Episode 3: The Alternatives to D&D

Every other week, entertainment journalist Sean Weeks picks the brain of multi-ENNie award winning game designer Steve Dee about games as an art form, and how they change us, and how games can rise to that calling and we can improve our literacy around games.

Episodes 1 and 2 looked at the problems and limitations with D&D. This episode we look at what else is out there or what else could be out there. We look at "hybrid"-"RPG-like" games like Gloomhaven and Blood on the Clocktower, and how one removes the need for a gamemaster and the other puts one back in. We talk again about how a game is an artificial structure where we don't actually want to defeat our enemies as much as possible but rather produce a close and exciting battle - which is a kind of narrative. But constructing these things in RPGs is often left to the GM or to finding exactly the right group which makes it fragile, and leaves the design of the game rules doing very little.

The solution D&D created was to create its own subculture where there are standard versions of play, and story is built around that as best as it can be. To date, every roleplaying game (digital ones also) has mostly followed that line. So again we wonder: what else can we do?