Quote from: Blazing Donkey;495488Wrong. Rifts & the Palladium 'megaverse' system has more.

BWAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA...

That is the funniest thing I have read all day. Thanks.

The one thing it has empirically done better than anything else is brought noobs into RPGs.

Here's why: there is never a moment in preparing to play D&D - and even once you start playing it may not come right away - when someone says "What do you want to do, you can do aaaaanythiiiiing you waaaaaaaaaaant".

We sit down to play, I say "We're fantasy adventurers, pick a species from this list"

"Elf sounds cool, I'll be an elf"

"What kind of adventurer do you want to be, pick from this list"

"A druid sounds good"

"Okay, roll some dice, put the highest in these scores because you're a druid, then do whatever for the rest"

"Okay"

"Here's some starting equipment and cash"

"Okay"

"Here's a list of stuff you can do on your turn when there's a fight like cast a spell or cut a dude with your scimitar or turn into a bird or whatever"

"Okay"

"You're at the entrance to the dungeon, left the tunnel is dry and dusty, to the right it's warm and drippy, which way do you go?"

"left"

And we're playing D&D!

Ironically the edition that is worst at this is the one I've got the most experience with: 3.*, and the only reason it's worst is because of skill points. It's still not that bad.

Once you have some inertia, then you get someone to say "hey, what if I do THIS", and then they're off.  But if you start with "you can do or be aaaaanything that you waaaaant", a noob will never create a character.

And the earlier the iteration, the smaller the selection set.

1. Roll 3d6 in order, assign to stats.
2. Fighter, Cleric, Thief, Magic-User, Elf, Halfling, or Dwarf?
3. Buy some equipment.
4. Fighters handle combat, thieves handle traps. Magic users can cast 1 spell, pick from the list which one you want. Same with the elf. Dwarves are short fighters, halflings are short thieves.
5. Play.

Quote from: Peregrin;495476I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite post on theRPGsite.

No, seriously, I agree wholeheartedly with what you've said here and in your linked post.

Also, it reminds me a lot about what Frank Lantz (game designer and teacher at New York Uni.) said at the '06 Game Developer's Conference in regards to video-games (yes, the GDC is about video-games, but Lantz concentrates on game design as a broad discipline rather than a technical skill tied to a specific medium, and I feel like bits of the following are easily extrapolated to apply to other sorts of "simulations" other than virtual ones):

Thanks. I didn't know about Lantz's words, but they are pretty insightful. His points on representation are very relevant. Interestingly, it is very easy to combine relatively simple choices into complex and rather free decision-making environments, and it goes for both tabletop and computer games. In computer gaming, the "immersive sim" concept (Thief, System Shock 2, Deus Ex and the Elder Scrolls games, the upcoming Dishonored) aimed to provide opportunities for increasingly sophisticated environmental interaction; at their core, however, individual choices are simple to make - "do I go through this highh-risk area and risk a difficult confrontation, or do I find an alternate, out of the way route?", "do I increase my hacking skill to make infiltration easier, or do I put that into using rifles and become effective in combat?", and so on.

Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;495486The OP sounds like he wants to play D&D using Legend, whereas he should be playing to the strengths of Legend.

I agree that D&D gives a default playmode which is easily picked up.
I disagree that D&D's way of doing monsters, spells and magic items is better than the Runequest/BRP family of games. In Runequest, you start from imagining a Dark Age/Iron/Bronze Age world, then add magic and mystery. The fantastic elements grow organically. In D&D, you flip through the MM and add some stuff which looks cool. It works but it's like painting in primary colors compared to a Turner.

RQ is atavistic, playing D&D is always playing D&D. I also think that many are unable to think beyond a D&D lens because they played it first and longest. It's a shame.

I don't want to play D&D per se, but I do want my fantasy games to offer a wide variety of spells, monsters, and magic items.

Actually, I think my bigger issue was addressed better by others in the thread - D&D puts together a cohesive package in a way that a lot of other games fail to.

As a player, I want a game where I can quickly and easily create a character by making a few meaningful choices from a decent variety of meaningful options.  D&D does OK with that; the early editions are too rigid and the later ones tend to offer a lot of choices but few if any meaningful ones.

As a GM, I want to be able to have a lot of readily-usable peices I can put together to form adventures.  There is enough to do with coming up with interesting situations, NPCs, plots, and keeping up with what the PCs are doing - I don't want to have to come up with rules, too.  That's why I buy books.

Meta-Comment:
Note how the OP highlights the building blocks of D&D. And note how, rightfully, it is said by someone else that Palladium is the only other venue that has surpassed (if at least in volume) TSR in providing AD&D-style building blocks.

Quote from: Settembrini;495577Meta-Comment:
Note how the OP highlights the building blocks of D&D. And note how, rightfully, it is said by someone else that Palladium is the only other venue that has surpassed (if at least in volume) TSR in providing AD&D-style building blocks.

(Looks over to the shelves of GURPS 3rd edition books)
(Raises one eyebrow)

Quote from: estar;495578(Looks over to the shelves of GURPS 3rd edition books)
(Raises one eyebrow)

Or Glorantha / RQ for that matter.

In the field of D&D only D&D provides D&D style building blocks in any quantity.

Quote from: David Johansen;495646In the field of D&D only D&D provides D&D style building blocks in any quantity.

Also, D&D does D&D best!*


*With the possible exceptions of Pathfinder or the retro-clone of your choice.

I agree with basically everything said in this thread (strong archetypes, easy to grasp and play, good balance between realism and abstraction...)

I can add that D&D is, story-wise, an "alphabet" of sort. You can take the basic blocks (classes, races, monsters, magic) to build almost any kind of world/fantasy setting imaginable: high magic; low magic; worlds where the only magic users are cleric;, lot of magic items, magic is lost and exists only in magic items; the world has been overrun by Lovecraftian aberrations and now everyone is enslaved, "magic" is actually psionic powers and nothing else; and so on.

Many games/novels strive for the "new", often forgetting the importance of the "how". Sometimes I think of western movies: you can literally count on your fingers their basic elements: cowboys, Indians, Mexicans, colons, the saloon, the sheriff, horses, the diligence and some stunning landscapes. Still, great western movies were made (and are still made - see "Deadwood") over and over - because these basic elements were/are used to tell good stories. The same, IMHO, is true for D&D.

Quote from: Blazing Donkey;495488Wrong. Rifts & the Palladium 'megaverse' system has more.

Have you actually done the math on this, or are you just making things up?

Personally, I think if you were to take the AD&D 2e Wizard's/Priest's spell compendiums and count the spells, you'd probably have already exceeded the total in all Palladium games.

Likewise if you took every 2e Monstrous Compendium.

If you've actually run the numbers and can show that I'm incorrect here, I'd be pleasantly surprised.

The main difference between Rifts and D&D is that Rifts sucks.  D&D's mechanics have always been a mess, but Rifts is a shit sandwich.

Quote from: bombshelter13;495760Have you actually done the math on this, or are you just making things up?

Personally, I think if you were to take the AD&D 2e Wizard's/Priest's spell compendiums and count the spells, you'd probably have already exceeded the total in all Palladium games.

Likewise if you took every 2e Monstrous Compendium.

If you've actually run the numbers and can show that I'm incorrect here, I'd be pleasantly surprised.

I think the hard thing would be determining if eight versions of Mind Flayers and Beholders count as single blocks or eight blocks.  Never mind whether stuff in Dragon and Rifter count.  Fan projects?  Retroclones?  What are we enumerating?  How are we enumerating it?  Why would we want to?

1. Make money.
2.