thedungeondelver
Legendary Pubber
- Joined
- May 2, 2017
- Messages
- 377
- Reaction score
- 563
I remember reading a few years ago, and I can't recall if it was 3e's heyday or 4e's announcement, a post from someone (I've forgotten who it was, or where it was) but the poster seemed to take spiteful joy in what D&D had become or was becoming, summing up their feelings (and this is paraphrasing) thusly: "Frankly I'm glad D&D has changed so much. We don't do 'dungeons' and 'dragons' don't exist in my game." With a lot of asspats and "I've thrown out levels" and "I've done away with the magic system" and "we've never used alignments" and a lot more of "Yes to all of those!"
This is not edition warring, no matter how much you might think it is, because it embraces all systems, all genres. What is it with people who look at a game - any game - and say "Well, that trope has to go. That rule is out. I won't use that system. We're not setting it in the default world. Those aren't classes we're using/we are using classes and not point-build"...
I mean, there's enough RPGs out there that there are literally no itches left to scratch. None. Nada. Zero. Everyone gets a cookie they like. Want story-heavy horror? Try that one that uses the Jenga tower. Want pure old-school dungeon crawl goodness? I think that answer goes without saying. Anime? Check on all fronts - giant robot, magic girls, eastern fantasy...alien fantasy (e.g., no elves no hobbits), hey have you heard of Jorune? The list goes on and on.
So, why, then would someone point to a game, any game, and say "Fellows," (and I mean that in the most gender-neutral way) "we need that game. But not that game. No. We want the rulebooks, but just for the covers. Gut 'em. Dispose of them. Get rid of 'em altogether. Let's pare it down so the title of the game and any expectations about it are meaningless."
I get it that system tinkering is an intrinsic part of GMing (and playing in) any game, any setting, any campaign world. No, I totally get it. But if (for example), I take and say "I want to play Exalted" and the first thing I do is throw out the Charms system, then do away with the solar/lunar/earth/etc. exalts, then dispose of the storyteller system, ditch most of the game lore, and instead set it in the antebellum South...what, exactly, am I left with? Who am I pitching this as a good idea to? Why, then, did I not just play Aces & Eights?
There's something to the old rant Gary made about "Dungeons & Beavers".
I think in the case of D&D, it is literally in the case of a subset of gamers, the idea that they want the...and I hate to say this, prestige, the crowd-draw of saying "We're playing D&D!" but nothing else. Just those words. That seems to be what 4e fans wanted: no "baggage" of the old, only the name. Just scrape it off and keep it, but throw everything out (fortunately this seems to have passed by WotC, now). I'd never create the expectation at the table that we were going to play Eclipse Phase, but instead we'd use the Traveller rules, and also it is set in steampunk 1890.
Just...find a system and play what you like. You don't have to reinvent the wheel, and you don't have to reinvent it on top of a system you apparently didn't like in the first place. It just seems so contra-intuitive.
This is not edition warring, no matter how much you might think it is, because it embraces all systems, all genres. What is it with people who look at a game - any game - and say "Well, that trope has to go. That rule is out. I won't use that system. We're not setting it in the default world. Those aren't classes we're using/we are using classes and not point-build"...
I mean, there's enough RPGs out there that there are literally no itches left to scratch. None. Nada. Zero. Everyone gets a cookie they like. Want story-heavy horror? Try that one that uses the Jenga tower. Want pure old-school dungeon crawl goodness? I think that answer goes without saying. Anime? Check on all fronts - giant robot, magic girls, eastern fantasy...alien fantasy (e.g., no elves no hobbits), hey have you heard of Jorune? The list goes on and on.
So, why, then would someone point to a game, any game, and say "Fellows," (and I mean that in the most gender-neutral way) "we need that game. But not that game. No. We want the rulebooks, but just for the covers. Gut 'em. Dispose of them. Get rid of 'em altogether. Let's pare it down so the title of the game and any expectations about it are meaningless."
I get it that system tinkering is an intrinsic part of GMing (and playing in) any game, any setting, any campaign world. No, I totally get it. But if (for example), I take and say "I want to play Exalted" and the first thing I do is throw out the Charms system, then do away with the solar/lunar/earth/etc. exalts, then dispose of the storyteller system, ditch most of the game lore, and instead set it in the antebellum South...what, exactly, am I left with? Who am I pitching this as a good idea to? Why, then, did I not just play Aces & Eights?
There's something to the old rant Gary made about "Dungeons & Beavers".
I think in the case of D&D, it is literally in the case of a subset of gamers, the idea that they want the...and I hate to say this, prestige, the crowd-draw of saying "We're playing D&D!" but nothing else. Just those words. That seems to be what 4e fans wanted: no "baggage" of the old, only the name. Just scrape it off and keep it, but throw everything out (fortunately this seems to have passed by WotC, now). I'd never create the expectation at the table that we were going to play Eclipse Phase, but instead we'd use the Traveller rules, and also it is set in steampunk 1890.
Just...find a system and play what you like. You don't have to reinvent the wheel, and you don't have to reinvent it on top of a system you apparently didn't like in the first place. It just seems so contra-intuitive.