D&D 4E 4e Compared to Trad D&D; What You Lose, What You Gain

Celebrim said:

Let me try to make a thesis out of this.

In the late 90's and early 00's people began to try to think systematically about RPG design and develop a framework for describing RPGs. They contributed a lot of potentially useful terminology to the game and the exercise was itself really worthwhile, even if I'm not convinced any of their conclusions necessarily hold true. One idea that they hit upon was the idea of "system matters". Now, I'd argue that this is something they had to hit upon in order to do the thing that they were doing. It was a necessary pre-condition for the exercise. And, to some extent I agree with it. I would certainly never argue that the system doesn't matter at all. But there is I think a gotcha in the idea of "system matters" that if you overlook, can lead to wildly erroneous conclusions.

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I think that this statement is clearly not supportable from my experience. As early as the mid-late 1970's there many diverse opinions on different sorts of rules and already much thinking (albeit of a very early sort) had gone on. Certainly Ken St. Andre and the T&T folks engaged in a robust debate with the D&D folks. Anyone who played a game of Boot Hill certainly was well-educated on the HUGE impact of system on play experience vs D&D! Traveler offered another PoV, and RQ another. ALL of these people were well aware that their systems differentiation from D&D was a key aspect of why and how they 'felt different' in play. All of this was well appreciated by 1980.

The people who were engaged in these conversations and who decided that "system matters" went on to create very tightly scripted games with rigorously defined goals and procedures of play. These were games that consciously attempted to implement "system matters" and who consciously had thought about procedures of play in a way no one else before really had.

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Well, yes, I agree, a certain group of what are now deemed 'indy game' or 'story game' developers created some games of this sort (and a wide spectrum of games were, and are, being created in the middle). As I pointed out before, 'system matters' came long before the first story game! (though IMHO those games have their roots in 1980's games that were of a similar but less refined ilk). TBH I think there's no big divide overall. Everyone knows that system matters, and everyone knows that you can bend different systems in various ways. Still, nobody thinks it is wise run games with inappropriate systems.

Naturally, you can analyze these games pretty much entirely within the framework their creators had created. It works. Because those games were in fact created and inspired by that framework with the intention of implementing the ideas that they had invented.

But you cannot necessarily apply the same level of analysis to game which were not consciously created under the "system matters" paradigm, whose creators had very different ideas about what they wanted to accomplish, and which did not rigorously define what the procedures of play were to be. AD&D actually IMO better defined procedures of play than most games created at the time, which literally told you nothing about how to play them and typically just dumped a huge amount of rules on the player because the author never considered procedures of play as something that needed to be communicate. But AD&D certainly didn't limit procedures of play in the way Indy or Indy inspired game systems typically do, because while the author's of D&D didn't necessarily assume someone would know how to play an RPG, neither did they think of themselves as trying to produce a single type of gameplay within a single game.

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OK, so I'm not really having a problem with this in the sense that, yes, some games envision a very specific type of play. They are generally called 'niche' games. Paranoia was an early-ish example of this sort of game, which came out in 1984, but arguably Boot Hill was the earliest mainstream example, and it was probably the 2nd or 3rd RPG ever written.

Now, I admit, Boot Hill, and even Paranoia ARE a lot looser in their procedural formulation than DitV or Dungeon World. I would chalk that up more to a lack of understanding of how to do it, and generally lower editorial and writing skill levels in games of the 70's and early 80's vs a lack of basic understanding of the concept of constrained play.

Another aspect is that RPG authors were pitching games in a MUCH less saturated and competitive market back in the early days. They naturally tended to aim for a more general audience. Today its pretty hard to imagine tossing yet another general purpose fantasy RPG out there, it has 100 competitors and is unlikely to be differentiated much. In 1980 it was perfectly feasible for RQ to do that however. Its authors didn't NEED to make it niche, that would have simply limited its appeal!

Mostly I just don't believe there were ever serious game designers who thought system didn't matter. Maybe a few SAID stupid things like that, but they knew better...

AbdulAlhazred said:

This is similar to the questions which drove me to the design of HoML, where there are NO SUCH THINGS as individual checks. If a conflict doesn't exist, then there are no dice, and if one does, then it is a challenge. Thus you can't make checks outside of challenges (which include combat encounters in HoML terminology).

Now, there ARE 'general challenges' which follow basically the 4e SC rules, and 'combat' (or technically the slightly broader category of 'Action Sequences' which might potentially include other combat-like time-critical situations where you want to use action economy). So there's still SOME sort of dichotomy there, but if you were to interact with an NPC and it was part of some sort of conflict resolution then you wouldn't have a choice in HoML about mechanics, you'd be in a general challenge (unless someone started a fight).

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I was a huge fan of the Mass Effect series before it went downhill. Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 are notable in that they use very different combat mechanics.

Mass Effect 2 is a tightly defined cover based shooter. Combat has to take place in special combat arenas where suitable waist high obstacles are found to make use of its cover mechanics.

Mass Effect 1 on the other hand has no unified combat mechanics. It makes no distinction between environments where combat can take place and where combat will not take place.

I overwhelmingly prefer Mass Effect 1. It does so much with combat that Mass Effect 2 simply cannot do. Since it doesn't use any special rules and has a single engine for both combat and non-combat, pretty much any terrain can become combat terrain. So for example, there are sequences where you are fighting what are basically zombies, and the zombies can appear in stair cases and in all sorts of tight cramped environments that they just couldn't in Mass Effect 2. There are sequences where environments that were peaceful suddenly and unexpectedly become combat environments. You can be walking around the haven and suddenly assassins are trying to kill you. In Mass Effect 2, you can visibly distinguish between environments where combat can happen and where it can't. One of the best done scenes in all of video gaming history plays on the fact that in Mass Effect the developers have you riding in an elevator frequently, both to force dialogue with NPCs and to allow loading in the background. Towards the end of the game you are riding in an elevator when it becomes a combat scenario in one of the most awesome uses of camera work and perspective I can think of.

Now, a lot of players preferred Mass Effect 2 with the tight scripted combat engine and the simplified combat and chargen mechanics and the focus on episodic stories rather than a single grand epic. I think they are nuts, but they are allowed to do so. But my table top RPGs work pretty much the same way. The rules don't drive what is possible. Everything is possible, and the rules provide guidance for resolving what happens when you try. There is no such thing as being inside or outside of the challenge.

AbdulAlhazred said:

I think that this statement is clearly not supportable from my experience. As early as the mid-late 1970's there many diverse opinions on different sorts of rules and already much thinking (albeit of a very early sort) had gone on. Certainly Ken St. Andre and the T&T folks engaged in a robust debate with the D&D folks. Anyone who played a game of Boot Hill certainly was well-educated on the HUGE impact of system on play experience vs D&D! Traveler offered another PoV, and RQ another. ALL of these people were well aware that their systems differentiation from D&D was a key aspect of why and how they 'felt different' in play. All of this was well appreciated by 1980.

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I was around then and I read the Dragon articles, and if you go back and read those early debates it is very clear that no one has a clear idea of how to describe what they are talking about. One word that you would have heard a lot in 1980 is 'realism'. Fans and designers tended to debate games in terms of how 'realistic' they they were, with the implication that mature and sophisticated gamers would naturally gravitate toward the more realistic systems. A very good example of this mindset comes from the introduction of the GURPS rulebook where it says: "The basic rule system emphasizes realism. Therefore, it can fit any situation - fantasy or historical, past, present or future." This is exactly the opposite of the conclusion of the "system matters" people. Here are rules that can fit any game you would want to have, claims the author. How do you know this is true? Because they are realistic. This system is inappropriate for nothing! This is Steve Jackson saying this, one of the biggest names in the industry, a guy with real design chops. Tell me again what everyone knows?

(As an aside, while I think SJ was wrong about this assertion, in his defense the thinking in that sentence was ubiquitous at the time. Almost everyone thought like that and the major systems of the time reflect it. Also, I think he can design rings around Ron Edwards.)

Realism through the whole of the '80s was a blanket term that covered every goal of your game. If your game wasn't generating role play? The reason was the game was realistic enough? If your game wasn't balanced; well the problem was that it wasn't realistic enough. The main side argument this developed was over speed of play. How heavy was your rules? The goal was to create 'realistic' rules that still played quickly.

Now I'm not saying that there weren't very sophisticated arguments regarding rules and systems back then, but they had very different assumptions than this thread.

As I pointed out before, 'system matters' came long before the first story game!

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I don't think the concept of "system matters" that is being used in this thread was expressed until like 1999, and wasn't I feel formalized until something like 2004.

OK, so I'm not really having a problem with this in the sense that, yes, some games envision a very specific type of play. They are generally called 'niche' games. Paranoia was an early-ish example of this sort of game, which came out in 1984...

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Paranoia is a genre game in a genre that isn't particularly mainstream. Nonetheless, I find it a great example of how system does not matter. I tried to run Paranoia once. I'm a bit on the autistic side. I don't really do humor. I mean, I do, in as much as I often have NPCs that make people laugh, but I'm not what you'd call a witty person. So when I ran Paranoia it quickly descended into a dystopian horror story something like Logan's Run in tone, and not the jovial humorous game that the game intends - despite it being an early example of a game that tries to define the procedures of play for the DM. Unfortunately, it turns out humor is not something you can easily define. So my attempt at running Paranoia was a bit of a bust and I learned the limits of my ability.

but arguably Boot Hill was the earliest mainstream example, and it was probably the 2nd or 3rd RPG ever written.

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Hard as this may be to believe, at the time Boot Hill came out, it was not at all clear that the Western was not at least as mainstream of a genre as fantasy, science fiction, or superheroes. It was not intended as a niche game and while I'm not super familiar with the Boot Hill rules, having not played them since 1990 or something, and then only once, my general feeling is that you could run any number of games with different tones and settings using Boot Hill.

dave2008 said:

I agree with those points to some extent, but I don't think that was the biggest issue. I think 4e could still be going strong today if:

1) Essentials designs had come first (then introduce the AEDU versions later)
2) Don't change anything with established campaign worlds, not a thing. Just update them to the new rules
3) Issue the PoL / Nentir Vale as a new separate campaign world.

I am not sure which one was the bigger offense, but issues 1 & 2 seemed to drive a lot of people away. They never bothered me, but they did seem to be issues for others.

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I am not sure I would have seen essentials design and rejoined D&D however.

I think if they had left Epic for later in the release and focused on getting a full complement of initial classes and races (though meh on gnomes really really meh) that could have improved reception.

They might have then had time to produce an epic tier including the DMG and let it be more fully its own at that time.

Also having a less Draconian license would have helped encourage 3rd party participation as well

Celebrim said:

I was around then and I read the Dragon articles, and if you go back and read those early debates it is very clear that no one has a clear idea of how to describe what they are talking about. One word that you would have heard a lot in 1980 is 'realism'. Fans and designers tended to debate games in terms of how 'realistic' they they were, with the implication that mature and sophisticated gamers would naturally gravitate toward the more realistic systems.

...

Realism through the whole of the '80s was a blanket term that covered every goal of your game. If your game wasn't generating role play? The reason was the game was realistic enough? If your game wasn't balanced; well the problem was that it wasn't realistic enough. The main side argument this developed was over speed of play. How heavy was your rules? The goal was to create 'realistic' rules that still played quickly.

....

I don't think the concept of "system matters" that is being used in this thread was expressed until like 1999, and wasn't I feel formalized until something like 2004.

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AbdulAlhazred said:

I'm not sure I hold with [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s idea of the evolution of the game (or devolution according to many). Things like XP for treasure, and a hard focus on things like henchmen, wandering monsters, hex crawling, etc. did fade some with time, but it seems to me it was more in the service of trying to achieve a wider range of narrative experiences than some vain quest to turn D&D into a 'sim'.

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Some thoughts (that don't just pertain to the quoted text above but to other posts):

1) I agree with AA's post directly above. I'll elaborate:

a) AD&D 2e moving xp for treasure/gold from the primary way to advance to an option was no small thing.

b) AD&D 2e introducing "Roleplaying xp by way of DM fiat" was no small thing.

c) AD&D 2e introducing xp awards for using noncombat skills in a process sim sort of way was no small thing.

d) AD&D 2e coming out a few years after the Dragonlance novels in 85, in the thrall of the grey box Realms, then Planescape, and the utter deluge of metaplot surrounding these settings was no small thing. This is what I'm talking about when I say "The Dragonlancing of D&D." The advent of setting and metaplot tourism, inevitable player passivity and/or importence, and GM Force that accompanied it.

e) Vampire the Masquerade coming out right in the beginning of the 2e zeitgeist and basically running so hard with rule 0 that a ridiculous number of GM's just took (VtM Golden Rule) to be expected D&D canon:

"This is the most important rule of all, and the only real rule worth following: There are no rules. The world is far too big - it can't be reflected accurately in any set of inflexible rules. Think of this book as a collection of guidelines, suggested but not mandatory ways of capturing the World of Darkness in the format of a game. You're the arbiter of what works best in your game, and you're free to use, alter, abuse or ignore these rules at your leisure."

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f) Due to all of the above, that era's ethos of GMing became one of entitled GM's and their precious setting, NPCs, and metaplot utterly railroading an entire generation of players. GM's Calvinballing/Fudging/Forcing/Illusionisming their passive players through setting and metaplot tourism until their players became either (i) completely disenfranchised or (ii) so utterly annoyed that they just murderhoboed the setting/ignored the metaplot to utter ruin because the only way they could actually influence the gamestate was through violence/combat.

The number of anecdotes and refugee players that fled other games into my own game during that period was truly absurd. I've never seen anything like it before or since. And I sat in on plenty of games and talked to GMs and entertained tons of conversations that bore out this idea of unmitigated authority for GMs to basically be the only active player at the table with the players doing little but characterizing a personality and rolling some dice (and hoping the resolution mechanics actually mattered).

2) My guess is [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] never played much Basic (1-3 and solely dungeons) or Expert (4-14 and expansion into wilderness but using the same machinery, principles, and procedures) (most people didn't play Champion/Master/Immortal...some played RC)? Exclusively played AD&D? The Gygaxian prose in AD&D (even though he explicitly called out the game as not realistic and not intended to be a simulation) vs Moldvay, Cook/Marsh made an enormous difference in the rules text. Basic and Expert's rules and prose read as (abstract) "game" while AD&D (even if not intended as a simulation) read as granular content generation rather than (abstract) "game" facilitator. I think there is a marked difference there.

When I talk about "system matters", I'm working off a premise of "intentful or thoughtful design (as a holistic/integrated product)". Does anybody actually think Environment Scaling/Movement Rates + Exploration Turns + Wandering Monsters/Random Encounters + Gold for XP (and not for monsters) is just a happy accident and not intenful/thoughtful design to create a very specific impetus and environment for player decision-making?

3) I do not agree with Celebrim's encapsulation of what Dragon contained in the early to mid 80s. It wasn't a deluge of "realism" conversation. It was letters to the editor about all things gaming (social to silly to rules). It was artwork and interviews. It was commentary on contemporary games like Talisman, Diplomacy, et al. It was advice on how to choose a Dungeon Master (an overwhelming amount of which pertained to evaluating how fair and honest of a referee they were, whether their games were interesting, how good of a command they had of the rules and procedures, how whether house rules they made favored one archetype/class over another, etc...there was very little commentary on their command of ecologies, economies and feedbacks, etc). It was miniature rules. It was various rules modules (that didn't have an overwhelming bent toward "realism"...some did...some didn't). It was new classes or new takes on classes. It was satirical articles and silly, short fiction. It was advice on map-making and lots of "scaling controversy". It was articles on wargaming. It was Sage Advice (that didn't hew excessively toward "realism").

i am now trying to picture an AD&D fighter simply taking a death ray on the breast plate to double down on intimidating someone.....

Manbearcat said:

I do not agree with Celebrim's encapsulation of what Dragon contained in the early to mid 80s.

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I don't think you've left me much of substance to reply to. Clearly I've opened up some old wound that still hurts, and as you even admit much of the reply doesn't pertain to my post, I'm going to just let it pass for the most part.

But I do want to protest that however you read me, I did not and never claimed to encapsulate all of what Dragon contained in the early to mid 80s. Certainly I know that it contained art work, interviews, original games, supplemental material of all sorts, comics and so forth and I don't see how mentioning these things is a rebuttal. I was never attacking the quality of Dragon.

Celebrim said:

I was a huge fan of the Mass Effect series before it went downhill. Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 are notable in that they use very different combat mechanics.

Mass Effect 2 is a tightly defined cover based shooter. Combat has to take place in special combat arenas where suitable waist high obstacles are found to make use of its cover mechanics.

Mass Effect 1 on the other hand has no unified combat mechanics. It makes no distinction between environments where combat can take place and where combat will not take place.

I overwhelmingly prefer Mass Effect 1. It does so much with combat that Mass Effect 2 simply cannot do. Since it doesn't use any special rules and has a single engine for both combat and non-combat, pretty much any terrain can become combat terrain. So for example, there are sequences where you are fighting what are basically zombies, and the zombies can appear in stair cases and in all sorts of tight cramped environments that they just couldn't in Mass Effect 2. There are sequences where environments that were peaceful suddenly and unexpectedly become combat environments. You can be walking around the haven and suddenly assassins are trying to kill you. In Mass Effect 2, you can visibly distinguish between environments where combat can happen and where it can't. One of the best done scenes in all of video gaming history plays on the fact that in Mass Effect the developers have you riding in an elevator frequently, both to force dialogue with NPCs and to allow loading in the background. Towards the end of the game you are riding in an elevator when it becomes a combat scenario in one of the most awesome uses of camera work and perspective I can think of.

Now, a lot of players preferred Mass Effect 2 with the tight scripted combat engine and the simplified combat and chargen mechanics and the focus on episodic stories rather than a single grand epic. I think they are nuts, but they are allowed to do so. But my table top RPGs work pretty much the same way. The rules don't drive what is possible. Everything is possible, and the rules provide guidance for resolving what happens when you try. There is no such thing as being inside or outside of the challenge.

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Well, exactly... There isn't any such thing as being outside of a challenge! If you aren't in a challenge then there is no conflict, and NO GAME, just people talking! I mean, in HoML you can have an 'interlude' but it is just that, a connector between scenes (IE it might be a montage, or just players hobnobbing, etc.). Now, interludes can be narratively useful and lead to the generation of new conflicts, but all actual 'game play' happens within the conflict/challenge paradigm.

The other thing about HoML is that it actually achieves the math parity goal of 4e, non-combat checks have EXACTLY the same math as combat rolls do. This greatly opens up the system in terms of what can happen. You can suddenly employ a skill check against a defense and it would have parity with an attack (something that generally won't work in 4e). Likewise you could use an attack mechanic in a skill challenge and it would 'just work'.

So, actually, the mechanical parity and consistency is there. There's no 'special zone' that is the only time combat can happen, thinking that would be incorrect, and really it isn't even true of 4e itself, unless you restrict your thinking too much when you run it. In fact I would say one of the enemies of good 4e GMing is the process that was ingrained by AD&D, roll initiative! lol.

Celebrim said:

I was around then and I read the Dragon articles, and if you go back and read those early debates it is very clear that no one has a clear idea of how to describe what they are talking about. One word that you would have heard a lot in 1980 is 'realism'. Fans and designers tended to debate games in terms of how 'realistic' they they were, with the implication that mature and sophisticated gamers would naturally gravitate toward the more realistic systems. A very good example of this mindset comes from the introduction of the GURPS rulebook where it says: "The basic rule system emphasizes realism. Therefore, it can fit any situation - fantasy or historical, past, present or future." This is exactly the opposite of the conclusion of the "system matters" people. Here are rules that can fit any game you would want to have, claims the author. How do you know this is true? Because they are realistic. This system is inappropriate for nothing! This is Steve Jackson saying this, one of the biggest names in the industry, a guy with real design chops. Tell me again what everyone knows?

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But, if he didn't think system mattered, then why didn't he just write D&D supplements? Of course it mattered and Steve (whom I happen to have had the pleasure of playtesting games for in that time period) was VERY VERY aware of how different systems created different sorts of games, that's the sort of stuff we all talked about endlessly back in the day.

Now, they had different ideas and theories than we have now, but system, and play methodology was central. They just hadn't worked out the sort of more sophisticated ways to arrange it that we have come up with today.

Yes, there was a strong school of thought back in those days that creating a hyper-realistic game would somehow unlock some sort of magically wonderful story power, but we know now that was a silly idea. It isn't in any way shape or form similar to the idea that system doesn't matter. I literally know of NOBODY that said that!

(As an aside, while I think SJ was wrong about this assertion, in his defense the thinking in that sentence was ubiquitous at the time. Almost everyone thought like that and the major systems of the time reflect it. Also, I think he can design rings around Ron Edwards.)

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The two of them think in different ways. Steve is a very talented guy. I agree, his sentiment about GURPS was naive and proved incorrect. He'd probably be the first to say so. Note that he spends little to no time on GURPS today. I'm sure he's fond of his creation, but I think he understands that it was a limited concept. His current games are much more like indy RPGs than anything else IMHO.

Realism through the whole of the '80s was a blanket term that covered every goal of your game. If your game wasn't generating role play? The reason was the game was realistic enough? If your game wasn't balanced; well the problem was that it wasn't realistic enough. The main side argument this developed was over speed of play. How heavy was your rules? The goal was to create 'realistic' rules that still played quickly.

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Well, that was one school, the 'wargamer' kind of school who wanted playability and at least realism in the areas that mattered to them, maybe fighting, maybe skills, maybe social interaction, depended on the genre and goals of the game.

However, most of us were not really concerned with realism. There was a thought that maybe sometimes a great lack of realism could lead to a weird sort of game. I mean, people would often cite high level D&D fighters who could jump off cliffs and etc. without harm as kind of weird, but mostly we just thought it was awesome when it was our character that got to do that!

Now I'm not saying that there weren't very sophisticated arguments regarding rules and systems back then, but they had very different assumptions than this thread.

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Well, yes and no. They addressed the same concerns. They were often just simplistic in their expression and drew conclusions which lacked the benefit of 40+ years of game play and design experience.

I don't think the concept of "system matters" that is being used in this thread was expressed until like 1999, and wasn't I feel formalized until something like 2004.

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Well, I think it was expressed in T&T in about 1976, at the latest!

Paranoia is a genre game in a genre that isn't particularly mainstream. Nonetheless, I find it a great example of how system does not matter. I tried to run Paranoia once. I'm a bit on the autistic side. I don't really do humor. I mean, I do, in as much as I often have NPCs that make people laugh, but I'm not what you'd call a witty person. So when I ran Paranoia it quickly descended into a dystopian horror story something like Logan's Run in tone, and not the jovial humorous game that the game intends - despite it being an early example of a game that tries to define the procedures of play for the DM. Unfortunately, it turns out humor is not something you can easily define. So my attempt at running Paranoia was a bit of a bust and I learned the limits of my ability.

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But system DOES matter in Paranoia, because the whole mechanics of the game pushes things in the direction it is intended to go. You couldn't possibly run that game using the rules of most RPGs. You need a system that allows for anyone to die horribly at any time and where 'advancement' doesn't help with that problem (at least not in a straightforward mechanical way, high programmers MIGHT be safer than basic troubleshooters in a narrative sense).

I mean, sure, you could probably adapt BRP or maybe Traveler's core mechanical systems to produce a similar result. There's always more than one way to express at least some of the details of a game. I'd also surely note that if Paranoia was written today it would be VERY different, and maybe better.

Hard as this may be to believe, at the time Boot Hill came out, it was not at all clear that the Western was not at least as mainstream of a genre as fantasy, science fiction, or superheroes. It was not intended as a niche game and while I'm not super familiar with the Boot Hill rules, having not played them since 1990 or something, and then only once, my general feeling is that you could run any number of games with different tones and settings using Boot Hill.

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Boot Hill is most definitely a niche game. Its rules cover one thing, fighting with guns, knives, tomahawks, bows, spears, and maybe dynamite. It tells you how to lay out a western frontier town and play out barfights, gunfights, bank robberies, etc. There are NO rules for anything else, at all. Well, I think there's a rule for gambling and cheating at cards, which is basically an excuse to start shooting. That's it. This is a very niche game. The GENRE might not be niche, and perhaps you could expand the game if you wanted to, but its designers had one thing in mind. Characters take literally 1 minute to roll up (3 tosses of d% and writing down a couple numbers, buy a gun, start fightin'). Most sessions included at least 1 and often up to 3 deaths per player. We played 100s of hours of this game, and even so I can only remember ONE character that survived for more than maybe 2 sessions.

AbdulAlhazred said:

My response would be that ONLY 1e out of those 4 is 'traditional' D&D, and even it is on the outer edge of the core traditional phase of D&D as defined by [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]. 1e certainly has the rules and procedures in the forms he talks about such that you CAN play D&D as it was originally conceived. It also allows for something different, epitomized by the OA book, and then finally by 2e, which is to say a more 'story game' or dramatically driven game.

I'm not sure I hold with [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s idea of the evolution of the game (or devolution according to many). Things like XP for treasure, and a hard focus on things like henchmen, wandering monsters, hex crawling, etc. did fade some with time, but it seems to me it was more in the service of trying to achieve a wider range of narrative experiences than some vain quest to turn D&D into a 'sim'. There were always a few people who played kind of like that, but I don't think it was a vast tension. Not like OSR vs modern RPG play is today. Some people liked rules that they felt produced 'realistic' results, but everyone always recognized that they were playing a game and that some sort of narrative considerations (IE making the PCs playable in some sense) was an element of the game. Even people who loved Aftermath (a very hard-core game of gun realism) had to make some concessions if they wanted to keep playing for long.

So, I would see the 'LARPing phase' as simply an extension of a trend which started early in the game's history. It wasn't even a very distinct phase, but 2e certainly was not 'traditional D&D' in its sensibilities and catered to it (though oddly enough it retained pretty much all the 'stuff' required to do old school dungeon crawls if you wished, though some of the details were poorly explicated or left to implication).

3e and 5e are totally different beasts. They have little to do with traditional D&D or even with AD&D in general really. 5e does drive close to the sensibilities of 2e in many respects though, and might be seen as a sort of less incoherent D&D with stronger story elements, though sadly little in the way of mechanical support for that (system matters).

3e was just a mutant hairball thing. I suspect the designers THOUGHT they were polishing 2e's chaotic rules mess, but they so amplified spell casting and created such a huge THING with the skill system, that it just warped off in its own direction. If it is like 2e, it is like 2e hyped so much that it just melts... IMHO WotC wrote 4e because fundamentally 3e was just unmanageable and impossible to push in any real direction.

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3E broke because they thouguht it was fun to remove the restrictions AD&D had, but they did not redesign anything to account for that especially in regards to spells. YOu oculd fix 3.X as well its not fundamentally flawed you would just plug smaller numbers into it and have saves scale better a'la AD&D. FOr example Save or suck in AD&D you made the save 75-95% of the time, in 3.X you could fail 75-95% of the time.