Comment Who cares if D&D dies? (Score 3, Insightful) 286
I know this might sound harsh. but after roleplaying for nearly 15 years, D&D just doesn't offer anything interesting anymore. I used to play it when I was 10 and thought all that there was to RPGs was hack an' slash, but that was a long time ago.
There are some nice odds and ends that came out of TSR - I personally thought that Ravenloft, Darksun and Planescape were interesting attempts to breath new life into the increasingly stagnant fantasy genre, but look at how bland the rest of the backgrounds are: Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Birthright - footnotes to Tolkien at best., they are nothing more than cashcows. The D&D system just plain sucked, still does, and if you just want to do hack an' slash then there are plenty of multiplayer computer games such as Diablo II, Everquest, and even the biosphere offerings will more than fill your needs and are probably much more fun. Or why not just do wargaming instead - Games Workhop and other cater to this market just fine?
The reason that roleplaying keeps me interested theses days is the background, complex plots, characters and interesting players/GMs - the sort of interactivity that computers games will not yet achieve for some time to come. Look at the two biggest RPG companies aside from WotC: Whitewolf and Steve Jackson Games:
Love or hate it (which I do in equal amounts) WW has done much more to actually build interesting and innovative fictional environments for roleplaying with the World of Darkness and Trinty Universe lines than TSR/WotC has ever managed with various flavours of D&D. They sell not because the system, but because of the content and quality of the background material.
Likewise, GURPS is popular not because of the system, (although it is a much better attempt at a universal system than D&D3 will ever be) but because of the hugh range of excellently written background books -regardless of what system you like to use, even if you hate the system, many of the books are still highly entertaining, and useful.
The opensource game license is an interesting idea, but I believe ultimately flawed. They are working from the premise that getting into RPGs is hard because there are so many systems and they are so different to learn - their solution is that we all use the D&D system and so don't have to learn new systems for different genres of play and then everyone can then write their games for the largest possible market (D&D system). The problem with this is that one system doesn't suit all types of games, all types of genre and all types of groups!
If you are into interesting system mechanics then look at Phage Press' Amber Diceless Roleplaying games (set in Zelazn'y Chronicles of Amber Universe), or Jonathan Tweet's Everway RPG, based on using vision and fate card. Both are truely unique and interesting games because the systems facilitates storytelling. The first time that we played Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu was a milestone for our gaming group: WHAT WE CAN'T JUST KILL THE ENEMY? We had to actually think about innovative ways to defeat the enemy while avoiding combat!
Our group LIKES there to be different flavours of rules for different types of games we play - hell most of the games we play these days barely require any rules: the ROLEplaying of characters is what is important not the ROLLplaying of dice! Do the roleplaying community a big favour and let D&D die!
There are some nice odds and ends that came out of TSR - I personally thought that Ravenloft, Darksun and Planescape were interesting attempts to breath new life into the increasingly stagnant fantasy genre, but look at how bland the rest of the backgrounds are: Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Birthright - footnotes to Tolkien at best., they are nothing more than cashcows. The D&D system just plain sucked, still does, and if you just want to do hack an' slash then there are plenty of multiplayer computer games such as Diablo II, Everquest, and even the biosphere offerings will more than fill your needs and are probably much more fun. Or why not just do wargaming instead - Games Workhop and other cater to this market just fine?
The reason that roleplaying keeps me interested theses days is the background, complex plots, characters and interesting players/GMs - the sort of interactivity that computers games will not yet achieve for some time to come. Look at the two biggest RPG companies aside from WotC: Whitewolf and Steve Jackson Games:
Love or hate it (which I do in equal amounts) WW has done much more to actually build interesting and innovative fictional environments for roleplaying with the World of Darkness and Trinty Universe lines than TSR/WotC has ever managed with various flavours of D&D. They sell not because the system, but because of the content and quality of the background material.
Likewise, GURPS is popular not because of the system, (although it is a much better attempt at a universal system than D&D3 will ever be) but because of the hugh range of excellently written background books -regardless of what system you like to use, even if you hate the system, many of the books are still highly entertaining, and useful.
The opensource game license is an interesting idea, but I believe ultimately flawed. They are working from the premise that getting into RPGs is hard because there are so many systems and they are so different to learn - their solution is that we all use the D&D system and so don't have to learn new systems for different genres of play and then everyone can then write their games for the largest possible market (D&D system). The problem with this is that one system doesn't suit all types of games, all types of genre and all types of groups!
If you are into interesting system mechanics then look at Phage Press' Amber Diceless Roleplaying games (set in Zelazn'y Chronicles of Amber Universe), or Jonathan Tweet's Everway RPG, based on using vision and fate card. Both are truely unique and interesting games because the systems facilitates storytelling. The first time that we played Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu was a milestone for our gaming group: WHAT WE CAN'T JUST KILL THE ENEMY? We had to actually think about innovative ways to defeat the enemy while avoiding combat!
Our group LIKES there to be different flavours of rules for different types of games we play - hell most of the games we play these days barely require any rules: the ROLEplaying of characters is what is important not the ROLLplaying of dice! Do the roleplaying community a big favour and let D&D die!
