Great summation of the RPG "version wars"

[bayonetbrant]

be prepared for a new round of them whenever 5e finally releases

this is from back in 2008, and the OP is a guy who played regularly in Gygax's early-70s groups in Wisconsin.

well, having had a bit of time to think...

I think the hobby, and D&D and particular, is changing. I don't think I'd use the term "evolving", because of the implication that word has of getting "better".

To refer to another thread of a couple of weeks ago that I can't be arsed to find, 4E does what 4E does better than Brown Box does what 4E does. However, 4E does a very poor job at doing what Brown Box does.

I'm going to overstrain the analogy to model railroading yet again. Currently, it is possible to buy models so good that, properly lit, they cannot be told from the real thing... including 1" tall lettering that is clearly readable under magnification and in the correct type face, in 1/87 scale... so it's readable at 1/87 of an inch high.

But there are still modelers who take files, tin snips, brass sheet, hand drill, and soldering iron and build their own models, because the building is more important than the having.

To me, that's what Brown Box D&D is like... a bunch of hand tools, some hints on how to use them, and a slap on the back and a "Now go build whatever you like!"

4E isn't really aimed at that mindset. I also think it would be a mistake to say "the hobby has evolved" or "tastes are changing". What is changing are the people WOTC (and everybody else) is selling to. WoTC no longer gives a ripping rat's ass about me and the other 999 wargamers in their 50s and 60s who bought the first printing of Brown-Box D&D. They are marketing to different people, who want different things from me.

Fair enough. It sometimes bothers me psychologically that I'm no longer part of the desired demographic in this hobby, but as Master Yoda said, "Such is the way of things. Such is the way of the Force."

4E is neither better nor worse than Brown Box. It is merely different. For those who find the changes more in line with their tastes and desires, it will be a change they welcome. For those who find the changes LESS in line with their tastes and desires, it will be a change they do not welcome.

On the other hand, the Game Police have yet to break into my house and force me at Glaive-Partizan-Guisarme-Volgue-Bardiche-Fauchard-Fork-Lucerne-Hammerpoint to stop playing whatever game I want.

It's a change. It is neither objectively better nor worse. It is a change.

Now get offa my castle green.

[Martok]

A good article.  I'm inclined to agree with him. 

[Jack Nastyface]

So I admittedly had to google "brown box D&D" just to see what he was talking about.  Is anyone still using those old rules?

FWIW...I recently had the opportunity to review the Pathfinder rules.  Although the rules were good, it was a little bit difficult to piece together a "game play concept" (ie: I didn't quite understand some of the stuff about feats and skills and abilities).  Overall I thought it was a good system.  Then I read over a couple of low-level modules...and I was completely underwhelmed.  Although some of them had an interesting back story, the adventure itself was the most basic of dungeon crawls.   Enter an abandoned castle / ruin; open a door and kill everything you see; loot room; enter hallway; open another door;  wash, rinse, repeat.  Also, I never really liked that fact that as you levelled up, you fought harder and harder monsters. I always thought that fighting off a room full of zombies or shambling mounds or someother 7th level monster en masse was kind of hokey.  I mean, why didn't these groups of large and powerful monsters just go outside and beat the crap out of the local fiefdoms?

Thinking over my RPG experience (includes MANY titles...) it occured to me that MOST of the sword-and-sorcery genre games fit this mode, but the other genres (read: one's with guns) usually required a bit of mission planning, sleuthing, decision making.  So if you KNEW that those M-60 MG nests with interlocking fields of fire in Twilight 2000 would mow down your entire team, you pretty much HAD to think of something else.  Same if the sheriff had 7 men in his posse, but you only had a six gun.

So what I guess I am saying is:  rule-sets notwithstanding...are RPG's where you face the legitimate and "fair" risk of instant death without resurrection, magic healing, etc inherently more tactically challenging than the hack-n-slash sword-and-sorcery stuff, and are there sword-n-sorcery modules that require as much thinking, sleuthing, etc than skull bashing?

For reference, I don't think I played any fantasy RPG that was a involved and multi-layered as the Boot Hill campaign "Bullets and Ballots".  And even "simple" RPG modules, like Operation Sprechenhaltestelle from Top Secret were more "thinking man's game" than bullet-fest.

Or is this too simple a view? 

Post-script:  I might add that "Village of Hommlet" was the ONLY D&D module I played where I felt the player could do whatever to accomplish whatever.  I suppose this was the precurser to the whole sandbox concept we see in many AAA FPS game titles.  Also FWIW...I didn't like Ravenloft...but that's only because I'm not into the whole horror genre (que inflammatory remark by S-o-M). 8)

Yours in gaming,

Jack Nastyface