Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐Aug 25, 2024
Basic D&D is not any better than Advanced D&D. Yes, it's a little simpler, in some ways too simplistic, in some ways even more racist (Elf as a class?? Come on.), and in many ways makes the same mistakes that #DnD has always made from the very beginning: classes/levels, HP, XP, races, the Vancian magic system. It's not a dramatically different game and #OSR nostalgia and sentimentality doesn't rescue it from being just as bad, in different ways. #RPG #TTRPG
Show threadGemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐Aug 25, 2024

A great #TTRPG system disconnects sex/gender, species/race/ethnicity, class/skill, background/role, religion/alignment from each other and the core rules from any particular setting.

A great #gaming system doesn't micromanage you into a mire, and is designed to be self-contained, not to generate book sales for profit.

A truly great #RPG system doesn't limit players' or GMs' imaginations.

#DnD is historically significant, in that it birthed the genre, but it is not "great" in any version.

Show threadGemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐

50 years later, #DnD is not radically different to its original 1970s roots, because the people in charge of making a new D&D have always made just a slightly different variation of the same paradigms in each version.

By contrast, a game system like #MIMgames #TheWindow delivers a truly great #ttrpg #rpg system without relying on any of the core concepts of #DnD or its progeny.

The rules are free, light, and universal. They are story-driven, not simulation-driven.

https://gcvrsa.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/windowrules.pdf

Aug 25, 2024 at 7:44pmWeb
Show threadGemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐Aug 25, 2024

What makes #MIMgames #TheWindow a truly great #ttrpg #rpg system is that your character is as you describe. If you can think it up, it's yours. Characters are described with adjectives, not numbers, the same way we describe human characteristics in the real world. There are no limitations on class or skill tree or anything else, really. You can be or do whoever or whatever you want, so long as you can describe it and the GM permits it.

Sadly, the website is defunct, but Internet Archive has it.

Show threadGemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐Aug 25, 2024
I think the thing that kills me about #DnD is that from the very beginning, the most iconic example of a wizard up to that point was Gandalf, who is rarely seen in Tolkein's books actually using anything we could describe as "magic" in the D&D sense, and who used a sword, Glamdring. #fantasy #rpg #ttrpg
Show threadHipsterDMAug 25, 2024
@gcvsa
I dunno, the whole "you shall not pass" scene he seems to be using pretty powerful magic.
He's an angel after all, so is the Balrog.
Show threadGemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐Aug 26, 2024

@HipsterDM I didn't say he doesn't use magic, I said he rarely uses anything recognizable as magic in the D&D sense. Also, it's important not to mix up the Jackson/Weta movie adaptations, which didn't exist in the 1970s, with the Tolkien source material.

In the book, Gandalf actually faces down the Balrog with Glamdring, not his staff. He only uses his staff to break the bridge, destroying his staff in the process.

Show threadKevin CasarezAug 26, 2024

@gcvsa Perhaps not your intention, but it would seem like you're saying the wizard class is based largely on Gandalf, or that Gandalf is the prime example? That feels short-sighted.

If we want only to look at Tolkein's books, there's plenty of other magic users of recognizable name: Sauron and Sarumon pop right to my mind as fast as Gandalf.

But Merlin can also represent the wizard class, and his stories and legends were around for centuries before Tolkein lived.

Show threadGemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐Aug 26, 2024
@kevincasarez No, that's not what I was saying, at all. What I was saying, which is quite clear, is that the D&D Magic-User/Wizard class can't use swords, when the most iconic wizard in fantasy literature at the time of D&D invention used swords. It's just a prime example of the weird choices Gygax and Arneson made when they designed D&D in the 1970s.
Show threadKevin CasarezAug 26, 2024
@gcvsa Ah, I see. I thought your focus was on the magic, not on the weapons proficiency. My bad.