Thursday, January 16, 2025

The Culture: One of the OGs Talks To Dunder Moose

Dunder's on a roll. Yesterday he had on Rob Kunze and Griff. Regardless of my take on Griff, this is worthwhile.

While a good show, both Griff and Rob exhibited a curious habit.

There is a curious thing. You'll see this a lot with people that made something when they talk about what they made.

The thing is that they never talk about their own creation as if it were a finished, set-in-stone thing; it's not real to them as it is to the end-user. They always see it in its unfinished state, and some folks are so caught up in this mindset that they have to have finished pieces taken from them so they stop tinkering with them.

The other thing you'll see--and you see it here with Rob and Griff--is that they don't necessarily grok why the thing works as it does. It is not uncommon for their own users to sit them down and walk them through how their own creation works to point out exactly that.

The better designers do grok this. That's why they are the better designers. They also grok that game design is product design; if the widget executes the function that justifies its existence, then it is properly designed- you're now on to refinement to perfection. (Best example to date on this? Glocks; there's a reason that the Glock is the global standard for sidearms, as D&D is for adventure gaming.)

And product design can be, has been, and continues to be taught as if it were any other trade or profession successfully- which means that game design can be taught. Has been taught. Successfully.

This is not the 1970s. We know what works now; we have for 30 years. Nothing changed in the 1990s. Nothing changed after WOTC took over D&D. Nothing changed. There's just been one false hope of dethroning the king after the next.

The best thing you can do going forward is focus on teaching people how to play and training them on how to win: serve your hobby. Competing on product is a dead end.

1 comment:

  1. These Rob Kuntz interviews have all been frustrating.

    Why is no one asking him How they ran D&D on the practical level. We can answer all the "Gygax didn't play that way" questions, all at once.

    How did Dave run? Gygax? Himself? System differences, Group size, Practical management of 1:1 time, Domain play, etc,... And follow-up question to clarify.

    Why is no one doing this? He's not gonna be around forever.

    ReplyDelete

Anonymous comments are banned. Pick a name, and "Unknown" (et. al.) doesn't count.