[Industry] Ryan Dancey on D&D and the hobby

[Havard]

That said, I followed the discussion on DF. You make very good points.

Thanks Rafe!

To those who dont visit that site, what I was talking about there was this particular quote:

I define a Hobby Game as one where (at least one person) spends more time preparing to play the game than actually playing it. For TRPGs that is usually the GM, but often it is players as well. This “out of game time” may be the biggest obstacle to overcome to keeping the TRPG platform competitive.

I think this is where Dancey gets it wrong. I think that there are lots of people out there who _want_ a Hobby Game. This is certainly where the OSR fits in, but I think there are younger gamers out there who would appreciate that too. Not so much spending hours writing up 3E style statblocks for NPCS, but for building worlds, designing scenarios and just dreaming about alternate realities.

More than that, I think _this_ is where video games cannot beat Pen & Paper RPGs.

I also hope the new edition sends a message against "character optimization". Munchkinism is hardly something exclusive to later editions, but but reading todays 4E forums this is the only subject discussed. While I am not arguing for killing someone's badwrongfun, I think new editions of gamers need to be shown that there are other aspects of the hobby. Lets get back the "products of your imagination" attitude. Without imagination, D&D is just another lame board game.


-Havard