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Zed Duke of Banville

Zed Duke of Banville

Dungeon Master
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Oct 3, 2015
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13,606
Ol' Willy said:
Desman said:
Roleplaying is not about classes, stats and levels, stop worshipping piss-poor tactical games disguised as rpgs.
Click to expand...
It is exactly about classes, levels and stats.

RPGs have grown out of wargames, smol scale wargames to be exact, and have the same attitude to simulating combat above everything else

Chainmail, the proto DnD by Gygax, was a wargame

The original 1973 DnD was essentially a fantasy wargame

Zed Duke of Banville should prep you more about this
Click to expand...
Exploration is one of the twin pillars of RPGs alongside combat; these exploration elements, along with character customization/progression, differentiated RPGs from squad-based wargaming. Chainmail Rules for Miniatures is a crucial influence on the creation of Dungeons & Dragons, but it was still very much a miniatures wargame, lacking any exploration and any customization/progression while on the scale of representing 20 men per miniature figurine (and with each side starting with many miniatures, far from squad-based!), with its fantasy supplement establishing the "fantasy wargame" that preceded D&D and RPGs. Similarly, Dave Wesely's Braunstein games were a crucial part of the development of RPGs but still quite distinct; important for establishing the principal of each player controlling a single character, but lacking those same elements which would only be introduced by Dave Arneson, building on Braunstein, Duane Jenkins' successor Brownstone games (Old West setting), and the Napoleonic wargames enjoyed by that group. Gygax's D&D, deriving its combat from Chainmail, was intentionally rather abstract in its combat systems, something that soon dissatisfied a certain component of the audience and led to the development of new RPGs.

D-D-Ed-Simbalist-exploration.jpg


Character stats (equipment, inventory, customization, progression) support exploration and combat, together forming the three key sets of elements defining RPGs.
 
InD_ImaginE

InD_ImaginE

Arcane
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Aug 23, 2015
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6,212
Pathfinder: Wrath
If Goldbox games were to be released today, they would be considered mediocre or outright bad even by Codex.

The only reason they are getting highly praised is because they are old.
 
octavius

octavius

Arcane
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Aug 4, 2007
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Bjørgvin
That's funny...for me the things that make the Gold Box games not as good the IE games, is the extremely basic AI and the very limited selection of viable spells.
 
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