Who is the most influential living game designer?

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T. Foster said:
It wasn’t influential at all (not least because Mayfair Games canceled it and got out of the rpg business about a year after it was released) but it feels like in an alternate universe it should have been. IMO it took what was working for WW and Shadowrun but did it better and more interestingly.
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i wouldn't say Underground had no influence, i could see it in the DNA of Unknown Armies
 
SJB said:
James Maliszewski makes the case for Sandy Petersen.

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Retrospective: Ghostbusters

Roleplaying games based on officially licensed properties started appearing quite early in the history of the hobby. FGU's Flash Gordon & th...
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Petersen definitely belongs on the short list
 
Baulderstone said:
Yes, people are questioning the influence of Mearls work on D&D 4E and 5E, but he had those jobs because he was a hugely influential designer on 3rd party products during the 3E era.

The Network System from BedrockBrendan BedrockBrendan is older than D&D Advantage but is very similar mechanically. It's basically a system that uses a the same premise as the core of the game.

It's a D10 dice pool system where you roll a number of d10s equal to your skill level and keep the highest. If you don't have a skill, you roll 2 d10s and keep the lowest. To break it down..
Skill Level
UnskilledRoll 2 dice and keep the lowest
Level 1Roll 1 die
Level 2Roll 2 dice, keep the highest
Level 3Roll 3 dice, keep the highest
Level 4Roll 4 dice, keep the highest

You can modify the roll by adding or taking away dice.

The probabilities are really slick as well.
View attachment 59995
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Nice system!

I was not aware cf the actual probabilities, but rolling adding extra dice is just grest fun on a limbic system level!

From a player's point of view this system would feel quite enjoyable to play.

You can also easily eliminate character sheet clutter by getting rid of Talents/Feats and just using an Ability Level mechanic that not only indicates proficiency, but also widens the scope/magnitude of what is achievable per level.

I think it would work great in a pulp/rollicking action genre where you roll more dice and widen the plausibility factor depending on your Ability level.
 
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Mankcam said:
This certainly has been very influential, however just pointing out that it wasn't the first time I saw this mechanic.
I'm sure it existed in Mechwarrior RPG, and likely some other lesser known rpgs.
But D&D 5E kinda made it famous
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Pretty sure the first use of Advantage is in OtE by...Tweet.
 
Voros said:
Pretty sure the first use of Advantage is in OtE by...Tweet.
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Kinda

I never played it, but I know Over The Edge was 1990s/2000s era

I also remember there being a nucleus of a mechanic like this in Mechwarrior rpg in the mid 1990s, but I think the Mechwarrior system was almost a decade old by the time I got to play it.

It was a Disadvantage Mechanic, so half of the Advantage/Disadvantage Dice model was already in existence with rpgs by the late 1980s.

In Mechwarrior I remember that you rolled 2D10 for Named Skills, and it was also an open-ended roll (for every natural 10 you rolled an additional dice).

It was a "Add the Dice and Get Over Target Number" system, with easier tasks having lowered target numbers

If actions were deemed to be Difficult you rolled an extra D10, keeping the worst two scores to calculate the result. This Difficulty modifier mechanic could be applied to both trained skills and untrained actions

For general ability actions (untrained actions) instead of 2D10 you always rolled 3d10, keeping the worse two scores to calculate the result, and there was no open-ended capacity.

So if the task was Difficult and you were not trained, then it ended up being a roll of 4D10, keeping the worst two scores to calculate the result.

This is the earliest version of Penalty/Disadvantage Dice that I am aware of. There may have been other rpgs around before Mechwarrior that had similar ideas,

Simplifying it to its modern form by making it just rolling double dice and keeping the best/worst result, was a great idea.

Would not be surprised if Johnathan Tweet currated it for Over The Edge.
 
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Mankcam said:
This certainly has been very influential, however just pointing out that it wasn't the first time I saw this mechanic.
I'm sure it existed in Mechwarrior RPG, and likely some other lesser known rpgs.
But D&D 5E kinda made it famous
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Baulderstone said:
Yes, people are questioning the influence of Mearls work on D&D 4E and 5E, but he had those jobs because he was a hugely influential designer on 3rd party products during the 3E era.

The Network System from BedrockBrendan BedrockBrendan is older than D&D Advantage but is very similar mechanically. It's basically a system that uses a the same premise as the core of the game.

It's a D10 dice pool system where you roll a number of d10s equal to your skill level and keep the highest. If you don't have a skill, you roll 2 d10s and keep the lowest. To break it down..
Skill Level
UnskilledRoll 2 dice and keep the lowest
Level 1Roll 1 die
Level 2Roll 2 dice, keep the highest
Level 3Roll 3 dice, keep the highest
Level 4Roll 4 dice, keep the highest

You can modify the roll by adding or taking away dice.

The probabilities are really slick as well.
View attachment 59995
Click to expand...

Oddly enough I believe the first RPG I ever played was Mechwarrior (this is still something I am not 100% sure of because I never saw the book, it was all pregens and the GM had all the material in a three ring note book).

I'm sure most of these things you can find people who did it first. The question I suppose is influence. It is like there were people who technically finger tapped before Van Halen but there is no question he is the one who influenced the the guitar virtuosos doing that style in the 80s.

I think in RPGs it can be very tricky because a lot of people aren't even aware of designers by name but might be influenced by them (there are a ton of RPGs that shaped me and many of them I don't know the designers name off the top of my head, or it is very unclear who the main designer actually was in some other instances).
 
I'd vote for Jackson and Livingstone. Not content with pushing RPG's in the UK, their company Games Workshop and it's creations are amongst the few game settings that have managed to break out of our hobby into genuine pop culture.

Simlasa said:
Forgive me for not knowing why this is wrong... but would Mike Mearls count? It's not like he designed D&D but he worked on 4e, which led to some significant fallout, and then worked on 5e which brought the crown back to the tower... then a lot of folks shuffled towards its light to make stuff for it or convert existing things to use it.
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I mean... people say that. But 5e has significant amounts of 4e in it's core mechanic design (As does Pathfinder 2e, other big games around at the moment); it's content is different, but the underlying engine is very similar.

5e isn't quite the Windows 7 to 4e's Vista (7 was a universal improvement...) but it changed enough to quiet the loudest complaints.

Doc Sammy said:
Dishonorable mentions to Justin Achilli, Ron Edwards, Olivia Hill, Jennifer Aniston, Satyros Brucato, Varg Vikernes, and Zak Sabbath. Not all influential designers are good influences.
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TBH I think Zak deserves a legit nomination due to the time that he was a leader of the "DIY D&D" movement as it separated from the OSR. Now, he's always been an asshole (And I think that the speed everyone dropped him indicates that he was never really well-liked).

I think Edwards deserves a nomination, but more for the community he inspired than his own works, which are... eh.

TristramEvans said:
yeah its been very popular in rpgs and boardgames for the last 30 years, i can see why 5e adopted it, even if they fucked up the implementation
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Nah, the "roll one extra dice and remove one you don't want" take on it feels better at the table (Rolling two dice instead of one feels good! Pinging away the unwanted die feels good! It doesn't add significant thinking time. There's no memory issues or chance for someone to cheat by lying about or "forgetting" their previous roll.) than "re-roll and keep the new result even if worse" does.

It only works so well because D&D uses so few dice, though. For a dice pool game, it wouldn't be so good.
 
Ladybird said:
Nah, the "roll one extra dice and remove one you don't want" take on it feels better at the table
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i agree, it was one of the aspects i liked about The One Ring (and the Powerpuff Girls boardgame)

Where 5th ed fucked up is that they couldn't also let go of adding incremental modifiers on top of it
 
Ladybird said:
I'd vote for Jackson and Livingstone. Not content with pushing RPG's in the UK, their company Games Workshop and it's creations are amongst the few game settings that have managed to break out of our hobby into genuine pop culture.


I mean... people say that. But 5e has significant amounts of 4e in it's core mechanic design (As does Pathfinder 2e, other big games around at the moment); it's content is different, but the underlying engine is very similar.

5e isn't quite the Windows 7 to 4e's Vista (7 was a universal improvement...) but it changed enough to quiet the loudest complaints.


TBH I think Zak deserves a legit nomination due to the time that he was a leader of the "DIY D&D" movement as it separated from the OSR. Now, he's always been an asshole (And I think that the speed everyone dropped him indicates that he was never really well-liked).

I think Edwards deserves a nomination, but more for the community he inspired than his own works, which are... eh.


Nah, the "roll one extra dice and remove one you don't want" take on it feels better at the table (Rolling two dice instead of one feels good! Pinging away the unwanted die feels good! It doesn't add significant thinking time. There's no memory issues or chance for someone to cheat by lying about or "forgetting" their previous roll.) than "re-roll and keep the new result even if worse" does.

It only works so well because D&D uses so few dice, though. For a dice pool game, it wouldn't be so good.
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I think Sorcerer was a very influential game for the time but didn't have the legs mechanically that Baker's work has displayed.

Zak was always a bit of a poor man's Patrick Stuart to me. I liked a fair bit of Zak's stuff but to me PS was clearly the bigger and more original talent.
 
Ladybird said:
TBH I think Zak deserves a legit nomination due to the time that he was a leader of the "DIY D&D" movement as it separated from the OSR. Now, he's always been an asshole (And I think that the speed everyone dropped him indicates that he was never really well-liked).
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Zak certainly had influence, mostly negative, but it's so recent it's hard to put him on a list of most influential designers. I can point to some OSR adventures that have a Zakish esthetic, but that's about it. Is there actually anything games are doing now that they didn't do before him?
 
i'd probably nominate Raggi before Zak, but that's still operating in the osr space, and in which case i think Ryan Dancy is far higher up on the list than any indvidual in the osr.
 
TristramEvans said:
i'd probably nominate Raggi before Zak, but that's still operating in the osr space, and in which case i think Ryan Dancy is far higher up on the list than any indvidual in the osr.
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Yeah, but I have a problem with Dancey in that he isn't a game designer. If this was most influential person, then I could see it.
 
T. Foster said:
Ray Winninger also wrote Underground (actually released as “Ray Winninger’s Underground”), one of my favorites from the baroque post-WOD “peak rpg” period
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I have a fondness for edgy 90's games but I cannot find a pdf copy anywhere. Anyone got any leads?
 
On the basis of what I have played the most, in no particular order, Marc Miller, Sandy Petersen, Ken St Andre, Monte Cook, Robin Laws.

In terms of who has made me rethink how I play and run games, Robin Laws.
 
Another name that I've not seen mentioned is James M Ward. Credited as early as 1975 on one of the OD&D books, wrote two RPGs for TSR, wrote articles for Dragon Magazine in the 1970's, created an early collectable card game, worked for TSR for years, had his own game company (Fast Forward Games), wrote a setting for C&C and so on. He was linked somehow to the Pool of Radiance computer games has written several novels, and it still doing RPG design. I'm not sure if he is #1 all time, but I would think he deserves a mention. Below is a list of some of his stuff, mostly from Wikipedia.

------------------------------------

RPG credits

Metamorphosis Alpha (TSR, 1976), the first science fiction role-playing game.

Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes, with Robert J. Kuntz (TSR, 1976), one of the four rules supplements to the original edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

Gamma World, with Gary Jaquet (TSR, 1978), the first role-playing game in the post-apocalyptic subgenre.

Deities & Demigods, with Robert J. Kuntz (TSR, 1980), a core rulebook for the 1st Edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons presenting similar material to that of Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes. This work introduced a number of now iconic Dungeons & Dragons deities, such as Corellon Larethian, Garl Glittergold, Gruumsh, Moradin, and Yondalla.

The Mansion of Mad Professor Ludlow (TSR, 1980).

Greyhawk Adventures (TSR, 1988), a hardcover sourcebook for the World of Greyhawk campaign setting.

Metamorphosis Alpha 4th Edition (Mudpuppy Games, 2006).

Towers of Adventure (Troll Lord Games, 2008), a digest box set for the Castles & Crusades game.

Tainted Lands (Troll Lord Games, 2010), a dark horror themed box set expansion for the Castles & Crusades game.

Beneath the Dome (Troll Lord Games, 2013), a serial adventure for the Castles & Crusades game.

Gods and Monsters (Troll Lord Games, 2014), a book on gods and monsters from various mythologies for the Castles & Crusades game.

77 Worlds RPG (http://Firesidecreations.com , 2014), a science fiction post apocalyptic role-playing game and campaign setting using the Ward Card System (WCS). The 77 Lost Worlds RPG is part of the Apocalyptic Space series of RPGs.

Giant Lands RPG

Lance RPG (in development)

Other

Spellfire Collectable card game

1-on-1 Adventure Game books (TSR)

Dragon Ball Z Collectible Card Game.

Westeros GAME OF THRONES Miniatures rules (2007).

Astrobirdz Concept card game, RPG, board game, coin game, YA novels.

My Precious Presents card game

Dragon Lairds board game, created by Ward and Tom Wham, was published in 2008 by Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd.

In 2008, Ward became the Managing Editor of and a contributor to The Crusader magazine published by Troll Lord Games.
 
And don't forget Giantlands!


I kid, I kid. Ward definitely belongs on the shortlist.
 
Oooh I'd forgotten about Giantlands. I wonder how the theme park is getting on.
 
Jeff Grubb and David 'Zeb' Cook are two designers who I think should be considered more influential than they are.

I mean, Cook (and Moldvay) are the real Godfathers of the OSR imo, moreso than Gygax, who is invoked more as a totem than an actual influence (as the completely distorted invention and use of the terms 'Gygaxian naturalism' and 'Gygaxian democracy' ((wtf??)) reveal).
 
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