[MUD-Dev] D&D vs. MMORPG "complexity"

[Threshold RPG]

On 23 May 2003, at 13:26, Travis Casey wrote:

> In my experience, the majority of D&D players use considerably
> more than just the core books.

Your experience is certainly not the common one. In fact, WoTC had
to increase the costs of the core books by $10 each because people
were not buying books beyond the core three like they hoped and
planned they would.

> Well, good.  But there have been others who have said that paper
> RPGs are irrelevant, and it seems to me that much of what you've
> said superficially looks like an argument against the relevance of
> paper RPGs.

I am not sure how you came to this conclusion from my
arguments. Almost every single time I replied to this thread I
prefaced it by saying I not only loved D&D but felt D&D and PnP
games have a lot of great concepts that makers of any type of game
can borrow or learn from.

Of course, my last reply to Ryan went in great detail, and despite
the fact that I have sent it 3 times it has never shown up on the
list. I have no idea why.

> Well, personally, I think it's pretty rude to insist that others
> not try to use something you post in a public forum as a
> jumping-off point for something they want to discuss.

Then make it CLEAR you are starting an entirely different discussion
rather than making it look like you are arguing points already
raised in the existing discussion.

> The only reason I can see for your decrying just *my* messages for
> being off the topic of this thread is that you feel I'm attacking
> you personally.  Let me assure you, such is not my intention.

Don't worry. I never felt you were.

I just think it is very confusing to jump into a thread, and without
specifically saying you are wanting to discuss something different,
make your points as if they are a direct counter to what is already
being said.

Ryan said D&D was too complex to be made into an MMORPG with current
technology.

I disagreed with that, saying D&D is far less complex of a rule
system that most existing MMORPGs and MUDs.

Then you disagreed with my statement, using other PnP Rpgs as
evidence. But that didn't make a whole lot of sense in the context
of the discussion taking place, since other PnP rule sets were not
the topic.

Can you see the confusion when you do not explicitly state that you
are seeking to discuss something else, and instead make it look like
you are disagreeing with one of the 2 positions in the debate?

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Hartman, J.D. (http://www.threshold-rpg.com)
President & CEO, Threshold Virtual Environments, Inc.
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