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RPGS: Platform and Product
Oct. 16th, 2011 05:44 pmThis is a response to Zak Smith's post:
http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2011/10/platformyness.html
Which is in turn a response to Steve Yegge's G+ post about Platform vs. Product at Amazon vs. Google:
https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesvaVX
This deserves more space and thought than it's gonna get here. One of these days, maybe.
I come to it from...well, OK, let's put it this way:
1) the group I'm leaving at work to go join Infrastructure was called Platform Engineering
2) I applied (unsuccessfully) for Google SRE
3) I've played D&D for more than 30 years (holy shit, he said, as the realization of THAT hit him)
4) I appear to be obsessed with collecting, reading, and often trying to play D&D variants.
So: D&D is *of course* a platform. It's an extensible framework for building The Awesome on.
The interesting discussion comes from what parts of D&D are Platform, and what parts are Product.
And, you know what? There's actually a canonical legal answer to that. That would be the d20 SRD.
Now of course that only really refers to Type III, but still, that's going to be a useful and not-wholly-inaccurate starting point. The Platform is everything that you could extend with the OGL.
Of course, that's way too big. The Platform as thus-defined contains a hell of a lot of Product. The way I currently like looking at this is the question "What Is The Essence Of D&D?" I remember several months, maybe longer, ago, reading someone's argument in the OSR Blogosphere about: "Six ability scores, saving throws, classes, levels, Vancian magic, abstract hit points, fantasy-melange setting" and probably some other stuff I've forgotten about.
Me, I'd say even that's too big a tent. I'd say that Microlite20 and, especially, Microlite74 (www.retroroleplaying.com) are D&D...but they have 3 ability scores and no Vancian magic.
And then there are experiments like Terminal Space--or for that matter, Gamma World--that use the D&D Platform to do completely different genres. And given that GW and Boot Hill were TSR games, clearly Gary and Co., early on, saw D&D as a Platform.
The point is: whatever that irreducible core of D&D is is *definitely* Platform, not Product. Platformy bits go out at least as far as the borders of the SRD, although towards the edges it's mostly more Product than Platform.
To bring it back around: Platforms by their nature say, "Hey! Go make something cool with this." Products don't, although they may not discourage it either. The OSR, and gamers who dig stuff like the OSR (and, although it will make them vomit into their hipster goatees, I include Forgeites in this) inherently dig Platforms over Products. Sandbox play? Platform. Dragonlance? Product. Vornheim? Some of both. The Zoo? Product. The charts? Platform. The city itself...more Platform than Product.
http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2011/10/platformyness.html
Which is in turn a response to Steve Yegge's G+ post about Platform vs. Product at Amazon vs. Google:
https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesvaVX
This deserves more space and thought than it's gonna get here. One of these days, maybe.
I come to it from...well, OK, let's put it this way:
1) the group I'm leaving at work to go join Infrastructure was called Platform Engineering
2) I applied (unsuccessfully) for Google SRE
3) I've played D&D for more than 30 years (holy shit, he said, as the realization of THAT hit him)
4) I appear to be obsessed with collecting, reading, and often trying to play D&D variants.
So: D&D is *of course* a platform. It's an extensible framework for building The Awesome on.
The interesting discussion comes from what parts of D&D are Platform, and what parts are Product.
And, you know what? There's actually a canonical legal answer to that. That would be the d20 SRD.
Now of course that only really refers to Type III, but still, that's going to be a useful and not-wholly-inaccurate starting point. The Platform is everything that you could extend with the OGL.
Of course, that's way too big. The Platform as thus-defined contains a hell of a lot of Product. The way I currently like looking at this is the question "What Is The Essence Of D&D?" I remember several months, maybe longer, ago, reading someone's argument in the OSR Blogosphere about: "Six ability scores, saving throws, classes, levels, Vancian magic, abstract hit points, fantasy-melange setting" and probably some other stuff I've forgotten about.
Me, I'd say even that's too big a tent. I'd say that Microlite20 and, especially, Microlite74 (www.retroroleplaying.com) are D&D...but they have 3 ability scores and no Vancian magic.
And then there are experiments like Terminal Space--or for that matter, Gamma World--that use the D&D Platform to do completely different genres. And given that GW and Boot Hill were TSR games, clearly Gary and Co., early on, saw D&D as a Platform.
The point is: whatever that irreducible core of D&D is is *definitely* Platform, not Product. Platformy bits go out at least as far as the borders of the SRD, although towards the edges it's mostly more Product than Platform.
To bring it back around: Platforms by their nature say, "Hey! Go make something cool with this." Products don't, although they may not discourage it either. The OSR, and gamers who dig stuff like the OSR (and, although it will make them vomit into their hipster goatees, I include Forgeites in this) inherently dig Platforms over Products. Sandbox play? Platform. Dragonlance? Product. Vornheim? Some of both. The Zoo? Product. The charts? Platform. The city itself...more Platform than Product.