thread: 2005-06-16 : Craft and Innovation
On 2005-06-16, Sydney Freedberg wrote:
Good stuff. But! (of course) - two counterarguments:1.
A two-year cycle of innovation is "slow"? Are you kidding?
It's as fast as the Moore's Law period for computer processing speed to double, and even in computers all that does directly is allow flashier graphics and, often, really sloppy programming that relies on sheer power instead of good design to run at reasonable speeds. How big an advance is the latest Microsoft Windows/Explorer combo compared to that of 2003?
And outside the field of computers, two years is an eyeblink. In my field, national security, it takes two years to put a Pentagon budget together, 10-15 years to field a major weapons system, and anywhere from a year to a generation to shift strategic thinking.
So two years? Wow!
2.
Yes, screwing around with new mechanics purely for the sake of being innovative is Not So Great. But! Ever heard of the Burgess Shale? It's a particular rock formation that has a staggering variety of fossils in it—more fundamentally different ways of arranging the body (phyla) than exist in all subsequent evolution. (I'm cribbing shamelessly from Stephen J. Gould's Wonderful Life here; I'm no paleontologist). The key thing about the Burgess Shale is that it preserves fossils from the "Cambrian Explosion," a very early period AFTER the basic principles of organizing a multi-cellular life form were evolved but BEFORE there had been a mass extinction to weed out the designs.
Now, combined with the fact that two years is a fast cycle time—D&D splits off from miniatures gaming say, circa 1974-1975? That's only 30 years ago—one generation! ANd much of that time was spent, as it had to be, thrashing out "uh, what is this new thing anyway?" and running basic variations on the original wargaming structures, rather like Precambrian evolution throwing out lots of slightly different ways to be a single-celled organism.
I don't know the hobby history too well, but the earliest conflict resolution/fortune in the middle design I know of is Story Engine from, what, the mid-nineties? (There are probably earlier examples). By analogy, roleplaying game design is hitting its "Burgess Shale" period: We've got the basics, we've just opened up to some radically different ways of playing with them, so now it's time to try a zillion crazy combinations. Most of which won't work, true. But it's worth exploring the entire space of what's possible.
