Actually, the author of this piece backs into a criticism of D&D that has been voiced ad-nauseam in the gaming community for some time now--that system matters and directly influences the way in which players interact and create a story together. D&D is criticized by some for leaving too much outside its mechanical framework, which can make for an ad-hoc game where dysfunctional group dynamics rob the game of any fun.

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Indeed, there is a whole niche industry of Indie-RPGs, that has grown up around designing games that address many of the complaints the author has raised.

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Its a shame that he didn't research them, it might have made for a better reasoned and richer story. I'm just amazed at the number of articles on Gygax and his legacy that have shown up in the MSM where there isn't the slightest shred of research. Roleplaying may be a geeky endeavour, but it is one that counts many adults in its ranks, and moreover, is the template from which many more "mainstream" video games lift their material.

No one writing for this magazine would ever suggest that the dusty recollections of adolescence should form the basis for say, an article on China-Taiwan relations. Why are they sufficient for a piece on a cultural phenomena like D&D and its legacy?

It's true—for gamers, particularly experienced ones, my argument is old news. But for the wider Slate audience, does it really help to spend another three pages running down a list of all the experimental indie games that came and went? Immortal wasn't really any good, but at least it tried. Castle Falkenstein was a stroke of genius, but it couldn't survive, either. And I didn't mention Call of Cthulhu, either, which doesn't have any of the point-based character traits that GURPS relies on, that some people think are restrictive, but gets most players to roleplay to the hilt by sticking them in an incredibly rich and realistic game-world.

But each of those examples opens up its own set of issues, and its own potential flame war. We can dissect the problems with every system, from the ambitious-but-clunky Shadows in Wraith, to the ruthless rules-raping that an unchecked PC can get away with in Champions. But there's no game that can't be destroyed by munckins, or elevated by a smart group of players. My point is that D&D starts dumb, and makes you fight for every interesting moment. It doesn't provide you with a set of dynamic mechanics that you can just as quickly toss out if they seem overly involved...it gives you an increasing number of lists, a character improvement system that's as restrictive and linear as it is arbitrary, and ultimately, it gave us the D20 system, an awkward attempt to drag other genres into this glorified wargame.

If it seemed like I was presenting GURPS as the perfect system, I'm sorry...like every system, it has problems. And every game is a matter of preference, and how much money you want to spend, etc. What I want is variety, and viable competitors, and a lively industry. In a best-case scenario, you can have our Michael Bay, and I can have my Coen Brothers, and although we'll sneer at each other now and then, both worlds can soldier on. What we have is a death march that's winding down. The RPG equivalent of the Coen Brothers can't exist, and if it does, it's living off of scraps. There was a brief period when RPGs had momentum, and maybe they could have become respectable, and more designers could have made a living at it, and the entire thing could have become healthy enough to support a real indie market. But there's a reason Chaosium doesn't really make money, and why R. Talsorian folded, and why the outside world thinks gamers, and RPGs in general, are so dumb. It's because D&D looks dumb, feels dumb, and unless you work incredibly hard, plays dumb, too. It's not the kind of game you praise, but defend. And it's the game that defied our medium for all these years, and now it's the game that's killed it.

And if we can't agree on anything else, let's at least agree that RPGs are stumbling into a mass grave.

Oh please, people have been claiming the death of the RPG since the 80's and the whole "D&D is evil" routine. Then it was video games. Now the MMOs. And yet, the games keep selling, new generations are playing, and GenCon keeps growing.

And your film analogy is not entirely accurate. RPGs are the medium, the DM or GM is the director. Some RPGs are 8mm, some are hand-helds, and some are digital in 2.35:1. Whatever the medium, a skilled director, or DM, can make a masterpiece.

Almost the entire (non-computer) game industry went through a decline in the '90s, not just the RPG industry. Avalon Hill died, Mayfair shrunk their product line down to a few imports, Games Workshop slashed almost everything except their miniatures line, FASA went belly-up. Hasbro gobbled Tonka (which owned Parker Brothers) in '91 (Hasbro already owned Milton Bradley after MB's problems in the 1980s). Wizards Of The Coast was one of the few companies to weather the changes on the strengths of the collectible card game fad. The long-term result is Hasbro's dominance in the industry, and Hasbro is essentially a toy company that makes games, not a games company.

Honestly, if it wasn't for the Germans, the entire works would be in that mass grave that was mentioned. You'd have thirty flavors of Risk and 200 kinds of Monopoly, and a few licensed toss-offs for the kiddies--lousy games with Hannah Montana or Shrek on the front of the box.

We can agree that D&D is a deeply flawed game and there are other games that are far better, in and out of print. But if the RPG industry has any significant life in it, it's because of Dungeons And Dragons, not in spite of it: Hasbro has a valuable trademark in D&D and has the motive and money to at least keep up the presentation quality of the rules (hard covers, glossy pages, a nice website).

Don't think this is praise of Hasbro, either. It's neither a blessing or a curse (tho' if I had to choose one, I'd curse 'em). The point is that blaming D&D for the woes of the gaming industry is (a) wrong, (b) dumb and (c) wrong (yes, I did list that twice).

>>the ruthless rules-raping that an unchecked PC can get away >>with in Champions.

Hey, don't knock it, I had a blast rules-raping Champions.s.

I still find it hard to belive that as the author of this article this being has the desire to rant about industry problems and blame them on what to all intents and purposes comes down to him not liking D&D, for whatever reason.

The offer to run down three pages of indie games that came and went would have actually been refreshing and may well have been seen as informative to an audience that does not really know about the "gamegeek" community and may well have expanded the audience for his article instead of dropping him into a position to be flamebait.

What would strike my curiosity is to know how he was deifning "indie" in the gaming community. Chaosium, FASA, Palladium, HERO, SJG, RTalisorian, Mayfare, Guardians of Order, who is indy there? And he is talking about the industry closing up on RTalisorian, when in reality the owner decided to work for Microsoft for a while to try and make more money and put gaming on the back burner, and now that they are trying to come back they are having to take new approaches and it is taking time to reestablish the brand.

I am thinking that the big call in almost all these replies though is that he needs to back up his oppinion with some viable facts or maybe even just start his ill informed rant with "in my oppinion", so that he could have been better ignored.

The point isn't that there's so many indie games that "came and went"; the point is that there's an active, thriving community that's successfully put a lot of thought to the problems D&D have. Gurps is honestly no better than Champions or Hero, in the sense that the rules hinder rather than aid attempts to come up with an interesting story.

To overlook games like "Dogs in the Vineyard", "Sorcerer", or some of the most fascinating, like "Polaris" or other GM-less games, makes it seem to me as if Slate wanted a reminiscing piece, not a decent survey of the state of the art.

But at least the basic critique is right-on, and that's enough for me to say thanks.

"And if we can't agree on anything else, let's at least agree that RPGs are stumbling into a mass grave."

Sometimes people reach a point where their perspective leads them to believe an activity's existence has been somehow diminished because they're not as actively engaged anymore. D&D and its peers represent a persistent phenomena that has merely seen some ebb and flow. I started playing during the stagnant, later years of TSR. Then WotC came in with a much-needed infusion of creativity and enthusiasm. But ever since I started meeting people who play D&D, I've never felt the numbers slide at all. There's likely a good deal more players than anyone can account for. I'm routinely surprised to find out about people who don't look like gamers, but sure enough, are.

Perhaps it depends on what you mean by RPG. I'd say that for many of us, RPGs were so thoroughly created and defined by D&D that the flaws of the genre are synonymous by the flaws of that game itself.

Take Calvinball as an example of a genre of typical child's game - in which the rules are fluid, the play absolutely physical, and the gaming bizarre. The game is so different from session to session that there is little 'skill' to be practiced. The game is utterly dependent on the good spirit of the players - one evil bully and it becomes a beatdown session. Balance is crucial, logic is somewhat lacking, etc.

Then take Monopoly. The rules are clear, the goal obvious, the game self-contained and universal. It is also distinctly limiting and very few people actually step into the shoes of the real-estate mogul this way - it is as distant from Trump's career as chess is from the defense of Stalingrad.

Well, D&D has created a genre of its own, for which it is the archetype. Leveling and dice, Dungeon Masters and paper maps, books of rules... this is what makes the computer-free RPG. It is not, emphatically not, what makes the computer game RPG, either single or multi player, which has its own strengths and weaknesses and rarely transcends the official adventures sold in the box. It is not what makes LARP work or fail to work, either, even though LARP is in some sense (by name at least) and RPG.

To say that D&D isn't a very good RPG and then proceed to throw out dice, experience points and levels - is to effectively advocate for another genre. That's fine. Many people have criticized RPGs for many things. Some want tabletop strategy games instead. Some want SCA instead. But if you're going to say that D&D isn't a good RPG, you need to compare it to, say, Star Frontiers, or Mechwarrior - where, at least, there is serious logic behind why the foes have money - but yes, everybody keeps leveling, and dice keep getting rolled.

THAT would have been a very good article that would have had me respecting your opinion even though I disagreed with your conclusions. In fact, here you've proved your gaming experience is more extensive than my own, which in its own right would be enough for me to at least allow that you might know something I don't. You should write like this more often, since your first article was literally begging for ridicule on a humiliating scale.

"It's not the kind of game you praise, but defend." When I read a statement like that, I realize the writer is not interested in having an intelligent debate. So I can't praise the countless hours of enjoyment I experienced playing D'n'D with my friends? I can't praise the game for providing a flexible framework within which we invested our imaginations and emotions? Wow, what doofuses we were. Too bad we didn't have the penetrating insight of a Sofge and recognize that we couldn't possibly be having a good time with the "morally reprehensible" and obviously flawed game system we so mindlessly embraced. Yep, if only we had the discernment to turn our backs on a game avidly played by millions of people around the world and took up some obscure, inherently superior role-playing system that dozens and dozens of our more sophisticated geek-brethren patronized. Oh well.

Really, a mass grave? That must be why the local convention get more popular every year. Besides in your 3rd paragraph you summed it in the first sentence, every system has its problems.

Seriously, you're beating up on a dead guy who created my favorite hobby. I might not always have agreed with him and I might have had to work a little bit to make D&D games more complex. But without him I would not have had those games.

Oh and by the way, have you seen the 3.5 Exalted Deeds book?