HERESY THREAD: Sacred cows that you think D&D would be better without.

[The Traveller]

None of you people engaging in this want to play D&D.

I solve this problem by not engaging.

[mcbobbo]

My number one pick - deities.

I have never ever seen them implemented in a remotely consistent way, and have long glossed over them.

I think clerics and the like would be better off serving their alignment, with particular gods being paragons of that alignment.

[Exploderwizard]

My number one pick - deities.

I have never ever seen them implemented in a remotely consistent way, and have long glossed over them.

I think clerics and the like would be better off serving their alignment, with particular gods being paragons of that alignment.

Thats how B/X did it. You could add whatever deities you wanted but the rulebook came with simple law/neutrality/chaos.

[Gronan of Simmerya]

I solve this problem by not engaging.

I'm still trying to figure out what the hell this brown woodgrain box with three little booklets is.

[TristramEvans]

Well, I don't anyhow.  But I do want people to buy and play D&D.  I think the industry on the whole desperately needs a popular and accessible version of D&D on the market.  A better game and a better product might be conceived and implemented to replace it but do you know how hard it is to build a strong product identity to overthrow an established one.

I might not like it, but we need D&D and we need it to be strong and accessible to new players.

My thoughts on the matter as well.

[Exploderwizard]

Well, I don't anyhow.  But I do want people to buy and play D&D.  I think the industry on the whole desperately needs a popular and accessible version of D&D on the market.  A better game and a better product might be conceived and implemented to replace it but do you know how hard it is to build a strong product identity to overthrow an established one.

I might not like it, but we need D&D and we need it to be strong and accessible to new players.

A D&D that is strong and accessible but no longer D&D is pointless.

It would be like saying every game with a spaceship in it is Star Wars, the brand would lose any real identity it has.

[thedungeondelver]

Well, I don't anyhow.  But I do want people to buy and play D&D.

No, you want people to buy A game on which is pinned the name D&D.  But not D&D.

Everytime one of these "lEtS sLAuGhTEr T3h d&D saCrED cOWs!!!!!!111oneoneeleven" threads comes up it's the same old song and dance:

"Get rid of everything that makes D&D have the D&D framework, and we're golden!"

It just doesn't work that way.

Fiat buying Chevy and selling Fiats with Corvette logos on them doesn't magically make Fiats into Corvettes.

[thedungeondelver]

I might not like it, but we need D&D and we need it to be strong and accessible to new players.

D&D did this from 1974 until 1989, in manifold forms.

AD&D was huge.  Basic was huge.  OD&D was huge*.

Don't say "Yeah but it's got phone/internet/tablets to compete with!" D&D lived with computer games fairly early on.  Pong systems hit right around the time D&D did.  The Atari 2600, Intellivision, 8-bit home systems and on and on all rolled in and while they were doing it D&D got bigger and bigger, and lived on those systems as well.  From Cloudy Mountain all the way to Pool of Radiance and beyond.

The problem doesn't lie with D&D, the problem lies with the people who own D&D.  An evergreen "basic" entry product like the '80/'81 Basic/Expert sets by Tom Moldvay are what's needed.  Period.  Sprawl out the "This is advanced, this is basic" paradigm again - the two products lived side by side and happily so.  When I interviewed Gary Gygax many years ago he said they were completely happy with the perception that people had that they should buy both games.

But since about '85 or so neither TSR nor Wizards seems to have been able to apprehend that you can't keep jerking the goalposts back everytime someone goes looking for an entry point into D&D.  Is it this game, that my cousin bought a few years ago?  No?  It's a boardgame now?  Oh...okay, well a couple years later when I go looking for supplements it's back to a boxed game called essentials?  Or 4e?  Or what?


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*=for the hobby-games market it was aimed at, but then quickly exploded into dens and living rooms all over the place...

[Sacrosanct]

If they were really smart, they'd do an entry level D&D boxed set, set in the Adventure Time world.

[The Traveller]

I think the industry on the whole desperately needs a popular and accessible version of D&D on the market.

Not really. D&D isn't the hobby, the hobby isn't D&D. D&D isn't roleplaying, roleplaying isn't D&D. It's not the tide, it's just another ship, and if you want it to rise you're going to need to look at the bigger picture. Maybe it was once, but those days will never come again.

[Gronan of Simmerya]

Not really. D&D isn't the hobby, the hobby isn't D&D. D&D isn't roleplaying, roleplaying isn't D&D. It's not the tide, it's just another ship, and if you want it to rise you're going to need to look at the bigger picture. Maybe it was once, but those days will never come again.

You're right, but you aren't carrying it far enough...  the tide will never be any more than a tiny fraction of what it used to be.

RPGs have become a niche hobby.  A healthy one, perhaps, but a niche hobby.

Paul... shit I forgot his last name, marketing director at SJG about 5 or 6 years ago... said RPGs were about a $50M per year industry.  This is somebody working in the industry for a bigger player.

D&D ALONE used to make considerably more than $50M per year, in 1981 dollars.  Never MIND TSR's other games.

Though I don't agree with a lot Ron Edwards wrote, he WAS right that the applecart has been well and truly nuked.

[The Traveller]

You're right, but you aren't carrying it far enough...  the tide will never be any more than a tiny fraction of what it used to be.

Maybe... I don't think there's enough recognition of roleplaying's selling points in the general consciousness at the moment.

To most people RPGs were World of Warcraft 1.0, an earlier version as opposed to a different version. The understanding that - even if you don't want to get deep into character or dress up like a bondage fetishist in drag on Halloween or push minis around some melted packing foam - these games bring something unique just isn't there.

We can imagine something and interact with it, manifest it, and anyone can join in this shared imagination. We can create whole worlds, unlimited universes, never before seen, and players can walk in them in every sense but the physical. These games make it okay to for grownups talk to play make believe again, and that is a very powerful and primal force. A touch of the hyperbole perhaps but no less true for all that.

It's the same with any product, essential or otherwise. Identify the selling points, the unique attractions, and push those as hard as you can. Nobody seems to be doing that, 4e was an attempt to do WoW on paper for pity's sake. I know there was an ad run by WotC a while back which went along the lines of "if you're going to pretend to be an elf you may as well do it with your friends in the same room" but that misses the point completely.

The point is of course that we aren't playing WoW on a table, we're doing something very different, as different as playing a basketball game on a computer and actually training for basketball, forming a team spirit, struggling and eventually the adrenaline rush of actually playing, then going for pizzas afterwards. The community is another thing, it may be a side effect but it's something not to be found in computer games.

People who want a product to succeed or are comparing RPGs with MMORPGs are missing this point, and meanwhile who is promoting the key selling points of RPGs?

Nobody is doing that.

[Arkansan]

None of you people engaging in this want to play D&D.

I don't say that as a pejorative; it's just that you want the popular-kid D&D banner over your game of choice, but you don't want that game to be D&D.  Empty table at a 'con because you're playing ?  Call it D&D but when the players get there tell them you've eliminated the six stats, the alignment, vancian casting, levels and classes.  But hey! It's advertised as D&D*!  So...win!  Players at the table!

If I want a points-buy more granular system with no levels or classes...there's a half-dozen games out there I can try.

If I need a car I don't drive my lawn mower to the store.


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*Also there will be no dungeons involved for they are childish and silly.

You don't think there is any hyperbole here? I mean yes you can go too far and legitimately not be playing d&d anymore, but I think modifying one or two things doesn't change what the game is fundamentally. I mean you could drop the cleric, tweak casting just a bit, leave everything else the same and still be playing d&d. However if you do that and change the way attributes work, drop the d20 and what not, then right you aren't playing d&d anymore. I just don't buy this sillyness of "any change makes it not d&d". That position is just to extreme to make sense. Like most things, there is a middle path.

Honestly like I said earlier one of the reasons I fucking love od&d is that it is so simple that I can change things and not have it fall apart. Now I will say that I wouldn't want to see a bunch of changes to published d&d, other than going back to something more along the lines of B/X.

Oh, also like other have said fuck feats right in there stupid face.

[jhkim]

D&D did this from 1974 until 1989, in manifold forms.

AD&D was huge.  Basic was huge.  OD&D was huge*.

The former is not my impression from reading various retrospectives such as Rick Swan, Sean Patrick Fannon, and others.  I agree that OD&D, AD&D, and Basic were huge.  However, their popularity peaked somewhere around 1981 or so.  By the mid-1980s, the market was clearly shrinking.  The cartoon series was cancelled, and TSR was scrambling to find ways to maintain their market.  

Second edition AD&D in 1989 may have been misguided, but sales were already fading for years before it came out.  Just keeping with 1st edition as-is was clearly not working, so they tried something different.  

But since about '85 or so neither TSR nor Wizards seems to have been able to apprehend that you can't keep jerking the goalposts back everytime someone goes looking for an entry point into D&D.  Is it this game, that my cousin bought a few years ago?  No?  It's a boardgame now?  Oh...okay, well a couple years later when I go looking for supplements it's back to a boxed game called essentials?  Or 4e?  Or what?

For dedicated players who loved AD&D 1st ed and kept playing it, the changes of TSR and WotC might seem mysterious.  However, it seems that the vast majority of players were not like the die-hard fans who kept with AD&D1.  The entry point changed after the sales of the last entry point withered away.

[Opaopajr]

What do I think D&D would be better without?

Most players.

What else?

3rd and 4th edition.  3rd especially.... take out all the "un fun" limitations on magic users and wonder why magic users outshine everything else... way to go, dipshits.

I'm about here. TSR D&D is pretty much all I am interested in D&D.

If I wanted sacred cows slaughtered (like I once did, and 3e was my dream come true -- until I played it) then I'd go play another game.

It'd be the same for other games like oWoD line, CoC, or GURPS. Tweak rules here and there for a campaign, but complete overhauls and might as well play a new game. Why bother with all that work when you can just switch?