a skilled wargamer could have tightened up the combat rules of 3E.