Author: Philomousos (---.texas.net)
Date: 05-25-2000 02:57
Excellent, Larry - you yourself compared complaining about xD&D's shortcomings to complaining about McDonald's not serving filet mignon.
I couldn't agree more - xD&D is the McDonalds of RPGs: it is a bunch of hastily thrown-together and unpalatable crap which dehumanizes its customers and is patently unhealthy. How many potentially fine roleplayers has xD&D turned into unimaginative orc-bashers by it's endless parade of "dungeon crawls" (not even up to "dungeon walks", after all these years)?
If only xD&D'ers would realize that they paid about *three times* as much for their Big Mac as they could have paid for a juicy filet mignon from the likes of Chaosium or White Wolf, they'd be really upset. Role-playing (not roll-playing) is what this hobby is all about - if you just want to roll dice and 'win' things, Monopoly seems to be a time-honoured classic (hey - it's even got all the beloved abstraction and complete insane disregard for how the world actually works, just like xD&D) at about 1/8 of the cost.
There's plenty of filet mignon out there for everyone - so I don't understand Larry why you seem so intent on leading all these people astray. xD&D *was* just fine - it was an evolutionary step in the development of role-playing. It was a first baby-step toward a well-developed and entertaining hobby. But it's done. Dungeons and Dragons is over with. To uphold it in any way as a pontential model for game design is FLATLY RIDICULOUS! I can understand people still playing it (whatever system you play first usually retains your loyalty somewhat), but the very notion that anyone could consider xD&D as anything but laughably quaint from a design standpoint is insane. It can't even simulate the literature upon which it proposes to be based. It's like saying "Hey, we invented the wheel - our wheel must still be the best. Don't go for those smooth, rounded high-tech wheels which grip the road and are made from advanced materials. Go for our crappy stone wheel with lots of odd protrusions and cumbersome weight."
So if I want to design or buy a game, should I go with one which is inefficient, inconsistent, slipshod and unbelieveable even according to its own precepts and which consisently discourages role-playing (given that the primary means of 'advancement' of skills involves murdering things that don't look like you and taking their worldly possessions), i.e. a Big Mac, or should I go with one which is elegant, more recently designed in accord with more advanced principles, believeable in that it somehow remotely simulates the world in which players actually live (the only one we know - where a 100-foot fall will kill even an experienced Green Beret, no matter how many people he's killed and with how much loot he's managed to abscond), and that encourages role-playing in all of its dramatic and philosophical content, i.e. a scrumptious filet mignon (of a third the price)? No, duh!
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