The Ideal Iconic Role-Playing Game

[Cluedrew]

Every once in a while someone on the forum says something about how they wish D&D was less popular and someone counters by saying some other system would simply have the oppressive presence of D&D instead. And usually a lot of other digital ink is spent in this discussion, but it got me thinking; if we got to and had to pick a system to be the iconic role-playing game, what would be the best choice?

Spoiler alert: Because we neither get to nor have to I am not actually picking a particular system, but I have a few thoughts about what it might look like. (Also for this thread I'm just talking about the system itself. Even in light of recent events I am not talking about the system's caretaker.)

The first thing is approachability. As the most iconic system it is also one going to be the one most often someone's first role-playing game they have tried. So it should be an easy system to learn and an easy system to GM. I suppose that is always true to some degree, but here even more so, so I would be willing to make some more trade offs for it. People who want to go deeper and more detailed can move onto other systems or use the homebrewed solutions that will pop-up, so I think it is the best trade-off for this situation.

Second is, I believe it should be setting and (to an extent) genre agnostic. Every system is going to have a particular tone, or whatever you want to call it. That cannot be avoided. But with that tone it should be able to cover fantasy, sci-fi, westerns and so on. This is perhaps the most subjective one, but I have seen too many attempts of people trying to push their favourite system past its limits and I think preparing for that is easier than getting people to switch systems. In this respect a tool box system (in the style of Fudge) is probably best. Now this does cut against approachability, especially for the GM, and might have to be a bit of a compromise, but there might be some way to resolve it. Like having some "preconfigured" settings for people to start with.

Now if that was the most subjective point this is probably the most abstract, but at the same time it is pretty straight forward: I think the iconic role-playing game should be almost entirely a role-playing game. The genre exists in a space between tactical war games/dungeon-crawlers and story-telling games. Having elements of both is probably inevitable, and learning into one or the other doesn't necessary make for a better or worse game. Yet, if this is the iconic role-playing game, I don't think it should lean too far into either side of that scale.

And that is all I have so far. Feel free to add your own, comment on the ones I wrote or on the topic itself.

[NichG]

I'd agree with the approachability thing, and on top of that I'd say that it should: have multiple levels of possible play complexity, so you can basically 'add' to the game as people get more comfortable. In addition, it should be designed to have a subset of its structure which is very adaptable to other media (computer games, board games primarily, but also fiction) while also retaining and featuring things which take advantage of the freedom of a tabletop environment.

I would disagree on the thing being genre or setting agnostic, because in order for toolboxes to be useful you have to already have a good idea of what you want to build and what it would look like. I'd rather design it to be at least somewhat focused, but to really give strong inspiration from reading the rules, the setting books, etc, about how things could look or be as well as making the specific world it presents vibrant, real, filled with history, and conceptually varied with many different angles one could take within it. An iconic game needs to do the thing that D&D does in spawning a lot of 'generic fantasy' and 'fantasy heartbreaker' things, but within which you can immediately spot the D&D-isms. Vampire does the same thing for that matter - there are just certain points which if they show up in a generic urban fantasy/horror TV series it gives off this strong 'wait, is this actually a WoD adaptation?' feeling (and I've barely even played any WoD stuff, but I still get this vibe from e.g. Underworld). On the other hand, I can't make that kind of association with e.g. GURPS or FATE.

[Cluedrew]

On Complexity: Not exactly sure what you mean by this. Do you mean something like there should be more complex rules for things you don't have to engage with? I mean its fine if that happens, but I don't see why that should be a design goal. And if it is pure add-ons, since the simpler version already works, isn't the more complex version just busy work? Unless the simpler version isn't working, and that is also bad.

On Media: I don't even know how to guess what this means. Could you please elaborate?

On Toolbox: This one I had to spend a bit more time on, and went back and forth on a few times. But this is what I seem to have settled on: Well if we are going that direction, I think we want less of a D&D / Fantasy Heartbreaker situation and more of an Apocalypse World / Powered by the Apocalypse world situation. Generally speaking, Fantasy Heartbreakers seem to be trying to fix what people didn't like about D&D, while the Powered by the Apocalypse systems reuse what people like about Apocalypse World. There are probably more than a few exceptions to that but still, I've never seen anyone go "You know what D&D's spell casting system would be great for?" [Anything including D&D's own settings.]" Now what exactly is getting reused I can't say. I mean the core resolution mechanic is high on that list, along with things like character advancement, but I don't really know what those look like.

[Ameraaaaaa]

Honestly, it should be a pretty rules light rpg 1st and foremost. It should be 10 pages or less. This will prevent the "it's sooooo complicated" from taking place making rpgs more welcoming.

It should also be very freeform in the sense of having no set list of traits. This way the gm can insert their favourite setting into the game like for example harry potter, dragon ball z, naruto, star wars, star trek, marvel, dc, blade runner, ect ect.

So maybe something like risus or paper free rpg or lasers and feelings.

All 3 are simple and free.

Paper free rpg is a single page with a single sentence character sheet, a roll 3 keep the middle and check the results table with a 5e style advantage system, suggestions on how to implement optional rules and can be played with a gm. Though it's yes/no/and/but system might take a few minutes to get a hang on to for new players along with being pretty swingy.

Risus is a more standard rpg but is only 4 pages long that also has rules for teamwork, combat, and much more packed in those 4 pages. Pretty easy to homebrew as well.

Lasers and feelings is a 1 page star trek inspired system with a easy to understand system with a unique type of critical hit where instead of doing extra damage you get to ask the gm a question. Also comes with a free adventure generator and is insanely easy to homebrew.

[NichG]

On Complexity: Not exactly sure what you mean by this. Do you mean something like there should be more complex rules for things you don't have to engage with? I mean its fine if that happens, but I don't see why that should be a design goal. And if it is pure add-ons, since the simpler version already works, isn't the more complex version just busy work? Unless the simpler version isn't working, and that is also bad.

For example if I'm playing 7th Sea (it's not a perfect or even intentional example of this idea, and the system doesn't explicitly tell you you can organize things this way, but this is what it would look like and I didn't want to use D&D):

- The simplest working version of the game would be: choose where I'm from, buy core stats, pick a profession (and get free skill dots from that), top up my skills, and go.
- Next level of complexity would be to include advantages - stuff like 'cannot get drunk', backgrounds - things which the GM weaves into the game and you get XP for resolving or XP if the GM forgets to use it frequently enough, and arcana - things you can spend a drama die on to do, but the GM gets to spend a drama die on the flip side of it to make happen to you. At that level I will also be bringing in sorceries (bloodline advantage, relatively simple treatment in the core book) and martial schools (get a handful of extra skills that let you approach combat differently, like enabling counter-attacks and the like). Unlike D&D, being a magic-user in 7th Sea is more that you have one or two extra tricks that add on to what you can do rather than having things like 'caster classes'. If you're an El Fuego practitioner, you're immune to fire and can move fire that is naturally in your environment, and maybe treat fire as solid so you can climb it or use it to cushion your fall, and at the maximum of (at that point very expensive) investment you can make a phoenix and fly on it for a bit.
- Next level of complexity would be to include secret society memberships and nation-specific or society-specific splatbook material, and associated metaplot connections. Also brings in things like Syrneth artifacts, etc. You can play the game without this stuff just fine, but its like going from DM's homebrew prime material world to going interplanar in D&D.
- Want to get even more into things? Bring in the rules for owning your own ship as a party...

So if you just want to do a oneshot where you're re-enacting a scene from the three musketeers, you can do that. If you want a campaign where you're a group of people with dark and troubled pasts who help eachother out when those things catch up with them, then its good to go to at least the next layer. Want to get embroiled in efforts to protect the thin shroud that seals reality away from technologically advanced eldritch horrors, or participate in a peasant rebellion, or get the scientific revolution started, or prevent fantasy Isaac Newton from conquering the world from the shadows (or help him)? Bring in the secret societies stuff. Etc.

If you've got a bunch of new players, you can introduce them to the hobby and the game at the simplest level (or use that for one-shots in general). Then as people get comfortable, you say 'aha, there's another layer to the game, lets bring that in'. This could be access to some kind of specialized subsystems or minigames (lets break out the nation building stuff and see the game from a totally different angle!) or optional rules for doing things like playing as monsters or different supernatural types, etc.

The reasoning here is, you'd want the game to have enough depth that people can play it for 20 years and still feel like they're discovering things about it, but you don't want to front-load that depth so that new players would have to understand it even a bit just to begin play.

On Media: I don't even know how to guess what this means. Could you please elaborate?

I probably can't involve using D&D as an example now, but basically everything under the sun cribbed from D&D rules to make things that were 'not a tabletop game'. Old computer games like Wizardry, Rogue and Nethack grabbed stats, AC/to-hit, etc, cribbed lots of monsters (but only loosely their mechanics) and maybe stole a few spell ideas but largely renamed them. Not to mention the actual official TSR computer games, which were more faithful D&D adaptations but of course stopped short of anything that would require a GM to adjudicate it like open-ended questions via augury and the like, or anything that would actually modify the world in a serious way like creating buildings or demiplanes or summoning/raising armies. So there were sections of D&D that made it very appealing to adapt to that other medium - something that was desirable to do because it was iconic. And that in turn drew more attention and awareness of 'what does it mean to be D&D-like' which fed back and enabled it to actually become iconic, even when those things were barely D&D.

Similarly, adaptation to fiction creates another funnel to enhance and establish a broader set of ideas around the RPG. I didn't play tabletop games for the first time until years after I had already read Forgotten Realms and Dark Sun and Dragonlance stuff. For universal systems that don't actually say anything about a world, a setting, that don't specifically have integrations for those things, you can't get a feedback loop going between the game and other media. Could you see reading a novel and being able to say 'aha, that was based on GURPS?' the way you could read a book and say 'aha, that was based on D&D' or 'aha, that was based on Shadowrun' or 'aha, that was based on Vampire'?

On Toolbox: This one I had to spend a bit more time on, and went back and forth on a few times. But this is what I seem to have settled on: Well if we are going that direction, I think we want less of a D&D / Fantasy Heartbreaker situation and more of an Apocalypse World / Powered by the Apocalypse world situation. Generally speaking, Fantasy Heartbreakers seem to be trying to fix what people didn't like about D&D, while the Powered by the Apocalypse systems reuse what people like about Apocalypse World. There are probably more than a few exceptions to that but still, I've never seen anyone go "You know what D&D's spell casting system would be great for?" [Anything including D&D's own settings.]" Now what exactly is getting reused I can't say. I mean the core resolution mechanic is high on that list, along with things like character advancement, but I don't really know what those look like.

So imagine something like... build a complete game engine from a very abstract level behind closed doors, but what you release first is actually only a fully fleshed out specialization of that engine to a specific setting, with lots of explicit mechanical hooks to things that are important in that setting, etc. Then if people want to adapt it to other things, you can reveal those underlying structures and designs and the process of how you went from the general engine to the specific world. For something that is to be iconic, I'd do it in that order rather than e.g. 'here's the most general version of the system, here's a setting-specific book to do the adaptation'.

[Grod_The_Giant]

It should also be very freeform in the sense of having no set list of traits. This way the gm can insert their favourite setting into the game like for example harry potter, dragon ball z, naruto, star wars, star trek, marvel, dc, blade runner, ect ect.

I'd actually push back on the "no set list of traits" thing-- I've seen a lot of people run into brick walls when handed a really blank slate, and homebrewing stuff can be really intimidating at first (to say nothing of argument-inducing). You want people to be able to make a character with a minimum of option paralysis.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'd actually push back on the "no set list of traits" thing-- I've seen a lot of people run into brick walls when handed a really blank slate, and homebrewing stuff can be really intimidating at first (to say nothing of argument-inducing). You want people to be able to make a character with a minimum of option paralysis.

I agree with this. My experience is that there's a sweet spot for new players on the crunch scale. Too much crunch is a hard barrier (or requires massive hand-holding and effectively making characters for them). Too little crunch (by which I mostly mean defined, pre-built, thematically-meaningful options) and it's also a barrier. Most people don't go into it thinking "oh, I want to play <very specific character>." They go into it kinda in "browse, then figure it out" mode. Browse through the list of pre-defined options, pick one that looks cool, then play with it. So often a class/level system is way more welcoming than a build-a-bear one for new players. Not always--if the system requires a high level of system mastery to not suck, that's a barrier as well.

[SimonMoon6]

Here's my suggestion: Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG which was rebooted without the DC stuff as Blood of Heroes.

Is it approachable? I think so. It's very straightforward. Every action that involves rolling dice uses the same table. You always roll two (exploding) d10. And that's it (apart from spending points to improve your chances of success). Powers, skills, and other advantages are also kept simple and comprehensible while also being comprehensive. You don't have to fiddle with things the way you do in D&D, though you can customize as much as you like.

Is it genre agnostic? Someone might say, "Boo, it's just a superhero game!" But the thing about superhero games is that they are well-structured to handle every genre because superhero games are typically built to represent superhero comics and every possible genre appears in superhero comics, so the game has to be able to handle them (unlike, say, GURPS which tries to handle every genre but instead chooses to handle "low power ordinary humans" extensively and thus does a very poor job with superheroes).

And I have a lot of experience using DC Heroes in multi-genre games. In fact, I turned to it because I needed a game that could do everything easily and well (and quickly! Champions fails badly here).

Regarding what I meant about quickly: Imagine the PCs find the villain before you expected them to. Do you have to end the session? Not in DC Heroes. It takes about five seconds to scribble down the villain's exact stats without worrying that you didn't optimize him enough.

And powers work quickly. No spending half an hour trying to decide how to spend 1000 points of Multi-Power (like in Champions). If you have a power that lets you do many things (Sorcery, Omni-Power, etc) you just choose what you want to do and split a small integer integer number (like 12 or maybe 20) among the different things. No more math than that. If you want to change into an animal, you take the animal's stats and add a small number of points to those stats. That's it.

So, it wins in the realm of what I want for low complexity while still having some actual numbers to judge things with. If you can describe a character in words, you have enough information to write down their stats instantly. And combat is simple.

[Telok]

FATAL /jk

The only thing I can really add is the game can't have a "one true way" setup. If it breaks, causes angst, spawns decades of homebrew fixes, and generally stuff in the game goes all screwy when you don't use it in the "correct" or "one true way", then it's a **** game for beginners. Unless the game can't, mechanically, be made to play the wrong way, such that it's blatantly against the rules and even first time readers can't misunderstand that you play a specific way.

[Pauly]

I am going to assume a green fields approach and start from the assumption that RPGs as we know them do not exist.

1) It has to have a genre. People will need a hook to get interested in this new thing.

2) It has to be a genre where there is no dominant IP/Duopoly IP. If I choose “wizarding school” as my genre there is a giant IP that will eat my lunch if it chooses to compete, or I end up being subservient to the IP. If I choose space opera then I can have Star Wars or Star Trek but not both. If I choose “neither” then the IP giants will eat my lunch if they decide to compete. Mutants and Masterminds can be the current big boy in the superhero genre RPG only because Marvel and DC aren’t interested in fighting for the space.
Medieval Europe + Magic has no dominant IP, and even if you want to argue LoTR, that’s really only 2 books (LoTR itself is 1 book split into 3 parts due to post WW2 paper shortages) and there’s a huge amount of variety in the genre Wheel of Time, GoT, Witcher, Grey Mouser, Conan plus the old legends such as King Arthur and Robin Hood.
This will also allow us to create our own IP and room for our own novels, webcomics, Streaming series etc.

3) Procedurally created characters. I’m going to be agnostic on the class based/skill based divide. My experience is that gamers have the greatest fondness for characters they rolled up over characters that they built. We can get into points buy etc. in 2nd edition, but for 1st ed. I want to maximize the nostalgia factor. Not totally random either, let the players roll on this table or that table, or choose this profession with these skills or that profession with those skills.

4) Limited options on the class/background/race. We don’t want to overwhelm the players with too many choices and we need the choices to be clear archetypes of the genre. D&D 5th ed. can include choices like “warlock”, “warforged”, “artificer” and “tiefling” because they have a long established player base. Again we can add more complex stuff into later editions.

5) Roll the dice, read the number resolution system. No exploding dice, no dice pools, no roll [x] dice and choose.
Limited chains of dice. Roll to hit -> roll to wound is OK, but roll to hit -> roll to parry/dodge -> roll for location ->roll for damage -> roll for armor reduction kind of chains are not OK.
It would be best if all dice checks run off the same system, but it isn’t a hard requirement.

6) Binary success/fail result on skill checks. Requiring a PbtA style interpretation of what a success or fail means is something GMs and players can develop the skills to do later, but for 1st ed. we want clear simple outcomes.

Edit to add

7) Character progression. Again I’m agnostic as to how it iccurs and how far you progress, but players should feel that their characters are being rewarded for experience.

8) Probably the most important. A regular official publication that expands the game. FAQs, errata, game designer notes, new IP stories and settings, and new official items and abilities. Help build the community of players, reward them for engaging with your brand, get your players to pay to be beta testers, create buzz for upcoming expansions.

[Ameraaaaaa]

I'd actually push back on the "no set list of traits" thing-- I've seen a lot of people run into brick walls when handed a really blank slate, and homebrewing stuff can be really intimidating at first (to say nothing of argument-inducing). You want people to be able to make a character with a minimum of option paralysis.

I agree with this. My experience is that there's a sweet spot for new players on the crunch scale. Too much crunch is a hard barrier (or requires massive hand-holding and effectively making characters for them). Too little crunch (by which I mostly mean defined, pre-built, thematically-meaningful options) and it's also a barrier. Most people don't go into it thinking "oh, I want to play <very specific character>." They go into it kinda in "browse, then figure it out" mode. Browse through the list of pre-defined options, pick one that looks cool, then play with it. So often a class/level system is way more welcoming than a build-a-bear one for new players. Not always--if the system requires a high level of system mastery to not suck, that's a barrier as well.

Fair point on the no set list of traits thing. Luckily risus has a bunch of example cliches (basically skills mixed with profession) iirc along with the ability the ability to make your own.

And lasers and feelings does actually have a set list of traits unlike the other 2. Tho lasers and feelings has no advancement system. So long running campaigns are tricky in that sense.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

For me it has less to do with the actual structure of the game and more to do with the way the game exists from an ownership perspective. Chess isn't owned by anyone, but several companies produce chess pieces and many publishers print chess puzzles and chess guides. There's even some miscellaneous chess variants.

Chess is "official" but only in the sense that there's a commonly used rules set. (For an example of a less centralized situation, look at trick taking games and how many variants they have.) However, chess isn't controlled by a specific company, and the only real centralized authority for chess is one that regulates competitive play.

Imagine a world where "D&D" is a public domain game, where people have a general idea of how to play but there's no one authoritative rule book. The standard rules are short and commonplace enough that they're not necessarily hard to remember. In essence, it's not even too far off from the current state of affairs, only with WotC out of the picture.

You have other games that are more exclusively published, but this lingua franca of RPGs is owned by nobody. To me, that's my ideal iconic RPG.

[ahyangyi]

For me it has less to do with the actual structure of the game and more to do with the way the game exists from an ownership perspective. Chess isn't owned by anyone, but several companies produce chess pieces and many publishers print chess puzzles and chess guides. There's even some miscellaneous chess variants.

Chess is "official" but only in the sense that there's a commonly used rules set. (For an example of a less centralized situation, look at trick taking games and how many variants they have.) However, chess isn't controlled by a specific company, and the only real centralized authority for chess is one that regulates competitive play.

Imagine a world where "D&D" is a public domain game, where people have a general idea of how to play but there's no one authoritative rule book. The standard rules are short and commonplace enough that they're not necessarily hard to remember. In essence, it's not even too far off from the current state of affairs, only with WotC out of the picture.

You have other games that are more exclusively published, but this lingua franca of RPGs is owned by nobody. To me, that's my ideal iconic RPG.

That's what OGL was supposed to do. D&D 3e SRD might be one authoritative rule book, but you can also play Pathfinder. Pathfinder Core Rulebook might be authoritative, until you run into the guy who insists PF+SoP is the real game. And they are all valid.

[Ignimortis]

I don't believe in a singular "ideal" RPG as described here. What people look for in TTRPGs is different for every person. One person's "welcoming" level of complexity might be unpleasantly simple for another, and vice versa.

Viz., my entry into TTRPGs began with trying to make a system for a small circle of roleplayers I was rolling with, who used a simple d100 roll as well as the GM's understanding of situations and characters to resolve rolls. I did not like it, and desired more crunch, more explicit options, more deterministic resolution, etc. So I wrote something that was, for all intents and purposes, not all that much lighter than D&D 5e (which released later that same year).

Same with the "ideal" being genre agnostic - by the time you get to truly genre agnostic, you end up with something that is usually so rules-light that it's basically a resolution engine rather than an actual game. Otherwise the rules will get in the way and unless the GM is already skilled at dealing with TTRPG gameplay conventions, will inform the genre at least to some extent. See: GURPS being actually pretty bad at handling high-power characters, even if you strip it down to the basics.

So if I were to make a guess about a "perfect for entry" TTRPG, I'd go for something similar to either Vampire or D&D 5e (even if they didn't exist). Urban fantasy (of the "secret world behind the curtain" variety, not the "magic is out in the open since forever" one) and regular heroic fantasy are about the easiest genres to get to grips with regarding the settings around you, your limitations, expected behaviour and such. Rules for either could be cleaned up, but not exactly simplified all that much - I find that both of those games are in that curious spot where they're easy to get into, but mechanically-minded players also have something to do within the confines of the rules.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

That's what OGL was supposed to do. D&D 3e SRD might be one authoritative rule book, but you can also play Pathfinder. Pathfinder Core Rulebook might be authoritative, until you run into the guy who insists PF+SoP is the real game. And they are all valid.

Yeah, I think the main wrinkle there is that WotC retains ownership and control over the one that's considered official, because they have the D&D brand. It basically stops any movement to make the lingua franca anything but this one game owned by this one company.

[Cluedrew]

OK, replies are coming in faster than I can form a complete reply so I am going to just try and hit some high points.

To NichG and Ameraaaaaa and Grod_The_Giant and ... oh boy so many people have touch on this topic: Wow, I kind of thought that preconfigured module would be important but I never was expecting people to latch onto the idea of iconic lore. Sure, add it to the list and discuss further.

To Telok: Well, FATAL is a pretty good iconic terrible system, I'll give it that much. The rest is fine and basically comes down to flexibility and rules clarity which is... good and important. But I have nothing interesting to add there.

To CarpeGuitarrem and ahyangyi: Probably correct, but from the second paragraph of the original post: "(Also for this thread I'm just talking about the system itself. Even in light of recent events I am not talking about the system's caretaker.)" There is already a huge thread covering that, we don't need to cover it here as well.

To Ignimortis: Honestly I would prefer it if there wasn't a single overwhelming system at all, that's what the "had to" is all about. So this hypothetical does have some constraints I would rather not deal with. But I thought it might be an interesting topic.

Speaking of which, I do like the "urban fantasy" idea, where being thrown into an unfamiliar world is part of the setting/story. Seems like a good feature of a gateway system. And experienced players can skip over it if they want to.

[Easy e]

It is interesting to note how current D&D doesn't really have any of the things you want an "Iconic RPG" to have. I am not sure what that means, but perhaps people who play and talk about TT RPGs online, have no idea what makes an iconic RPG? We are too close to it.

We need folks who have no idea what a TT RPGs is, tell us what they would need to get together and play a game of make-believe around a table together.

My initial instinct, is they would want something like Cards Against Humanity/Apples-to-Apples where you get dealt a hand of options to perform as a character. Then, the GM plays challenge cards, and then the players around the table play their actions on the challenge while narrating. Different character types would give you access to "unique" decks of action cards. Kind of like 5-minute dungeon combined with Apples-to-Apples with a layer of story-telling added in?

Not even sure if this is still a TT RPG, but that seems way more "mainstream" than what we have now.

[gbaji]

I think the big problem with this conceptually is that the very game concepts/mechanics/whatever that game players desire today only exist as concepts because of earlier ideas that were formed via "iconic" play in the first place. It's easy to say, 50+ years later that "I'd really prefer to not have set spells/skills/abilities in the core rules", but it's pretty unlikely that the gaming industry would have gotten to the point where you'd have that view/preference if not for a whole slew of games that did just that. Now, you want free form customization, but if that had been introduced on day one? Probably would never have gotten off the ground.

Why did D&D become the winner in the "iconic game" contest, instead of say Bunnies and Burrows, or Tunnels and Trolls, or Chivalry and Sorcery (or Chainmail, which actually predated it and meets many of your criteria)? I'd argue strongly that it's precisely because it had very specific detailed lists of abilities tied to classes (so both easy to pick up and play in that respect), but also lists of spells with a large amount of variation and power range, and also a handful of existing settings to play in. And they were smart and marketed game modules (and a cartoon!) to tie people into it. But all of that was very specific details on setting/genre, and were more or less the opposite of what you're asking for in the OP.

If you're asking what sort of game people prefer to play today after decades of game design development processes, and a lot of player RPG experience, that's a very different question. But if you ask "what iconic game could have appeared that wasn't D&D back in the mid to late 70s"? Um... Probably something that looked a whole heck of a lot exactly like D&D. You needed well defined classes for folks to pick, without too much flexibility. You needed lots of tables and charts for folks to play around with, scaling from "easy" to "complex" (D&D was both horrible for this, but also kinda brilliant looking back at it). You needed embedded progression. You needed well defined stock settings to play in. Otherwise, you'd have a bunch of people looking at general rules and going "Ok. What do I do with this? Is this like a pet rock or something?".

And frankly, especially if we're considering alternatives for "back then", you have to completely toss out a whole gamut of game design and play styles that really only exist today because of the internet. The ability to find and/or publish a bewildering set of rules, tweaks, customizations, modifications, and then iterations of those things in response, etc (not to mention online play groups) just didn't exist until the last 20 years or so. "Back then", you needed something that a small number of people, sitting around a table on a Saturday afternoon, could pull out and play pretty easily and without a whole lot of pre-knowledge about RPG theory. Where maybe one person reads the rules, and the rest just play along (and hopefully have a lot of fun).

Of course. The flip side is that "back then", since there was no internet, we tended to have a lot more Saturdays to hang out with friends around a table and just play games.

D&D "won" because it took existing very broad rules and play guidelines and "filled them in" with the details. And it did it first.

[icefractal]

I'm going to take a somewhat different stance on the lightness issue - while highly crunchy isn't good for newbie players, being rules-light isn't the main factor that makes it easy to get into. That factor is, IMO:
The system should still work with a majority of the players coming in cold and flat.

By cold, I mean coming in with no preparation. They didn't learn the rules. They didn't read the setting beyond a basic description. They didn't come prepared with a concept for their character, or a creative agenda, or any ideas on where they'd like the plot to go. They're ready to play, but they've done zero prep work.

By flat, I mean they're not highly energetic, their creative juices aren't flowing, they more want to passively consume (or at least be given clear prompts) than to actively improv a story, and while they may be happy casually roleplaying, they're not really driving character development forward. Maybe because they're tired from work, maybe because they're feeling too awkward in a new social circle to put themselves forward, maybe they had a bad week - point is, everyone has times they're flat.

Now IDK that it's possible to have a good game when everybody is cold and flat, but the game shouldn't break down when some of the group are, and ideally having the GM + one player actively contributing and everyone else just along for the ride should at least result in a moderately enjoyable time.

Also note that this is coming in cold and flat. If the game can on-board people during play, or get the creative juices flowing, then great, all the better. But at the start of the session at least, the "you must be this engaged to ride" bar needs to be pretty low.

How this relates to rules-lightness? It's a whole different axis, and some rules-light games are "hard mode" on this axis. PbtA, for example, works fine with cold players but gets boring fast if too many people are flat. Fate has the same issue, plus you don't really want to be completely cold either, because then the "choose your aspects" part of chargen becomes daunting (although TBF, you can use pregens).

[Ameraaaaaa]

I'm going to take a somewhat different stance on the lightness issue - while highly crunchy isn't good for newbie players, being rules-light isn't the main factor that makes it easy to get into. That factor is, IMO:
The system should still work with a majority of the players coming in cold and flat.

By cold, I mean coming in with no preparation. They didn't learn the rules. They didn't read the setting beyond a basic description. They didn't come prepared with a concept for their character, or a creative agenda, or any ideas on where they'd like the plot to go. They're ready to play, but they've done zero prep work.

By flat, I mean they're not highly energetic, their creative juices aren't flowing, they more want to passively consume (or at least be given clear prompts) than to actively improv a story, and while they may be happy casually roleplaying, they're not really driving character development forward. Maybe because they're tired from work, maybe because they're feeling too awkward in a new social circle to put themselves forward, maybe they had a bad week - point is, everyone has times they're flat.

Now IDK that it's possible to have a good game when everybody is cold and flat, but the game shouldn't break down when some of the group are, and ideally having the GM + one player actively contributing and everyone else just along for the ride should at least result in a moderately enjoyable time.

How this relates to rules-lightness? It's a whole different axis, and some rules-light games are "hard mode" on this axis. PbtA, for example, works fine with cold players but gets boring fast if too many people are flat. Fate has the same issue, plus you don't really want to be completely cold either, because then the "choose your aspects" part of chargen becomes daunting.

The 3 games i suggested favor differently here.

All 3 can handle flat players. But rank differently with cold players.

Lasers and feelings handle players the best of the 3 because character creation is literally just picking a role (from a list) a style (from a list) a name and a number from 2 to 5.

Risus has a list of example clichés iirc (haven't read it in a while) and it's pretty easy to make a cliche by just thinking of a job or character type.

Paper free rpg probably struggles since there's only 1 example character. But it's still pretty easy since you just pick a name a role a speciality and a flaw.

[Quertus]

Boy oh boy, I’m not sure if I’m even capable of having a dog in this fight.

Is it better for the “iconic” RPG to just use a bunch of 6-sided dice, or a whole array of polyhedrons? To use a die, or pools of dice? Just dice, or dice and cards (and chits and…)? To require math at all?

To have a clear power level, or to work at a wide range? For a character to advance at all? To do one genre really well, or fit into many/all?

For character creation to be random? Point buy? Done as a group? Done after you start playing (as a series of flashbacks perhaps)?

Almost any such question, games could be made multiple ways. But what is better for the health of the hobby, for someone to start with, and get bad habits from?

So, let me put on my big boy pants, and try to deliver an answer. An answer derived by looking at what it should not look like.

It should not be monotone, like fate or dread or gurps. If it’s strongly suited to a singular feel, of gritty or terror or following particular story beats in a predictable fashion, it sets people up for failure by misaligning their expectations wrt what a RPG is. Therefore, the lead RPG should support the widest range of feels possible.

It should not involve the system, GM, or other players roleplaying your character. Not even armchair quarterbacking. So no declaring others’ actions (even in backstory), no Alignment, no “earn a beanie for following a GM’s misinterpretation of your personality”. Instead, the player should be primary for their character’s actions and personality, and the game should encourage other players (including the GM) to ask when the version of the character that lives in their head would have acted differently, in order to improve upon their clearly inferior model of the character.

But most of all, it should come with an evil overlord approved 5 year old advisor style AI, that will advise and then (if you ignore the advice) publicly taunt you for all eternity if you attempt something so contrary to the source material as “dodging Magic Missiles” or, well, the entirety of the D&D movie. Which… is a backwards way of saying, it should have a canon, words that have meaning, like Wizard or Magic Missile, and not just be a build-a-bear where each game brings their own fluff and substance. There should be a central core of clearly defined ideas, a shared experience, a high bar for entry where we laugh at idiots like IMDb used to (sadly, I can no longer find this on IMDb) for the creators of The Core, with their incorrectly regarded as goofs: people complain about the physics in The Core, but some absolutely nothing in the movie is remotely similar to the physics of the real world, we can only assume that this movie is taking place in an alternate reality with completely different physics.

To sum up that last (rather large) paragraph, the flagship RPG needs to be recognizable.

And, in that vein, “the real world” isn’t a good place for this RPG to live. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that it needs to be aspirational. But what that means may vary from person to person; Fantasy or Super Heroes or Space / Future tech may not hit that chord with everyone.

And, related to that, it should be good for video game adaptations. Which means advancement, and that a single character can see extensive play time (preferably without save scumming, so as not to give people who start with video games the wrong idea). (Those who first see it in TV / movies / books should also not get the wrong idea… but I’m uncertain where to go with that.)

A bit of a tricky one, but… it should focus more on fun than Balance.

And, my own personal bias, I believe it needs to be Magical.

[Ignimortis]

I'm going to take a somewhat different stance on the lightness issue - while highly crunchy isn't good for newbie players, being rules-light isn't the main factor that makes it easy to get into. That factor is, IMO:
The system should still work with a majority of the players coming in cold and flat.

By cold, I mean coming in with no preparation. They didn't learn the rules. They didn't read the setting beyond a basic description. They didn't come prepared with a concept for their character, or a creative agenda, or any ideas on where they'd like the plot to go. They're ready to play, but they've done zero prep work.

By flat, I mean they're not highly energetic, their creative juices aren't flowing, they more want to passively consume (or at least be given clear prompts) than to actively improv a story, and while they may be happy casually roleplaying, they're not really driving character development forward. Maybe because they're tired from work, maybe because they're feeling too awkward in a new social circle to put themselves forward, maybe they had a bad week - point is, everyone has times they're flat.

Now IDK that it's possible to have a good game when everybody is cold and flat, but the game shouldn't break down when some of the group are, and ideally having the GM + one player actively contributing and everyone else just along for the ride should at least result in a moderately enjoyable time.

Also note that this is coming in cold and flat. If the game can on-board people during play, or get the creative juices flowing, then great, all the better. But at the start of the session at least, the "you must be this engaged to ride" bar needs to be pretty low.

How this relates to rules-lightness? It's a whole different axis, and some rules-light games are "hard mode" on this axis. PbtA, for example, works fine with cold players but gets boring fast if too many people are flat. Fate has the same issue, plus you don't really want to be completely cold either, because then the "choose your aspects" part of chargen becomes daunting (although TBF, you can use pregens).

This is a particularly interesting take on the matter. I don't think a game would work when everyone is cold and flat, and a GM being flat usually means nobody's gonna have a great time, either, unless it's a very specific game where fun can be had by solely interacting with pre-prepared mechanics - so a flat GM can just act as a rules engine with some minimal interference. But those are rare, too.

But the game being welcoming and inspiring to people coming in "cold" is very important indeed. I find that a good book can take a "cold" and "flat" player and get them interested, as well as making them think "wouldn't it be cool to make an X?" - which gets rid of both states.

[NichG]

The discussion on ideal genre is kind of interesting...

I wonder if rather than the version of urban fantasy with the supernatural being hidden, something like supernatural apocalypse urban fantasy would work well - maybe even better. You have a normal, recognizable world that every player coming in knows what it looks like and knows how to think about. Then you say as the premise of the game something like 'three years ago, the supernatural was revealed to be real as a major faction of unseelie fae ripped the boundaries of the world asunder, creating Wild Zones in various places all across the Earth which are gradually encroaching. Other supernatural factions have revealed themselves, governments have gathered military and scientific forces to do something about the zones, people have discovered latent talents which grow with exposure to the zones and seek their magic for their own personal addictions, fulfillment, and profit, etc.'

So that way you don't have the whole awkward 'you have cool powers but you have to hide your awesome/political mess with forces seeking to clamp down on anything that upsets the status quo' thing that masquerades do, but you still have the recognizability. Plus you have a sort of easy overarching drive to the setting: "The Wild Zones threaten society as it stands, push them back and protect your city", with the ability to do more subtle variants like actually parleying with the supernatural, exploring the wild zones and encountering basically anything from familiar myths and legends, etc.

For cold players, you basically just play a normal person (yourself even!) in social settings which have gotten a slight supernatural tinge to them - there's a new co-worker at your job and they're a self-confessed vampire, a baku has been visiting your dreams, etc. Just enough to get the idea of 'this is kinda neat'. Maybe even helps with 'flat' since you could just ask the player to bring in details from their own life. That level of play would be almost zero system stuff required, since you wouldn't be doing much combat for example, just enough to get the idea of 'how would you build yourself as a character in this game?'.

As things heat up, you could have all sorts of things like trying to learn magic, getting yourself turned into a supernatural type, diving into a Wild Zone for magic and loot, etc. Combats, etc, the usual TTRPG stuff, as well as bringing in additional subsystems and splat-like things in a modular way as people are comfortable with them.

[KorvinStarmast]

1) It has to have a genre. People will need a hook to get interested in this new thing.

That's a good starting point.

3) Procedurally created characters...Not totally random either, let the players roll on this table or that table, or choose this profession with these skills or that profession with those skills.

For a beginner, yes.

4) Limited options on the class/background/race.

Basic Rules 5e D&D provided this nicely.

5) Roll the dice, read the number resolution system. No exploding dice, no dice pools, no roll [x] dice and choose.

Agree. Kiss principle. (Which sadly leaves Tunnels and Trolls out)

Binary success/fail result on skill checks. Requiring a PbtA style interpretation of what a success or fail means is something GMs and players can develop the skills to do later, but for 1st ed. we want clear simple outcomes.

Agree. That's kind of like advanced TTRPG play. This is also why Blades in the Dark is probably not a good beginner game, even though we are enjoying it.

7) Character progression.

Yes.

Probably the most important. A regular official publication that expands the game.

Agree.

Why did D&D become the winner in the "iconic game" contest, instead of say Bunnies and Burrows, or Tunnels and Trolls, or Chivalry and Sorcery (or Chainmail, which actually predated it and meets many of your criteria)?

Chainmail isn't a role playing game. It is a table top miniatures battle game.

You needed well defined classes for folks to pick, without too much flexibility. You needed lots of tables and charts for folks to play around with, scaling from "easy" to "complex" (D&D was both horrible for this, but also kinda brilliant looking back at it).

Yes. The complexity was dialable.

"Back then", you needed something that a small number of people, sitting around a table on a Saturday afternoon, could pull out and play pretty easily and without a whole lot of pre-knowledge about RPG theory.

Still true.

D&D "won" because it took existing very broad rules and play guidelines and "filled them in" with the details. And it did it first.

True enough. But it also won by getting the game into toy stores with the B/X boxed games. It expanded the target audience from SF&F geeks and wargamers to kids around 12 years old. (Peterson's "Elusive Shift" does a great job of describing how that played out).

[gbaji]

Chainmail isn't a role playing game. It is a table top miniatures battle game.

Yeah. I was being a bit snarky. But trying (and maybe failing) to point out that D&D itself took earlier miniatures rules and "filled them in" with a lot of the very things that the OP suggests should *not* be in an "iconic" RPG. Tightly defined character classes. Alignment to provide motivation. Specific settings and objectives (kill monsters, gain gold and exp, increase levels). The shift from "this is a fighter, this is an archer, this is a wizard", to "this is Bradigoff, my mighty viking warrior, with a pole axe, X number of HPs, and abilities to lift gates and bend bars, so I can help us dive into this dungeon and defeat its defenders" (with each other player filling out their own character as well) was what made D&D... welll D&D.

Rules that go back to the more generic "fill it in yourself" concept work today because we have 50 years of gamers understanding how RPG games work, and knowing how to play them. Back then? It was a completely new concept. I just realized that a lot of what the OP (and some responders) were suggesting was the equivalent of creating a "skeleton" set of rules (much like Chainmail), just to resolve actions but not much else, and then realizing that we didn't actually have an RPG until someone came along and filled that stuff in. We could even go further and suggest that game systems like PbtA are very much the modern equivalent of Chainmail (set of rules resolution, but each iteration "fills in" the details to be played).

Hence why I brought it up. It's not a perfect analogy, but...

True enough. But it also won by getting the game into toy stores with the B/X boxed games. It expanded the target audience from SF&F geeks and wargamers to kids around 12 years old. (Peterson's "Elusive Shift" does a great job of describing how that played out).

Well. Wouldn't that likely also be necessary for our hypothetical alternative iconic game as well? Otherwise, we are basically restricting this to a small set of hobbyists.

[Quertus]

To flip this line of thought on its head, how much hatred should the flagship generate, to be optimal for the hobby?

Now, this means two different things. Perhaps the more obvious is the free press the “satanic panic” brought D&D. Haters are just free publicity for the hobby.

But the second is, how many “bad” things should the flagship have, to encourage people to look at other games, and find the one for them? Needing lots of dice or having lots of books or requiring a battle map to play means people who don’t want or can’t manage such things will look elsewhere for a game more suited to them.

Personally, I think that the flagship should have several flaws, to drive people into the rest of the hobby. Probably one of the best flaw for the flagship to have is massive amounts of lore, lore books, etc - great for those who love such things, but likely to drive off those who do not want to invest the time or money into such a difficult to approach system / setting.

[Cluedrew]

For example if I'm playing 7th Sea (it's not a perfect or even intentional example of this idea, and the system doesn't explicitly tell you you can organize things this way, but this is what it would look like and I didn't want to use D&D):
[...]
The reasoning here is, you'd want the game to have enough depth that people can play it for 20 years and still feel like they're discovering things about it, but you don't want to front-load that depth so that new players would have to understand it even a bit just to begin play.

You know, despite this being a fine answer I felt oddly apathetic to it and on rereading I caught the second part and that made me think.

You know, I use system as a term for role-playing games because "game" alone never really felt right. It is somewhere between its own game and a tool for making your own games. And from that perspective I don't really want to spend 20 years learning my tools. Now you may ask what about the difference between learning the tools and learning new techniques that involve the tools, the latter is something masters continue to do after all. And yeah, I'm not really sure where to draw the line.

Point is, some elegant system that lets you ignore certain rules while you are getting started sounds good. I'm not sure I'd want to stretch it out that far though.

Here's my suggestion: Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG which was rebooted without the DC stuff as Blood of Heroes.

I don't know enough to comment in detail, but that is a strong pitch for the system. I will also agree "Superhero" is pretty much one of the most kitchen-sink type of settings there ever have been.

I'm going to take a somewhat different stance on the lightness issue - while highly crunchy isn't good for newbie players, being rules-light isn't the main factor that makes it easy to get into. That factor is, IMO:
The system should still work with a majority of the players coming in cold and flat.

Would these roughly be:

• Unskilled at mechanics.
• Unskilled creatively (or just uninspired).

The discussion on ideal genre is kind of interesting...

Also a very strong pitch. Both in terms of setting and I like the idea that you could mix character creation into the early parts of the campaign. Which is actually something I sort of do anyways, at least on the fiction/character side. Also it seems to be a nice way to get people to ease into the system. You could even lay it out semi-formally, people start just talking, name and describe their characters and after a bit we lock down stats. Then they come into contact with some supernatural force, abilities awaken and you finish character creation.

[KorvinStarmast]

was what made D&D... welll D&D.

Nope. The genre mixture of SF&F, and swords and sorcery, and the pulps, is what did that as did, per the ruling the judge made, the unique synthesis that DA came up with which ended up being the Blackmoor campaign.

creating a "skeleton" set of rules (much like Chainmail),

Nope. The Skeleton set of rules was the Original Three Little Brown books.
Not Chainmail.
Basic, B/X, and AD&D 1e were way more polished than the original.

TBH, if it weren't for the "no exploding dice" criterion and the "no counting successes" in the OP, I'd have suggested Tunnels and Trolls as a more iconic RPG.
One of the features of that game which I liked a lot was that it only used d6, and the 2d6 'saving roll' that also acted as the Skill check which also allowed you to earn XP as a result of a failed skill check or a successful one, was really neat.

The other neat thing was that each time you had a chance to advance you had interesting choices in what part of your character you'd boost. And the law of diminishing returns cropped up again and again.

[NichG]

You know, despite this being a fine answer I felt oddly apathetic to it and on rereading I caught the second part and that made me think.

You know, I use system as a term for role-playing games because "game" alone never really felt right. It is somewhere between its own game and a tool for making your own games. And from that perspective I don't really want to spend 20 years learning my tools. Now you may ask what about the difference between learning the tools and learning new techniques that involve the tools, the latter is something masters continue to do after all. And yeah, I'm not really sure where to draw the line.

Point is, some elegant system that lets you ignore certain rules while you are getting started sounds good. I'm not sure I'd want to stretch it out that far though.

I mean, I basically jumped to the end point of that for my first time playing 7th Sea. But I had played other TTRPGs and RPGs in general. Its more there so you can use it if you need it.

Another example, I ran a one-shot of Paranoia for a bunch of scientists of whom one had played Paranoia before, one had played TTRPGs before, and everyone else had no experience. Paranoia billed itself as a rules-lite game but its actually kind of crunchy, so I ripped out most of the rules and said: "Write down numbers for these 6 things that add up to 42, I'll PM each of you with a special thing about your character, randomly generated, which I won't talk about any mechanics for.' And basically the entire session had maybe a few rolls but that's it, it was all just people bouncing stuff off of each-other.

On the other hand you could do stuff with weapon damage levels and armor and specializations and buying gear and hidden mutant power scores that decrement over time and the social armor system against treason accusations and stuff I didn't even remember was in there, if you wanted to do it and if you were doing a longer campaign. The system doesn't really suffer from having a lot of stuff ripped out of it, but you can still have that stuff and its not just pointless.

[ahyangyi]

To flip this line of thought on its head, how much hatred should the flagship generate, to be optimal for the hobby?

Now, this means two different things. Perhaps the more obvious is the free press the “satanic panic” brought D&D. Haters are just free publicity for the hobby.

But the second is, how many “bad” things should the flagship have, to encourage people to look at other games, and find the one for them? Needing lots of dice or having lots of books or requiring a battle map to play means people who don’t want or can’t manage such things will look elsewhere for a game more suited to them.

Personally, I think that the flagship should have several flaws, to drive people into the rest of the hobby. Probably one of the best flaw for the flagship to have is massive amounts of lore, lore books, etc - great for those who love such things, but likely to drive off those who do not want to invest the time or money into such a difficult to approach system / setting.

If I have to choose a flaw, then I'd wish the iconic game is open source and hence has no central authority (but can have a core development community). And that might also mean more erratas -- one thing with Splatbooks is that they are super flavorful but tend not to receive fixes at all.