Not everyone likes chocolate.
Amazing, but true. So it's nice that we have vanilla, hazelnut, strawberry and a million other flavors out there so there's something for everyone.
RPGing is a gaming style that's very much like that. We have games that are solid on crunch and others that are heavy on story. In fact, it's a myth that heavy crunch -- or heavy story -- means a sacrifice for the other. Fantasy Flight Games' SG-1 RPG book featured a near perfect melding of high crunch and great story mechanics. It was also big enough to choke a ogre.
I've always personally believed that anyone could find an RPG that fit their style if they only took the time to look hard enough.
Then again, I spent years trying to get AD&D players to try something different and most of them never budged. I didn't understand then that they didn't feel the need to find anything new -- they had already found their perfect chocolate.
I on the other hand was trying out a variety of other flavors named Champions, White Wolf, GURPS, Deadlands and many others.
Then D&D 3.0 came out.
Almost all the things that I didn't like in AD&D had been updated or modified. Better yet, I could make the game my rules bitch. I spent a good year just using the Players Handbook for my own d20 Castle Falkenstien game, which was almost all NPC/PC interaction and combat.
Once I broke down and got the MM and DM guides, whole worlds opened up, never mind the great stuff 3rd party people put out for new magic systems and monsters.
And the Pathfinder Role Playing Game is a great heir to all of that potential , giving us all the flexibility of that classic design while updating the game for the next decade.
D&D may have evolved into a new flavor that's enjoyed by many. But for us, Pathfinder is our kind of chocolate.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to sign off 'cause I got a serious munchies.
How'd that happen? :)
