There's been three tiers of D&D:
BECMI
AD&D
3rd-5th editions
Gary said, "There is no relationship between 3E and original D&D, or OAD&D for that matter. Different games, style, and spirit."
So when I see people talk about 5e being like 2e, I .... No.
Approaching a "6th edition", what?
How did GURPS not win this rpg battle?
I read people who think they are rpg experts and they end up in quicksand. Because they do not know what D&D was and how it changed. It's like the language changed mid-sentence.
Game theory, is all ....
Huh? I assume English isn't your first language, so you might want to clarify your points somehow.
But to answer the thread title, yes, D&D is still relevant.
Quote from: Theory of Games;1130313Game theory, is all ....
The games are all playable as separate systems.
While Gary can say "Different games, style, and spirit," that's being disingenuous
from the perspective of marketing. Each game was (until recently, with PDFs) sold for the most part, serially. They adopted and changed source material from each other, and utilized the same intellectual property from each other. They learned lessons on how not to cannibalize their own product sales.
This is the same reason why studios and other creators are hypocritical a-holes for deriding fans of canon. The product marketing leverages the good will and personal / emotional investment of those fans of canon in order to sell them on new entries into their franchises.
Why would it not be relevant?
And that's even before I mention the whole OSR movement.
Quote from: Theory of Games;1130313How did GURPS not win this rpg battle?
Because people don't want to have to design their RPG before playing a campaign. If SJ Games went the Chaosium route and had a stand-alone RPG (Runequest) alongside their toolkit (Basic Roleplaying) during the 3rd edition era, they would have in better shape when they switched to 4e. Only recently with the Dungeon Fantasy RPG they took a stab at it and while it helps it was too little too late. If they want GURPS to be more popular they need to let the fan contribute via a third party publishing program. But as it stand they are still overly concerned with branding and image.
Quote from: Theory of Games;1130313So when I see people talk about 5e being like 2e, I .... No.
People are comparing D&D 5e to AD&D 2e because both share similar characteristic despite differing on many of the mechanics.
1) Both are true to the classic D&D formula of class, level, attributes, hit points, AC, etc
2) Both were initialially designed to allow for a moderate level of character customization. D&D 5e subclasses and AD&D 2e kits. Skills (5e) and proficencies (2e). In constrast 3e character customization was pushed to a ten.
Quote from: Theory of Games;1130313Game theory, is all ....
bullshit. There that sentance is completed.
Quote from: Theory of Games;1130313Gary said, "There is no relationship between 3E and original D&D, or OAD&D for that matter. Different games, style, and spirit."
Translation: I can't see how use D&D 3.0 to run a campaign in the way I like to run a campaign with the time I have for my hobby.
Which is fine and why we have hundreds of RPG systems out there. It is also find to greatly prefer one system over another to run a campaign. But it is bullshit to say that a system can't be used to run a campaign. What one can say that it takes too much work to use said system to run the campaign the way I like it, which is fine as well. Maybe the system has too many extraneous elements, maybe it doesn't work with how you think certain ought to be handled.
Likely in Gygax's case, he felt 3.0 focused way too much on certain things that he felt was distracting to how he ran campaign. Which is the most common argument I find when people criticize more detailed system and editions.
What you, Gygax, and many other miss is the fact that playing a RPG campaign is about pretending to be a character having adventures. What your character can do is defined by the setting and what been described by the character. The fact I choose to handle this using GURPS, OD&D, AD&D, Runequest, or D&D 5e is incidental to why I am running a campaign in the first place. I can run and have run my Majestic Wilderlands using forementioned systems for the past three+ decades. What differs is the amount of work I put into detailing things with mechanics, how long it takes me to adjudicate things like combat, and the level of detail that is gotten into while playing. But in the end I am running the same campaigin with the player doing similar things for similar reasons.
The reason this works for me is because I don't start with what the system allows me to do. I ask what can character do with the setting then look to see how the system handles those things. If the system doesn't cover it then I will make a ruling consistent with how the system work to cover it. But the player is still able to do the same thing with their character.
With system like GURPS/Runequest versus OD&D then something may not be covered routinely. A disarm just doesn't happen with OD&D as part of combat resoltuion. However if a character needs to disarm an opponent then I still make a ruling. And it will be about as difficult relatively to a normal weapon swing as a disarm is in GURPS or another detailed system. Which is difficult but not impossible.
Now if the system talks about milestone, balenced encounters and similar elements, then I will ignore. Those section are advice not rules like the character goes first if they have to higher speed in GURPS, or goes first if they roll the highest 1d20 initiative roll in D&D 5e. They speak to how a run a campaign and like all such advice, use them if they are useful, ignore them if they are not.
Now it not to say that all systems work equally well for my Majestic Wilderlands. Some system take considerably more work than other and thus I don't use them. Some system I don't use because I don't like them. Or I don't get how they supposed to work like Fate. However Fate isn't bad because I know other who have made it work for them and they have fun with it. And it has a community of people actively creating material for it.
Consciousness, stream of, there is.
Quote from: Theory of Games;1130313How did GURPS not win this rpg battle?
In what world would GURPS have a chance?
D&D presented a clear mode of play (the dungeon crawl) that was easy to grasp and run by newbies, even young teenagers. All you needed were a few rooms on a piece of graph paper, and the adventure was on. On top of that, there was a compelling rewards system (leveling, serendipitous magic), a kitchen sink default setting so you could bring in all your favorite bits, and like all RPGs it was infinitely expandable for those who wanted more sophisticated or just different experiences.
GURPS, by contrast, could never even figure out a default genre, much less a core premise. The core rules generally seemed to assume the default was a low-magic fantasy, but they include enough rules for a real fantasy game, and there was no setting. You could play a modern game, but you were left to your own decices, and the gun rules were kind of broken. GURPS eventually became known for historical gaming, but that was only after a huge number of historical worldbooks were released, and until Infinite Worlds coalesced they were just scattered settings with no unifying thread. And then GURPS swiveled hard in the direction of complexity for the sake of complexity, catering more to its gearhead diehards than potential new players.
Quote from: Theory of Games;1130313There's been three tiers of D&D:
BECMI
AD&D
3rd-5th editions
Gary said, "There is no relationship between 3E and original D&D, or OAD&D for that matter. Different games, style, and spirit."
I would probably agree. 3e pushes Player control to the front and to a certain extent replaces Player Skill with Character Skill. 3e is more Heroic Fantasy genre compared to ADnD which is more Survival Horror.
QuoteSo when I see people talk about 5e being like 2e, I .... No.
I see 5e as being closer to 4e then to 2e.
QuoteApproaching a "6th edition", what?
How did GURPS not win this rpg battle?
I read people who think they are rpg experts and they end up in quicksand. Because they do not know what D&D was and how it changed. It's like the language changed mid-sentence.
Game theory, is all ....
There definitely has been a change in game design but there are still plenty of old school Nintendo hard games out there if you look.
5E is the most mutable of all the editions. It will vary wildly depending upon the hands on the tiller. When people say it is like 2E, or BECMI, or like 3E, or like 4E, what they are saying is some glimpse into how they would see themselves running it. (If they haven't run it, it may not be a very accurate glimpse, but it is at least a surface impression.)
For me, it runs most like BECMI because that it is what I want to do with it, how I tweak a few rules, what I ignore, and the style and tone of the adventures themselves. Where it is different than BECMI is back towards the center core of 5E, which is mostly to the good for me, since I don't particularly like race as class and a few other hallmarks of that edition, even though it is by far my favorite of the early editions. I'd prefer 5E be just a hair simpler than it is, but I get most of that by not using certain classes, discouraging feats, etc.
Frankly, I can see why someone wouldn't want to use 5e to run a mostly BECMI-style game. After all, if you like BECMI well enough, just run that. But if you think it can't be rather easily done, then you are speaking from ignorance. I'd never run 5E in 2E style, since 2E is way down the list of D&D things I enjoy, but I'm not so blind that I can't see that it could be easily done.
So...GURPS has made alot of interesting turns in its history if you believe that superceding D&D was SJG's goal, but it's not. It's pretty clear they view the market as people who are looking to move on from D&D to something else. Asking the Generic Universal Roleplaying System to have a 'default' genre is ludicrous though 4e did put the Infinite Worlds setting in the referee's book so one might see world hopping adventures as such. I do think GURPS could have commanded a wider audience if they hadn't doubled down on the complexity in the nineties but in the end, they never developed a killer ap setting or a high value license. Yes they did Hellboy but that was before the movies IRRC. Fourth edition made GURPS less approachable and less supported but it was as much a victim of the market. I always think GURPS could do a lot better. SJG doesn't seem to agree but they've got the numbers and experience and they own GURPS so my opinion is largely irrelevant.
For my best shot, I think there needs to be an inexpensive lead in product for supers or Mad Max style post apocalyptic vehicle madness. These are popular and recognizable things that are very current. D&D style fantasy has become quite ubiquitous but it doesn't seem to have the kid's interest these days, it's not gonzo enough. The problem is that they're also the most complex things to do in GURPS and the things GURPS does least well. The answer, to my mind is alternate subsystems but GURPS is all about the universal application of the core rule set.
I don't even play D&D really these days, but in my view it is the most relevant RPG out there in terms of how important it is. It is the RPG most people play. I think there have been a couple of times in my memory when there was a question about it (when Vampire gave it a run for its money in the 90s, when Magic started syphoning players from local groups and TSR went under, and when Pathfinder challenged D&D's supremacy with a variation of D&D). Right now it seems to be enjoying immense popularity. It is easy to attack the biggest game in the room, because it has to appeal to the broadest possible audience. But it is the game through which most people comet to he hobby, and come to understand what RPGs are, so if you are not at least considering that, it might be hard to connect with a wide audience.
D&D is certainly more relevant than GURPS at present.
Really, D&D 5e is probably the most relevant rpg in history. If D&D had not evolved and changed it is unlikely it would still be around.
Even so, an underground, grass roots D&D community in a world where it's not even available as a product would appeal to me far more than the current drekk.
Even the White Wolf games beat Gurps back in the day. ha D&D is a lot more than Wizards.
D&D is relevant. The D&D industry is not.
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Theory of Games, please explain what you mean by relevance? In what context?
And how are you defining "D&D" in this regards? AKA, the current edition, the hobby, etc?
2e is 1e drifted in a 3e direction.
5e is 3e drifted in a 2e direction.
:D
Is D&D still relevant to the market/hobby? Sure. Despite all the others that have come out over the decades, D&D remains the best-selling, most-played, and most-imitated RPG of all time. If you add in its direct imitators (Pathfinder/Starfinder, OSR, every "OGL d20 System" product, etc.), I would be shocked if D&D doesn't still account for an absolute majority of all RPG purchases, player numbers, and play hours.
Is D&D still relevant to me personally? Nah, not really, other than as a lingua franca of RPG discussions. There are so many other systems that I like better that I have a hard time seeing D&D ever coming in as a game I regularly play again. (And, since you mentioned it in the OP: No, GURPS is not one of those systems.)
Quote from: Theory of Games;1130313(snip) Gary said, "There is no relationship between 3E and original D&D, or OAD&D for that matter. Different games, style, and spirit." (snip)
That was Gary's subjective opinion, probably motivated by the massive chip he carried on his shoulder like a tumour. Perhaps if he had been more successful he might have been a lot less resentful and churlish about those who took his ideas and built on them. It seems there's a fair bit of the fan base who actually see the relationship between and among all of the editions so far. Others may not. YMMV.
But D&D is clearly still relevant because it is the market leader.
Some of that comment by Gygax is a fall back to TSR dogma about how unique D&D/AD&D is even when another game has like only one attribute more to make it 'totally different' and so on. Yet, at the same time in those days they would have complaints written at everything under the sun.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1130386Is beef making you fat?
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I think this question is more important that the OP's questions.
Quote from: Scrivener of Doom;1130455But D&D is clearly still relevant because it is the market leader.
In terms of being a full-time enterprise with actual employees doing it as their day job, it is almost the sole survivor.
Yes it is relevant, but I wish it was a little less so. What I mean is that D&D has always held on to so much of the roleplaying crowd. Most stores I know where you can buy actual RPG books have D&D only. A little more balance would be great.
I think that's as much the move to kickstarter as anything though.
Quote from: Theory of Games;1130313There's been three tiers of D&D:
BECMI
AD&D
3rd-5th editions
Gary said, "There is no relationship between 3E and original D&D, or OAD&D for that matter. Different games, style, and spirit."
So when I see people talk about 5e being like 2e, I .... No.
Approaching a "6th edition", what?
How did GURPS not win this rpg battle?
I read people who think they are rpg experts and they end up in quicksand. Because they do not know what D&D was and how it changed. It's like the language changed mid-sentence.
Game theory, is all ....
I can't believe you just lumped 4th Edition in, with the 3rd and 5th Editions. Can you imagine the anguish that is causing, amongst the 4th Edition fanbase?
Quote from: Lynn;1130316The games are all playable as separate systems.
While Gary can say "Different games, style, and spirit," that's being disingenuous from the perspective of marketing. Each game was (until recently, with PDFs) sold for the most part, serially. They adopted and changed source material from each other, and utilized the same intellectual property from each other. They learned lessons on how not to cannibalize their own product sales.
This is the same reason why studios and other creators are hypocritical a-holes for deriding fans of canon. The product marketing leverages the good will and personal / emotional investment of those fans of canon in order to sell them on new entries into their franchises.
D&D barely has a canon, at least that many people care about. Sure, it has a bazillion campaign settings set in a self-described multiverse... but it's always been a game where canon is fast and loose and doesn't get in the way of the party's adventures.
Forgotten Realms isn't popular because it has canon. It's popular because it's extremely generic, easy to adventure in, and Wizards is unwilling to support multiple settings since that killed TSR.
Most RPGs aren't played for the canon. The canon just provides a starting point for newbies. From there you either remain lazy and complacent, or you make your own campaign setting.
Mindful of the caveat that 'collectors' support 'canon' bloat. (that is my quota of quote words for the week, hate doing that ha) So, there are games that is pretty much all they are.
DnD has near on 50 years of canon at this point. It has so much canon that people take pride in trying to invert the DnD tropes.
Specific to D&D, I am not sure that canon is quite the right word, since it is such a confused mess over time (decades) in the various settings and main books, even adventures that have been rewritten o many times. Other games are often better examples of pure canon fixation. Edit: It is more like brand loyalty for D&D, to get to the point.
Quote from: Kuroth;1130857Specific to D&D, I am not sure that canon is quite the right word, since it is such a confused mess over time (decades) in the various settings and main books, even adventures that have been rewritten o many times. Other games are often better examples of pure canon fixation.
Maybe implied canon? There is a vast amount of canon associated with the settings, but I agrees it's not really the heart of the game. It's more of a sidebar, and is both slippery and subject to revision. The strongest canon in D&D isn't the specific setting canon, it's the bits and pieces that make up the implied setting. Beholders, dragons that come in colored types, all the various things that are sometimes labeled sacred cows, and everything else that's part of the default expectations. It's really hard to define exactly what, how much, and in what proportions is necessary for the game to remain D&D, but there's a lot of it, and it limits and constrains what can be done by providing a lot of detail that must be incorporated or worked around, so it is a form of canon.
That is why I think it is more about brand loyalty, because even those common elements are often pretty different between editions. Other games work hard to keep all that straight, because collectors. Whatever the case, as far as these things are a part of the new game players' experience? Don't really see those as that much to do with them. That has more to do with peers and their interests as a group.
D&D is the market leader. It will always be relevant for that reason alone. The winds in the RPG market change by the ebbs and flows in its success.
Thankfully, we live in a world today that isn't bound to publishers, though it never really needed to be that way for the ref with initiative. Many fine games made by people that contribute to this forum, in fact. huzzah!
its not relevant to me, I only do D6 Fantasy now. I still say to people "you wanna play D&D?" but I mean we'll be using D6 Fantasy, to play pretty much what you know as D&D, swords wizards orcs n stuff.
D&D will be relevant so long as people try to emulate, subvert, restore, or reinvent it.
Quote from: Manic Modron;1130882D&D will be relevant so long as people try to emulate, subvert, restore, or reinvent it.
Sometimes even from within. Think about it--D&D is still relevant despite multiple attempts by the various owners at various times to take it out behind the barn and put it out of their misery!
I guess no one has yet found D&D's phylactery. :D
Is D&D relevant? What??? It is 80% of the market or something like that... Newbs think that D&D is synonymous to RPG. Of course it is relevant!
Also, D&D is probably my favorite system and even I wish there was more space (I mean, attention) for different games.
Maybe you mean "is the original version of D&D as written by Gygax and Arneson still relevant" and the answer would still be yes IMO. Just look at tghe 5e DMG and notice how much of that was written by Gygax. Some parts of the game have evolved very little.
Quote from: Eric Diaz;1130897Is D&D relevant? What??? It is 80% of the market or something like that... Newbs think that D&D is synonymous to RPG. Of course it is relevant!
Also, D&D is probably my favorite system and even I wish there was more space (I mean, attention) for different games.
Maybe you mean "is the original version of D&D as written by Gygax and Arneson still relevant" and the answer would still be yes IMO. Just look at tghe 5e DMG and notice how much of that was written by Gygax. Some parts of the game have evolved very little.
I was pleasantly surprised when the DMG included a chapter briefly explaining the various cosmologies that have shown up over the years, as well as referencing various neglected campaign settings like Planescape, Spelljammer, and Eberron.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1130890I guess no one has yet found D&D's phylactery. :D
Well played.
The answer to the thread's title is: "Unfortunately."
There. I said it. Fite meh!
I blame the noobs and the non-gamers. And name recognition. None of them know there's other RPGs and most people are too lazy to learn more than one system, so ironically they just stick to one of the most difficult to learn, cuz it's the only one they know exists.
I suspect that the reason why D&D was revitalized recently has a lot to do with Stranger Things prominently mentioning it.
Imagine if that had happened while 4e was still published.
Quote from: VisionStorm;1130913The answer to the thread's title is: "Unfortunately."
There. I said it. Fite meh!
I blame the noobs and the non-gamers. And name recognition. None of them know there's other RPGs and most people are too lazy to learn more than one system, so ironically they just stick to one of the most difficult to learn, cuz it's the only one they know exists.
I agree that D&D is a complex game, but the second biggest RPG is Pathfinder...
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1130917I suspect that the reason why D&D was revitalized recently has a lot to do with Stranger Things prominently mentioning it.
Imagine if that had happened while 4e was still published.
I think that Stranger Things helped sales, but I also think that the current edition is more streamlined and noob friendly than every prior edition of the game, other than arguably Basic. And that's just cuz 5e classes are a bloated mess, while 0e barely give you anything. So despite some of my reservations about it, I do think that 5e has some merits that might explain why it's sold better than even 3e.
Quote from: Eric Diaz;1130918I agree that D&D is a complex game, but the second biggest RPG is Pathfinder...
Yeah, but that's just a D&D clone with more options, geared towards D&D die hards who aren't OSR but are also not satisfied with the recent editions of D&D either.