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| That's an Old School D&D Clone from Spain used in the article picture - awesomesauce! |
Some names stick out from my early gaming days, and Lewis Pulspher is one of them. His name seemed to pop up everywhere back then and its nice to see him still kicking the tires of the hobby today.
Lewis writes about games being more complex than they need to be with constant expansions because of "money" More rules being released sells more books which makes more money.
I just added my own thoughts on the matter to the comments over at the ENWorld article from the perspective of someone that actually wrote a simplified rule system that is being distributed for free in PDF.
Its an interesting thread with few commenters (in four pages of comments) agreeing with each other. Well done Lewis!
RPGs are like candy bars. Everyone wants some different. One recipe isn't going to appeal to everyone. And that's okay.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's the industry in a nutshell. Well said.
DeleteSo you're saying that some RPGs are full of nuts?
DeleteJolly,
DeleteThank you and the rest of the Kenzer team for making HM4 a part of my life. To this day, it's the RPG that has brought the most fun to my table, and it's my wife's unabashed favorite. Not only is its prose and layout overtly complex in reference to Gary's writing, the brilliance of how it plays at the table as a true OSR badass is neatly concealed beneath a veneer of tongue-in-cheek and 'Larry Elmore's Sexy Ladies are still okay to enjoy' that, for me, communicated what D&D was in a way that nothing had up until that point when I found the game in 2002, having not been mentored in the hobby and wandering in the wilderness since a BECMI Rules Cyclopedia in first grade.
It is a Complex Game, and it doesn't pretend otherwise, while having fun with itself. I am not about this trend of 'less is more' and the automatic derision heaped on anything that is 'more' in the hobby these days.
Justinian: Hear, hear. :)
DeleteHe also does a lot of work on youtube.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/user/LewGameDesign
ReplyDelete"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Wow, that's awesome!
I can't bring myself to agree with his view. I get that simple games make them more accessible, but that doesn't necessitate that the game is more satisfying for an individual.
ReplyDelete