Semi-Major Mistake in Champions Complete

[Derek Hiemforth]

(Not really a question, but this forum seemed like the best place to provide feedback.)

 

To quote Popeye the Sailor, "Garsh... this is embarasskin'!" 😳

 

So, I uh... I was using Champions Complete last night, and happened to notice a not-inconsiderable error I made in it, lo those many years ago...

 

On page 20, when describing Pushing in Heroic campaigns, it says, "Pushing in Heroic campaigns requires an EGO Roll ... The character gains 1 CP to the ability per 1 point he makes the roll by, to a maximum of +5 CP."

 

That is just flat-out incorrect. That second sentence should read, "The character can add up to 5 CP to the ability if the EGO Roll is successful, +1 CP for each point he makes the roll by."

 

Sorry everyone!   

[Simon]

via GIPHY

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah... there are formatting mistakes in Western Hero that grind at my soul.  They are minor but I want it to be perfect

[Nekkidcarpenter]

Could a competent person help me out here and post a gif of the ancient booer uh, booing?

 

[Derek Hiemforth]

2 hours ago, Nekkidcarpenter said:

Could a competent person help me out here and post a gif of the ancient booer uh, booing?

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

@Derek Hiemforth speaking of minor errors. Did you notice that Vulnerability is listed as x1 but (combat name the villain right now) has it listed at the correct x1 1/2?

[Derek Hiemforth]

7 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

@Derek Hiemforth speaking of minor errors. Did you notice that Vulnerability is listed as x1 but (combat name the villain right now) has it listed at the correct x1 1/2?

 

Yep.  I think that was the first erratum I saw in CC, found almost as soon as I opened my author's copy of the book. 🤦‍♂️

[armadillo]

On 6/3/2021 at 11:22 AM, Derek Hiemforth said:

(Not really a question, but this forum seemed like the best place to provide feedback.)

 

To quote Popeye the Sailor, "Garsh... this is embarasskin'!" 😳

 

So, I uh... I was using Champions Complete last night, and happened to notice a not-inconsiderable error I made in it, lo those many years ago...

 

On page 20, when describing Pushing in Heroic campaigns, it says, "Pushing in Heroic campaigns requires an EGO Roll ... The character gains 1 CP to the ability per 1 point he makes the roll by, to a maximum of +5 CP."

 

That is just flat-out incorrect. That second sentence should read, "The character can add up to 5 CP to the ability if the EGO Roll is successful, +1 CP for each point he makes the roll by."

 

Sorry everyone!   

 

C'est rien, as the French would say.

 

I was slow to warm up to 6th Edition, but your book made me finally get it. Don't get too hung up on these small things--we need you to make more stuff like this!

[DreadDomain]

Damage Shield on page 97 does not clearly state that Constant +1/2 must be added if the power is not already constant ( which should be quite often).

 

Also, not an erreor but I find it annoying that Growth does not have is own effect table (like Density Increase and Shrinking) but instead refers to the Size Templates. It really isn't convenient.

[Derek Hiemforth]

3 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

Damage Shield on page 97 does not clearly state that Constant +1/2 must be added if the power is not already constant ( which should be quite often).

 

Well, but if the power was not already Constant, and you didn't add Constant (+½), then it wouldn't be "A Constant Area Of Effect (Surface) power that a character applies to himself..."

 

3 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

Also, not an erreor but I find it annoying that Growth does not have is own effect table (like Density Increase and Shrinking) but instead refers to the Size Templates. It really isn't convenient.

 

Yeah, this one is a matter of logistics. One of the ways I saved space was to refer to things instead of repeating them. When you're trying to cram HERO System Sixth Edition and some superhero genre material all into 240 pages, there just ain't room for repeating stuff...  😆🤷‍♂️

[DreadDomain]

19 minutes ago, Derek Hiemforth said:

Well, but if the power was not already Constant, and you didn't add Constant (+½), then it wouldn't be "A Constant Area Of Effect (Surface) power that a character applies to himself..."

Sure, I see your point but it could be read as if the modifier (+1/4) makes it constant. What makes matter worse is that it mentions right after "If a Damage Shield involves a Ranged power, it must take the No Range (-½) Limitation. A Damage Shield moves with the character as he moves; this doesn’t require the Mobile Advantage.". It's explicit, you need to add No Range, it's explicit it does not require Mobile but it's silent about Constant. It's not an error but it's unclear. 

 

For Growth, I understand why it was done that way. I just don't like it 🙂 Note that it's potentially the only decision I don't like about CC so it's not a train smash!

[HeroGM]

12 minutes ago, DreadDomain said:

 

 

For Growth, I understand why it was done that way. I just don't like it 🙂 Note that it's potentially the only decision I don't like about CC so it's not a train smash!

 

Add it as a book mark.

[Hugh Neilson]

Funny...the big complaint about 6e was its continuation of the trend of depth of coverage of corner cases, interactions, etc., repetition of issues in different places and beating issues to death with clarifications, causing the books to bloat outwards until finally reaching 2 volumes.

 

The complaints in CC are that it doesn't cover my favorite corner case, doesn't reprint things where I would like to see them and doesn't clarify my pet issue.

 

MORAL:  if you try to make everyone happy, nobody likes it.

[HeroGM]

IMHO they could do it as they did with 4 or 5 and save a lot of the tool kitting things for an advanced players.

[DreadDomain]

8 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Funny...the big complaint about 6e was its continuation of the trend of depth of coverage of corner cases, interactions, etc., repetition of issues in different places and beating issues to death with clarifications, causing the books to bloat outwards until finally reaching 2 volumes.

 

The complaints in CC are that it doesn't cover my favorite corner case, doesn't reprint things where I would like to see them and doesn't clarify my pet issue.

 

MORAL:  if you try to make everyone happy, nobody likes it.

Hugh, I must admit that I am surprised my two points above led you to this conclusion so I will attempt to frame my position a bit better.

 

First, I will state clearly that in my views, both points are minor and yet, they are not about corner cases. The reason I bring them up is simply because generally, CC succeeds to clearly and succinctly repackage 6E in a tight book, in a well organised manner. CC definitely helps people "get" Champions. It makes it easier on newcomer and veteran alike to just jump in.

 

The two examples above (specifically growth) in my mind stand-out. For Damage Shield, a slight rewording would make it super clear (it is super clear for Range and Mobile). For Growth it's about user friendliness and organisation. Cutting out a simple table to have people refer to more complex tables at the back of the book is in my view, not a good trade-off.

 

I want to reassure you that I was not complaining. I was simply voicing my opinion about what I think are potential organisational and clarification improvements and doing so in a thread that seems to be created for it. Do I demand, or even expect, that they will be taken into consideration? Of course not. We're just a few blokes chatting here and I expect and respect the fact that people will have different opinions, and might even change them.

 

Last point, both 6E and CC are product that I am very happy with. I always use CC first and when in doubt, I always refer to 6E.  

[HeroGM]

@DreadDomain
What I tend to do when I play is have my players use a copy of CC while I use 1 & 2. If there is an issue that's not in CC I use the 6e core to "overrule" or I'd there is something that is left out of CC (or fantasy hero complete) but in APG1/2 then I allow it. Oven even allowed stuff from Digital Hero - so I'm right there with you on it all.

[Hugh Neilson]

17 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

Hugh, I must admit that I am surprised my two points above led you to this conclusion so I will attempt to frame my position a bit better.

 

First, I will state clearly that in my views, both points are minor and yet, they are not about corner cases. The reason I bring them up is simply because generally, CC succeeds to clearly and succinctly repackage 6E in a tight book, in a well organised manner. CC definitely helps people "get" Champions. It makes it easier on newcomer and veteran alike to just jump in.

 

Fair.

 

17 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

The two examples above (specifically growth) in my mind stand-out. For Damage Shield, a slight rewording would make it super clear (it is super clear for Range and Mobile). For Growth it's about user friendliness and organisation. Cutting out a simple table to have people refer to more complex tables at the back of the book is in my view, not a good trade-off.

 

Again, fair.  But I have no doubt most of us could find "just one or two little items" we'd like to add in.  Multiply that over a few hundred gamers, and we have 6e Vol 1 & 2. Like Derek, I don't see Damage Shield being unclear. I also think a reasonable gamer is not going to argue that a +1/4 advantage give you a +1/2 advantage plus a further benefit. And there are lots of items, in most games, where I have to cross reference.  If I'm building a character based on Growth, I'm going to get the data I need to play it on the character sheet, not be flipping through the book every game, anyway. One man's improvement is another man's repetition or rules bloat.

 

17 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

I want to reassure you that I was not complaining. I was simply voicing my opinion about what I think are potential organisational and clarification improvements and doing so in a thread that seems to be created for it. Do I demand, or even expect, that they will be taken into consideration? Of course not. We're just a few blokes chatting here and I expect and respect the fact that people will have different opinions, and might even change them.

 

Perfectly fair, again, nor was I trying to single out your suggestions from the broad impact of "just one or two more things in the book".  But it was adding "just one or two more clarifications" multiple times that grew 4e to 6e.

 

[Ninja-Bear]

On 9/17/2021 at 10:14 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

Funny...the big complaint about 6e was its continuation of the trend of depth of coverage of corner cases, interactions, etc., repetition of issues in different places and beating issues to death with clarifications, causing the books to bloat outwards until finally reaching 2 volumes.

 

The complaints in CC are that it doesn't cover my favorite corner case, doesn't reprint things where I would like to see them and doesn't clarify my pet issue.

 

MORAL:  if you try to make everyone happy, nobody likes it.

I believe I complained on the boards about this too. My favorite “is this particular power exactly worth the cost?” Also the implied “I found a loop hole or weird build therefore the cost structure isn’t isn’t exact and is fallible so we must rewrite the rules! And add six more paragraphs!” 

[Greywind]

1 hour ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I believe I complained on the boards about this too. My favorite “is this particular power exactly worth the cost?” Also the implied “I found a loop hole or weird build therefore the cost structure isn’t isn’t exact and is fallible so we must rewrite the rules! And add six more paragraphs!” 

 

Instead of a rulebook answer, there should have been room for the GM to decide how it would be within their own world. Like in the early days of the system.

[Derek Hiemforth]

1 hour ago, Greywind said:

 

Instead of a rulebook answer, there should have been room for the GM to decide how it would be within their own world. Like in the early days of the system.

 

The following is from CC, p6.  I don't know how to say it more clearly. 

 

"You won’t find many phrases in this book like “at the GM’s discretion” or “if the GM allows” or “with special permission from the GM” because all of those are assumed at all times. For example, the rules just state that Special Powers can’t be bought in a Power Framework. They don’t add “unless the GM gives special permission” or the like, because it’s assumed; the GM can always give special permission. Likewise, even though nothing in the rules implies that the Stealth Skill is optional in any way, that doesn’t automatically mean every GM must permit any character to buy Stealth. Every campaign is unique, and if a GM thinks his game will work better – be more fun for all involved – by allowing something the rules as written don’t allow, then he is absolutely empowered to allow it. Likewise, if disallowing something normally allowed would be better, or if some rule in the system would suit his game more if it worked differently, then he can certainly make those changes."

[DreadDomain]

15 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Perfectly fair, again, nor was I trying to single out your suggestions from the broad impact of "just one or two more things in the book".  But it was adding "just one or two more clarifications" multiple times that grew 4e to 6e.

 

Of course. But if this thread would lead to a revised or updated CC, I can only assume the feedback would be diligently proritized, as 1) reasonable feedback that can be reasonably be implemented, 2) reasonable feedback to is too difficult to implement or going against the objective and 3) rejected feedback.

 

One big misconception about feedback, is that it must, and will be implemented. This way lies madness and often leads the requester of feedback to only want to receive opinions that fall under the first category and perceive opinions of the second and third categories as "too much feedback", "feedback I do not want" or "people are just complaining". It totally defeats the purpose of feedback.

 

Anyway, moving on...

2 minutes ago, Derek Hiemforth said:

 

The following is from CC, p6.  I don't know how to say it more clearly. 

 

"You won’t find many phrases in this book like “at the GM’s discretion” or “if the GM allows” or “with special permission from the GM” because all of those are assumed at all times. For example, the rules just state that Special Powers can’t be bought in a Power Framework. They don’t add “unless the GM gives special permission” or the like, because it’s assumed; the GM can always give special permission. Likewise, even though nothing in the rules implies that the Stealth Skill is optional in any way, that doesn’t automatically mean every GM must permit any character to buy Stealth. Every campaign is unique, and if a GM thinks his game will work better – be more fun for all involved – by allowing something the rules as written don’t allow, then he is absolutely empowered to allow it. Likewise, if disallowing something normally allowed would be better, or if some rule in the system would suit his game more if it worked differently, then he can certainly make those changes."

And this is something I really appreciate of CC in contrast of 6E. I suspect by only cutting similar statements in 6E, you can probably cut 50 pages right there... 😉

[Duke Bushido]

4 hours ago, Derek Hiemforth said:

"You won’t find many phrases in this book like “at the GM’s discretion” or “if the GM allows” or “with special permission from the GM” because all of those are assumed at all times. For example, the rules just state that Special Powers can’t be bought in a Power Framework. They don’t add “unless the GM gives special permission” or the like, because it’s assumed; the GM can always give special permission. Likewise, even though nothing in the rules implies that the Stealth Skill is optional in any way, that doesn’t automatically mean every GM must permit any character to buy Stealth. Every campaign is unique, and if a GM thinks his game will work better – be more fun for all involved – by allowing something the rules as written don’t allow, then he is absolutely empowered to allow it. Likewise, if disallowing something normally allowed would be better, or if some rule in the system would suit his game more if it worked differently, then he can certainly make those changes."

 

 

For what it's worth, I think a lot of us noticed  that, presented up front, even before the first of the rules.

 

And I know at least one of us really appreciated it. 

 

 

I can only rep a post once (without GM permission, which I don't seem to have... ), so don't think it stalkerish, but I'm going to randomly rep another dozen of your posts over the next few days.      Just remember that this is most likely what that's all about.   

 

And thanks, Derek.

 

I know a lot of us claimed that we could have done it, and some of those probably _could_ have done it.

 

But you _did_ it.  That's a crap load of work, and I can give you at least one concrete example of someone who has appreciated it every time he looks through that book.

 

 

 

[Hugh Neilson]

7 hours ago, Greywind said:

 

Instead of a rulebook answer, there should have been room for the GM to decide how it would be within their own world. Like in the early days of the system.

 

That is how most early RPGs were written - a rules framework that covered the basics and left players and GMs to work out the rest.

 

But players and GMs wanted official rules.  So game designers responded with bigger books and supplemental books that had more rules.  This is what people ask for, so let's publish one.  Wow - it sold.  Let's publish more. Wow - these sell much better than adventures. Let's move the resources from adventures to rules books. Or we could put huge FAQs online for free. Which one will make money for the game designers? We still get those huge FAQs, but "they will be incorporated in the next reprint, or next edition - keep some free cash available!"

 

A lot of games implemented that with a "here are the basic rules; if you want more, buy more books" model.  Hero went with an "all the rules in one core rule set" model.  We know which model won. Marketing the "Complete" line as "the basic rules" and "Core Rules and APGs" as "the advanced/more complex rules" is a realistic compromise.

[Duke Bushido]

3 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

That is how most early RPGs were written - a rules framework that covered the basics and left players and GMs to work out the rest.

 

But players and GMs wanted official rules.  So game designers responded with bigger books and supplemental books that had more rules. 

 

 

First things first:  the "first thing" being something that I have learned I was completely wrong about out here in the ether:

 

Those things that you think are not worth mentioning because people will recognize from your behavior and past patterns that these are always implied are, in fact, the things that should be said in quintuplicate before actually moving on to the point because, given the choice, people will gladly forsake everything they have ever known about you in favor of seizing the tiniest potential opening to vilify you and your entire lineage-- a behavior that I find to be really, _really_ weird, since I don't know anyone who actually does that _in person_, but millions of people seem to think it is the sole purpose of online communication.

 

So, in the interest of the personal safety of my great-great-grandchildren (should any of our collective DNA make it to the survival ships orbiting the sun before we finish making the earth inhospitable):

 

This is the important disclaimer:  There are as many different kinds of people as there are people.  Many-- most-- maybe even all people-- are good at something, and less good at other things.  This in no way reduces their value as people, nor their talent nor their intelligence, nor our need to keep each other in the highest possible regard.  Problematically, when we want something done, we want it done by someone who is good at whatever "it" may be.  Out of necessity, and perhaps convenience, we tend to rate levels of competence or skill of knowledge or whatever-- we rate people, okay?  Yes; it _can_ be taken in an extremely derogatory vein:  "Yep.  Duke's #1-- at being butt ugly!"  That's not a good thing-- even having ratings-- or having to rate people at all, or compare them to one another-- isn't the best possible thing, but it is also both a convenience and a necessity in terms of evaluating individual strengths and weaknesses.  However, it's vital to keep in mind that evaluating individual talents or abilities is in no way an assumption of overall superiority or inferiority of a human being as a whole and valuable person.

 

 

Now that I have done the necessary complete destruction of the focus on the actual point by pushing it way back on the timeline of exposure, I want to quickly revisit the quoted excerpts above:

 

3 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

That is how most early RPGs were written - a rules framework that covered the basics and left players and GMs to work out the rest.

 

But players and GMs wanted official rules.  So game designers responded with bigger books and supplemental books that had more rules. 

 

 

I have a hypothesis on this; I have had it for years, but as some folks can be-- what's the buzzword right now?  "Lit?"  "Woke?"  Or are we still using "triggered?"-- by something as simple as not knowing what a fish knife is, I _rarely_ express it online.  I have, but it has always turned into a "look how awful that person is for having an opinion," and I don't bother pursuing conversation.   However, I am going to put it out there one more time, as it seems appropriate here....

 

In the early days, RPGs were a hobby for a small subset of people-- most of them were readers and writers, thespians and artists.  That is, most of the earliest gamers (I still refuse to use that term in reference to video games; I won't apologize for that, but at least all who have read this will henceforth know exactly who I'm talking about when I _do_ say "gamers" ) were pretty creative people.  These early gamers had to have a lot of imagination, particularly if you wanted to progress beyond level 3 in D&D  (yes: I am old enough to remember when the D&D rules stopped at level 3.  So are a lot of you out there:  do NOT let the knowledge that this was once normal in gaming ever die!).  If you and your group liked the game you had going, you had come up with everything beyond 3rd level yourself, and for most of the early gamers, it was no-brainer easy to do.

 

You had to build your worlds whole cloth; you had to build your earliest adventures whole cloth (especially if you weren't really big on TSR games).

 

The takeaway from this is more-or-less that these early games worked (and as far as some of us care, still do work) because the people that were using either were themselves or were playing with people who were imaginative, confident, and creative enough to draw from what was there and extend it forward as they needed it expanded.

 

We all remember when gaming hadn't gone mainstream-- when there were movies on television extolling the horrors of Tunnels and Trolls and the dangers of Dungeons and Dragons (and the satanic nature of Smurfs, just to remind us of the perspectives against which we were working at the time).  We laughed at it the way we laughed at Reefer Madness, and eventually, our little hobby started becoming more and more mainstream.  (Personally, I think videogames took the heat off of us-- remember when those weren't "normal things" for kids to play with?    ).

 

As it became mainstream, more people were exposed, and more people became curious.  Remember that "curious" is its own trait, separate from imaginative; separate from creative; separate from self-confident.  ALSO NOTE that the previous suggestion specifies that these traits are _separate_, but at NO POINT makes any claim that they are in any way mutually exclusive to any or all of the others!  There.  Disclaimer 2, out of the way.

 

The upshot is that we began to get more people who were interested in the hobby who were not _originally_ interested.  Why weren't they interested before?  Where they lacking something that made gaming compelling to the earliest adopters?  Some personality trait that made gaming immediately appealing?  Perhaps these late adopters lacked the self-confidence to risk being labelled "weirdo" or some other form of "them!" by their mainstream friends?  I can't say that this is what happened; it's just a hypothesis that, after decades, I have no real way of testing.   Perhaps they lacked just enough confidence that they couldn't bring themselves to do it until more and more people survived the experience-- the second mouse gets the cheese, after all.

 

Maybe the lacked the imagination to fully immerse themselves into the game, or to really picture the scene dotted out on the graph paper.  Or the didn't have the creativity to craft together an interesting character or contribute to a story-- there are a million maybes: maybe they had just never heard of gaming!  Maybe they lived in an area where there were no gamers to introduce them to it-- who knows?

 

One thing that makes me want to test the hypothesis is the recent resurgence of "old school" games-- now that the internet makes all things available, and new generations of people can be exposed to everything, there is a core of people who want to play _those_ games: the games that practically _mandated_ creativity, imagination, and self-confident game masters and players because there was nothing else to support them beyond "how to get started."

 

I suspect that few of us are playing with all the same people we started playing with, way back when.  I really can't say that it is better to be playing with the same people for 40 years or to have rotated through a hundred different friends over those same years.  I see pros and cons to each possibility, and myself?  I still do play with four of the people from the old days, but I have a couple of other groups that rotate people in and out with semi-regularity.  Each is _different_ from the other, but neither is really "better" or "worse."

 

Anyway-- 

 

The more people there are that lack whatever trait it is to fill in their own blanks, the more call came for rules addressing these blanks.  The more people there were that could not extend their own games in way with which they were comfortable, the more call there came for supplemental material.  The more people lacked the confidence that what they were doing was perfectly acceptable, the more call there was official guidelines about pretty much everything.

 

The constant expansion of rules doesn't apply to just Champions, either, obviously; so let's not assume that I am claiming it is (disclaimer #3).  The fact that this rules creep tendency followed the mainstreaming of gaming and the increase in "non-traditional" RPG Gamers from the early days at least _seems_ to support the hypothesis.  In short: rules creep is a direct product of an increase in gamers who are not comfortable without these additional rules.

 

Look at all the various gaming forums:  "how do I X" threads far, far outstrip "I ran into X, so I Y.  Check it out!"

 

The internet has actually kind of made this worse by giving a false sense of "smallness" to the world:

 

i want to do this the same way you guys do.

 

Why?

 

Well, because you guys might be using the rules better than I am.

 

There are currently no rules that cover that.  You will have to draw on what exists, and then kind of intuit what seems to be the best modifications to address your problem.

 

Oh.  Well how did you guys do it?

 

 

"I want to make sure I am playing it the same way you are.  There are no rules for it, but I will feel better if other people are doing it this way-- you know; just in case."

 

 

Let's face it:  I would _love_ to sit across a table from pretty much _any_ of you guys.  That's not hyperbole.  It might be because I don't get enough time as a Player and so I'm grasping at straws, but I suspect it's because I really enjoy most of the ideas and such that I hear from you here and it makes me curious (and a little excited) about what your games are like.  The reality, though, is that I will _never_ sit across from Chris Goodwin, or Lord Liaden, or Doc Democracy, or Hugh Neilson, or _any_ of you folks, ever.  The world is too big, and time is too small.  All that being said, why am I worried that I am not doing something in the same fashion that you are?  There is no realistic reason I would want that-- no _practical_ reason (no offense intended; it's just a fact of geographic distribution (disclaimer #4).  The only possible reason it would matter to me is if I failed to find official rules guidance and thus opted to settle for a consensus from experienced players well-versed in the rules.

 

I could go on and on and on and on, but I'm going to try to stop at having merely gone on and on, as I _believe_ (perhaps incorrectly) that I have made my hypothesis clear, and have presented it in the most inoffensive way possible (though I am sure that I will proven wrong on that count both immediately, and again in twenty-eight months by some new member looking for something to get worked up and angry about.      Such is the internet).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Hugh Neilson]

Some short comments on an excellent, well-reasoned post.

 

3 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

I have a hypothesis on this; I have had it for years, but as some folks can be-- what's the buzzword right now?  "Lit?"  "Woke?"  Or are we still using "triggered?"-- by something as simple as not knowing what a fish knife is, I _rarely_ express it online.  I have, but it has always turned into a "look how awful that person is for having an opinion," and I don't bother pursuing conversation.   However, I am going to put it out there one more time, as it seems appropriate here....

 

In the early days, RPGs were a hobby for a small subset of people-- most of them were readers and writers, thespians and artists.  That is, most of the earliest gamers (I still refuse to use that term in reference to video games; I won't apologize for that, but at least all who have read this will henceforth know exactly who I'm talking about when I _do_ say "gamers" ) were pretty creative people.  These early gamers had to have a lot of imagination, particularly if you wanted to progress beyond level 3 in D&D  (yes: I am old enough to remember when the D&D rules stopped at level 3.  So are a lot of you out there:  do NOT let the knowledge that this was once normal in gaming ever die!).  If you and your group liked the game you had going, you had come up with everything beyond 3rd level yourself, and for most of the early gamers, it was no-brainer easy to do.

 

Wargamers made up a lot of the early RPGers, many of whom are pretty contemptuous of the thespians.  "Role-playing" vs. "Game".  As I recall, the L3 thing was basic D&D, which eventually got "Expert" and above.  We started with Basic and bought Advanced. I am pretty sure OD&D, which included Balrogs, went well beyond 3rd level.

 

3 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

You had to build your worlds whole cloth; you had to build your earliest adventures whole cloth (especially if you weren't really big on TSR games).

 

Oh, this for SURE. Even if you were big on TSR, they routinely published a boxed set, matbe a 3 part adventure and moved on.  Boot Hill,Top Secret, Gangbusters, Star Frontiers, Gamma World, Metamorphasis Alpha - off the top of my head.

 

3 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

The takeaway from this is more-or-less that these early games worked (and as far as some of us care, still do work) because the people that were using either were themselves or were playing with people who were imaginative, confident, and creative enough to draw from what was there and extend it forward as they needed it expanded.

 

Sure.  We also read a lot of magazines with their suggested rules fixes and expansions.  Space Gamer, Different Worlds, White Dwarf and, of course, Dragon.  The demand for variants and expansions was  there right from the start.

 

3 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Maybe the lacked the imagination to fully immerse themselves into the game, or to really picture the scene dotted out on the graph paper.  Or the didn't have the creativity to craft together an interesting character or contribute to a story-- there are a million maybes: maybe they had just never heard of gaming!  Maybe they lived in an area where there were no gamers to introduce them to it-- who knows?

 

I'd say the biggest issue was awareness.  We  had people then who would never play, and we have them now.  But now, RPGs are more familiar to more people.

 

3 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

The more people there are that lack whatever trait it is to fill in their own blanks, the more call came for rules addressing these blanks.  The more people there were that could not extend their own games in way with which they were comfortable, the more call there came for supplemental material.  The more people lacked the confidence that what they were doing was perfectly acceptable, the more call there was official guidelines about pretty much everything.

 

The constant expansion of rules doesn't apply to just Champions, either, obviously; so let's not assume that I am claiming it is (disclaimer #3).  The fact that this rules creep tendency followed the mainstreaming of gaming and the increase in "non-traditional" RPG Gamers from the early days at least _seems_ to support the hypothesis.  In short: rules creep is a direct product of an increase in gamers who are not comfortable without these additional rules.

 

We're older too, which often means "less time". We also, as we aged, added "more money to invest" to "less time to invest".  Now, I have the bucks to buy a honking big Adventure Path (that would have been what, 18 or so modules in the 1980s?), and no time to design adventures.  Then, I had lots of time and little cash.

 

But those early "more rules" books like Unearthed Arcana and Champions II and III sold pretty well.  The demand was there.  It was less known, but as it built, game developers and companies started producing fewer games, but with more support.