In the last couple of weeks, there has been a recurring theme in conversations I’ve been having, which is basically that one’s history with the hobby greatly influences their style of play and/or style of RPG design. It seems almost obvious or self-evident, right? And yet I think we underestimate just how powerful an influence one’s personal history with RPGs can be.
Here’s an example: I was paying very little attention to RPGs in the aughts, and so many ‘influential’ games that had their heyday in those years mean almost nothing to me. Essentially, I moved directly from 2E to modern indie games, and everything that happened in the middle might as well not exist in terms of how I have helped shape the play culture within The Gauntlet.
Another example: I greatly admire the play style of David LaFreniere, Jacob Densford, Jorge Salazar and some others, because it comes across as really fresh and fearless. I think that is a direct result of them being relatively new to the hobby, and so they don’t have a lot of the built-in baggage that comes with having played D&D for 20 years. I have similar feelings about certain game designers and the way they approach design (Hannah Shaffer immediately comes to mind).
On the flip side, there is definitely something to be said for a deep well of experience with RPGs. I particularly enjoy the way folks like Paul Czege and Epidiah Ravachol, and even some of the OSR designers, draw on their experience with traditional games to inform their modern designs. From a play perspective, it’s helpful to have people like Richard Rogers and Daniel Lewis around, because they understand the conventions of play, know how to effectively communicate them, and can avoid a lot of the pitfalls a less experienced person facilitating a game might run into.
I don’t know where I’m going with this, but I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.
The aughts are missing from your experience? You’ve never played My Life with Master, or Polaris?
The aughts are missing from your experience? You’ve never played My Life with Master, or Polaris?
I’m in the same boat, I skipped over almost a decade of RPGs.
I’m in the same boat, I skipped over almost a decade of RPGs.
Paul Czege I probably more accurately mean ‘games of a certain type’ that came out in the aughts are missing. So, examples for me would be universal systems like Fate, Cortex, and D20; basically all D&D between 3.0 – 4.0; and a lot of the stuff from Robin Laws and Ken Hite. Stuff like MLwM, Polaris, and Jason Morningstar’s early work all count as ‘modern indie’ in my definition, even though they may have come out in the aughts.
Paul Czege I probably more accurately mean ‘games of a certain type’ that came out in the aughts are missing. So, examples for me would be universal systems like Fate, Cortex, and D20; basically all D&D between 3.0 – 4.0; and a lot of the stuff from Robin Laws and Ken Hite. Stuff like MLwM, Polaris, and Jason Morningstar’s early work all count as ‘modern indie’ in my definition, even though they may have come out in the aughts.
I can see a certain amount of this. My group started in the early 90’s when my dad bought me Vampire: The Masquerade for Christmas having seen an advert and assuming it was like Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, a CCG.
After trying to use paper to simulate d10’s, we had a go, abandoned it and a couple of years later tried AD&D. I had no context for it other than Inquest Magazine’s top ten RPGs article and was too young for the Brighton Adventurer’s Guild community. None of our friends had even heard of D&D outside of the cartoon so no one knew what they were getting into. Time went on and we lost a lot of players who were just random friends. Our odd takes on premade stories and eventually our own ones was a lot more narrative simply as we didn’t know a lot of the origins, the community or accepted behaviour. Later on we got friends who played Baldur’s Gate and Final Fantasy games but no RPGs. It was only in the last eight or so years we got people who knew Warhammer, d20 system and gamey games. There’s still a division as I tend to bring in people who don’t know anything about RPGs and teach them our ways, then one or two who are used to the perceived traditional way of playing RPGs. You can really see different styles in action when someone was good at drama in school and likes Final Fantasy games or someone is used to winning 40k tournaments against people, going all way to that initial attitude of whether you ‘win’ a game or whether there is a win state at all. Whether you can hack rules or whether they are immutable laws set down from on high.
I can see a certain amount of this. My group started in the early 90’s when my dad bought me Vampire: The Masquerade for Christmas having seen an advert and assuming it was like Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, a CCG.
After trying to use paper to simulate d10’s, we had a go, abandoned it and a couple of years later tried AD&D. I had no context for it other than Inquest Magazine’s top ten RPGs article and was too young for the Brighton Adventurer’s Guild community. None of our friends had even heard of D&D outside of the cartoon so no one knew what they were getting into. Time went on and we lost a lot of players who were just random friends. Our odd takes on premade stories and eventually our own ones was a lot more narrative simply as we didn’t know a lot of the origins, the community or accepted behaviour. Later on we got friends who played Baldur’s Gate and Final Fantasy games but no RPGs. It was only in the last eight or so years we got people who knew Warhammer, d20 system and gamey games. There’s still a division as I tend to bring in people who don’t know anything about RPGs and teach them our ways, then one or two who are used to the perceived traditional way of playing RPGs. You can really see different styles in action when someone was good at drama in school and likes Final Fantasy games or someone is used to winning 40k tournaments against people, going all way to that initial attitude of whether you ‘win’ a game or whether there is a win state at all. Whether you can hack rules or whether they are immutable laws set down from on high.
Baggage is an interesting way to describe it! Someone delivered a critique after a playtest I ran along the lines of, “Didn’t we answer these design questions years ago?”
I know there are places where I’m retreading the same waters or making mistakes that I wouldn’t be making if I’d come to RPGs earlier.
On the other hand, I feel thrilled to be entering with a half-baked understanding of the history of RPGs! At worst, I make something redundant and someone feels gently annoyed by my game. At best, I make something weird and different that didn’t evolve from D&D, but from some lovechild of Myst and bedtime stories. This feels like an exciting time for games, and I’m glad to be a part of it.
Baggage is an interesting way to describe it! Someone delivered a critique after a playtest I ran along the lines of, “Didn’t we answer these design questions years ago?”
I know there are places where I’m retreading the same waters or making mistakes that I wouldn’t be making if I’d come to RPGs earlier.
On the other hand, I feel thrilled to be entering with a half-baked understanding of the history of RPGs! At worst, I make something redundant and someone feels gently annoyed by my game. At best, I make something weird and different that didn’t evolve from D&D, but from some lovechild of Myst and bedtime stories. This feels like an exciting time for games, and I’m glad to be a part of it.
Just like an athlete’s body develops according to the sports they play, a gamer’s mind develops according to their games. I have friends who have never played anything but D&D, and the ideas of group characters and shared narration are completely foreign to them.
Just like an athlete’s body develops according to the sports they play, a gamer’s mind develops according to their games. I have friends who have never played anything but D&D, and the ideas of group characters and shared narration are completely foreign to them.
I’ve been loving running Dungeon World for my current group who have either played from third edition, fourth edition, fifth edition or no edition of D&D before. My newest player has literally only played Lady Blackbird, Tremulus and Dungeon World so far and has kept up with everyone else without skipping a beat.
I’ve been loving running Dungeon World for my current group who have either played from third edition, fourth edition, fifth edition or no edition of D&D before. My newest player has literally only played Lady Blackbird, Tremulus and Dungeon World so far and has kept up with everyone else without skipping a beat.
Steven Warble Here is a link to a rather interesting podcast about behavioral momentum in rpgs: https://player.fm/series/the-tabletop-superhighway/behavioral-momentum. I am not sure I completely agree with your assessment though. If the rules reward / demand different behavior I think one can learn new tricks.
Steven Warble Here is a link to a rather interesting podcast about behavioral momentum in rpgs: https://player.fm/series/the-tabletop-superhighway/behavioral-momentum. I am not sure I completely agree with your assessment though. If the rules reward / demand different behavior I think one can learn new tricks.
Horst Wurst
I completely agree that players (and GMs) can learn new tricks and play styles. The first step is knowing they exist. If you never play anything but trad D&D the idea of keeping a communal group of characters and jumping from one to the other is probably not going to be an idea you would ever think up.
Horst Wurst
I completely agree that players (and GMs) can learn new tricks and play styles. The first step is knowing they exist. If you never play anything but trad D&D the idea of keeping a communal group of characters and jumping from one to the other is probably not going to be an idea you would ever think up.
Hannah Shaffer “Didn’t we answer these design questions years ago?” is the most gatekeeper-y gatekeeper bullshit. Someone once made the point (it might have been Paul, or maybe Dan Maruschak) that it’s really unfair for former Forge people to criticize newer people in the space, when they were allowed to work through similar things free from such criticism.
Also, I love “gently annoyed.”
Hannah Shaffer “Didn’t we answer these design questions years ago?” is the most gatekeeper-y gatekeeper bullshit. Someone once made the point (it might have been Paul, or maybe Dan Maruschak) that it’s really unfair for former Forge people to criticize newer people in the space, when they were allowed to work through similar things free from such criticism.
Also, I love “gently annoyed.”
Horst Wurst, it’s definitely possible to change and evolve. It’s interesting seeing the first point people entered the hobby, the first time they clicked with it and how much they evolve over time. The other GMs in my group have knowledge of new systems that caps out around the time d20 swallowed up 7th Sea and L5R. I fell into Fiasco and then the kind of games covered on the podcast, then went that way assuming this is where gaming was going. It was interesting revisiting RPG.net a few months ago and realising my journey hadn’t been a universal one.
Horst Wurst, it’s definitely possible to change and evolve. It’s interesting seeing the first point people entered the hobby, the first time they clicked with it and how much they evolve over time. The other GMs in my group have knowledge of new systems that caps out around the time d20 swallowed up 7th Sea and L5R. I fell into Fiasco and then the kind of games covered on the podcast, then went that way assuming this is where gaming was going. It was interesting revisiting RPG.net a few months ago and realising my journey hadn’t been a universal one.
It occurs to me that taking a long hiatus allows you to have multiple “how I got into gaming” stories, which is pretty cool.
It occurs to me that taking a long hiatus allows you to have multiple “how I got into gaming” stories, which is pretty cool.
I remember thinking “these guys are doing everything wrong” several times when i first joined the gauntlet. I learned from RPG video games like Balders gate, and the idea that you wouldn’t explore every tunnel systematically or wouldn’t pick up everything that was not nailed down were bizarre to me. conversely i never spent real life years making a character and could always reload the game so I find it strange when someone worries so much about danger or try to protect their character
I remember thinking “these guys are doing everything wrong” several times when i first joined the gauntlet. I learned from RPG video games like Balders gate, and the idea that you wouldn’t explore every tunnel systematically or wouldn’t pick up everything that was not nailed down were bizarre to me. conversely i never spent real life years making a character and could always reload the game so I find it strange when someone worries so much about danger or try to protect their character
Daniel Fowler Excessively defensive play is one of the things I have noticed separates old school gamers from newer gamers.
Daniel Fowler Excessively defensive play is one of the things I have noticed separates old school gamers from newer gamers.
Jason Cordova Daniel Fowler To hell with character self preservation! I demand more purple lotus powder!
Jason Cordova Daniel Fowler To hell with character self preservation! I demand more purple lotus powder!
I’ve played very little D&D, and my introduction to indie games was as a reaction to Vampire (which I have played a lot of), so my perspective is quite different from stuff like what I hear on the podcast.
I’ve played very little D&D, and my introduction to indie games was as a reaction to Vampire (which I have played a lot of), so my perspective is quite different from stuff like what I hear on the podcast.
Jason Cordova Daniel Fowler Jorge Salazar, I love it when player characters die, especially in Dungeon World – Last Breath is so good.
Jason Cordova Daniel Fowler Jorge Salazar, I love it when player characters die, especially in Dungeon World – Last Breath is so good.
I admit I tend to find players who are really defensive of their characters dull, less from the classes or options they pick necessarily but they often also avoid any sense of risk of drama. If you’re a tank, run into the danger head first.
I admit I tend to find players who are really defensive of their characters dull, less from the classes or options they pick necessarily but they often also avoid any sense of risk of drama. If you’re a tank, run into the danger head first.
In defense of trad RPG players, character death in most trad RPGs is not something that is welcomed, it is usually something that the game – or Game Master – punishes you for. Besides losing a character you are emotionally tied to, and losing whatever game time weight your character had, you are usually penalized with lose of XP, loss of magic items, and loss of in-play influence. In trad play, death is bad. Playing defensively is the correct adaptation in that environment.
In defense of trad RPG players, character death in most trad RPGs is not something that is welcomed, it is usually something that the game – or Game Master – punishes you for. Besides losing a character you are emotionally tied to, and losing whatever game time weight your character had, you are usually penalized with lose of XP, loss of magic items, and loss of in-play influence. In trad play, death is bad. Playing defensively is the correct adaptation in that environment.
Another example of baggage is hyperawarness of tropes. Twice I’ve had players flatly refuse to even converse with a gene because they couldn’t belive it had any purpose in the world other then to trick them
Another example of baggage is hyperawarness of tropes. Twice I’ve had players flatly refuse to even converse with a gene because they couldn’t belive it had any purpose in the world other then to trick them
Another example might be suddenly looking for secret doors near bookshelves
Another example might be suddenly looking for secret doors near bookshelves