Over in the MMO world, it's been a thing for some time for some games to get sufficiently popular that savvy players get the necessary stuff required to spin up their own private servers.
Over time, several of these have decided to take the original game in directions that neither the current owners nor the creators ever intended. The results have been mixed--experimentation is like that--but one conclusion has come forth clear as crystal:
Changing the rules changes the game.
I'll narrow this down to Globe of Gankcraft, as that is still the top dog in this sphere.
In addition to the official Retail and Classic servers, there are a number of private servers with large users. In tabletop terms, this would be Current Game and D&D-alikes.
Watching playthrough videos available on YouTube make it clear that even minor changes to the rules have cascading effects two, three, or four degrees from impact that combine to change how the game plays and therefore what the play experience is.
Because this is a videogame, and because it is easy to compare different iterations of the same game, these conclusions are easy to reach because the evidence is obvious to the observer.
The same is true for tabletop RPGs.
The reasons people gainsay this stems from two points, one of which the #BROSR has hammered for quite some time: the lack of discipline to play Rules As Written. AD&D 1st Edition does not play the same way that AD&D 2nd Edition does, neither play like D&D3, and none of them like Current Game.
Yet, because of the rampant lack of playing RAW, this gets missed until it's forced upon the observer like having shit smeared into his face.
The other reason, as I imply above, is the inability to conceptualize the operation of the game as if it were a videogame. A lack of proper play did not help at all, but even those that do run into the problem of conceiving that differences in rulesets manifest in actual play as differences in outcomes on the table. "It's (game), and all (game) is (game) no matter the edition" is what their position is- until, of course, they get reality smeared into their faces.
This is why actual play, done properly, matters.
There are people, far more than one may want to admit, that cannot conceive of there being significant qualitative changes between two editions of a thing unless and until they see both of them in action and are able to compare them in more-or-less real time.
This is how it is in RPGs. Edition changes that seem minor can, and do, have massive effects on how the game plays. Sometime as simple as reducing spell components to only the most expensive or exotic, or reducing caster recover and memorization times to 8 hours and 1 hour, as D&D3 did can drastically change the way the game plays.
Changing how the Force works drastically changes how a Star Wars game plays. Moving from Spells/Day to Mana Points changed how Palladium Fantasy played. Magic casting putting a character on a roulette wheel of Save Or Suck changed how Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play played.
Yet, because RPGs are things that don't look and feel like games until they're being played, users tend to miss the significance until they run head-on into the brick wall of the changed boundaries.
Then come the complaints, born of a mismatch of expectations; the complainant expecting what was before and getting something else, like ordering French Fries and getting Vegan Sticks.
Designers and Publishers need to hold to a policy of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Games are not electronics or software; Chainmail is not obsolete and works just fine today as it did decades ago. They also need to communicate to prospective users what the game does, how it does it, and why it works as it does; this reduces confusion and filters out bad fits.
Players need to hold to a policy of "Until I grok it, don't fuck with it". Far too many make presumptions that are unfounded with regard to what the game is, how it works, or why it is as it is and do nothing to recitify this. Games are not bits in a box to fiddle with; they are purpose-built machines with a defined function and an objective. Until you know the ins and outs of that machine, do not fuck with it. If it doesn't do what you want, play something else.
We value mastery for a reason. That reason is to be able to see the outcomes of a change before that is made, and be able to commit to testing it before implementation to confirm or deny that theory- something far too few even bother with anymore, letting paying customers be the Beta Testers, just like their videogame counterparts.
And people wonder why RPGs are, as a scene, such shit these days.
Try playing the game as it was meant to be played. You might enjoy it.
RPGs sit in a weird consumer space, kind of like scripts for stage plays. Sure they are meant to be used, but they are also meant to be perused. I think one of the reasons splatbooks are popular (as opposed to the real reason they're made, to be lucrative) is that it's fun to sit and read them.
ReplyDeleteEspecially in a hobby this far down the autism spectrum, there are far more hours spent alone than at the table/roll20/whatever.