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So Ed at Esoteric Murmurs had some interesting things to say about the progression of game designers, in "When I Left You I Was The Learner" and a "followup". He's responding to Vincent Baker's idea of game design being a slowly built up craft which takes years to master (cf. his post "Craft and Innovation").
I'm not sure I have an objective view in this, but I drove me to look at my own list of favored RPGs and what their designers did.
Jonathan Tweet's RPGs go Ars Magica (1987), Over the Edge (1992), Everway (1995), Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition (2000). Of these, my favorite is Ars Magica, though I realize that opinions differ. It is at least still selling nearly two decades after its release. I think all of his designs are strong, though Everway was something of a flop.
Robin D. Law's RPGs go Nexus: The Infinite City (1990), Pandemonium! : Adventures in Tabloid World (1993), Feng Shui (1996), Hero Wars (2000), Pantheon and Other Games (2000), The Dying Earth (2001), Rune (2001). Like Tweet, I think he's clearly improved his craft, but I'd probably pick Feng Shui as my favorite.
Greg Costikyan's RPGs go Commando (1979), Paranoia (1984), Toon (1984), The Price of Freedom (1986), Star Wars (1987), Teenagers from Outer Space 3rd edition (1997). I'd have to put Paranoia as my favorite.
Mike Pondsmith's RPGs go Mekton (1985), Teenagers from Outer Space (1987), Cyberpunk (1988), Dream Park (1992), Cybergeneration (1993), Castle Falkenstein (1994), Champions: The New Millenium (1997), Dragonball Z (1998). My favorite of the lot is TFOS. The track is mixed with some of what I feel are real duds like Dream Park and C:TNM.
Sandy Petersen's RPGs go Call of Cthulhu (1981), Ringworld (1983), Elfquest (1984), Ghostbusters (1986), Hawkmoon (1986). Of these, my favorite is his first RPG Call of Cthulhu. While Ghostbusters was inspired, the others are pretty mediocre.
Steve Peterson's RPGs go Champions (1981), Espionage (1983), Justice Inc (1984), Danger International (1985), Fantasy Hero (1985), Hero System 4th (1989), Champions: The New Millenium (1997). Here, Champions improved in a number of things with editions and I respect Danger International which had a number of great innovations. But I hated the later Fuzion system. I'd probably put Hero System 4th as my favorite, though.
Ron Edwards's RPGs go Sorcerer (1998), Elfs (2001), Trollbabe (2002), Mongrel (2003), Black Fire (2003), Zero at the Bone (2004). Of these, I'm most interested by Sorcerer though I've only read the others.
My basic conclusion is that as far as my personal tastes, I think I am more swayed by inspiration than developed craft. Now, this is a little funny, because I am extremely concerned with good editing, polish, and attention to detail in RPGs. I do think that games do on average improve with later editions (though there are many exceptions) -- to the point that I am often hesitant to buy first edition RPGs. However, when I look at the track record, I have to admit I don't get a sense of linear improvement.
Now, some of my fellow Forgites might feel that the situation has changed in recent years, with designers learning from a new school. I'm skeptical. As far as I see from discussion and the profiling, hit games among the Forge crowd seem to favor the newcomer as much as the veteran. Hit games by my estimation would include Hero Wars, Sorcerer, The Pool, The Riddle of Steel, The Burning Wheel, My Life With Master, Primetime Adventures, and Dogs in the Vineyard.
On the other hand, I think I like it that way. RPGs are not a well-trodden field like the novel or the feature film, where classes can be given of accepted wisdom. It's still hit-and-miss, inspiration, and luck to a fair degree. I'd like to see more newcomers, new ideas, and so forth. There has at times been a danger of the Forge ceasing to be a place of innovation and instead seeing a lot of look-alike designs of a particular sort.
(NOTE: This was edited to add in Robin D. Laws, who should certainly be mentioned among top RPG designers.)
June 24 2005, 13:58:11 UTC 6 years ago
As a comparison, I used to make songs with Trackers (old music software). At first, I made lots of innovative songs, and some people loved them--but others disliked them because they were half-assed, different parts of the songs didn't fit together, the instruments were not well tuned to each other, there was no mixing done... now I make songs with Reason. They are much more streamlined, I mix and master them, and they are more polished. I'm not yet at the point where I can be highly innovative AND craft well at the same time, but there seems to be a progression here that makes me a more skilled composer now, even though I love many of my old (flawed) songs for simply the ideas I put in there.
I just think it might be the same with RPG design, or most creative art at that.
June 24 2005, 17:25:07 UTC 6 years ago
However, I'm saying that tabletop RPG design seems to have less linear development than some more established fields -- like the portrait, the song, the novel, or the feature film. In those other fields, I feel that there is more steady progression in people's careers. Works will tend to improve to a peak at some point many years later, though there are always some careers with lots of peaks and valleys. Maybe this is just my perception, but I feel that RPGs are more the latter. Great RPG designers are still great, but it includes a lot of inspiration compared to reliable craft.
It's complicated in the case of RPGs because there are multiple editions which often have multiple authors -- which is quite different than how it is in most other fields. Later editions then benefit from feedback and experience of that same game, even if done by a different author. For example, Tweet was brought in to do a new edition of D&D. Now, D&D as a whole is clearly a lucky beginner. Tweet massively revitalized it, but he was working with material established as a lucky beginner.
June 24 2005, 17:32:38 UTC 6 years ago
June 24 2005, 15:59:22 UTC 6 years ago
June 24 2005, 21:36:25 UTC 6 years ago
>> this is a little funny, because I am extremely concerned with good
>> editing, polish, and attention to detail in RPGs.
Actually, this makes perfect sense to me. If the role of a game book is to get the players into their own creative endeavors, an inspiring game is going to be much more successful and produce much more memorable play than a well-crafted one which does nothing for the imagination. If a group finds something in a poorly-designed game to latch onto, they'll drift the rest of it as necessary. At that level, it becomes much more about the individual players' tastes than about a game's 'objective' level of craft.
As the first commenter noted, Ars Magica is a much less solid game than D&D3, but it inspired you to work around that and have more fun than you would have with a bog-standard D&D fantasy hackfest.
June 25 2005, 00:55:15 UTC 6 years ago
Bottom line is, if I was going to make an original background and had to use one of the two systems exactly as written, I would still likely use Ars Magica 1st edition solely on the mechanics. While they cleaned things up considerably from the AD&D2+options mess, the D&D3.0 rules still feel overly cumbersome to me, cluttered with rules like attacks of opportunity, the convoluted split of skills/feats/class abilities, and more.
Now, that's not an objective judgement of quality, since it does involve my personal tastes as well. I might still agree that D&D3.0 is somewhat more solid mechanically on an objective scale, but the two are at least close.
June 25 2005, 06:13:47 UTC 6 years ago
nitpick
The PANDEMONIUM rpg was written by Steve Sechi, not Robin Laws. Robin wrote one of the supplements. I think it was called Weather the Cuckoo Likes.June 25 2005, 14:52:23 UTC 6 years ago
Re: nitpick
Weather the Cuckoo Likes is a supplement for Over the Edge, not Pandemonium, but it was indeed written by Robin D. Laws.To be pedantic, though, my copy of OtE 2nd ed. says "Johnathan Tweet with Robin D. Laws", and my copy of HeroQuest (ie, Hero Wars 2nd ed., described as a "Forge Success" up above by John) is credited as being designed by Robin D. Laws as well.
I think Robin's career is interestingly balanced between innovation and indie work and paycheck type work, systems work and setting work.
Feng Shui -- uses the same system, under the covers, as the earlier Nexus: the Infinite City. I don't know whether he worked on that or not, though -- I'll have to dig out the rulebook.
Likewise, Rune -- technically an "adaption" of the Ars Magica system. He's taking existing mechanics, in both cases, and melding them with setting in interesting ways. As opposed to, say, Hero Wars/HeroQuest or Dying Earth, where he's marrying original mechanics to a pre-existing setting.
June 29 2005, 19:27:10 UTC 6 years ago
Re: nitpick
Ah. My mistake. He's listed as "Additional Material" in Pandemonium!, not as the primary author. The same is true for Over the Edge and for the Last Unicorn Games' Star Trek line. So probably shouldn't hold him responsible for those. (I'm thinking particularly of LUG's Star Trek, which I thought was a pretty lousy basic game though it had some good additional material).I tend to agree that sequential authors are a good thing for games (i.e. bringing in someone like Tweet to revise D&D, for example) -- though multiple authors on the same edition can lead to "design by committee" problems (cough-Fuzion-cough).
June 29 2005, 09:59:51 UTC 6 years ago
I'd rate Hero Wars/HeroQuest higher than Feng Shui/Nexus as a design. I'd still rate Nexus as the best setting work Laws has done, though I've not read the Mad Lands book he did for GURPS, and I know that the Nexus setting design is the work of many authors.
June 29 2005, 19:15:30 UTC 6 years ago
(Particular a pet peeve of mine -- flavorful mechanics terms which overlap non-mechanical terms. The action points of Feng Shui are called "shots" in a game which is full of shooting! That's annoyingly confusing. Similarly, in Savage Worlds, I find that in a game with both cards and dice, certain die rolls are called "Aces" and the PCs are called "Wild Cards". What was he thinking?)
June 30 2005, 07:42:36 UTC 6 years ago
As for your peeve, I completely agree. Even in HeroQuest, where you can succeed with a roll and still get a defeat (of varying severity) confuses some of my players. I suppose that's more a problem of resisted rolls than terminology.