ScottS wrote:I have problems understanding why RPGs can't just be like Monopoly, Battleship etc. and remain unchanging gaming fixtures.
Probably because those games are really boring and only survive by inertia. Mind, inertia is pretty goddamn strong market force, but you have to get inertia before you have inertia(...)but as we've seen from New Coke the downside to market inertia is that people don't like change even if it's superior.
I'd argue that those points probably feed into each other in a negative way. "Boring" is only an issue for people who've played the game before; a new guy doesn't care and just wants to play. And theoretically, he should have an easy time finding a group because the "inertia" is already there (if you believe that millions-of-lapsed-gamers figure that gets thrown around). But the inertia works against the new gamer; if you grab Essentials off the shelf and start trolling around for a D&D group, you immediately run into issues with other people only playing 1E, BECMI, 2E, 3.X/PF, 4.0E or whatever. Older-edition gamers have a legitimate beef against 4.X, but above and beyond that, you have the simple fact that "people don't like change" in a lot of cases and therefore don't really give a crap about keeping up with the current rules iteration.
Even if you think Monopoly sucks, the advantage to the "frozen rules set" model is that you can grab Monopoly off the shelf, bug people to "play Monopoly", and everyone knows wtf you're talking about. There's no question of "which edition", and in the case of people that haven't touched their own dusty copy of the game for years (because they've played it enough to know it sucks), they're still potentially willing to run it with new players, teach people the rules etc. because it requires no extra effort (there's no new textbook of rules they have to study).
Last edited by ScottS on Mon Mar 21, 2011 1:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
Well, in D_C's Tome, game today, we got jumped by a sparkley pony, and I had to defeat the session's boss with rainbow lasers. So I'm seriously down with a MLP edition.
Anything has to be better than more edition wars, right?
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
Fixed rules only work for very simple games. I mean, everyone knows that Monopoly is a children's game that only gets played every once in a while by bored non-gamers.
I think a good model is Arkham Horror. It's a really simply and yet really sleek and efficient core system, but it gets complicated by add-ons and the like.
I have an idea: play a game of Monopoly, discuss absolutely nothing with 3 other players, and then when someone lands on Free Parking, discuss what happens.
Even in ludicrously simple rules, house rules exist. And they require discussion.
Fixed rules only work for very simple games. I mean, everyone knows that Monopoly is a children's game that only gets played every once in a while by bored non-gamers.
Well there's always chess and diplomacy. Damn simple games, but not exactly children's games. Of course both have a gazillion variants built off of the core game.
The "Free Parking kitty" was never used as a pretext to substantially modify the rulebook/components and attempt to sell you an update of the same game. There were "collector's editions" of course but whatever.
Diplomacy is an example of substantial variants (Colonial Dip, Machiavelli, etc.) getting packaged and sold as separate games while the original stayed in print and unmodified. (Been out of Dip for a while but pretty sure the rules have been frozen since 1959 except for the addition of the coastal crawl thing.)
I've only played Arkham a couple of times, and I'm not familiar with the extent to which the expansions represent rules patches. Supplements that keep the "house rules" separate from the original package are fine I guess. It's not a question of suppressing house rules, but rather keeping the baseline constant so there's no brand confusion.
Let's also not forget that Monopoly has tried every trick in the book to sell new editions. The rules may have not changed, but they reskin the board all the time for excuses to sell more editions.
The internets says over 100 editions.
Last edited by K on Mon Mar 21, 2011 8:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
100 seems a very soft number considering they do em for states, colleges, etc. Ayep, just checked wikipedia, and they link to this site which suggests at closer to 1700 2000+. Some aren't official, but still, damn.
ScottS wrote:by 1936 the Monopoly rules were crystallized.
Except that still people can sit down for a game and not realize they play by different rules...
Wikipedia sez wrote:House rules
Parker Brothers' official instructions have long encouraged the use of house rules, specific additions to or subtractions from the official rule sets. Many casual Monopoly players are surprised to discover that some of the rules that they are used to are not part of the official rules. Many of these house rules tend to make the game longer by randomly giving players more money. Some common house rules are listed below
Last edited by erik on Mon Mar 21, 2011 1:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.
FrankTrollman wrote:I have an idea: play a game of Monopoly, discuss absolutely nothing with 3 other players, and then when someone lands on Free Parking, discuss what happens.
As a doctor-in-training, are you ethically allowed to recommend people play Monopoly? I mean, doesn't "getting people to play that" constitute a crime against humanity?
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.
Fixed rules only work for very simple games. I mean, everyone knows that Monopoly is a children's game that only gets played every once in a while by bored non-gamers.
Well there's always chess and diplomacy. Damn simple games, but not exactly children's games. Of course both have a gazillion variants built off of the core game.
You're forgetting Go.
There's some variants, but the underlying rules have been frozen for a *long* time, and it's probably the "deepest" game you can find.
...so they released the new online character builder. Finally. And, surprise surprise, it's worthless. You cannot create new monsters or powers. You cannot add powers to an existing monster. You can do exactly two things:
- Change the monster's level
- Rename monster powers
That sounds pretty sad, even by 4e standards. With all of that said...anyone have any actual statistics to show how badly WotC are at a loss from trying to sell 4th edition stuff? Because that's what counts, if you ask me. We can whine about it all we want, but how much they sell is actually the thing that will make any difference in this world of...okay, now I'm starting to sound silly.
"Lurker and fan of random stuff." - Icy's occupation
sabs wrote:And Yes, being Finnish makes you Evil.
virgil wrote:And has been successfully proven with Pathfinder, you can just say you improved the system from 3E without doing so and many will believe you to the bitter end.
The only concrete numbers I heard are from the (what was it, copywrite/pirate lawsuite), but thats old.
Its in an old thread here somewhere (the one where TD claimed hundrets of thousand sounds more than a million).
From what I hear, they're making the next Neverwinter Nights 4e-based. From my experiences with the two predecessors of this game and the fact that Cryptic is working on it, I predict much fail.
sabs wrote:NWN 1 was awesome and amazing
NWN 2 fell flat on it's face.
NWN3 can only suck.
+1.
And I really hope they don't pull the same trick on Baldur's Gate somehow.
God, that would not only be the worst butchering of canon and lore EVER, but it would mean that we get another spectacularly bad D&D game on the shelves...
Last edited by icyshadowlord on Mon Mar 28, 2011 2:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"Lurker and fan of random stuff." - Icy's occupation
sabs wrote:And Yes, being Finnish makes you Evil.
virgil wrote:And has been successfully proven with Pathfinder, you can just say you improved the system from 3E without doing so and many will believe you to the bitter end.
NWN 1 OC was not awesome and amazing, also MotB was one of the best expansions in the series.
NWN 2 was let down by an inflexible and buggy game engine with an art pipeline very poorly suited to DIY.
PS. Cryptic? Ugh, I'd rather have buggy with potential from Obsidian than Cryptic's trademark shovelware.
PPS. that said, even though people say that 4e is suited to computer games I think it's actually the worst suited yet ... they will have to completely change the mechanics in my opinion, so there is a glimmer of hope.
PPPS. they do intend to maintain the persistent world and content creation aspect of NWN ... if against all hope the engine is decent someone will probably end up doing a total conversion to a different ruleset.
Last edited by MfA on Mon Mar 28, 2011 3:37 pm, edited 3 times in total.
MfA wrote:PPS. that said, even though people say that 4e is suited to computer games I think it's actually the worst suited yet ... they will have to completely change the mechanics in my opinion, so there is a glimmer of hope.
Neverwinter is not a 4e game. It's a game that uses a 'modified version' of the ruleset 'including the use of healing surges and action points' (which they implement as something different again).
So the 4e thingy is just marketing speak, it will probably have some names that are similar but it's going to be buttonmashy actionrpg style.
Does anyone know of someone who's sat down and actually wrote software for playing 4e as a computer game? Not professional, commercial stuff, just a guy in his garage?
I mean, Battletech had some good stuff, Dark Tower is available for the PC, even Titan has software for it, among many other 'small' games. It's just bizarre that so far no fool in his garage has actually done the same for 4e.
Last edited by Doom on Mon Mar 28, 2011 5:22 pm, edited 2 times in total.
