Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
Indeed, D&D marketing has always been very happy to claim their system does things - often to the point of writing whole sourcebooks about those things, like 'intrigue' - that it is in fact quite terrible at. This is by no means unique to D&D - WW wrote whole game lines that were absolutely not about the thing that the promotional material claimed they were about at all, like Aberrant - but it looms larger because of D&D's outsize market share.

Somewhat oddly for a relatively niche hobby, in the TTRPG marketplace there's a very significant sense that marketing is everything - that popularity is entirely dependent upon how cool the pitch is, how great the art looks, and so on and the mechanical solidity of a game is way, way down the list of reasons behind a game's popularity. Personally I suspect this has a lot to do with how very few tables play games anything like the rules as written and how a good GM can make a great game out even the most jaw-droppingly terrible of systems. Or, as freeform reveals, no system at all.
Oh, totally. There's a reason I've spent money on Hell on Earth Reloaded but not the other Deadlands settings, it's just a more enticing pitch for me ,( I do plan to get the others sometime, but not right now).

A thing that's hard for those of us who like using mechanics is that for most people mechanical solidity of a game doesn't matter. They actually don't want to engage with mechanics that deeply, and so 'the D&D skill rules suck' isn't seen as a reason to avoid using it for skill-focusrd campaigns. It's also why this forum is used to D&D combats lasting six real life hours and twelve in-game seconds, instead of half an hour and half a dozen rounds. Most people don't care because they'll never engage with the subsystems or because home patches are easy.

But I've yet to see a GM who could run a decent FATAL game. One who could run almost anything else, but the things in that book are better left untouched. Although FATAL probably failed/succeeded as hard as it did because of it's terrible 'marketing'.