"Dave Arneson's True Genius"

[Gronan of Simmerya]

Better late than never! My review of "Dave Arneson's True Genius" by Robert J. Kuntz is at
https://wordpress.com/post/wmusswtwbf.wordpress.com/76

 

[Ulairi]

Here is a working link:

https://wmusswtwbf.wordpress.com/2019/01/24/review-dave-arnesons-true-genius-by-robert-j-kuntz/

 

[David Johansen]

I always find myself reminded of Robert Fulguhm's Everything I Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten. He talks about the way children are all willing and able to jump, draw, dance, sing and play in Kindergarten and feel they can't do any of it by fifth or sixth grade. I think published settings and modules play to that insecurity.

Still, I like rules...so sue me.

 

[T. Foster]

Thanks for the thoughtful and thorough review. It’s the first thing I’ve seen that actually makes me interested in reading the book.

I’m personally a product of the second generation of RPGs (roughly 1978-83*) when those codified rules and pre-written settings and adventures Rob decries were introduced, not just by TSR but also Judges Guild, Chaosium (RuneQuest and Call of Cthulhu), GDW (Traveller), etc. I don’t agree with Rob’s apparent premise that these things were antithetical to creativity and imagination. I know that their guidelines and examples inspired me, I suspect more than the open-ended, bare bones toolkit of 70s-era OD&D would have.

It seems like he is (or maybe just you are) making a slippery slope argument that those products led directly to all the problems of the 21st century hobby, and maybe it seems that way from a first-gen perspective, but I don’t think that’s fair or accurate, and it’s definitely reductive. The rpg hobby of 1981 might not have been the same as the hobby of 1976, but it’s a lot closer to it than it is to the hobby of 2001, and glossing over that similarity seems to me to do a disservice to everybody. I’m hoping maybe in the book itself Rob makes a more nuanced argument.

*Edit: lest I be accused of falsifying my personal history, I didn’t start playing RPGs until 1984, but when I did the games I played and liked most were the ones published in this era - even at the time I preferred them to the “new” games of the mid-late 80s

 

[Mankcam]

Same here. I started in the mid 1980s, but we were using the earlier games for the most part (the late 70s/early 80s RPGs), only upgrading editions near the end of the 80s. The early 80s games had more structure than the 70s games, but they were also very imaginative and creative. Many games were still very simple and open in nature, and the ones that had more structure didn’t seem to feel encumbered by such.

By the end of the 80s they were becoming increasingly straight jacketed by rules, and seemed much more homogenised.

 

[CRKrueger]

I can kind of see the argument that compared to OD&D, Basic took the first slippery step on the road to damnation, and with AD&D Gary became the mad conductor on the Rules Train and Unearthed Arcana was when he screamed “This Rules Train Has No Brakes!”. 3e in that context just seems the natural end result.

As someone who started with Moldvay as a 14 year old, not a college-age wargamer who played with the inventors of the game, I doubt I would have done much with OD&D.

At the same time, I made up shit I thought would be fun, felt free to toss out rules (and just chuckled when Corporate Gary contradicted GM Gary) and came up with my own NPCs, towns, cities, campaigns, and worlds.

I really don’t think people take into account how much the design and corporate culture of MtG affected D&D.

Sure D&D went crazy with options in the 2.5 days, but the concepts of systems mastery, of the designer being the ultimate authority on the rules, PC build culture, that’s all pure MtG.

Gronan talks about cultural transformative moments in his review. MtG was definitely one of those. I didn’t know a single role player who didn’t play it. Some groups entirely cratered as people stopped roleplaying entirely. Every FLGS was hosting MtG tournaments, whether official or not. MtG had been part of the roleplaying zeitgeist for years before 3e came out.

 

[Nobby-W]

Richard Garriott (designer of Ultima, System Shock (?) and some others) was of the view that his job was to ensure that there was at least one way to complete a level, but that shouldn't necessarily be the only way. My gaming hobby had a substantial hiatus between the mid 1990s and relatively recently, so I've see a really marked before and after effect. While there were some super crunchy systems in the 1980s (e.g. FGU's more overblown efforts) there wasn't quite the obsession with the 'official' interpretation of rules-as-written that you see today.[1] Perhaps MtG had some influence on the RAW culture I've seen grow in the 15 year gap; I drifted away from role playing not long after MtG got popular, although that was for reasons unrelated to MtG itself.

It does help if a system has obvious ways to handle standard tropes like stealth, fast talking or activities like climbing; there is some merit in having a starting point in the rulebook. OTOH I'm a big fan of 'rule of cool' and making sensible decisions as a DM, and I'm more of a story gamer these days than I used to be. I certainly can't be arsed swotting up the D&D 5e rulebook and unearthed arcana to learn how to min-max a character.
__________
[1] Another example would be the rather unhealthy obsession with OTU canon and RAW interpretation in certain elements of the Traveller fan base.

 

[robertsconley]

Better late than never! My review of "Dave Arneson's True Genius" by Robert J. Kuntz is at
https://wordpress.com/post/wmusswtwbf.wordpress.com/76

Good Review. I was nice to see longer piece written by you. It was informative and I like your writing style.

For the most part I am critical of Rob Kuntz's the Dave Arneson's True Genius. The summary of my criticism are

1) The presentation of his various thesis is surrounded by jargon drawn from General System Theory. It fails to effectively relate his insights and points to anybody not willing or doesn't have the time to learn the jargon. This limits the impact of the book. Which I view as unfortunate as he does have good points that are worthy of further discussion by the broader hobby.

2) The personal anecdotes are worth the price of the books in of themselves as they give a viewpoint of the early days of roleplaying, D&D, and TSR (mostly negative). Combined with the details given in Playing at the World, Hawk & Moor, etc they give a fuller picture.

3) The author is extremely biased against commercialism something that I feel weakens the points he makes in his book. Whether Rob Kuntz realizes or not he undercuts his argument by the anecdotes he relays in his book. In short he had a very negative view of the time working at TSR under Gary Gygax. During the early days of the development of the playtesting D&D, Rob Kuntz was highly creative in creating adventures, and rule supplements including creating his own megadungeon, Kalibrun, so Gary Gygax can play his the game he was creating.

When D&D was published and TSR got off the ground, Rob Kuntz submitted material but in general was ignored by Gygax and the staff. He also had issues with how the people hired from Minneapolis (the Blackmoor bunch) were treated. He (and most of the Blackmoor crew including Dave Arneson) quit and the experience obviously has colored his viewpoint since.

To the point where it turned into a unreasonable bias against any commercial RPG project (which is just about everything in the industry).

I am a published author and self-published several works of my own so I not without my own bias in this.

The Final Word
Anybody interested in the hobby and the history of the hobby should get this book. Again despite the flaws of the book, Rob Kuntz has a point and some useful insights.

 

[robertsconley]

As far as the thesis of Rob Kuntz's True Genius goes, the main issue I have is that the use of General System Theory complicates and obscure what Dave Arneson's developed.

Take for example Einstein's E=mc^2. Which states that any object has an equivalent energy of it's mass times the speed of light squared. WHY that relationship works the way it does is backed by several paper written by Einstein that require an understanding of physics and higher math. But the relationship itself can be stated in a form easily understood by most people.

It may be that to explain why Dave Arneson's True Genius requires the use and understanding of General System Theory. But unfortunately there is no portion of the book that state what Dave Arneson's True Genius is in a straightforward form like E=mc^2 or Newtons law of gravity F = G x ( (mass1 x mass2) / distance^2)

So what is Rob Kuntz getting at in his book? The simplest explanation is found this post.

At it's core, I believe Kuntz is saying that he created a framework (architecture), not thought of before, that is not dependent upon structured rules (sub-systems) or data, yet is still complete as a system. The essence of the original concept is found in the architecture of the game. The sub-systems are inconsequential and/or mutable and do not truly define Arneson's creative leap, an ever changing and adaptive design.

Once I saw this, I read the book again, and it was much clearer. So while my criticism of the author presentation and conclusions remain I can see the point that he was trying to get across.

 

[robertsconley]

I have argued many times in many posts that the hobby and industry places too much stock in the rules. People argue long and strenuously with me when I assert that the rules people traditionally associate with a RPG system or product are secondary to making the game run and not the point of the game.

It is my opinion that what Dave Arneson's developed and put together can be simply put. That he created a game/activity where people interacted with a setting as their characters with their actions adjudicated by a referee.

In my view that is core "loop" of all RPG campaigns since the first one Blackmoor. You pretend to be a character in some setting and describe what you do as that character within that setting. Then the referee tells you what happens or how to resolve what it is you are trying to do.

That various pieces of these were found in earlier wargame campaigns (playing individual campaigns, having a human referee, freeform game objectives, etc). But they all came together in Dave's Blackmoor campaign, and just as important done in a way that allow others (like Gygax, Kuntz, Monard, etc) to understand how it was done and to run their own campaigns.

In this the rules as most people call RPGs are a detail, a tool used by the referee to aid in adjudicating what the players do. The primary implication of which what a character can or can not do is not defined by the rules but by the setting of the campaign and the capability of the character as stated in notes about the character.

This above has drawn strenuous objections and people looking at me like I have two heads. My opinion that results from being taught from an early age that when one plays a game you follow the rules else you are cheating. That cheating is bad.

The difference with RPGs is that you can still "cheat" but the rules being broken are not those found in the PHB, DMGs of various systems. But rather something is done that isn't allowed by the setting of the campaign. It is the setting that provides the "rules" of the campaign. What traditionally hobbyists call rules is a tool to make adjudicating the setting easier. However if the rules describe something that doesn't make sense in how the setting work. Then the referee should describe an outcome consistent with the setting.

Finally since RPG settings are in theory in entire worlds with the potential of life as rich and detailed as our own Earth, these means what player could try to do and what the referee would be called on to adjudicate is equally expansive. In practice this is far more narrow due to a focus on having adventure and the tropes of specific genres. But it also means that there isn't a system developed that encompases all that is possible within a setting. Thus the need for the considered judgement of a human referee to bring a RPG campaign to life.

The true genius of Dave Arneson that he figured this out and do it in a way to do all of this so that it was fun leisure activity that could be done in the time one has for a hobby. And with all due respect to Rob Kuntz, I don't need to bring in General System Theory jargon to explain how this works, why it works, and who developed it.

I can kind of see the argument that compared to OD&D, Basic took the first slippery step on the road to damnation, and with AD&D Gary became the mad conductor on the Rules Train and Unearthed Arcana was when he screamed “This Rules Train Has No Brakes!”. 3e in that context just seems the natural end result.

So above I stated that rules are a detail, a mere tools used as a useful aide to make a RPG campaign happen. So while I stand by that, one has to acknowledge that RPGs are a leisure activity done for enjoyment. This means that personal preference plays an outsized role in determine what gets and doesn't get used in a RPG campaign.

I may not need GURPS to run an RPG campaign, hell I don't need any rules if I am that well-versed in a setting. However I enjoy using GURPS and thus have ran many campaign using its extensive library of rules.

The only issue with Gygax's "Rules Train" as you put it that people were not aware that it was just an option. Not just in option in that oh I could be using Runequest, or Dragonquest or another contemporary rule system, but that you don't need any formal set of rules.

But in today's hobby that issue largely is fixed thanks to the internet making it easy for hundreds if not thousands to talk to folks who where there like Gronan. Also due to recent scholarship like Playing at the World, Hawk and Moor, and True Genius. Also don't forget there is a long term trend towards lighter rule systems. Which leads the referee to having to make more rulings.

As for commercialism ruining the hobby, that also being being fixed by the widespread use of open content and the ease of sharing via the internet. A major development that Rob Kuntz misses in when he talks about the issue in True Genius.

The situation today is far better than 1985 when Unearthed Arcana was released.

 

[Nobby-W]

[ . . . ]
In this the rules as most people call RPGs are a detail, a tool used by the referee to aid in adjudicating what the players do. The primary implication of which what a character can or can not do is not defined by the rules but by the setting of the campaign and the capability of the character as stated in notes about the character.

This above has drawn strenuous objections and people looking at me like I have two heads. My opinion that results from being taught from an early age that when one plays a game you follow the rules else you are cheating. That cheating is bad.

The difference with RPGs is that you can still "cheat" but the rules being broken are not those found in the PHB, DMGs of various systems. But rather something is done that isn't allowed by the setting of the campaign. It is the setting that provides the "rules" of the campaign. What traditionally hobbyists call rules is a tool to make adjudicating the setting easier. However if the rules describe something that doesn't make sense in how the setting work. Then the referee should describe an outcome consistent with the setting.

Bingo. Cheating as a concept might make sense in a competitive game where the players are all supposed to play against each other to win within an equal set of rules (this includes wargames). RPGs, by and large, are not competitive, and the concept of cheating is largely irrelevant in that context. 'Cheating' W.R.T. a setting as you're describing it is a completely different concept to what most folks would understand as cheating, and having the DM frig results to make sense is perfectly legitimate as the DM is not in competition with the players.

 

[ffilz]

Robert, thanks for all of your thoughts.

I got into the hobby in 1977, which is really the start of Trent's second generation (with the publication of Basic D&D). I did take a wrong turn and go in the route of slave to the rules though not quite to the extent that "the rules define exactly what you can do and anything not covered by the rules is verboten. Since I first grokked what made D&D different from Tractics (my first TSR game, which I chose instead of D&D because D&D didn't look like a miniatures game - seriously, I was looking through both boxed sets at a hobby store and picked Tractics), I have understood that primary difference is that the rules DON'T limit what can happen in the game.

And as I have come to better understand that, I have almost exclusively gone back to original games, and in fact, the original version of each game (ok, I play OD&D with the 6th printing because earlier printings are not reasonable to get... But I play 1977 Traveller and 1978 RuneQuest), with the one exception that I am also very interested in Burning Wheel (where contrarily I play the LATEST version, Gold). But when (if) I run Burning Wheel it will be informed by those original games.

That said, I am happy to use modules. But I'm not a slave to what's in them, rather, I use them as short cuts to preparation, but when I run them, the players will do what they will do, and I will tell them what happens using my imagination and the rules.

The other comment I have regarding Mike's note that consistency to the setting is more important than consistency of the written rules. In general I agree with this, but I'm also happy to allow that sometimes the written rules help define the setting, but once I have interpreted a setting from those rules, that setting wins. This ultimately is my answer to the relativistic planet busters of Traveller... on the one hand, the rules present a physics that would seem to allow them, but on the other hand, the rules also present a setting where clearly that is NOT something that society worries about. So if someone tries that, I will contradict the rules and say no...

Frank

 

[Gronan of Simmerya]

I never played Magic the Gathering.

I heard about the scarcity of powerful cards and said "blow that, it's a trap to get my money."

 

[Moonglum]

I think it is unambiguously true that the hobby would be much better if there were no published adventures or settings (and perhaps 10-20 commonly known rules sets, rather than the current ~1000+). Not only do they stifle creativity and hem in the scope of our games, but we seriously don't need them. You could have all the support you would ever need for creating your own stuff just drawing on a monster manual or two, perhaps some unstocked maps, and books like Dungeon Alphabet or Grimtooth's Traps. To be fair, the hobby's creators started us on our march to being consumers rather than creators of gaming ideas - no one made them publish CSIO or Keep on the Borderlands.

 

[Bunch]

I think it is unambiguously true that the hobby would be much better if there were no published adventures or settings (and perhaps 10-20 commonly known rules sets, rather than the current ~1000+). Not only do they stifle creativity and hem in the scope of our games, but we seriously don't need them. You could have all the support you would ever need for creating your own stuff just drawing on a monster manual or two, perhaps some unstocked maps, and books like Dungeon Alphabet or Grimtooth's Traps. To be fair, the hobby's creators started us on our march to being consumers rather than creators of gaming ideas - no one made them publish CSIO or Keep on the Borderlands.

Yeah I don't agree with that statement all.

 

[Moonglum]

Also, I think it is a mistake to view the core problem as the volume of system rules in modern games or the propensity of players to layer on more house rules or replace published rules with something else. Everyone has their own limits to how little and how much of that they enjoy, and none of it has to hold back how people play The real problem is the published adventures and settings. These are the things that actually stop you from doing the core creative activity of the games and set you on the path toward passive observation of someone else's idea of play.

 

[EmperorNorton]

I generally view any theory that decides that the massive pile of variety of game styles, GM tools and such as a detriment to some platonic ideal of "True Roleplaying" or "What Roleplaying Should Be" as a pile of bullshit.

There are a lot of styles of games I don't have a lot of interest in, but people are out there having fun playing them, and it sure isn't my job to tell them how "oh you're game would be so much better if you played it the way I like to play".

If they are having fun, good for fucking them.

I have no idea why that concept is so hard for so many others to grasp.

 

[robertsconley]

In general I agree with this, but I'm also happy to allow that sometimes the written rules help define the setting,....

It been my experience that there are times using a system of rules is a more concise and clear way to describe an aspect of how a setting works as opposed to a prose English description. In my mind it is about the question of what it is the best way of presenting this piece of information. Rather than a need to add a rule for everything.

To illustrate the point another I could write the inhabitants of Appledale are 75% human, 20% dwarves, 5% other races. Or I could say Use the following table to determine the inhabitants of Appledale. Which convey the same information in a different form that probably more useful during prep or during a session. Especially we are talking dozens of entries compared to my simplistic example.

Roll
----
01-75 Human
76-95 Dwarf
96-00 Other

 

[robertsconley]

I think it is unambiguously true that the hobby would be much better if there were no published adventures or settings (and perhaps 10-20 commonly known rules sets, rather than the current ~1000+). Not only do they stifle creativity and hem in the scope of our games, but we seriously don't need them. You could have all the support you would ever need for creating your own stuff just drawing on a monster manual or two, perhaps some unstocked maps, and books like Dungeon Alphabet or Grimtooth's Traps. To be fair, the hobby's creators started us on our march to being consumers rather than creators of gaming ideas - no one made them publish CSIO or Keep on the Borderlands.

So no room for somebody liking my vision of a setting like Blackmarsh? Nor any room for me trying to make a profit so I can pay some artists and hire an editor to make it pleasing to the eye.

I am all for "do it yourself" and more than willing (and have) convey my thought on how to effectively use one's limited hobby time. But to condemn it holistically is just as myopic as those who state they only willing to use what Wizards (or Chaosium or SJ Games) produces.

And hypocritical as well. Because unless you have gone to the library (or the wikis) and done original research on the setting of your campaign, develop a set of rules and a campaign from scratch then you are no more "pure" or creative then those who buy all their material.

My advice in this matter is to setup up a table with nothing more than dice, pencils and some notebooks. Using nothing more than those tools learn to run a fun session of tabletop roleplaying. Having done that successfully then go and use your favorite rules and supplement and don't feel guilty about using htem. Doing the exercise with dice, paper, and pencil will help you understand what important and what not and make you much more effective when you go and run D&D, GURPS, Traveller, etc. And you should run D&D, GURPS, Traveller, etc because in the end it about what is fun and enjoyable in one's hobby time.

For example when I run D&D I use my homebrew set of rules. Because that what I find fun. Not because I think it is inherently superior for anything except for being the version of D&D I like to run. In addition I like to use GURPS and Harnmaster RAW because they work the way I like RPGs to work when dealing with the type of detail they both cover.

 

[robertsconley]

The real problem is the published adventures and settings. These are the things that actually stop you from doing the core creative activity of the games and set you on the path toward passive observation of someone else's idea of play.

RPGs are never passive. The active participation of the players and referee was built in from the beginning and is independent of what inspires the campaign and informs how it run through the different session.

I see zero difference than Dave being inspired by Saturday afternoon Universal monster flicks and John being inspired by Rein-Hagen's take on vampires. It all grist for the mill.

 

[CRKrueger]

The real problem is the published adventures and settings. These are the things that actually stop you from doing the core creative activity of the games and set you on the path toward passive observation of someone else's idea of play.

Maybe for you. I consume a large number of adventures, the first and only time I ran one as is, was the first one I ever ran back in 1982, B2. Every other adventure has been modified, sometimes to the point that I doubt the original author would recognise it. That’s just how my brain works. I start with things, then I fold, spindle and mutilate them, along the way fueling my own creations, the end result being, for my purposes, better than what I started with, and saving me a lot of time, particularly in the creation of maps, probably my weakest skill.

 

[robertsconley]

Maybe for you. I consume a large number of adventures, the first and only time I ran one as is, was the first one I ever ran back in 1982, B2. Every other adventure has been modified, sometimes to the point that I doubt the original author would recognise it. That’s just how my brain works. I start with things, then I fold, spindle and mutilate them, along the way fueling my own creations, the end result being, for my purposes, better than what I started with, and saving me a lot of time, particularly in the creation of maps, probably my weakest skill.

Exactly what I do. One reason I am a long time subscriber to the Harn autoship program because the articles can be mangled and adapted for I need for the Majestic Wilderlands. Useful for when I got family or work stuff going on and I don't have the time to draw or create from scratch my own thing.

The campaign also richer as result and feel more "lived in" because at some level I am incorporating another author's take on the genre.

 

[Baulderstone]

I can kind of see the argument that compared to OD&D, Basic took the first slippery step on the road to damnation, and with AD&D Gary became the mad conductor on the Rules Train and Unearthed Arcana was when he screamed “This Rules Train Has No Brakes!”. 3e in that context just seems the natural end result.

As someone who started with Moldvay as a 14 year old, not a college-age wargamer who played with the inventors of the game, I doubt I would have done much with OD&D.

At the same time, I made up shit I thought would be fun, felt free to toss out rules (and just chuckled when Corporate Gary contradicted GM Gary) and came up with my own NPCs, towns, cities, campaigns, and worlds.

The B/X boxed sets were great tools for creativity. The model for play, with the wilderness rules in the Expert Set, is a lot more interesting than what was presented in most modules of the time.

I think that the simplicity of presentation of the maps is also a benefit, not a drawback. They used simple and easy-to-draw icons. When I looked at the maps in the B/X sets (an in The Keep on the Borderlands), I immediately starting making my own, and to my eye, they were just as good as the ones in the book. I'm not entirely opposed to fancy maps by any means, but I think having simple maps is essential in the core book that the GM learns from.

[/quote]I really don’t think people take into account how much the design and corporate culture of MtG affected D&D.[/quote]

Sure D&D went crazy with options in the 2.5 days, but the concepts of systems mastery, of the designer being the ultimate authority on the rules, PC build culture, that’s all pure MtG.[/quote]

I agree with some, but not all of that. MtG certainly gave PC build culture a boost, but "albino dwarf syndrome" was already a joke in GURPS circles in the '80s. As for the designer being the ultimate authority, that's on Gygax. I read his column in Dragon on people playing his game wrong before I owned the AD&D books, so that unfortunately was my first impression of the guy.

I agree with you completely on the system mastery element though. The thing that the designers of 3.0 forgot is that you can play a game of Magic in half and hour, then go sit in the corner for fifteen minutes and tweak your deck before going back and playing another game. When you build a PC, you are expected to play that character for a couple of years, so if you realize that you made a "mistake", it hangs over you for a long time.

The constant release of new feats and prestige classes was terrible too. With M:tG expansions, as I mentioned above, you can shuffle new cards into your deck easily. With D&D 3.0, I had players constantly riddled with buyer's remorse after every supplement or issue of Dragon because there was some new feat or prestige class that they wished they had gone for.

At least with the build culture around GURPS, you were generally just dealing with the Advantages and Disadvantages from the core and whatever setting book you were using. The players weren't constantly be taunted with new selections that they couldn't have every month.

To the point where it turned into a unreasonable bias against any commercial RPG project (which is just about everything in the industry).

My feeling is that location-based modules were fine, but that they dropped the ball by never providing very much in the way of hex crawls to complement them. I only got into Judge's Guild products during the OSR, and they would have been enormously helpful to me as models during my early gaming days. They struck a good balance between providing an area to play while leaving plenty of room for the PCs to make their own adventures. They provided a template for play that I never really got from TSR.

The only setting set I ever owned for D&D at the time was The World of Greyhawk and it was too high-level to actually provide me with anything to use at the table, giving summaries of nations rather than locations. That was my first genuinely disappointing RPG purchase, as I didn't see much of anything in it that I could use.

I don't really buy the idea that D&D would have been better off with no supplements. Plenty of gamers are never going to create their own stuff from scratch, and that is fine. Without modules, D&D would have been much smaller, and with fewer people playing, many people who did do creative things in RPGs would never have been exposed to it.

I expect supplements allowed RPGs to be exposed to more RPG creators than it stifled creative people from doing their own thing. Even as complete RPG novice, I can remember the scorn I felt reading that Gygax column about people not playing his game right, and almost all the dungeons I ran back in the day were my own hand-drawn ones. I think The Lost City was the only published one I ran, and that one cleverly forces you to make the second half.

We live in a golden age of people making their own creative gaming stuff, both free and paid and putting it online. With all these people making things, I don't see that published products have really stifled creativity much.

 

[Baulderstone]

Maybe for you. I consume a large number of adventures, the first and only time I ran one as is, was the first one I ever ran back in 1982, B2. Every other adventure has been modified, sometimes to the point that I doubt the original author would recognise it. That’s just how my brain works. I start with things, then I fold, spindle and mutilate them, along the way fueling my own creations, the end result being, for my purposes, better than what I started with, and saving me a lot of time, particularly in the creation of maps, probably my weakest skill.

Yes. I buy adventures to gut them for parts. I want interesting NPCs, cool locations, and some stats I can steal to save me a little time.

 

[Moonglum]

I get that 90+% of the community disagrees with me about published settings and adventures; also, I don't care and am not sorry.

I obviously own a ton of that stuff, like everyone else. But I basically use them as an excuse not to draw a map; I haven't read more than 10 % of the text in much of any of them.

 

[Endless Flight]

I never played Magic the Gathering. I have never bought a pack of cards. I wouldn’t know the first thing about how it works.

 

[T. Foster]

it's worth remembering also that TSR was late to the published adventures/setting and codified rules party. Traveller was released in 1977, the same year as the D&D Basic Set, and RuneQuest (along with its first classic adventure, Apple Lane) in 1978, the same year as the AD&D Players Handbook and first wave of modules (the G & D series, Tomb of Horrors). GDW released Traveller Adventure 1: The Kinunir and started the Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society in 1979, which is the same year Judges Guild released Jennell Jaquays' Dark Tower and Caverns of Thracia, and Chaosium released Snake Pipe Hollow and Cults of Prax, all of which were much larger in scope and sophistication than anything TSR was doing at the time (e.g. In Search of the Unknown, White Plume Mountain) and, arguably, ever. If TSR had stuck to releasing only "toolbox" content (blank maps, etc.) and minimalist, open-ended rules, it's very likely that they would have been crowded out of the market by their competitors. There was definitely a hunger and demand for this sort of material, and other companies recognized it more quickly than TSR did. AD&D and the modules were not a unilateral decision by TSR to shift the direction of the hobby but rather TSR's response to what other companies were already doing.

 

[Akrasia]

...
I really don’t think people take into account how much the design and corporate culture of MtG affected D&D.

Sure D&D went crazy with options in the 2.5 days, but the concepts of systems mastery, of the designer being the ultimate authority on the rules, PC build culture, that’s all pure MtG.

Gronan talks about cultural transformative moments in his review. MtG was definitely one of those. I didn’t know a single role player who didn’t play it. Some groups entirely cratered as people stopped roleplaying entirely. Every FLGS was hosting MtG tournaments, whether official or not. MtG had been part of the roleplaying zeitgeist for years before 3e came out.

Did MtG really have that a big of an impact on RPGs?

I had no interest in MtG. I've never played MiG -- and I probably never will. Granted, I did not game much during the mid-late 1990s (I thus was only dimly aware of the whole Goth/WoD phenomenon), but I didn't know many people who played MtG.

 

[AsenRG]

I think it is unambiguously true that the hobby would be much better if there were no published adventures or settings (and perhaps 10-20 commonly known rules sets, rather than the current ~1000+).

And also, probably small enough that the list of current members of this forum would have made it the biggest one.

 

[Endless Flight]

Published adventures are great. The more of them, the better.

 

[Baulderstone]

I get that 90+% of the community disagrees with me about published settings and adventures; also, I don't care and am not sorry.

I obviously own a ton of that stuff, like everyone else. But I basically use them as an excuse not to draw a map; I haven't read more than 10 % of the text in much of any of them.

That's cool. I'm perfectly fine with agreeing to disagree on this point.

Did MtG really have that a big of an impact on RPGs?

I had no interest in MtG. I've never played MiG -- and I probably never will. Granted, I did not game much during the mid-late 1990s (I thus was only dimly aware of the whole Goth/WoD phenomenon), but I didn't know many people who played MtG.

In RPGs overall, not really. I don't think it had much effect on games over the '90s, and the few games that tried, like first edition Changeling, were reviled for it.

It did have a definite effect on D&D 3E though, which was even stated up-front by the designers at the time. Feats were put in the game to fill the role of cards in M:tG deck, and coming up with sweet combos was part of the game. If you look at early 3E issues of Dragon, they had a regular sidebar feature where they would highlight sweet feat combos for your character builds, just like CCG magazines would do with card combos. And it seemed like every new supplement needed a chapter of new feats to keep players interested.

Part of the design process on D&D was to get players buying more books, so a lot of supplements that would normally be focused on the GM, would have a whole chapter of player options in the front, in theory to get players to buy it. In my experience, the GMs still ended up being the ones buying the books, but the books ended up simply containing less useful content for them.

WotC seemed to believe the players would buy all the books just like they bought M:tG expansions, but of course, they just looked at their GM's books.

 

[Bunch]

I get that 90+% of the community disagrees with me about published settings and adventures; also, I don't care and am not sorry.

I obviously own a ton of that stuff, like everyone else. But I basically use them as an excuse not to draw a map; I haven't read more than 10 % of the text in much of any of them.

My biggest issue with your original statement was the word "unambiguous".

 

[Edgewise]

I think it is unambiguously true that the hobby would be much better if there were no published adventures or settings (and perhaps 10-20 commonly known rules sets, rather than the current ~1000+). Not only do they stifle creativity and hem in the scope of our games, but we seriously don't need them.

Totally disagree. Most people need a little guidance; if you just hand them a bunch of rulebooks and no examples for what to do next, they will walk away confused. Also, there are hundreds of truly great adventures that are better than anything that most GMs would come up with on their own. You can use these at the table or just for inspiration. It's almost like saying computers would be better if everyone wrote their own software.

 

[T. Foster]

I also feel like Rob (from what I gather second-hand) is missing, or at least undervaluing, the degree to which codified rules and pre-written settings and adventures can still be open-ended and toolboxy, as indeed all of what I consider to be the best of those (early AD&D, Traveller, RQ, etc.) did. They all encourage individual additions and modifications, and are generally just providing a foundational framework upon which individual campaigns are to be built - the same thing OD&D did (expressing Arneson's concepts in concrete, actionable terms) just on a more specific scale. Things like The Kinunir, The Keep on the Borderlands, The Secret of Bone Hill, Griffin Mountain, and The World of Greyhawk are mostly just collections of maps and stats with some vague suggestions about how you might be able to utilize them. That's not stepping on anyone's individual creativity, it's just giving it a nudge and a helpful framework so you don't have to do a bunch of extra work (cranking out stats is easy but time-consuming; drawing good maps is both time consuming and hard) or be daunted by a blank page. If anything, many players (especially those bred on "modern" stuff) find those types of adventures too toolboxy and open-ended and the common complaint about them is "what are the players supposed to do?" The answer is that it's not for the adventure to tell you that, it's for the DM and players to figure out through their play.

There are some people who are ready and willing to create their own rpg campaign from first principles, and for them even the OD&D white-box can feel like a straitjacket (which is one of the reasons there was such an explosion of alternate-D&Ds in the first few years, even before money became a big motivator), but there are a lot more people who want guidelines and examples, and they shouldn't be excluded from the hobby or relegated to second-class status.

 

[robertsconley]

I obviously own a ton of that stuff, like everyone else. But I basically use them as an excuse not to draw a map; I haven't read more than 10 % of the text in much of any of them.

However my direct question was whether you write the rules you use to run your RPG campaign?

If you don't write your own rules, why is it acceptable to use published rules and not other published works? Especially in light that the portion of most RPG systems devoted to adjudication is small compared to the stuff that supports the genre (or setting if it is a setting specific set of rules). For example most of D&D are lists of monsters, magic items, spells, classes, etc.

I obviously own a ton of that stuff, like everyone else. But I basically use them as an excuse not to draw a map; I haven't read more than 10 % of the text in much of any of them.

So why is that? Do you know a setting or genre so well that you internalized all the things you need to run a campaign and adventures?

 

[robertsconley]

My feeling is that location-based modules were fine, but that they dropped the ball by never providing very much in the way of hex crawls to complement them. I only got into Judge's Guild products during the OSR, and they would have been enormously helpful to me as models during my early gaming days. They struck a good balance between providing an area to play while leaving plenty of room for the PCs to make their own adventures. They provided a template for play that I never really got from TSR.

For those reading my reply, I got my start in publishing and RPG writing by supporting Judges Guild style setting. Writing fantasy sandbox and hexcrawl formatted settings is part of what I am known for.

My view that the historical problem is that the travelogue formatted setting and the tournament style adventure became not just the most common format used but the only format considered proper and format. I did work with the hexcrawl format because it what I adopted in the early 80s. As consequence I developed a lot of experience with it which aided me a couple of decades later when I wrote for the Wilderlands and the Points of Light book.

I don't think the travelogue format is bad just way overused. When done well, like for Harn, it works.. But if you need to detail in a compact form several dozen items of local detail then the hexcrawl format is your ticket. If you only have a dozen or so local level detail then a keyed map will suffice.

The only setting set I ever owned for D&D at the time was The World of Greyhawk and it was too high-level to actually provide me with anything to use at the table, giving summaries of nations rather than locations. That was my first genuinely disappointing RPG purchase, as I didn't see much of anything in it that I could use.

Or as I put it "The howling emptiness of the 30 mile hex." When I got ahold of the original Wilderlands of High Fantasy (the first five maps). I thought to myself "Yeah this works, this will work great." The major issue that drove me is that the players wanted to carve out kingdoms and the Wilderlands had all the data on villages and town that could tell me exactly how much revenue and troops the players could get or face in opposition.

 

[xanther]

...

It is my opinion that what Dave Arneson's developed and put together can be simply put. That he created a game/activity where people interacted with a setting as their characters with their actions adjudicated by a referee.

...

In this the rules as most people call RPGs are a detail, a tool used by the referee to aid in adjudicating what the players do. The primary implication of which what a character can or can not do is not defined by the rules but by the setting of the campaign and the capability of the character as stated in notes about the character.

...

The difference with RPGs is that you can still "cheat" but the rules being broken are not those found in the PHB, DMGs of various systems. But rather something is done that isn't allowed by the setting of the campaign. It is the setting that provides the "rules" of the campaign. What traditionally hobbyists call rules is a tool to make adjudicating the setting easier. However if the rules describe something that doesn't make sense in how the setting work. Then the referee should describe an outcome consistent with the setting.

This. Especially the last sentence. Hence my great aversion to RAW thinking. Hence my dissatisfaction with even basic concepts as class (just never could get D&D class to make sense with any setting or genre hero I had interest in). The solution, to me, is not to present oodles and oodles of classes and unique rules (e.g. feats) to fill those gaps.

I'm interested in mechanics that facilitate adjudicating the setting and presenting verisimilitude to a genre, the host of the mechanics being the rules. I've found detailed rules to do not help this (now detailed examples, and extensive content using the basic rules sure), rather mechanics should be flexible enough to cover many situations without a sub-system, even ones not thought of.

As an aside, I do not mind design sub-systems meant to help a GM create content for their games.

Finally since RPG settings are in theory in entire worlds with the potential of life as rich and detailed as our own Earth, these means what player could try to do and what the referee would be called on to adjudicate is equally expansive. In practice this is far more narrow due to a focus on having adventure and the tropes of specific genres. But it also means that there isn't a system developed that encompases all that is possible within a setting. Thus the need for the considered judgement of a human referee to bring a RPG campaign to life.

Agreed, and a rule system should not. In my view the mechanics should be such that they are readily and easily grasped by the GM, with information to allow a GM to make informed choices and examples to help the GM see how the rules can be used.

The situation today is far better than 1985 when Unearthed Arcana was released.

Indeed.

And as a point of information, first played D&D in late 1977, introduced by friends older brother back from college with this new game. Having been well versed in wargames, I really dug the free-form nature of it. So I guess I'm second generation introduced by someone I guess who is first generation? Not sure the cut-off.
Hated the Condescending Corporate Gary mindset. Frankly, back then the war was freshly over when a lot of us got into D&D, older brothers and cousins coming back from the war or being able to drop out of college...D&D was counter-culture to us so a person we thought had created this great counter-culture thing to start spouting condescending corporate crap...can imagine how well it went over.


I believe that the corporate D&D 3+ mindset is more a product of the MtG system mastery mindset, and need for endless product purchase. Only tried MtG a couple times, sorta fun, but don't like "collectable" games where the amount of money you spend Is just as important as skill. It's the off-line version of a freemium game.

 

[tenbones]

Very interesting thread. As a perverted inversion of D&D... on top of MtG, I wouldn't downplay the effect of MMO's on D&D either. "Character builds" are absolutely part of the assumptions of those games, which translated directly into mechanics in later editions of D&D that were never meant for table but then somehow got recapitulated into tabletop game-design for what designers believed were good intentions.

 

[Voros]

I can kind of see the argument that compared to OD&D, Basic took the first slippery step on the road to damnation, and with AD&D Gary became the mad conductor on the Rules Train and Unearthed Arcana was when he screamed “This Rules Train Has No Brakes!”. 3e in that context just seems the natural end result.

As someone who started with Moldvay as a 14 year old, not a college-age wargamer who played with the inventors of the game, I doubt I would have done much with OD&D.

At the same time, I made up shit I thought would be fun, felt free to toss out rules (and just chuckled when Corporate Gary contradicted GM Gary) and came up with my own NPCs, towns, cities, campaigns, and worlds.

I really don’t think people take into account how much the design and corporate culture of MtG affected D&D.

Sure D&D went crazy with options in the 2.5 days, but the concepts of systems mastery, of the designer being the ultimate authority on the rules, PC build culture, that’s all pure MtG.

Gronan talks about cultural transformative moments in his review. MtG was definitely one of those. I didn’t know a single role player who didn’t play it. Some groups entirely cratered as people stopped roleplaying entirely. Every FLGS was hosting MtG tournaments, whether official or not. MtG had been part of the roleplaying zeitgeist for years before 3e came out.

Interesting, I never played MtG nor did anyone in my group but we almost all took a hiatus from RPGs around the same time. I recall MtG arriving but never paid it much mind as it wasn’t an RPG. It wasn’t until in more recent years that I met younger people who play MtG.

My completely unscientific impression was that MtG would have appealed most to those who were more interested in rules and lore heavy gaming and were compulsive collectors who bought every book released.

I think a lot of the RPG industry relied on collector mania and when that base migrated to MtG it had an outsized impact on the niche hobby.

 

[robertsconley]

I never played Magic the Gathering. I have never bought a pack of cards. I wouldn’t know the first thing about how it works.

Very simplified explanation.

• You have a deck of 40 to 60 cards.
• Each card is either a source of magic (generally worth a point of mana) or a spell.
• Each turn you can play a source of magic.
• Each spell have a cost.
• If you have enough points of mana you can play the spell.
• Each side has 20 hit points or life.
• Spells have different effects but general work together to allow you to do damage to your opponent.
• Whoever goto zero life loses.
• The spells work in different combination in different ways to allow people form strategies about the composition of their deck.
• The above is why the game is so addictive to some. With all the available card there are hundreds of viable strategies.
• The cards are collectible in that when you buy a set you get a random assortment of cards.
• MtG is part of a class of card games called deck building games.
• Not all deck building games work like MtG particularly in the random assortment of cards in a product. For example Star Realms doesn't do random assortments.