Wolf, I don’t think you’ve actually rebutted me; I’m in agreement with most of the above.

Mechanics aren’t good or bad because they’re old or new; design can be progressive without being the product of game designers in 2013. The problem with the nostalgia fetish is decidedly not that people like old games – it’s that a (loud and unrepresentative) subset of people who like older games think that their subjective emotional responses to games they played when they were 13 are the only way a fantasy RPG should be designed, even when those subjective emotional responses were not a function of specific mechanical implementations. And this group of gamers (who give other gamers with similar tastes but much better social skills) has decided that people who like different things in the same game they like shouldn’t get cool new stuff because that cool new stuff is insufficiently “D&D” because FEELINGS. I suspect that, were the “It’s Not D&D” committee to take to message boards trashing the Midgard Campaign Setting because it violates the Vancian-Gygaxo baseline from which all fantasy RPGs evolved – “Central European myths aren’t D&D because E. Gary Gygax was more into Lovecraft, Moorecock and Vance” – you would be a bit miffed, and speak disparagingly at them while sitting at the country club lighting Cuban cigars with $100 bills.

As you well know, Mr. Baur, I still hold to Greg Stolze and John Tynes’s Unknown Armies as one of the pinnacles of progressive design (a game fourteen years old). It’s not for everybody (or even most people), but its mixture of flavor and systems-lite mechanics still challenge me – even though the second edition is 10 years old. If Atlas announced a UA 3e, I’d be ecstatic: and I’d be willing to accept a variety of mechanical implementations that actualize the game’s principle of “You did it” while retaining the philosophical distinctions between the post-modern magick of adepts and the Jungian archetypal powers of Avatars. I would even be open to a new vision of magick, given that in the ten years since 2e the Internet and global communication has created new paradigms of thinking – and in a humano-centric occult game that stuff is par for the course.

The essence of a table-top roleplaying game isn’t really mechanics – it’s the underlying fiction or story that the game facilitates. People might prefer certain mechanical implementations but those preferences (among the rational) aren’t nostalgia-based but utility based, with the utility being “can I tell the same sorts of collaborative stories I’ve told in past editions of the game I liked.”

I would like to point out that not one troll was harmed in the making of this rebuttal. Thank you Mr. Baur.

W. Baur makes a good point, but let’s not forget that the original article was probably aimed at the most diehard of the old-fashion fans that raised their nostalgia to an absurd level. People tend to do this in real life as well as in make-believe. That said, I agree with this point of view – progress doesn’t always mean improvement (though the d20 modern verse certainly worked, at least in my games), and that we shouldn’t dismiss the old in favor of the new so abruptly either.

Neal, in terms of this statement, “D&D is like a credo or design philosophy about genre (storytelling in the fantasy milieu centered on saving the world),” I think that’s an argument for “any” fantasy game sufficing. I can create the same “save-the-world” effect and good stories just as easily in Castles & Crusades, Savage Worlds, GURPS Fantasy, Pathfinder, Dragon Age, 13th Age….

D&D, therefore, is “more” than storytelling. That’s why I think the mechanics of it do play a part in its definition. I can emulate novels and stories just fine in other systems. They don’t all ring true as D&D-like–save C&C and Pathfinder. Those are games that share mechanical elements of the versions that came before. Whereas the others just seem to be “fantasy” games. Of course, I have no experience with 13th Age, so I’m generalizing there.

Somebody should send me some 13th Age books!

There’s nothing wrong with people being passionate about a kind of game they enjoy. There is plenty wrong with telling others that their game is inferior to the one the person prefers.

The first blog seemed to want to say that, but itself fell into the trap of decrying those that love older editions. We should celebrate that our hobby is so diverse.

I really doubt any individual is able to infallibly predict how any new edition will be received over time. The good news is that we don’t need to foretell the future. Playing/reading new games, regardless of whether they are tremendous successes, average, or inferior, helps everyone advance the hobby. We learn what works, we get inspired, we learn what we don’t like, and we create new material. That unpredictability should be celebrated – it keeps our hobby from being boring. The discovery itself has value and gives back to the hobby.

What Wizards does, what Paizo does, what 13th Age does, what any RPG company does is all contributing to the betterment of our hobby. In a similar manner, those that are passionate about where the game came from are also contributing. As historians and lore-keepers, as reminders of forgotten elements and styles, these individuals are another great part of our evolving hobby. Let us celebrate all of it.

Neal, I was curious about your statement that 13th Age’s emphasis is on 3e’s base. I don’t have a lot of experience with 3.x, but have played 4E for years, and see a lot of 4E in 13th Age. I view 13th Age as something of a “spiritual successor” to 4E, rather than a throwback to 3.x. Would you please elaborate on the aspects of 13th Age that you feel are more 3.x-influenced than 4E-influenced?

Tim, I’m referring to comments made on multiple forums by Wade Rockett, the PR person for Fire Opal. When asked whether 13th Age was the spiritual successor to 4e or intentionally iterating on 4e (which I also thought was obvious given the state of the rules) I and others were informed that any similarities to 4e were the result of serendipity rather than an intentional choice to further iterate or refine the styles of play encouraged by the last edition of D&D. Per the official line at Fire Opal, 13th Age is intended to be Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet’s version of fantasy roleplaying – and not to read any more into it.

I was quite puzzled by this, given the number of fans who were responding to the elements carried over from 4e and the 4e-like content for the Kickstarter causing the Kickstarter to explode in support (particularly the Battle Captain). It seemed pretty clear that the market was willing to support an attempt to further iterate on the assumptions of 4e by fixing some of the many problems with the system. But Fire Opal has been quite clear on this since this past December that 13th Age is what it is, and the only comment that they can make re: the shape of future support is that it’s Rob and Jonathan’s game so they’ll decide/approve the shape of future iteration. You can check RPG.net threads on 13th Age and Something Awful’s thread for confirmation.

Like you, I was quite confused by the statements made by Fire Opal on this point – and I have to say that my enthusiasm for 13th Age went down from a 9 or so to about a 3. The issues I had with 13th Age were, I assumed, going to be ironed out in playtesting given that most of them were legacy aspects of the rules inherited from earlier editions of D&D; once I found out these were features of the game given its status as Tweet and Heinsoo’s pet project and not the sort of thing that was up for debate I shelved my 13th Age games and decided to wait and see before spending any more money on the system.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on 13th Age, Neal. Like any system, 13th Age has some areas I’m not crazy about, but I find them few and far between. Additionally, the conversational tone between Jonathan and Rob in the sidebars makes it clear that GMs are welcome…expected, even…to house rule portions of it that they don’t like. There are even suggestions on alternate approaches to various rules, which I appreciate. It’s at the printers now, so hopefully you’ll get a chance to review the final version soon!

Henry W noted: “This is perhaps the only progress that matters.”

I’m not so sure that designing a game to match the tastes of a niche audience that, according to some industry analysts, appears to be shrinking is what I’d call progress – and if it is, it certainly doesn’t strike me as progress that matters. It’s stasis, certainly, but not progress.

I’d be more comfortable if WotC – or any major company – would say something like “We know millennials and core gamers in other industries enjoy computer games – how can we create a system that will be familiar enough to be popular with younger gamers (through mechanics that are based on MMO roles or that embrace archetypes of fantasy games) yet give them something a video game can’t by leveraging the strengths of tabletop as a medium?” This would, of course, cause wailing and gnashing of teeth among existing customers – many of whom would launch into nerdrage and use the tired rhetoric that “WotC is firing me as a customer” or something.

But the goal should be to embrace new ideas – with history as, perhaps, a baseline informing flavor – and grow the hobby by bringing in new gamers. Nostalgia is something that appeals to existing customers – not new customers. Legacy mechanics appeal to those who appreciate the legacy – not people who have never gamed before.

So yeah, I’m not convinced that an “open beta” is particularly progressive – it’s a way to get the people who are already buying games to continue spending money. A progressive approach would be to do something that would bring in new players, presumably by doing something that other games haven’t done particularly well in the past.

I don’t know what that thing is. I suspect no one will until someone gets lucky and gloms onto the right idea. But I really don’t think that the golden ticket – or progressive design – will be whatever “feels like” D&D to a bunch of 30, 40, and 50 somethings. If I’m wrong, and if D&D 5e causes an industry boom that makes non-gamers suddenly become gamers, I’ll happily write a column detailing all of the ways that I was wrong and apologizing to everyone who read my column. Seriously, I will. I’d love nothing more than to be wrong – an industry boom would likely cause Wolfgang to give me a pay raise for producing content for this Web site!

there is not a lot to add to whats already been said here, but i would like to add this… when i get into a car its reasonable to expect there to be a an accelerator pedal on the right and a break in the middle/left and a clutch on the far left if its an automatic.

if a game system is going to be called d&d then it should play like d&d and the basics of the system should be there and play like they always did. if i wanted to play something that was different then i would play something different. not to say that the game cant change but there should be the core of the game there and to work as expected,

without those things then its just not the same. its like eating ice cream made out of goats milk, yeah you can call it ice cream but its just not the same.

There’s a non-trivial segment of the RPG fanbase that won’t rest easy until the next edition of D&D is accompanied by a tear-stained apology note, personalized and signed by Mike Mearls, swearing that WotC is done experimenting with narrative mechanics, they won’t take D&D to a “bad place” ever again, and that the only rubric that matters in the future is the personal verisimilitude of the now-appeased Edition Warrior, pinky-promise. Some of these people have commented on the past two columns, actually, and you can find them on every RPG forum online.

While I don’t assume that this group of fans is synonymous with the contingent that claims what D&D really needs to grow as a brand is to preserve the nostalgia of 30- and 40-somethings, I do think both have unrealistic expectations of the world in which we live. For the hobby’s sake I sure do hope the percentage of younger customers that can be persuaded to buy and play something constructed around preserving the nostalgia of people that are no longer young is sufficiently large to prevent Hasbro from shelving the line for a decade; I sincerely hope that loads of young people in college will seek out the venerable elders among us, invite us into their dorms, and allow us older gamers to lecture them about why legacy mechanics that are (perhaps) dissociated from the larger mechanical framework are an important callback to the early days of the hobby, that these concerns are more important than broad appeal across multiple demographics, and in so doing teach these youngsters the right way to have fun pretending to be an elf.

I doubt that they will, though.

Arguing for the “Progressive” take on the game to dominate the next iteration of D&D is as nebulous as the “That’s Not D&D” grognards doing so for their preferences. That’s a fair enough desire, just don’t think people aren’t going to point it out if it’s wrapped in positive sounding words like progress and modern, while tagging words like legacy and nostalgia fetish to older styles of the game rules.

I’ll admit I’m not well versed in 4E, but I don’t see players commonly characterizing 4E as a narrativist system. From what I know of the system and what I hear, it’s still a very gamist system with its focus on balance and character abilities. Interestingly, I often hear some of the OSR people argue the rules lite systems they use cover just enough of the gamism to make the game outcomes interesting/unknown/dangerous, while leaving skills and roleplaying between the DM and players, thus a whole segment of the game is essentially narrativist in nature. The whole “we used to play an entire session without rolling dice” discussion. The old schoolers feel the modern systems with their focus on player abilities and codified skills is counter to their relatively rules lite ‘narrativist’ version of D&D. Go figure. Different strokes for different folks.

It wouldn’t be wise for WotC, but Hasbro could afford to shelf D&D for a decade as it isn’t their biggest brand, they brought WotC for MtG anyway. This doesn’t seem to be the case as Hasbro is fighting to reclaim the movie rights for D&D. We needn’t worry about that.

There’s a bit of fear-mongering in wondering what will happen to the RPG hobby if WotC shelves D&D for a decade after (if) this appeal to the old school fails. Nothing will happen to the hobby. It will continue as it is now. D&D will fade as other systems and games take over. You can bet these systems will try their hardest to grow the hobby. Why do you assume these other systems and companies aren’t doing the same thing as D&D and WotC are trying to do?

Neal, you asked what if those 40 year old gaming geezers aren’t invited to college dorms to guide the young padawans on how to properly roleplay elves the old school, nostalgia fetish way. Did you read what you wrote? Is there any sort of valid argument there or just some fuzzy straw man you’re gnashing harder than the “That’s Not D&D” crowd you claim commits that very transgression.

How do you know for sure modeling D&D further to MMOisms and “progressive design” will appeal to broader demographics of new and younger players? How do you know younger players are looking for their tabletop experience to mirror their video game experience. How do you know for certain going back to legacy style mechanics will sink the D&D brand into irrelevance and drag the entire hobby along with it? What evidence do you have?

It’s possible the better design fails to be adopted (Beta-max vs VHS), but only WotC would know for certain since they hold the sales numbers. For the time being the evidence we can infer from how 4E has progressed more closely aligns to the legacy crowd being right. If 4E was a smashing success in its outreach to new players, why the need for 5E. Or why the fear of 5E catering to the old school if we’re certain of 4E’s obvious superiority in proliferating into the current and future RPG market.

Henry wrote: “How do you know for sure modeling D&D further to MMOisms and “progressive design” will appeal to broader demographics of new and younger players? How do you know younger players are looking for their tabletop experience to mirror their video game experience. How do you know for certain going back to legacy style mechanics will sink the D&D brand into irrelevance and drag the entire hobby along with it? What evidence do you have?”

No one knows for sure. Absolutely no one. I don’t know for sure whether the sun will rise tomorrow, or whether the world will exist tomorrow night. I can infer from past results, however. And I guess my response to your question is that we’ve been trying your preferred solutions for the past two decades (with a couple year blip) and we’re in a situation where the hobby is contracting. I acknowledge that I’m not a businessman; I’m an academic. But it seems to me that trying the same thing over and over again expecting different results each time is madness. If I was trying to capture the interest of new players I’d base my efforts off the stuff that they like, see what can be adapted (different than translating), see what can be improved on, and go from there.

I pulled MMOs out of my ass because I assume that’s what hot – I don’t play them – but other games like Skyrim and Dark Souls (and Mass Effect) might also have something to teach TTRPG designers, and might result in a better assumptions about new players’ tastes than older editions of D&D. Or it might not. But I’d look to newer media before I jump to the idea that the lack of existing gamers’ decades of nostalgia being reflected in design is what’s preventing new gamers from deciding to play TTRPGs.

There’s also strong evidence that D&D has performed best in recent history when it’s bucked tradition. For the first two years of 4e the game was cracking the New York Times’ nonfiction best sellers’ list, so in terms of hardcover/hardcopy book sales the edition was doing extremely well – and with DDI generated cash hand over fist, it seemed like a decent enough job. This changed with the shift to Essentials (which was discussed as an attempt to cater to fans of older editions and scale back some of the changes), and 4e kind of died on the vine. We had a similar blip – albeit without the sales numbers reflected on the NYT list, although I could be mistaken about that – with the launch of 3e. Both editions were paradigm shifts that represented a large break with tradition, and both seemed to lurch when the course change came (3.5e, Essentials).

I think it’s quite telling that you keep saying “How do you know returning to legacy mechanics won’t work?” Clearly you want me to say “I don’t,” and this admission will somehow validate your position because I can’t guarantee you’re incorrect. Well, I don’t know but I also think that it’s very likely that your desired solution will fail; if legacy mechanics were going to work, then any of the existing games that utilized them would have caught on with the wider public by now and the hobby wouldn’t be in need of new blood. We know that two very public, very intentional attempts to break with tradition were successful: 3e and the d20 move being one, and as noted earlier 4e was catching on given publicly available sales indicators. But revisionist history now spins the release of 3e as the moment that history and tradition were finally realized, while 4e was decried because a nontrivial number of fans were and still are carrying on about how WotC “fired” them and conducted a years-long campaign against the game (for what it’s worth, I appreciate that you point out that you aren’t familiar with the system).

Personally, I’ve had some pretty good success introducing people younger than me to RPGs with 13th Age (a narrativist/gamist system like 4e, albeit rules-lite and more explicitly narrativist); I’ll let you guys know whether Dungeon World works, but people are excited about the promise of freeform storytelling and archetypal characters. Each of these two games are progressive – which, Alan, I’m not using “subjectively” but, rather, to designate that they’re intentionally iterating on contemporary game design (whether you think that non-progressive games are good or bad is subjective, however; I’m not convinced they’re inherently one or the other) and thus causing design to progress forward (which, again, is not necessarily a value judgment). I don’t think anyone with a charitable bone in their body would say that 13th Age or DungeonWorld are rejecting the heritage of D&D – but they’re leveraging that heritage to try something new mechanically rather than letting that heritage constrain them mechanically.

(It’s worth pointing out that kneejerk reactions to my position because of my insufficient deference to Owlbears and wandering monster tables has led people to react to my points as if I’m suggesting that D&D turn into Amber Diceless Roleplaying, Dogs in the Vineyard or Maid: The RPG. I’m not. Doing something like 13th Age, DungeonWorld, Radiant RPG, and so on would be fine by my book – contemporary games that retain tradition but don’t allow tradition to prevent the designers from trying new mechanical solutions to old problems. Hell, the magic system in Ars Magica is pretty kick-ass, too – and might be more relevant to younger gamers than Vancian systems given the lack of interest in Vance’s actual novels. My beef isn’t with nostalgia, or even the things you like – it’s with the belief that nostalgia is something that can be designed for given that it’s a feeling that emerged from games facilitated by a certain system, not a feature of any system)

Henry wrote: “Neal, you asked what if those 40 year old gaming geezers aren’t invited to college dorms to guide the young padawans on how to properly roleplay elves the old school, nostalgia fetish way. Did you read what you wrote?”

Actually, no, I didn’t. I just hit keys in a random order and hoped it formed words. I’m doing that now, too. It’s a miracle. adalkj as . asm. Sometimes it doesn’t work too well, though. ioujop asfa

Perhaps I was too oblique in my comment. You seem to be quite committed to the notion that legacy, heritage, and what feels like D&D to you need to be preserved in the next edition. You like it, so obviously it COULD work if the young people just played it, right?

My position is no, it couldn’t work – in part because it HASN’T worked thus far. Younger non-gamers are choosing to not play – and, because I assume that people are fairly rational about their entertainment (each person is an expert on their internal, subjective emotional states and perfectly equipped to determine whether they enjoy something) and that they’ve rejected RPGs because they don’t like them (or, at least, because they don’t like D&D – either what it is or what they’ve heard about it). The return to legacy and nostalgia is a return to something that young consumers have already rejected – hence my joke about a gamer with every purchase. Perhaps you have had a lot of success telling people who’ve decided they don’t want to buy something that they were mistaken, and that this thing they have decided isn’t fun actually is fun – but in my experience, the product has to change substantially before consumers who’ve already dismissed the product will give it a second look.

I’m not naive; I don’t believe that I could convince people who dislike Unknown Armies, 4e, 13th Age, or any other game that they were mistaken about that assessment. As I’ve stated consistently, individuals are experts on their own internal, subjective experiences, and I am insufficiently positioned to tell someone who isn’t me that they are incorrect about what they like and dislike. Launching a new edition with the promise of it being like editions that new gamers have already rejected and expecting them to like this new edition because of its similarities to games new gamers are choosing to not play strikes me as a poor decision. WotC’s attempts to depart from tradition bore fruit in the past with new gamers, however, so I’m inclined to believe that moving forward (with a respect for the past) will have a better chance than staying the course and hoping that new gamers find the things we get nostalgic about interesting. Again: nostalgia is only effective upon those who have knowledge of the original because people who don’t have that experience definitionally can’t be nostalgic; tradition only matters to those who are invested in that history (new gamers are probably like me: they don’t think of D&D as this history-laden activity, but as a means to kill monsters and take their stuff in fun ways).

Henry also noted this: “For the time being the evidence we can infer from how 4E has progressed more closely aligns to the legacy crowd being right.”

Not really. We could also infer that the first two years of 4e were quite successful, but the launch of PFRPG scared WotC into creating Essentials as an attempt to bring back lapsed fans – only Essentials failed to catch on, WotC created their own competition through bad PR and moves that were clearly boneheaded with the benefit of hindsight, and 5e’s announcement with its marketing-speak masquerading as design goals was announced as a last-ditch attempt to stave off another round of Christmas-time firings by promising to dominate the market again (Ryan Dancey suggested something to this effect, and this interpretation is popular on RPG.net and various other forums). It fits the evidence just as well as any other theory, and in some ways it fits it better. Ultimately, none of us are sufficiently positioned to know which interpretation is right so I’m not convinced that discussing this is particularly useful. That being said, given the revenue generated from DDI (which users on various forums have been able to estimate), I can say with great certainty that I would personally love to fail like 4e failed (and is failing right now given how large the DDI subscription pool is – I could pay off Sallie Mae and have enough to live on to finish my PhD next year with a single month of the DDI revenue).

But honestly, it’s not like any of this matters all that much. I’m not going to convince you, and you’re not going to convince me. One of us will be proven right should this legacy-centric, “It Feels Like D&D To Me” 5e succeeds. Should 5e have multiple source books appear on the NYT Best Sellers List for a period longer than two years, and should there be a significant marked increase of young players during that time I will write a column for KQ (no matter where I am or what I’m doing) apologizing to you personally, Henry, and all of the nostalgia fetishists generally for doubting their ability to save the hobby (I choose these metrics because at that point 5e will have overperformed 4e by every metric we can observe since WotC keeps everything else close to their chests). My words to God’s ear, and Wolfgang can be the guarantor of this, I’ll do this and I’ll do it sincerely. Wolf’s known me for a few years and knows my word is good – I’m not too proud to admit when I’m wrong, and I hope to God that I am for the sake of the hobby. But I really don’t think I will be.

I didn’t actually say many of the things you think I said. ;)

For the record, I do own a copy of Dungeon World (yet to read it I’ll admit), some 4E books (to date the best price to page deals I’ve gotten in RPG books), preordered 13th Age (what I’m currently browsing through, but waiting for the completed PDF to dig in), kickstarted the Diceless RPG spiritual successor, Fate Core, Hillfolk/DramaSystem etc.

I’m not really arguing for the nostalgia side so much as I’m just arguing against your statements that D&D and RPGs can only survive in a world of video games and sundry other hobbies through some undefined “progress”. Also your mischaracterization of “nostalgia fetishists” clinging to legacy rules for some unidentifiable nostalgia label, identification of those factors noted in my above posts, further supported by a few posts from other discussion participants.

Bone-headed moves by WotC aside, the two year blip of 3E and 4E doing well is because they’re the new release of the current D&D edition of their time. Of course sales will be strong. We would have a huge problem if initial sales weren’t strong. Yet if they were as rock solid as we infer, Pathfinder’s release should not have mattered at all.

If 4E continued to grow with new players or returning players, a 3.5E retroclone shouldn’t matter in the long run, not enough to disrupt their winning formula. Even if the miscalculation with Essentials threw a wrench into their plans, 5E should at the least to be 4E+, taking a winning design, tweak the parts that needed a refresh, and release. Why are we having this conversation otherwise?

I don’t believe WotC would change their direction in such a drastically manner due only to a bunch of “loudmouth curmudgeons” shouting for the old school. Even if the jobs of the designers were on the line, why switch to an old system if the successful current system could form the backbone of the next edition. It doesn’t make sense they would turn market speak into actual design goals unless there was a known benefit to do so.

As for DDI, I’ve seen those impressive figures too. I’ll freely admit I’ve no explanation for the numbers, other than perhaps subscribers are in it partly for 4E, but also partly for the settings and other articles. Maybe 4E always has performed fine, but WotC just wants more, numbers to be found within the old school population. Still doesn’t make sense they would “fire” their current players to go back to lapsed players if the market didn’t exist.

It’s true I haven’t kept up with the development of Next/5E. Last I heard it was a modular, scalable system that had an “old school rules lite” version that gamers can enhance with subsystems and options to move it in-line with modern editions. I didn’t see legacy mechanics, but was under the impression it was always a modern system merely emulating the old school flavor. There was even a background-based pseudo-narrativist-style subsystem. Revisions could have changed this. Correct me if I’m wrong on the current progress of 5E development.

‘Til this point I thought you were merely decrying the verbal/textual negativity of the nostalgia camp, but this insistence on their eminent threat to progress makes me think a “vocal minority” conducted a coup to remove large portions of current edition inspired design from the 5E framework, then that’s a significant change. Did they?

Unless they have, then you’re just crying wolf. :P I fully expect 5E to be a “progressive” system built along 4E (more than 3E or previous editions), just with a 5E-lite variant to facilitate new/old/lapsed gamers, those possibly of a certain ‘nostalgic’ persuasion.

Making something more MMO-like to interest millennials won’t work. At the end of the day, tabletop requires you put the gadgets down and come face to face with the other players and socialize. Millenials socialize over their electronics. They’d rather text each other than phone or video chat.

I work in academics, as well, and academia is looking at ways to bring gadgets and eLearning into the arena to keep these students’ attention to the material, not find ways to make the classroom teaching styles more like an MMO. We are now embracing the gadgets, and embracing ideas that the student does not need to be in the same room as the teacher or even experiencing the lessons at the same time. While distance courses have been around a good while, it has really been the presence of these particular learners that has influenced the push for eLearning and its associated formats.

So, if we attempt to cater D&D to this group, then making the game’s rules “like a computer game” is not what will bring them to the table; rather, it’s making a tabletop game into a computer game which will–and, as we know, this has already been done and continues to be done. These younger folks are playing video games; they like their gadgets, and they like to socialize through them. Face it, the millennials are just more comfortable with technology being their gateway to their recreation. Sitting in a face-to-face game, no matter the rules, is foreign to them, whether it be D&D, Savage Worlds,13th Age, or even a boardgame. Tabletop games in general–not just D&D–face the problem of catering to an aging market segment.

Bringing the younger crowd to the game is going to take their parents bringing them into it. Kids brought up to play face-to-face games will play whatever their parents are inviting them to play. And they won’t know if something is “legacy” or “new,” as it’s all new to them.

So, the moral of the story is to get your kids playing Faery’s Tale! ;-)

Whether or not this generation loves stories or not, I have no way of knowing, and I haven’t seen demographics on who is attending all the superhero or sci-fi movies. If playing games in public can interest this generation in gaming, then that is one wy to bring them away from the computer games and to the table. I really don’t think such players would have difficulties in picking up AD&D 2e as opposed to 4e or Savage Worlds–or whatever game is being played. If they did, wouldnt all card games and board games start trying to emulate computer games?

The one argument that we will agree upon is that exposure to TTRPG is paramount to getting another generation interested–no matter their age. I just don’t agree that it has to be the game flavor that you prefer to play that is the best or only entrance point for them into the hobby. Nor do I think legacy-related system necessarily are. I have no clue. We’d have to do a study to find out. Until then, I think the money trail is clearly leading toward Paizo’s version of the game as being the current most popular one, and they are making efforts to appeal to gamers of all ages without alienating their own customers. Their marketing fu is strong.

Christina Stiles wrote: “I really don’t think such players would have difficulties in picking up AD&D 2e as opposed to 4e or Savage Worlds–or whatever game is being played”.

You’re right, and they don’t seem to have any difficulty. In Austin we have two Pathfinder Society nights going, each at their own location, Mondays and Thursdays, and then an ‘informal’ Pathfinder day going in one of those stores on Saturdays. I haven’t been able to make the Saturday games yet, but the PFS nights typically run 5-6 tables each. Of those players most are under 30, and kids make up a respectable portion of that.

System mastery isn’t, as you say, Neal, a requirement by any stretch. It’s a requirement to *design*, certainly. It’s a requirement, though less so, to run a game that fits in a time slot. It isn’t a requirement to play and enjoy, however, and there have been many tables run there consisting largely of children playing for the first time with parents, most of whom have returned as far as I can tell. It’s anecdotal, but very little in the conversation hasn’t been, so…

John,

Why don’t you just use that Dean mojo of yours to create a job for me in Wisconsin? We can game together every weekend, and I’ll attend GaryCon with bells on. The book’s coming along fine, and my first single-authored pub is going to be out in Oxford University Press’s first-ever Handbook on Dance and Theatre before I’m on the job market – and now that I’ve seen the table of contents and how many heavy hitters in our field are being published in it I have confidence that the anthology will be a success. I’m working on a co-authored piece for ASTR’s Performance and Philosophy working group, am presenting on a panel with a few Ivy-leaguers at ATHE (the title is “Glamour Boys, Drag Queens, and Straight-Up Freaks: The Performance of Queer Masculinities in Professional Wrestling”) and might make another go at MATC depending on the funding situation at that point.

But on to gaming-talk, which is what really matters.

What I love about Old School players is that, with very few exceptions (although we’ve seen representatives of those exceptions post replies here), they’re absolutely not members of the “That’s Not D&D!” Committee. I think that, once you have fans with long enough memories, there’s absolutely NONE of the absolutism you see from the people I specifically have a problem with. There’s a lovely story of Old Geezer’s on RPG.net (who used to game with Mr. Gygax) about how he used to homebrew PC rules for Balrogs and Fire Elementals and stuff for members of his group who wanted to play as something different. Rather than decrying Wuxia or anime weeaboos (or whatever slur is being thrown around now when someone wants to play as a dragonborn or genasi), the attitude was to make shit up that gamers thought would be cool because that’s what D&D was about – the game was sufficiently elastic to accommodate anyone.

Although I personally quite dislike the idea of an impartial referee as opposed to a DM whose job is to be a fan of the PCs and help them have fun, I do love the notion in the earliest editions that the referee was the only arbiter of what happened at the table – their table, their rules, and no one else can tell that referee that her version of D&D isn’t D&D enough.

But strangely, it seems like that Old School attitude and approach to roleplaying – an approach I find quite liberating – isn’t what those arguing for more nostalgia elements in the next edition are talking about. For them, nostalgia has become associated with specific mechanical implementations – and, of course, preventing certain other mechanical implementations from being present in the next edition because of their relationship with ideologically impure ways to pretend to be an elf. This is unfortunate given how awesome the Old School’s laissez-faire approach to roleplaying and fun. This approach, I think, is the most important thing to come out of early editions of D&D: say “yes” to your players, as long as saying “yes” is fun for everybody. Although the current standard of “Does it feel like D&D?” seems like a dead end for a design philosophy (given the fact that these answers will always be subjective), a return to the Old School ethos of “Make shit up that you think will be cool” would be quiterefreshing, especially paired with the idea that D&D is so sufficiently elastic a game that it can handle anything gamers wanna make up. This OSR stuff makes a much more compelling design philosophy than “Unite the Tribes” and “Does it feel like D&D?” It broadcasts a return back to the fact that every table the runs D&D is trying to have fun their way. – which is all I want from a game, even if that game might not be for me.

All the people who hope (or fear) that adjusting the rules will somehow draw smartphone-addicted youngsters to our hobby have missed the point.

This latest generation has learned how to use their electronics to sustain a remote presence. (Something I’m still working on, but getting more and more comfortable with it every day.) If WotC, Paizo, or even Kobold Press wants to improve D&D/PF’s appeal to these kids, then create a multiuser live video sharing app that will let the players see and hear each other in real time.

Forget about all the elaborate “electronic tabletop” stuff that developers keep wanting to do. The MAP isn’t the game, the PEOPLE are the game!

Yes, I really do think it’s that simple.
If you build it, they will come. :)

Greg said: “It’s not nostalgia fetish to communicate what that feeling is and ask Wizards to retain that brand feel any more than it’s progressivism fetish to ask for change.”

I completely agree, which is why I explicitly never stated the above. Referring to my column you’ll note that I said the following: that those engaging in nostalgia fetishism believe that “the type of fun roleplaying games facilitated should be subordinated to nostalgic purity (in general) and their particular nostalgia (in specific)” and that for such people “[h]istory and nostalgia have become Gygax ex cathedra, rigidly constraining our understanding of the hobby’s past and constricting the mechanical designs that will define our hobby’s future.” As John helpfully pointed out (albeit elliptically), these features are in no way reflected in older editions of D&D – and indeed, these features’ absence from the earliest editions is in my view the most commendable thing about early editions of the game. I sincerely bemoan the loss of that attitude.

Once again, the issue isn’t that people like old games or that they have nostalgia for old games. It’s that, for a vocal subset of the gaming population, history and nostalgia are equated with specific, concrete mechanical designs rather than their feelings about past games (feelings that may or may not actually have had anything to do with the mechanical designs of the games about which they’re nostalgic).

I think that, perhaps, the disconnect between my opinion and those of many others is that, as I note in the column, I place absolutely zero value on nostalgia because I view it as an emergent property of a subset of rules that has more to do with the people I was playing with at those times in my life than I do with any edition of D&D. This is, perhaps, compounded by the fact that I view the “brand identity” of D&D as nothing more complex than “heroes gather together to kill monsters and take their stuff,” and accept that there are many valid mechanical approaches to realize this. I recognize that many gamers view nostalgia as much more important than I do, and equate the “feel” of D&D with certain mechanical implementations (their favored edition) than I do; thus, my suggestion to modernize the game’s mechanics while retaining the core of killing monsters and taking their stuff is, to some gamers, not what I intend it to be. I view my position as admitting that the core of the game (its essential characteristic of heroes killing monsters and taking their stuff) is strong enough to grow as mechanical designs grow each year; others think it’s tantamount to saying that their feelings about D&D are not valid.

Ultimately, it’s worth noting, I do believe that other gamers’ feelings about D&D are not valid! But only at my gaming table, which is as it should be (and firmly within the spirit of older editions of the game). I hope that my thoughts about D&D (should they diverge from anyone else’s feelings) are equally invalid at their tables, in the grandest tradition of the game. Your fun isn’t my fun, and each of our attitudes about roleplaying have absolutely no bearing on whether we have fun when we play that game (unless we play together). I don’t get more or less joy from knowing that people everywhere are playing the same game that I do, or playing it in the same way; that doesn’t rate.

Now, there is one other quibble I had with your post. In your final paragraph you note that “So Wizards is asking people what D&D is to them. Very reasonable. Part of what /anything/ is involves an intangible element, a “feel”. Reasonable.”

While I absolutely grant the first sentence, I absolutely deny your contention in the third sentence that part of what anything is involves an intangible element on philosophical grounds. Metaphysically speaking, it’s not at all clear that what you’re stating is true: If you ask me what a table is, I would tell you that it’s an elevated surface that things can be set upon, around which there are frequently chairs. How I feel has nothing to do with the identity condition there.

Leaving the philosophy aside, however, if your point is that, in marketing, it’s reasonable to do this then I’ll happily take your word on this and grant the point. But my larger contention – that these feelings arise from mechanical design as an emergent feature of that design (these feelings also involve non-design aspects such as the composition of the group, the point in group members’ lives when these events took place, the quality of GMing/roleplaying, and numerous other things) rather than being directly caused by specific mechanical implementations – is that nostalgia isn’t really all that helpful to designers. I could design a game that, word for word, appears to accommodate a given set of readers’ nostalgia for a prior rules implementation that nonetheless misses the “feels like D&D” mark; indeed, 4e’s existence and reception militates in favor of this point given that, on paper, it seems like a perfectly robust system for running dungeon crawls of the kind that were awesome back when D&D was a board game. In reality, a lot of people hated it. To use a less edition-war loaded example, consider DungeonWorld: a fine game in the spirit of old-school D&D, but its reception has been mixed given that the game places no emphasis on simulating a world or gamist concerns.

Like I’ve been saying (but not overtly), I’m not opposed to people saying “I really liked having a class-based game that worked either with or without a grid” – designers can do something with that! Or “I liked being able to make a character in 5 minutes and start killing monsters!” Again, a designer can do something with that – these are mechanical preferences. Even “feats are a deal-breaker” or “no warlord, no buy” work, even if they’re a bit strident – I can work with both data points and design something based off that feedback. But when you start saying things like “Well, it just didn’t/did feel like D&D to me” that isn’t helpful to me as a designer. Tell me what mechanics work and what mechanics don’t work for you such that I can get an idea of what mechanical implementations meet/do not meet with approval.

In this regard, game designers have to be kind of like doctors – “I don’t feel well” is an invitation to a deeper conversation about what kinds of pain are felt, what the symptoms are, and so on such that a prognosis can be made through eliminative questions, a bit of intuition and (in worst-case scenarios) dumb luck. The same goes for my attitude toward “It doesn’t feel like D&D!” The person saying it is absolutely correct in their assessment of their individual taste, but the proper response from a designer is to move past that as quickly as possible such that information that is relevant and useful to design can be given (and, hopefully, implemented).

Greg,

I’m hesitant to do as you ask and point out specific people who hold to the beliefs I’m criticizing. This is not my Web site – it’s Wolfgang’s – and I don’t think he’d appreciate me using my position to “name names” or start inter-Web site rivalries. Multiple message boards have this policy against inter-forum drama, and I think that it’s a good one insofar as it encourages civility and discourages pissing contests.

What I am comfortable doing is noting that it’s a trend I’ve seen on multiple blogs dedicated to gaming, multiple message boards (RPG.net has had posters that advocate this; EN World has had such posters as well; various other boards, too, if you dig through the moderators reports and find various posts that got people banned for edition warfare), and expressed in the comments sections of Wizards earliest Web polls discussing results. This is not to say that many people hold this view (or that such views are demonstrative of overall opinions on any of the boards listed, or that such content amounts to the boards’/Web sites’ official stances), and I do think the fact that only a niche group of niche consumers (online RPG enthusiasts are just a percentage of the small audience buying RPGs) lends itself to the most vocal minorities appearing to have outsized influence; essentially, a niche group (nostalgia fetishists) of a niche group (RPG fans who talk about them online) of a niche group (table top gamers) that that do hold this view are toxic to the hobby, and I have run into them offline as well (at my town’s only FLGS) where they’re equally toxic to other customers or those playing “ideologically impure” games.

Furthermore, it’s worth noting that no one ever says outright “I am a nostalgia fetishist” in much the same way that people don’t usually cop to holding other extremist beliefs – it’s something that you have to construct from the things they say. Something Awful’s forums have a thread dedicated to republishing these sorts of comments without naming names called “grognards.txt” that should be illustrative on this point – because it avoids naming names (except when those posting are public figures in the hobby and have ceded anonymity), it’s something I’m comfortable directing your attention to. Wolfgang didn’t know this stuff existed either, and when I directed him to read Grognards.txt he was scandalized after reading only a few posts: be warned, catgirl rape dungeons and in-setting fiction valorizing the Ku Klux Klan are only the tip of the iceburg, and quotes from people posting on other Web sites about what D&D should be are almost as shocking as the sexism, homophobia, and racism on display.

Please don’t think from the above that I’m not responding to the criticism that you worry that I’m addressing a straw man: given this Web site’s decorum and my sense of respecting the space Wolfgang has built, I’m not particularly comfortable just providing you the type of proof you request (although I think from the stuff I’ve provided you can start to get a sense of the RPG community you are blessedly unfamiliar with). Furthermore, I teach philosophy, publish within the field (I have an article in the anthology “Philosophy and Dungeons and Dragons” with fellow gamer and occasional designer Jon Cogburn), and am familiar with informal logical fallacies – so I do strive to not commit them in print. I think this is less of a “Neal is arguing against something that isn’t real because I haven’t seen it” and more of a “Neal is responding to a vocal minority of gamers that are quickly banned from discerning (or well-moderated) message boards and Web sites that discuss D&D.” Believe me, if you’ve never encountered someone online that told you you were pretending to be an elf in the wrong way you’re going to the right places for RPG discussion.

On a larger, professional ethics note, Wolfgang wouldn’t have hired me (or, ultimately, allowed a column to be printed) if I was allowed to lie with impunity, straight up troll people with my columns, or argue against straw men (and commit logical fallacies). Our Web editor Miranda wouldn’t have allowed it to go to print if she thought I was making stuff up. This Web site has a strong reputation within the industry (how many ENnies have we won at this point?), and I’m allowed to publish opinions that are controversial and that will frequently be rebutted; but I can’t just write anything I want and get it posted because we all take the reputation of the Web site seriously. Were I not talking about something real, the column wouldn’t have been posted and Wolfgang wouldn’t have spent 1000 words rebutting my points (albeit feebly and ineffectually ;) ). This Web site, my editors and I hold these columns to as high a level of scrutiny as anything else that appears on Koboldpress.com because, even though my opinions are controversial, the Web site is allowing them to reach a large number of readers and the quality of the argumentation does reflect on the Web site. Someone can disagree with me and think the argument is shit, no question – but it passed through the hands of multiple designers and editors who aren’t me and generated a rebuttal from the EiC that dealt with the substance of the column rather than spending 1000 words disputing that I was telling the truth. So if you don’t trust me yet, trust Wolfgang: I think Wolfgang’s response to engage with the content rather than dispute the validity of what I’m discussing is telling.

Philosophy aside continued: “As an aside about metaphysics and philosophy, there /is/ no “table”.” I dunno, Greg. My Master’s degree is in philosophy and that’s what I teach at Uni right now (well, it and theatre courses, of course). I would just state that if you believe the above then you hold very different philosophical commitments than I do, and that your view isn’t what I would call mainstream or uncontroversial. Which is fine insofar as diversity of opinion is important and whatnot – but it’s not an argument winner, you know, because this isn’t a settled debate. I suspect there are some post-structuralists who would agree with you, but unlike most in my field of Theatre History I’m not a post-structuralist (I am probably an Aristotelian at heart, but I fear going more into this tangent than I have already will induce snores from everyone else).

Greg also said this: “There are multitudes of games out there where “heroes kill monsters and take their stuff.” If this is what you are claiming D&D is (as it seems to be you are – apologies if not), then are you saying that all these games are D&D? Certainly not.”

It is what I’m claiming – and I would say “Certainly so,” actually. I don’t think that PFRPG fans would take seriously the contention that they’re not playing D&D – their game might have a different name and not have access to the corporate brand owned by WotC, but they’re demonstrably playing D&D (I suspect if you put video of people playing 13th Age, 4e, PFRPG, and 1e side by side there would be no real debate from non-enthusiasts that all people were playing different versions of D&D, branding be damned). I’d say, given my parenthetical, that the same goes for 13th Age fans. And Castles and Crusades fans. And fans of retro-clones. These games aren’t officially part of the brand, no, but they’re all still playing in the same ballpark. On my column, there were comments noting that my call for less nostalgia elements was like changing baseball into soccer – I hold that the difference between 3e, PFRPG, and 4e are more like the distinction between baseball with the infield fly rule and baseball without said rule. Consumers, no doubt, can speak with their money about which iteration of baseball they like better or “feels” better to them – I don’t dispute that. But I also don’t take the equivalent of “4e/3e/2e/1e don’t feel like D&D to me and thus [edition x] is bad/betrayed the spirit of D&D/and so on” as particularly important or noteworthy.

So my attitude on “feelings” constituting the brand is a bit more complex than the attitudes of some others. WotC might own the D&D brand now, just as TSR owned it in the past, but it’s become like the phrase Kleenex: in my part of the country, every type of tissue (no matter the brand) is called a Kleenex. In some areas of Louisiana, every type of soft drink is called a Coke – even Pepsi. People who I brought into the hobby with 13th Age call our sessions “Playing D&D,” and I didn’t see any reason to correct them other than semantics.

What I’m saying is that OD&D, 1e, 2e, 3e, and 4e all “feel like” D&D to me insofar as they meet D&D’s essential properties.* I’m nostalgic about all editions of the game. Do I prefer some mechanical implementations of the concept more than others? Duh, I think everyone does. But my happy memories of games really have NOTHING to do with mechanical implementations – they’re always due to gaming groups, inspired roleplaying, a lucky critical hit, and so on. Maybe some people really, really get into the gamist aspects of the game and their feelings about the game are tied up in mechanical implementations – I suppose that’s possible. I’ve just never met anyone for whom that was true, never seen any discussion online about these things online wherein people’s memories were subject to or derived from mechanical design, or anything like that. The plural of anecdote is not data, and I suppose I have to take your word on it if you know people for whom this is true, but I read a LOT of RPG blogs and message boards and I’ve never come across this sort of person in the wild (so to speak).

*Side note: it’s worth noting that, if you want to get really precise about what I think D&D is I’d need to put much more thought into it than a Web comment. As John noted above, I’m writing my dissertation, and am really firing these comments off as fast as possible to keep discussion going. I’m not getting paid for this stuff, so that’s why these comments might seem slightly rushed, jumbled, rambling or imprecise. My precise writing, with rigorous argumentation and clear definition, by necessity has to be saved for my scholarly work or my columns. So any infelicities, inconsistencies, brusqueness, or incompleteness of response isn’t because I’m dense or rude, it’s that my mental energy is a bit divided and RPGs and discussion thereof are my hobby not my profession. Also, I’m planning on running DungeonWorld next week and have no freaking clue how to translate some of the game’s lingo into something that makes sense to run, and I think everyone can agree that playing RPGs is infinitely more important than talking about them! :) .

Mechanics are secondary to the “spirit” of the game and of the players. Look at widely agreed generational differences (there are many, many individual exceptions to the generalizations): Baby Boomers are competitive but are able to be patient and persistent in ways largely foreign to Millennials, who tend to quit when the going gets tough rather than “bear down”. Gen Xers like to go it alone, and admire the “lone hero”, while millennials (Gen Y) prefer to share and work together but have been brought up to shy away from competition – and have been brought up to believe that “new” is necessarily better (think of all the advertising, for a start). The editions of the game reflect generational differences. 1st/2nd edition D&D was played by Baby Boomers. 3rd edition is the Gen X game, and 4th is the Millennial game. I don’t see how WotC can accommodate fans of 1e/2e and 3e and 4e, because gameplay depth was important to many 1e players, self-expression and one-man-armies was important for 3e (fantasy Squad Leader), 4e is all about tactical battles (where it’s really hard to get killed, relatively speaking), and variety has become the main interest in 3e and 4e.

In 1st edition you wanted to overcome the thrill of fear. The referee’s job was to scare the snot out of you, usually by threatening your character with death, soometimes by threatening to take or destroy your stuff, though his job definitely was NOT to actually kill you. 2nd edition was similar. 3rd edition became a contest to find rules that enabled you to construct a one-man army, and then the game was about you showing off the super-duper-ness of your one-man army. If you try to “go it alone” in first or second edition D&D, you are probably going to die, later if not sooner. Then third edition came along, designed to let each player be a one-man army that could succeed on his or her own. Where in 1st edition most of those unearned advantages would not even be allowed, they had become the main reason for playing 3rd. Your OMA was too tough to be scared.

Referees can always alter the tendencies of the game rules, of course. You can play first edition as “brain fever” fantasy, you can play it so that players really have no worry about getting killed.

1e (and 2e) could be played as a wargame, with tactics. We always played with a board and counters (or miniatures, occasionally). 3e is kind of fantasy Squad Leader, but leaning toward letting one-man-armies show off how “bad” they are. I once heard 3e described as “Fantasy Squad Leader”, which seemed apt. But the big difference between 1 and 2 on one hand, and 3 on the other, is that in 3e the “one man army” idea was worshipped, and the combined arms cooperation that was vital to 1e was abandoned. I suppose that might be part of “Everquestifying” the game. The one virtue of 4e is that cooperation is once again vital to survival, but in large part it has been “WOWified”.

4e is very tactical, but it’s been arranged so that it’s also very easy, with little real threat to the characters, hence it doesn’t require much tactical acumen. And there’s virtually no strategy, because virtually all the capabilities you might have used in 1e to do things outside of battles, have been eliminated or “neutered”. (My favorite quote about 4e, from Desslock: “Only dolts turn a tabletop game into World of Warcraft”.) Video RPGs have attracted a vast audience because they’re easy to play, you don’t need to worry about lots of rules because the computer takes care of it, and you cannot lose, all of this appealing to contemporary (Millennial) tastes.

I don’t see how WotC can provide easy paths to playing in all of those ways, and so far “D&D Next” hasn’t addressed the problem at all.

“Old school” is often about how you play, not really about mechanics. So as a Baby Boomer, I don’t find that 3rd or 4th edition “feels” like the D&D I knew. But younger people have likely had different experiences. Though no doubt there are players who do focus on keeping the same mechanics they’re familiar with.

Players are quick to abandon older editions because they need to find players for their games, and the new rules being sold in shops are more likely to be familiar to possible recruits. Typical players buy and use whatever the current edition is because that’s all they can buy (new). You have to work at it to stick with an older edition. It’s a practical matter, not a willingness or unwillingness to adopt new mechanics. WotC will continue to come out with new editions of D&D because they have to sell product, and a new edition offers so many opportunities for sales. If an edition is successful it might last longer. 4e evidently hasn’t been sufficiently successful.

“Progress” is not inherent in new game design. But as designers keep trying new things, inevitably they’ll sometimes come up with ways of doing things that are more interesting to current players, than the old methods were.

Neal: I have not been following the 5E Playtest but followed the link in Wolfgang’s KQ newsletter (hi, Wolfgang!) out of curiosity, and I have to admit that several strains of argument in your various posts strike me as curious.

“We could also infer that the first two years of 4e were quite successful, but the launch of PFRPG scared WotC into creating Essentials as an attempt to bring back lapsed fans – only Essentials failed to catch on, WotC created their own competition through bad PR and moves that were clearly boneheaded with the benefit of hindsight, and 5e’s announcement with its marketing-speak masquerading as design goals was announced as a last-ditch attempt to stave off another round of Christmas-time firings by promising to dominate the market again (Ryan Dancey suggested something to this effect, and this interpretation is popular on RPG.net and various other forums). It fits the evidence just as well as any other theory, and in some ways it fits it better.”

Regardless of the popularity of this interpretation on RPG.net, I would suggest an alternative history is readily available, and it’s one that Dancey (as the man behind the OGL) himself has already floated and is better supported by much of the available evidence. 3e sold much better than 4e, and did for longer, in large part because a) despite some grumbling from 1e grognards, it was actually more-or-less backwards-compatible with previous editions despite the addition of skills & feats and b) the OGL allowed an entire industry to spring up providing support products for the game and helping to increase and hold its popularity. In moving to 4e, WotC announced that the new edition would *not* be backwards-compatible (potentially alienating a large portion of its customer base) and that it would be largely ending the OGL arrangement in regards the new edition (and then on top of that seems to have butchered the Forgotten Realms setting for no apparent good reason, at least according to the FR die-hards I know).

Even at the time it was easy to track what the outcome would be; within weeks if not days of floating their new licensing option, virtually every 3e OGL support company publicly stated that they would not support 4e, and many announced their own competitive RPG systems. A fracturing was predictable and in some ways the only question was whether or not there would be a mass exodus of D&D players to another system that would become dominant. WotC probably assumed that the Brand was the thing; even if the rules were different and the game wasn’t backwards-compatible, they figured the Brand would win out in their quest to make everyone buy new game books all over again and then buy into a MMO-style monthly digital subscription (WoW envy is a terrible thing). And sure, initial 4e sales were pretty strong, as many players bought the books to check out the new rules; and clearly many of them read the rules and chose to play other games. Paizo’s decision to release Pathfinder and directly challenge 4e with a D&D 3e spinoff game was hardly a sure thing, but in retrospect I think it can be said that it proved out what a lot of people were saying then: that there were plenty of D&D players that would prefer to play something that they consider to have the “feel” of “D&D” even if it doesn’t carry the D&D name (which is surely what Pathfinder is, as you and others have noted in your posts) and a lot of them were not very happy about the idea of a subscription digital service (despite your claims that WotC is making oodles of cash from it, which appears to be based on some speculative posts on a message board? Really? All that cash is why they’ve shut the service down?).

I would suggest that the reason that WotC is trotting out 5e is both a signal once again of their core sales strategy (get people to buy new rule books) but also a clear signal on their part that they understand they f*cked up and are trying to get back players that have abandoned them for Pathfinder or the OSR games (an analysis which I think is buttressed by their decision to release their entire 1e/2e library digitally). And actually, all the industry scuttlebutt and numbers that I’ve seen for some time has pointed to a simple fact: Pathfinder has been measurably outselling D&D for at least two years (starting in Jan 2011 as reported by iCV2 and Ryan Dancey on EnWorld, and the sales trends were identifiable before that). The NY Times bestseller lists, incidentally, are not going to be reliable indicators here; the Grey Lady has only begun trying to figure out how to track non-book-store sales of comics and hobby games in the last few years and they’re still struggling with the metrics and data collection. For a long time, any sales recorded in gaming stores or in comics stores were invisible to the powers-that-be over there, and sales reporting in the Times for our hobbies is unreliable at best. iCV2, which has consistently tracked the hobby gaming and comics markets for a couple of decades, has noted four back-to-back years of growth in the gaming market (coming, interestingly, as board games have taken off and MMOs have started to falter, perhaps indicating a moment when a younger generation is seeking more face-to-face gaming experiences). Admittedly iCV2 can be cheer-leaders with a vested interest in promoting good news, but I would tend to find them on the reliable side (they base their charts on direct talks with distributors and retailers). Probably a lot of people are holding back on D&D with Next on the horizon, but it’s even slipped to third (behind Pathfinder and Star Wars) in recent quarters:

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/25373.html
http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/25377.html

Personally, I think this is a great time for games (though it can be bad for individual game companies), with so many different styles and rules choices available to players. Indeed, despite the fact that you are bemoaning the future of the gaming industry and the potential loss of young gamers, it would appear (both from industry reporting and from the anecdotes mentioned by others in these two columns) that the overall hobby games industry is growing and plenty of young people are discovering RPGs both via their local shop and via Kickstarter; they’re just not discovering the games and playstyles that you seem to hope they will discover. You have mentioned in several posts (in quite a lot of detail, in fact) that you consider yourself an academic; and yet you also wrote in a follow-up post on your original column the following:

“Dausuul said: ‘I can’t help but suspect your real gripe here is that while 4E took some steps toward your preferred style, 5E is going the other way.’ No, Dausuul, my real gripe is that there are people who maintain that the goal of mechanical design is to “feel” like D&D, generally because they mistake nostalgia for something that’s rule-derived. Which is exactly what I said. Given that I am the expert on my internal subject preferences, I am the person best-positioned to assess what I meant and what my real gripe is.”

Come now, sir; an academic, particularly one grounded in the liberal arts, should surely be aware that there’s a hundred years of psychoanalytic theory that suggests that we are often the least reliable and worst-positioned people to assess ourselves and our own true intentions. In fact it took me reading through every single post on these two columns to find your admissions that you are a “Forge-ite at heart” that has enjoyed what you have termed the “narrativist” style of game-play introduced into 4e and that you presumably are hoping to continue seeing in 5e, and further that the outrageous examples of old school reactionaries out to drive the heathen from D&D that you would like to cite if only you were allowed to are apparently posts from obvious trolls that are a peculiar minority often banned from message boards. Really?

Hmm. A man who teaches philosophy and studies theater accuses others of “nostalgia fetishism”? Ah, irony. The Lady doth protest too much.

Fizzygoo says “Aren’t the use of critical hits a mechanical implementation of the rules (and by the nature of their design are “lucky” and most likely to be remembered when they also coincide with a dramatic in-game event)?”

Critical hits are, by this point, a constant between every edition of D&D I’ve played (and most other games I’ve played too). I would say that they rate as a “mechanical implementation” as much as pretending to be an elf does.

Fizzygoo says “Perhaps a follow-up article that makes use of the clarifications provided by Mr. Herbert in the comments would be appropriate (but understandable if not feasible at this point in time)?”

No. It’s not feasible with the features schedule of the Web site, but I’m also not convinced it’s appropriate in this case. This sort of expansion/refinement is what the comments sections are for, actually – and why I’m trying to be very active in the comments (even seven days after the first column is posted). I’m enjoying actual engagement with readers who care enough to keep commenting and foster a dialogue – what we’re doing right here is, I suspect, a lot more valuable to the community than a second column rehashing this would be. The discussion is awesome, as is the contestation of my points. The columns are intended to be things that start a dynamic discussion on the larger Kobold Press Web site – which might result in me walking back a few claims, or readers convincing me I made a decision too hastily, or readers convincing me that I didn’t go far enough in my original column. I’m fairly certain that, for later columns only, Wolfgang and Miranda are considering allowing Kobold Press readers/commenters to write featured rebuttals, too.

Mr. Herbert wrote; “Critical hits are, by this point, a constant between every edition of D&D I’ve played (and most other games I’ve played too).”

Gotcha. I think I understand where you’re coming from. From my vantage point, when WotC asked for “what feels like D&D to you,” assuming they were asking all players from across all editions, then some things, like critical hits which weren’t introduced into a Player’s Handbook until 3.0 in 2000 need to be understood from their historical perspective (if only to understand where other gamers and their comments may be coming from), because it means there’s 25 years with 4 editions of players that essentially either didn’t use critical hits or did so through the use of house rules or non-PHB printed materials (I didn’t check 1st and 2nd ed AD&D DMGs to see if they had an optional rule, I think 2nd ed does).

But then adding the following sentence confuses me, “I would say that they rate as a “mechanical implementation” as much as pretending to be an elf does.” primarily because of the use of “pretending” which to me implies the imaginative process of role-playing that species/race within a fantasy world setting and not the mechanical ability bonuses, attributes, etc. that are applied to characters of that species/race. Additionally, from the history of the game view, elves appear as playable races far earlier than critical hits.

To me, there are two primary aspects that make a game uniquely “that game.” First, in no particular order, is the mechanics and second is the “world.” By world I mean the base (campaign) setting or lack there of, the flavor-text descriptions of the things within the game. Etc. Not following mechanical rules within a single game (i.e. one edition or another of D&D) should, generally, be done with care and with group/DM approval. Not following world “rules,” on the other hand, are often done and approved of by the group/DM.

So, using the playing an elf example. The +2 Dex, +2 Wis ability score bonuses, the speed of 7 squares, Low-light vision are all a part of the the mechanical aspect of elves in 4e. While “[elves] are easily moved to delighted laughter, blinding wrath, or mournful tears” is a world aspect of elves in 4e. If a player makes an elf character and doesn’t take the +2 ability bonuses or adds +4 to both abilities, etc., then technically they are playing it “wrong” according the to mechanics rules as written. If a player makes an elf character that is stoic, reserved, and rarely emotional then that is playing it “wrong” as far as the flavor text goes. (I used wrong in quotes because I only want to draw the line that the player is going against what is written, not that it’s bad, and in the example above, as a DM I would ask a lot of questions starting with “why” regarding the mechanical changes the player wants to make [with the right as DM to over rule that choice] and “cool, can’t wait to see your character in the game” regarding the world changes to the character).

So which, or both, or something else that I’m not seeing, do you mean when you say “”mechanical implementation” …as pretending to be an elf”?

Discussions are good :)

Hehe, yeah, wasn’t aware of the euphemism “pretending to be an elf” (though I do remember the D&D ad that said [paraphrased] “If you’re going to sit in your basement pretending to be an elf the you should have friends there” but that was the only place I saw it used).

Yeah, I’ve never know anyone to play/run a game that adheres strictly to “world rules”/fluff text (I prefer to use world rules or something different than “fluff” or “flavor-text” as I’ve mostly encountered that as disparaging towards the text being referred to/or people take it as a slight when used in referring to text that they like). Where most players and DMs that I’ve encountered assume that the world rules is “typical”, “usual”, “commonly”, etc., representative of what it’s describing. So the 4e description of elves I quote before would be interpreted as “{Most} [elves] are {generally} easily moved to delighted laughter, blinding wrath, or mournful tears.”

But then, for example, if the campaign is set in the Forgotten Realms, then DMs might default to 3rd or 2nd edition descriptions as being the general rule to which there are many exceptions.

I checked the original red boxed set of D&D and the expert box set and they did not have critical hit rules (the red box set, in the intro adventure characters only do 1 point of damage and then it is said that they do 1d6 on further adventures and not until the back of the book are the rules of variable damage weapons introduced). But I wouldn’t be surprised if a Dragon Magazine from that era introduces them. It was definitely only 3rd edition that introduced critical hits as a “cannon” (non-optional) rule in the Player’s Handbook.

When I was three or four years old friends of my parents gave them their SPI wargame Swords & Sorcery because “it was too complicated.” That was my introduction to fantasy (which indicates I have a bizarre foundation as the game was serious on it’s surface/in the art, influenced/play-tested by Gygax, but it is rife with silliness like leaders named “Tim the Enchanter,” “Unamit Ahezredit,” and “Logarithm Son of Algorithm” and locations named “The Nataly Wood,” and “The Stream [river] of Consciousness.”) At seven years old I got the red boxed set of D&D and by 8 years old I had a subscription to Dragon Magazine. I didn’t read Tolkien until after 8 years of playing/reading [A]D&D. So, like my familiarity of music (I tend to have heard Weird Al’s parodies first and the originals years later), my reference foundation is with [A]D&D first, typically and what it’s been influenced by later. I’ve been playing the most current version of [A]D&D since approximately 1983.

I like epic fantasy games, as well as non-epic, and so on. But when WotC asks what do you think of as classic/representative of “D&D” then I enter a Tolkien/Vancian epic fantasy frame of reference (even though I’ve never read Jack Vance) because that was the inspiration of early D&D with many of the elements having carried through to later editions. But if I were asked what I want out of a newer edition of Shadowrun (my 2nd most commonly played rpg), then I would want gritty rules where no matter how powerful the PCs get they still have to worry about a 15 year old kid killing them with a good shot from a hand gun (which is different from latest editions of Shadowrun). And if I were asked what I want out of a new edition of Sorcerer then I would have to default/not-comment because I’ve never had the player base that was interested in testing out my (now) dust covered copy of the game because despite how interested I am in the game system, I haven’t actually played it.

I also tend to play in and/or run long term continuous campaigns (in chronological order) DM/GMing:
* 3 years 2nd edition AD&D (Greyhawk/Forgotten Realms 1990-1992),
* 3 years 2nd/3rd edition Shadowrun (1992-1994),
* 1 year 2nd edition AD&D (Forgotten Realms 1995),
* 1 year 3rd edition Shadowrun (1996),
* 2 years 3rd edition D&D (Greyhawk 2000-2001),
* 6 years 3rd edition D&D (Forgotten Realms 2002-2008),
* 1+ year Pathfinder (Beta-testing my own campaign world 2012-present).
Player:
* 1 year 2nd edition AD&D (Forgotten Realms 1991),
* 2 years 3rd edition D&D (Forgotten Realms 2002-2003),
* 5 years 3rd edition D&D (Forgotten Realms 2003-2008),
* 2 years 4th edition D&D (Forgotten Realms 2008-2010) which then switched over to Pathfinder for the last 2.5 years (Forgotten Realms 2010-Present), and
* 1 year 4th edition D&D (Undefined 2010-2011).
I’ve dabbled in (played less than 6 consecutive months):
* Gamma World (original and 3rd edition D&D version),
* Palladium systems,
* Marvel (TSR version),
* Star Wars (West End, and 3rd edition D&D version),
* Star Frontiers, Hero System (player in over a year long campaign, and DM a 6 month campaign),
* T.W.E.R.P.S., and
* Mechwarrior (and maybe a few others).
And I’ve always wanted to try Paranoia and Sorcerer.
(my Shadowrun edition dates may be off.)

I wrote up an initial description of the problems that 4e was facing here http://fizzygoo.com/blog/2012/01/11/dd-5-0/, after the announcement of the release of 5th edition.

What I find interesting from your comments, Neal, is that you’ve felt 4e has lent itself to a narrative style of role playing (I’m familiar with Edward’s System Design ala http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/system_does_matter.html).

Since I’ve played primarily with “gamists” and “simulationists” the extraneous “world rules” from previous editions helped those DM’s deal with my narrativist needs. In other words, my experience has been opposite to yours. The lack of “world rules” details, the dropping of support to campaign worlds like Forgotten Realms, Planescape, and Greyhawk, has led DMs in my campaigns to focus on the gamist and simulationist aspects as they don’t have any guiding text for them to be able to create a game-night that satisfies the narrativist (unless the DM has narrativist inclinations in the first place).

This is not to say that either of our experiences is right or wrong…only to illustrate the disparate backgrounds from which we are approaching WotC’s request for what is “essential D&D.” While my preferred edition (for playing a heroic fantasy setting) is 3.5/Pathfinder, I’ve enjoyed 4th edition, 2nd, 1st, and basic. And if my DM says they want to play a gritty non-heroic fantasy game then I’d suggest not playing any of the version of D&D (save maybe OD&D or 1st AD&D as that shit just kills) but instead try to use a different system all together.

So while claims that you or I are “playing it wrong” I will dismissed as fanboy fantatism, the additional clauses to those sentences I take at face value (just as I’ve taken your comments and have attempted to have the clarified so that I can understand given my own prejudices and biases caused by my history with the game). If players say that it isn’t D&D if it doesn’t have encumbrance, or THACO, or level caps for “demi-humans,” … I have to say that those are valid points of view…it’s what those players are used to and like (even if I don’t). And if the majority of (any-version) D&D players say that THACO, level caps, and sexist terminology are essential to D&D then I have to accept that the majority of (any-version) D&D players are THACO loving, level cap embracing, die-hard sexists…even though that’s not my ideal of D&D (and I’m definitely against the sexist terminology).

But I still vote in the poles (even if they’re terribly constructed poles) because I don’t want “lunatic fringes” from appearing as the majority (and fully accept that on occasion my votes may lie within one or more of the lunatic fringe’s ideologies).