Game Designers

Any version of D&D and almost every OSR game shares the same flaw. They assume the game designers can do a better job than you. This one thing kills my interest in both the OSR and Open 5E, and it sucks.

I am proficient with GURPS and other classless games, like Runequest, Basic Roleplaying, and Open Quest. I look at all these new 5E games, and it feels like a bunch of Seattle game designers all arguing about who has the best implementation of each class - a set of assumptions based on stereotypes that define your role in the game.

They are trying to sell games to people with strong senses of personal identity, and the message is, "Please conform to a class."

Who says that a game designer knows who you are at the table?

Aren't YOU the best expert on who your character is?

It is hard to get excited about new versions of 5E, like Tales of the Valiant. I love what they did with this game. It is one of the best versions of 5E out there, evenly matched with the excellent Level Up Advanced 5E, which brings a flat math model and old-school sensibilities to 5E.

This even hurts old standbys like Castles & Crusades and some of my OSR favorites. All of them are fatally flawed. Who says my bard has to take these choices and nothing else? Why do I need more "killing power" if I never use it? Why do these games give me powers I never use or am interested in? Do the game designers "expect" me to follow some script through "discovery" that they know far ahead of me "discovering" it, and I can't form my own combos of skills, powers, and abilities?

Class-based games feel like this big railroad.

Yes, a class-based game is more accessible to sell to a group. You aren't all going in a thousand directions during character design. They are quick. You have established party roles built in.

But for solo play?

Why?

I get bored of these games and their safety rails and train tracks. I know what every character is and will do, and they never develop organically.

Games that give me power interests me more, and they are killing my interest in the offerings of "expert game designers."

You will know the day you look in a mirror and realize you are the same thing.