"Is the Old School Renaissance itself just more nerd fundamentalism?"

beejazz · May 13, 2013, 02:08:10 PM

Quote from: Black Vulmea;654232When sitting down to a design a roleplaying game, should the designer's default presumption be that off-loading a large amount of adjudication of how the rules work and how the game should be run on the referee is A Bad Thing?

That really depends on the design goals and target audience. Off loading certain decisions is a valid choice though. A good DM can choose monsters or roll them, and some prefer the latter.

Black Vulmea · May 13, 2013, 02:33:54 PM

Quote from: beejazz;654242That really depends on the design goals and target audience.

Yes, it does.

There is no one way to design a roleplaying game.

I respect gamers with different tastes, even if I don't share those tastes. My reaction to Torchbearer, frex, has nothing to do with the game itself - I hope the gamers who buy Tb have a lot of fun with it - but rather the pathetic sycophants suddenly praising that which they categorically pissed all over before the BW and DW guys did it.

Is giving the referee a great deal of control over how the game is played a good idea, or is a set of largely universal mechanics contained in the rules which everyone agrees to the better approach? The answer is yes, because both approaches, and everything along the spectrum in-between, has an audience who appreciates those games for what they are.