>I can think of one: designed characters. What others?
Though this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what WILL be
in the new game, once it finely gets going, a few of the things I
think have been useful advances in the last years of role-playing are:
- Pre-designed characters/templates/archetypes
- Fewer dice types ("Which one of those is the d8?")
- Different methods of gamemastering and playing (by which I mean
things like the troupe style role-playing method which I first saw
in Ars Magica -- which break downs into two possibilities, rotating
gamemasters and rotating player characters).
- Simpler rules
- Rules better attuned to the world (by which I particularly think of
the relatively cinematic systems of Star Wars and Top Secret/SI. RQ
has always been fairly good in representing the world of Glorantha
well, with one exception: it never really adequately covered the
world of myth that's at the center of Sacred Time and HeroQuests.)
- Different "levels" of roleplaying (by which I mean Pendragon where
you're role-playing a family long term, or Ars Magica where you're
role-playing a covenent to a certain extent, or Birthright where
you're role-playing countries at some points, or even the overblown
Aria game).
I'm sure there's much more.
Shannon