By reviving D&D, Adkison also revived concepts such as classes, levels, hit points, and XP, which gamify role-playing. That was not how we were playing RPGs at the time.
In my experience the players who love the gamified aspects of RPGs and the ones who prefer more “pure roleplaying” games are very different people, personality-wise. Without getting too much into stereotypes, I think the former folks tend to be more math-y / engineering-minded and love to “theorycraft” new characters and so on, whereas the latter tend to be more performing arts / literature / drama types.
Of course there are loads of exceptions to every rule and my point here is not to diminish or advantage either style of play, but just to highlight that these preference differences exist. This is important because I think it’s a mistake to assume there should be a one-size-fits-all form of RPGs.
I would also argue that WotC has done a lot of hard work (with several missteps) over the years but with 5E they’ve succeeded in a big way with building a system that’s easy enough to teach to beginners while offering a lot of depth for experienced players. This kind of broad spectrum game design is very difficult to achieve.
Of course the more complicated systems (designed for the mathies) are harder for beginners to learn but I’d also argue that the more open-ended, rules-light systems are hard on beginners in a different way. These games require a level of assertiveness and creativity that many beginners are unable to muster, so they often end up sitting there not participating much. In a way, these players are overwhelmed with options due to the open-endedness of the game.
D&D’s more regimented system gives each player something to do without overwhelming them, kind of like a well-designed board game. It’s a happy medium which I think is responsible for much of the game’s success in recent years.
There is more to it than a simple dichotomy into gamified RPGs with complex rules and rules-light games focusing on role-playing.
There were some rules-light games in the 90s, appealing to a different kind of people than D&D. Vampire, Werewolf, and other Storyteller games were the most prominent. But there were also games like Cyberpunk and and Shadowrun, which were kind of similar to D&D in their target audience. But different game mechanics led to different approaches to encounters and ultimately to different outcomes.
Call of Cthulhu was thematically very different. There were no expectations that the characters would grow stronger over time, and fighting was rarely the right answer. Ars Magica was kind of like an RPG for accountants. Resource management became important, when you had tens of characters living in a hidden fortress for decades.
Then there were many niche games. Fading Suns had an interesting setting that combined many genres. The rules were kind of related to the Storyteller system, but there was so much added stuff that it never really worked. Unknown Armies was another interesting game with a very different setting. It was one of the first games I remember with rules designed to support a specific style of storytelling.
The thing about D&D is that you can generally make it work for a wide swath of players. At the table I've been playing at for years, we have people who are in it for the gameplay crunch, people who are in it for roleplaying, and people who are in it to socialize. I enjoy roleplaying and storytelling to the point that I write in-character diaries and letters, but I also enjoy building a mechanically fun character and being challenged with combat. I could probably enjoy a system more focused on either one of those, but I don't think all of the people I play with would be on board.
And I 100% agree about rules-light systems being possibly harder for newcomers. I've seen it again and again.
In my experience the players who love the gamified aspects of RPGs and the ones who prefer more “pure roleplaying” games are very different people, personality-wise. Without getting too much into stereotypes, I think the former folks tend to be more math-y / engineering-minded and love to “theorycraft” new characters and so on, whereas the latter tend to be more performing arts / literature / drama types.
Of course there are loads of exceptions to every rule and my point here is not to diminish or advantage either style of play, but just to highlight that these preference differences exist. This is important because I think it’s a mistake to assume there should be a one-size-fits-all form of RPGs.
I would also argue that WotC has done a lot of hard work (with several missteps) over the years but with 5E they’ve succeeded in a big way with building a system that’s easy enough to teach to beginners while offering a lot of depth for experienced players. This kind of broad spectrum game design is very difficult to achieve.
Of course the more complicated systems (designed for the mathies) are harder for beginners to learn but I’d also argue that the more open-ended, rules-light systems are hard on beginners in a different way. These games require a level of assertiveness and creativity that many beginners are unable to muster, so they often end up sitting there not participating much. In a way, these players are overwhelmed with options due to the open-endedness of the game.
D&D’s more regimented system gives each player something to do without overwhelming them, kind of like a well-designed board game. It’s a happy medium which I think is responsible for much of the game’s success in recent years.