Where do we go from here?

[Libertad]

EDIT: Unproductive comment.

[Libertad]

In hindsight, that shitpost comment I made was rather unproductive and doesn't really contribute to the thread.

TBH I initially haven't ever heard of why Crissa/Ceilingcat left, nor have I seen it mentioned before despite being a member not long after (I joined around 2011 IIRC). I'll admit that it feels that years-old grudges are being dug up in the light of day.

BUT!

I'll admit that out of curiosity I read the last posts of the aforementioned trans users. That was a pretty terrible round of over-defensive "no you're the real bigot" wagon-circling, and while it's good to hear that people grew and learned from their mistakes I think it's also reflective of a similar problem with Den culture. Beyond the whole "liberal/leftist until one's ideas are challenged" way. I have no idea the ages of people involved back in 2010, but the debate about trap being a slur right now is occuring on r/animemes and is mostly being pushed by high school boys who feel that their fetish porn is under attack.

In the Den's case it more subscribes to the viewpoint of every pushback or contradiction being some kind of personal attack, or the need to continue an argument to the point that it dominates the conversation. I'm reminded of how in many circles there's a real fear of being labelled a bad person for a less than stellar take. And how said takes can be weaponized to portray someone as the worst person ever when it could be an off-day or a genuine mistake or someone who has harbored prejudicial thoughts but isn't over the deep end yet.

The Gaming Den's hostile demeanor is counterproductive to this; it is counterproductive for the bad takers in growing, and is counterproductive to the aggrieved-upon members in feeling valued and welcomed.

In the end, the Gaming Den is united by a shared disdain for trends in tabletop gaming culture and Frank & K Tome fans. It has lost the latter, so it's major feature is a negative. It's gonna sound sappy, but there needs to be replaced a new positive of some kind to ensure the survival of a community that is worth preserving.

[Aryxbez]

Holy.....Shit.

As a Casual Lurker, sometimes poster on here, I tried looking up why Frank Trollman's name had changed to Username17, and looks like I just missed the opening of Dark Souls or something. I have now since read the two posts (here & here) showing his departure, Shrapnel's Departure, and will now slowly try to read through the 9 pages on this thread (Linked for Posterity, to inform my friend circles that enjoyed TGD over the years, and easier to find the information for myself).

Suffice to say I've been out of the loop, I didn't quite realize that TGD had been moving away from RPG Design, though I know the posts seemed to be more focused on Reviews & talking about Video Games when I did check stuff out. I've enjoyed this forum for the RPG Design that seemed intent on moving the discussion forward, the industry forward, point out flaws in products so many would not point out, and offering superior designs. To me, TGD held the hope that it could bring change to our niche of a niche, and to some degree it still does. That is our Demon Souls proverbial "heart of gold", and I want not that to be taken away from us completely.

I never really clung to Memes, Politics, or other references, so they would seem like fresh/new ideas when mentioned (Ex: "Squick" or "Padded Sumo" are terms I don't see anywhere else but here). I slightly enjoyed the language here in that it let you state your argument and not be taken as a personal attack (AKA Link)

Anyway, who else have we lost, what is the current state of things here, and worst case, where should we migrate to? I guess such inquiries fall flat on someone who's barely posted at this point, and mostly lurked when they were around (shrugs).

P.S. Sorry for being so Link-happy right now, just...feared this day would happen.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Anyway, who else have we lost, what is the current state of things here, and worst case, where should we migrate to?

I ask that question every time a community I'm in dies, and not once have I ever gotten an answer for that. I'm starting to suspect that people just fuck off to their Discords where they have more control over the content people post. Because fuck archiving information, I guess.

[OgreBattle]

Interestingly the way most activity on here is in the "Annoying Questions" thread is like how folks use Discord today

[Zinegata]

where should we migrate to?

There's frankly an enormous amount of RPG design related resources outside of the Den. Not to mention a much larger growth of game design discussion in general - particularly video and board game design.

If design is really your primary draw, just Google them up and pick one whose tone and approach appeals to you.

A lot of the places Denners have traditionally shit upon are actually much better now especially in terms of design critique. Folks actually bring up things like actual math/probability tables in RPG.net nowadays.

And that's because contrary to popular belief, there's actually a glut - rather than a shortage - of competent designers in the market now. Lots of folks in fact understand how to put the math together and make a game. The shortage is instead in the creative ideas / marketing section - because with so many games coming out it's very hard to make one "stand out".

The die-hards here unfortunately just aren't brave enough to venture outside and realize how much the overall field has actually changed and how irrelevant they've become. And that's why I keep encouraging folks who are actually interested in game design to take a look at other sites. Change has already happened; if anything this is the niche of the niche that still refuses to accept it has happened.

[Koumei]

Apparently one of the Discords mistook Koumei and Konami, and I want to go on the record here and make one thing absolutely clear:

I am not burying beloved IP in order to make pachinko machines.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Just reminding people that the world is melting down and the old days of politically neutral* snark ain't never coming back. Maybe they'll return in a different form if something rises from the ashes of the liberal-conservative consensus. But I hope you enjoyed the old days of riffing on WH40K and Shitmuffin, because the conditions that led rise to those salad days are pemanently over -- even if WotC comes out with a 6E D&D.

I'd just take a chill pill until, oh, November 2022 at the earliest. The meltdown of contra-fascism has only begun, and if you think 2020 is going to be bad wait until Labor and the Democrats continue to unwittingly empower fascists with their reactionary, obsolete governing methods.

* Actually not, this board always had a strong social-democratic or even socialist bent to it, but a lot of center-left people think their politics are more invisible and normal than they really are.

[erik]

Apparently one of the Discords mistook Koumei and Konami, and I want to go on the record here and make one thing absolutely clear:

I am not burying beloved IP in order to make pachinko machines.

Yet.

[Aryxbez]

where should we migrate to?

There's frankly an enormous amount of RPG design related resources outside of the Den. Not to mention a much larger growth of game design discussion in general - particularly video and board game design.

A lot of the places Denners have traditionally shit upon are actually much better now especially in terms of design critique. Folks actually bring up things like actual math/probability tables in RPG.net nowadays.

Since this is something you commonly do, would you have some examples of websites, and resources outside of the den that are particularly good? I am also interested in these forums you speak of as well.

And that's because contrary to popular belief, there's actually a glut - rather than a shortage - of competent designers in the market now. Lots of folks in fact understand how to put the math together and make a game. The shortage is instead in the creative ideas / marketing section - because with so many games coming out it's very hard to make one "stand out".

Citation Fvcking Needed.

[Zinegata]

Since this is something you commonly do, would you have some examples of websites, and resources outside of the den that are particularly good? I am also interested in these forums you speak of as well.

RPG.net:

https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?forums/ ... design.11/

Or Reddit RPG Design

https://www.reddit.com/r/RPGdesign/

Basically talks mostly about the same stuff as the Den does, except with less circling over the same damn things over and over again and with a fair bit more activity.

Also:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BoardgameDesign/

Less about discussion, but more about getting resources. Ask a question and most people will direct you to an actual useful site.

For websites, you've got MaRo from Magic, Eric Lang on various Youtube videos (mainly in the Dice Tower channel), and Ignacy Trzewiczek's "Boardgames that Tell Stories". If you want to have a basic understanding of tabletop financials (e.g. production and shipping cost) and some "introductory" designer fare, Jamie Stegmaier has both a blog and a Youtube channel.

If you don't mind digging through forums, Cole Wehrle wrote a series of really excellent design articles for his Game of Throne-like boardgame Root in Boardgamegeek, which was successful enough that there's now a pretty good computer game adaptation of it on Steam. I'm not entirely sold on his new game though, but he's a lot more honest than other designers (including how he basically threw out some pretty major mechanics in his new game midway through testing, even though he hyped these mechanics in his earlier design articles. Such a thing would almost never be done by MaRo, as Magic is too stage-managed at this point to allow that).

The designer who's "closest" to my own approach though is Tom Lehmann. He doesn't do regular design posts or articles, but he and other designers do occasionally get invited to events like the GDC:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcyyeAww2wc

Where you'll also find a ton of other great designer videos.

Citation Fvcking Needed.

First of all - in the tabletop RPG space there are now so many new releases that the second most-played RPG in the 2020 report of Roll 20 (an online RPG tabletop tool) was "Uncategorized"

https://www.geeknative.com/72730/roll20 ... opularity/

Accounting for 13% of the total market. This is bigger than Pathfinder and the 3.5 holdouts combined. This 13% is basically all of the kickstarters, indie rpg, and home brew titles that have come out. This is why you have a top 10 list of "new hotness" RPGs in the report now (e.g. Heroquest, Tales from the Loop, etc).

[By the way, a really fun fact about this survey: 0.26% of the people playing were playing AD&D, edging out D&D 4E at 0.25%. So I guess the AD&D folks CAN claim victory over 4E now lol]

Moreover - I'm part owner of one of my country's top tabletop games distribution companies. We also own a couple of physical stores and an online store. So I have "inside info", so to speak.

In 2019 the number of individual tabletop games had roughly doubled from the previous year. And it more or less also doubled from 2017 to 2018 to begin with. To get an idea, check out Boardgamegeek, Kickstarter, or ICV to see just how much new stuff is being released each year.

And most of those individual games have different designer names on the cover, so each of those games has a different designer. There is in fact a glut in design - otherwise it would be just the same handful of guys producing all the games. Instead, a lot of established designers are finding that even they are getting "crowded out" - especially since there are actually now a fair number of folks who have actual "game design" degrees.

It has gotten to the point that we've stopped ordering anything except the top one in a category (which in Tabletop RPG terms means we only carry D&D 5E now, despite there being so many more titles available). A lot of the "uncategorized" RPG players for instance tend to be "cult of the new" people - who try a new system every month (or even every week). If we tried to carry everything, we'd go bankrupt very quickly.

And that's because it's very easy to publish a game with some reasonably balanced math nowadays. I considered self-publishing myself - you don't need that much money to do it either thanks to low-cost Chinese production - until Covid hit.

The problem is getting everyone's attention to buy it and convince them its any fun. Literally any sensible new tabletop game business plan now spends more on marketing than production nowadays. Otherwise you're just ordering books or boxes that will sit in your home.

This, again, is why a lot of designers actually spend time in conventions - to promote their games and hope that it gets featured in some article.

https://www.polygon.com/2020/6/30/21308 ... en-by-fans

Indeed, I literally experienced this marketing in action a couple of weeks ago when a friend saw this article and she learned about Honey Heist. She ended up running a session each for two separate groups after she learned about it.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I'd rather choke on a thousand barrels of cocks before even looking at that subreddit, to say nothing of actually posting on it.

[Zinegata]

I'd rather choke on a thousand barrels of cocks before even looking at that subreddit, to say nothing of actually posting on it.

Wow, you're terrified of a subreddit that "Basically talks mostly about the same stuff as the Den does, except with less circling over the same damn things over and over again and with a fair bit more activity." Really?

The bar you set here must be so low that even a pretty pedestrian design subreddit can threaten you.

[Omegonthesane]

I'd rather choke on a thousand barrels of cocks before even looking at that subreddit, to say nothing of actually posting on it.

Why so hostile? Give the devil his due, Zinegata actually provided resources when asked. Has r/RPGdesign pissed in your cheerios or something?

[Orion]

Sturgeon's Law is still in effect, but I can confirm from browsing various RPG reddits that although you see a lot of low-quality content and confused discussion, you don't have to scroll too far to find interesting and worthwhile conversations. I also share Zinegata's opinion that the waterline for commercial products is rising. The huge number of releases doesn't inherently prove anything since they could all be drek, but in fact I've seen a lot of new games I consider pretty good coming out in the past few years. The PBTA scene has matured substantially; Apocalypse World had problems but newer games have improved on the format significantly. Blades in the Dark has kicked off its own movement that I think is even more promising. I haven't had a chance to test the superficially-similar Resistance system but it also intrigues me.

Those are all on the story-game side of the fence, of course, but I actually think these games have lessons and mechanics that the D&D / Shadowrun / "Trad" game playing market would do well to incorporate. And even on the trad side of the fence things are not all doom and gloom. There are things about 5th edition that frustrate me, but it is not a strict downgrade from 3rd edition. It does a lot of things better, it does some things worse, and of course it has incommensurable differences in priorities from 3rd edition. I think it's pretty clear that if modern-day WOTC wanted to make a 3rd-like game, they would make something better than 3rd edition.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Those are all on the story-game side of the fence, of course, but I actually think these games have lessons and mechanics that the D&D / Shadowrun / "Trad" game playing market would do well to incorporate. And even on the trad side of the fence things are not all doom and gloom. There are things about 5th edition that frustrate me, but it is not a strict downgrade from 3rd edition. It does a lot of things better, it does some things worse, and of course it has incommensurable differences in priorities from 3rd edition. I think it's pretty clear that if modern-day WOTC wanted to make a 3rd-like game, they would make something better than 3rd edition.

I don't usually play tradRPGs for tactical combat, but Lancer had a pretty impressive tactical engine with plenty of room for interesting classes and builds. They did a pretty decent job of sectioning that off from the non-combat systems too, though I think a hacker mech with a friendly robo-brain probably gives you more out of combat power than a bighuge melee mech that has to be manned.

As far as 5E goes, I am optimistic about the fact that 5E is going to get some fancy computer games in the not too distant future. Having Larian poke around their systems and smooth things out could theoretically spell very good things for a future Sixth Edition.

[Zinegata]

I also share Zinegata's opinion that the waterline for commercial products is rising. The huge number of releases doesn't inherently prove anything since they could all be drek, but in fact I've seen a lot of new games I consider pretty good coming out in the past few years.

Just a rejoinder - my "inside info" consists of the tabletop industry as a whole, not just RPGs. Indeed at this point we only carry very few RPG books (5E D&D).

The thing is most other tabletop products have much less "room for error" in terms of balance/design issues. A Euro boardgame that is "broken" (severely imbalanced) or a cardgame that releases with a lot of cards that have to be banned immediately tends to be dead on arrival; but that hasn't happened very much for the past few years. It is instead much more common to wonder why a "pretty good game" failed to sell well.

Netrunner's reboot for instance was a really good game - but interest in it kept slipping because there were just too many shiny new games coming out for people to retain interest.

There are dreks, but they are mainly on the plastic minis Kickstarter side. A good rule of thumb nowadays is that rules quality is inversely proportional to the size of the box and the amount of plastic in it. And that's because those products tend to keep selling regardless of how broken the rules are - the people instead really just want to buy the plastic figures.

Those are all on the story-game side of the fence, of course, but I actually think these games have lessons and mechanics that the D&D / Shadowrun / "Trad" game playing market would do well to incorporate.

An important trend to note here: A big reason why pen-and-paper RPGs have moved steadily towards the "story game side" is because of the emerging popularity of the Dungeon Crawl boardgame genre.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/174430/gloomhaven

Gloomhaven for instance remains the number one boardgame on BGG, has a sequel lined up, and a computer game implementation in the works.

Moreover it has the persistence of the traditional tabletop campaign (your characters improve mission to mission), and most importantly does not require a Dungeon Master to run. This means prep time can be minimal (especially with the app) so players can just "play" without needing a DM to prep any encounters.

And there are a lot of games in this space - like Descent, Kingdom: Death, and various revivals of Heroquest. Each of which can easily translate to a 30+ hour campaign experience.

This is why I note the importance of treating DMs and players as "co-designers". If a group just wants to play a dungeon crawl - focused on fighting monsters to get their treasure - chances are Gloomhaven or one of its competitors can already provide that experience for them with much less hassle.

Those who stick to traditional RPGs by contrast do so because the system allows them to really craft not only their "own" story, but also their own game.

[Orion]

I think all or most of us were aware that we're in a golden age of board games. I've been assuming that when people talk about there being a lack of good designers out there they're talking strictly about RPGs. I still think they're overlooking a lot of gold.

[Emerald]

There are things about 5th edition that frustrate me, but it is not a strict downgrade from 3rd edition. It does a lot of things better, it does some things worse, and of course it has incommensurable differences in priorities from 3rd edition. I think it's pretty clear that if modern-day WOTC wanted to make a 3rd-like game, they would make something better than 3rd edition.

Ehhhhhh.

3e and 5e don't just have different priorities, they have entirely different design philosophies, which can be flippantly summarized as 3e caring about things like math and mechanical rigor and 5e...not. Someone good at making a 5e-like game is not at all guaranteed to be able to make a good 3e-like game, the same way that WotC transferring designers from MtG to D&D or vice versa didn't suddenly make them good at the new game they're working on.

3e was designed primarily by three people (Cook, Tweet, and Williams) who had at least a cumulative five decades of "trad RPG" design experience and general D&D knowledge between them, with a support staff of other designers (Collins, Noonan, Slavicsek, etc.) with long experience in the RPG space and decades of AD&D math and playtesting to drawn on.

5e was designed by two people (Crawford and Mearls), neither of which has pre-4e design experience, the former of which is known primarily for Blue Rose (a rules-light game that couldn't be further from D&D) and the latter of which is known primarily for fucking up the 4e development process multiple times and in multiple ways.

The Alexandrian has some pretty good articles (e.g. here and here) describing how a lot of the basics of DMing and running the game have become "forgotten lore" as the editions have gone on, because it's been assumed knowledge rather than stuff explicitly laid out in the DMG, with the effect being especially noticeable in 4e with all the hard breaks from prior editions. The same effect that applies to running an edition of D&D, I would argue, applies to designing an edition. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that most modern designers--not just at WotC, but in general--are in fact incapable of designing a 3e-like game (one that's not directly based on 3e, that is) because no one has the years of experience and data to draw on personally and there's no rules-heavy design zeitgeist to draw on in general like there was in the 80s and 90s (and to a lesser extent the 00s).

I mean, look at the only real attempt to make a rules-heavy game from scratch this decade: Pathfinder 2. Here's a game tangentially based on 3e/PF1 (in the sense that they've got a ready-made set of races/classes/etc., a known game style, a bunch of existing lore, etc. to draw on so most of the initial brainstorming is done for them) and made by people at Paizo who have been carrying the 3e torch for over a decade...and it's a clunky mess with bad math, underwhelming options, muddled tactics, and terrible book organization that even the Paizo forums and subreddit are pretty lukewarm on. If that's the best Paizo can do, I don't see anyone else doing any better.

So while we're almost certainly in a Tabletop Golden Age for board games, and RPG design spaces like RPG.net, EnWorld, Reddit, and such are generally all-in on 5e, OSRs, rules-light games, and their ilk, I'd say the field is pretty barren when it comes to rules-heavy/"traditional" RPGs.

[Zinegata]

So while we're almost certainly in a Tabletop Golden Age for board games, and RPG design spaces like RPG.net, EnWorld, Reddit, and such are generally all-in on 5e, OSRs, rules-light games, and their ilk, I'd say the field is pretty barren when it comes to rules-heavy/"traditional" RPGs.

Here’s the thing though: Trad RPGs don’t exist in a bubble. Indeed, during their heyday they shared the spotlight with traditional chit-and-hexes wargames.

And trad chit-and-hexes wargames also haven’t prospered at all in the present “golden age” despite improved mechanics, pioneering “Kickstarter” publishing, and ease of connecting people over the Internet. Having a lot of people who are into tabletop gaming didn’t result in a lot of new Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) players - and their groups basically don’t have anyone under the age of 40.

Instead, those who were inclined to play a WW2 squad level game tended to go for something more “modern” like Undaunted or Combat Commander. And that’s because it’s very, very hard to “sell” ASL to a modern audience when its adherents readily admit that it’s more difficult to learn how to drive a tank In the game than it does in real life. By contrast while the modern games are simpler (or “dumbed down”), you can generally quickly jump into the action and drive around a Tiger tank with only a few minutes of rules explanation.

In the same vein, needing an entire how-to-guide for DMs just to start a session shouldn’t be exactly seen as a “feature”; and it’s very likely why the articles you link describe it as a “lost art”. If given a choice, I suspect most people would rather NOT have to invest the time and effort to learn the art of DMing in favor of just playing Gloomhaven.

Finally, I have to say that in the context of trad RPGs I would say that it is at best an exaggeration to say 3.0 cared about math or mechanical rigor all that much. Cook for instance was infamous for explicitly making gimped feats and making Fighters far weaker than spellcasters.

That’s why I don’t agree with the idea that nobody can design a “trad” RPG anymore - because people make the same claims about chit-and-hexes wargames too. Wargaming grognards for instance still keep claiming that Campaign for North Africa is the most exhaustively researched wargame ever and we’ll never see its like again... when in reality the designers had already admitted years ago that they made up a lot of stuff when designing the game such as the infamous rule where the Italians were penalized for not having water to boil their pasta rations (in reality, the designers found in their research that the Italians performed far better than commonly thought; but they had to make the Italians look incompetent to pander to their audience).

It’s instead truer to say that modern audiences are less inclined to put up with things that were taken for granted in “trad” games. Modern wargamers no longer simply blindly accept bullshit Italian pasta ration rules; and likewise present RPGers simply don’t accept that the rules are all that balanced.

[infected slut princess]

Holy crap, some of you people need to spend way less time on the interweb.

[Emerald]

In the same vein, needing an entire how-to-guide for DMs just to start a session shouldn’t be exactly seen as a “feature”; and it’s very likely why the articles you link describe it as a “lost art”. If given a choice, I suspect most people would rather NOT have to invest the time and effort to learn the art of DMing in favor of just playing Gloomhaven.

Thing is, there's no way to avoid GMs needing a how-to guide before a session, no matter how heavy or light a game is*. Someone who hasn't played an RPG before isn't going to intuitively know how to run the PCs through a given scenario with the given game rules, whether that's a dungeon crawl in D&D, a Matrix infiltration in Shadowrun, a dinner party in Fate, or a seduction attempt in Blue Rose.

The issue with dungeon crawling procedures being forgotten lore isn't just a stylistic thing where AD&D used to have endless rules and tables and such and grognards are upset about torches no longer lasting for 1d6-1 turns, it's that 5e adventures (and presumably 4e adventures, though I've never read any in any depth) basically present dungeons as "Here's a dungeon! What, you don't know what to do with this? C'mon, it's a dungeon! Everyone knows how to run a dungeon crawl, right?" and the 5e DM who's never played a previous edition goes "Uh...no? Shouldn't that be in the DMG somewhere?" and the 5e DMG just shrugs because everyone knows how to run a dungeon crawl, right?

* Aside from "ultralight" games like Lasers and Feelings, which are "RPGs" in the same sense that War and Candy Land are "strategy games."

Finally, I have to say that in the context of trad RPGs I would say that it is at best an exaggeration to say 3.0 cared about math or mechanical rigor all that much. Cook for instance was infamous for explicitly making gimped feats and making Fighters far weaker than spellcasters.

Cook did nothing of the sort, as the oft-repeated "ivory tower game design" thing almost always misquoted or misinterpreted. The article was not claiming that the designers deliberately built imbalances into the game, mwahaha, but rather that they (A) weren't going out of their way to prioritize balance over carrying 2e stuff forward ("Arguably, this kind of thing has always existed in D&D. Mostly, we just made sure that we didn't design it away") and (B) could have done a better job of signalling the intent behind different rules items ("[The Toughness feat is] also handy when you know you're playing a one-shot session with 1st-level characters, like at a convention (you sure don't want to take item creation feats in such an instance, for example).").

As for the fighter-wizard disparity being deliberate, again, that's interpreting the fact that rules changes between 2e and 3e led to imbalances that weren't caught because the edition was playtested as if it were 2e (blasty wizards, non-wildshaping druids, etc.) as an intentional effort to nerf fighters on the designers' part. The idea that Jonathan "rules-light games" Tweet, Monte "low-magic d20 spinoffs" Cook, and Skip "Skip Hates Sorcerers" Williams were secretly in favor of caster supremacy is ridiculous.

Compare that to the 5e playtest, which involved no design goals beyond "bring back lapsed players," no mathhammering beyond "this hit rate feels right to people," random changes to every class in every playtest release rather than obvious iterative design, and so forth. The 3e designers didn't make a perfect game, but they actively cared about things like research, playtesting, and math while the 5e designers actively shunned it, and that's the big difference.

That’s why I don’t agree with the idea that nobody can design a “trad” RPG anymore - because people make the same claims about chit-and-hexes wargames too. Wargaming grognards for instance still keep claiming that Campaign for North Africa is the most exhaustively researched wargame ever and we’ll never see its like again... when in reality the designers had already admitted years ago that they made up a lot of stuff when designing the game such as the infamous rule where the Italians were penalized for not having water to boil their pasta rations (in reality, the designers found in their research that the Italians performed far better than commonly thought; but they had to make the Italians look incompetent to pander to their audience).

It doesn't matter that CfNA isn't actually a sublimely accurate wargame the likes of which shall never be seen again, what matters is that the designers did the research because they valued accuracy in the first place. One assumes that if you got the same design team together for CfNA 2: Saharan Boogaloo they would likewise create a well-researched yet imperfect game because they care about internal consistency and statistics and won't just throw math at the wall without testing or do whatever the wargame equivalent of "tell DMs to Rule 0 half the game" would be.

I'm not claiming that designing a rules-heavy game well is impossible currently, just that the current zeitgeist is very much opposed to the whole rules-heavy paradigm so designers who value the sorts of things you need for those sorts of games and who have any experience in that area are few and far between. You simply can't take a bunch of WotC designers hired for their ability to fit 2 pages' worth of rules into 50 pages and shrug out one half-assed sourcebook every 6 months, or hire a bunch of indie devs whose experience boils down to kickstarted OSR games and PbtA hacks, and have them easily pivot to churning out a sourcebook with 3e levels of content and/or GURPS levels of research every month because the skillsets are completely unrelated.

And, consequently, just because there are good RPG design resources in general all over the intertubes doesn't mean there are good design resources for the kind of RPGs one is interested in. OSR blogs are amazing resources full of well-reasoned and -research design articles and oodles of flavorful content...that are only really applicable to OSR games. /r/RPGdesign is a great resource for RPG-as-product design (prose writing, typesetting, publishing outlets, etc.) and flavor stuff applicable to any game...but its advice on RPG-as-game design is at rpg.net-circa-early-2000s levels, full of "DAE rules-light narrative games?" and "Rate my D&D heartbreaker!" and so on. There really isn't a site out there (that I'm aware of) that both has the design chops of the Den and also focuses on the same kinds of games that the Den does/did.

[Krusk]

Ivory Tower Design is still available.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080221174 ... mc_los_142

Magic also has a concept of "Timmy cards." These are cards that look cool, but aren't actually that great in the game. The purpose of such cards is to reward people for really mastering the game, and making players feel smart when they've figured out that one card is better than the other. While D&D doesn't exactly do that, it is true that certain game choices are deliberately better than others.

Seems pretty cut and dry. Some stuff was deliberately worse than other stuff.

He then goes on to say that sometimes that weak stuff has a use - toughness.

Its also worth noting that during a recent Ptolus live chat with Cook, Andy Collins, Jesse Decker, Bruce Cordell and Sean K Reynolds, they reminisce about the characters they were playing. It was all casters. They talk about writing stuff they wanted to use in that game, and then polishing it for 3e. Tweet and Williams weren't on it, but are referenced (as also playing more casters). It very much gives me the impression you aren't even supposed to consider non-casters as real classes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2H-CFhMvE

[Zinegata]

It doesn't matter that CfNA isn't actually a sublimely accurate wargame the likes of which shall never be seen again, what matters is that the designers did the research because they valued accuracy in the first place.

First off, I'm not ignoring the rest of your reply out of a desire to dismiss your points. You make a lot of good ones.

However, I'm highlighting this portion because I think it's the core of our disagreement. I think you have a very significant misconception about the designers of CfNA.

The designers of CfNA NEVER actually valued or did exhaustive research to begin with. They simply pretended to have done a lot of research to make it a selling point.

They could get away with it in the pre-Internet era because there were so few means of fact-checking obscure historical trivia at the time CfNA was published. But in the Internet age most of CfNA's very basic research issues were quickly spotted - there are plenty of Internet historians and Youtube channels nowadays - hence the designers eventually admitted they made up a lot of stuff in the game purely to pander to the biases of their audiences.

Modern wargames (published in the Internet Age) by contrast are very aware that they can't just make up stuff anymore and nobody would call them out on it. That's why the really well-researched modern games like Red Winter are good enough to be submitted as a thesis for a History PhD.

The thing is, these well-researched works tend to go against the public perception. Red Winter had very ground-breaking research about the Russo-Finnish War - a very obscure conflict - but it was unpopular among many "trad" wargamers because it overturned many of the preconceptions about the conflict. Trad wargamers were always told that the Russo-Finnish War was about incompetent human wave Soviet attacks on superhuman Finns.

Red Winter's designer, who actually talked to actual Finnish historians, found out by contrast that the Finns were NOT superhuman. Indeed the Soviets actually had better equipment, morale, and leadership in many regards. The thing is, Finland's terrain was really awful and the Soviets were defeated by the terrain more than the Finns.

By contrast, Undaunted isn't a very well-researched game. But it's set in the same battles as Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers and reinforces the tropes seen in those movies and TV shows; which is why it's far more popular than Red Winter.

Which is why the issue with the lack of "trad" RPGs isn't the lack of willing designers, or the lack of ability to design them. The real issue is the lack of an audience that wants to put up with DMings and the other "features" of trad RPGs.

Yes, DMing is an essential part of trad RPGs, and I agree 5E isn't doing itself favors by not guiding new DMs. But in 1980 people had no other choice. It was D&D with a DM, or they couldn't play a dungeon crawl at all. That is no longer true today. People can now play DM-less dungeon crawls online and even on the tabletop.

[TheFlatline]

Holy shit.

I came back here looking for the story about the cool L5R narrative that happened at a tournament and found... Well a major portion of my early 2010's withering away. I'm sad.

I had a lot of fun times with y'all and a lot of good discussions and a *lot* of hours wasted thinking about games and RPGs and boardgames.

I found my link so... So long and thanks for all the fish?