The reason for my fairly long speal on D&D and the OGL yesterday was largely for one main reason. The idea occurred to me a couple days ago that I could work on converting my idea for an MMO, which I’ve largely been working on for about 12 or 13 years, into a pen and paper RPG. I had made similar thoughts in the past but mostly as a form of testing the systems that I had come up with for the world.
This would be a difficult transition though. As much as we all know that computer RPGs and MMOs have their basis in P&P RPGs, many modern day video games couldn’t easily be converted over to older systems. They are based on quick calculations done on the computer that just couldn’t be done in a casual setting. And thus, trying to convert my game into a game to be played largely without computers is not going to be easy.
Another issue in this vain is that I feel that these games are getting too complicated these days. I mean D&D was always a complicated game, and though they keep on trying to make them more simple and easier to play, they somehow still end up with even more stats, skills, spells, classes, races, etc in every single edition than previously. While not the simplest to understand, AD&D didn’t have nearly as many different things to track as it does these days. So I’d want to make a game that truly did have a more simple system so that players could really enjoy what was going on without getting bogged down by the stats they had to keep. [1. Obviously you want to keep the stats to a certain degree as a lot of players do enjoy this aspect of the game.]
Well I’m not entirely sure how this idea is going to turn out. I also don’t know exactly how I’m going to play test the thing as I don’t actually know anyone who is into pen and paper RPGs anymore. I also don’t know if anyone would buy the system, but hey it’s worth a shot.