Do TTRPGs Need to "Modernize?"

[Sepulchrave II]

Really? I love Diplomacy!

It's a great way to get rid of unwanted friends without having to have uncomfortable and unpleasant personal (ugh!) conversations ... and all for the cost of a weekend!

I have a friend who hasn’t forgiven what I did in the Ruhr thirty-five years ago. It took France and Germany less time to bury the hatchet IRL, with WWII intervening.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I was responding to your claim that 3rd edition isn't a form of traditional D&D.
And if you're referring to the OSR specifically, I can tell you that the OSR owes more to 3rd edition and the d20 system than anything TSR created.
Without the 3rd edition OGL there wouldn't be an OSR. Many OSR games (Basic Fantasy, Castles and Crusades to name two) use 3rd edition as their basis. I'd say DCC does as well.
So, basically everything in "D&D" right now comes from 3rd edition.

Um, that is a drastic misreading of the situation.

OSR is not based on 3e. At all. Instead, OSR is based on the OGL.

OSR was formed because people were unhappy with the direction that 3e took, and used the OGL to recreate the TSR experience.

3e was "responsible" for OSR in the sense that people didn't like 3e, and started the OSR movement.

 

[Retreater]

OSR is not based on 3e. At all. Instead, OSR is based on the OGL.

Which was all based off the 3rd edition SRD. You can read about the creation of OSRIC - that's literally how it happened. They had to "reverse engineer" the older games based on what was allowed in the 3rd edition SRD.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Which was all based off the 3rd edition SRD. You can read about the creation of OSRIC - that's literally how it happened. They had to "reverse engineer" the older games based on what was allowed in the 3rd edition SRD.

Yes, I know that. That is exactly what I was talking about.

But you don't seem to understand what that actually means. The OGL (and SRD) allowed the foundational elements of D&D (classes, stats, terms) to be used- in other words, to "reverse engineer" the old rules (with some improvements) using the scaffolding, not the rules.

Which meant that on the one hand, you had nascent publishers (Necromancer Games, Troll Lord Games, etc.) that released "old school feel" 3PP for 3e. But that's not OSR.

OSR products were born of the forums (Dragonsfoot, K&K, ODD74) and the people on them, which led to the creation of games that were TSR-compatible, but not 3e compatible. Such as the first game- BFRPG.

OSRIC was second. But OSRIC, importantly, was 1e. Not 3e or 3e-compatible. While it had some changes (such as the loss of the never-lamented weapon v. ac table), it was, for all practical purposes, AD&D.

And that's what you're missing. Saying OSR is 3e is misleading at best, because it's not. It was very much a reaction against 3e, for people who felt 3e was anathema.

But sure, maybe I should read about it???

 

[Celebrim]

/B]While it had some changes (such as the loss of the never-lamented weapon v. ac table), it was, for all practical purposes, AD&D.

I would put the weapon vs. AC table as one of the three things I most miss about 1e AD&D. The other two are exponentially increasing XP in order to level up and casting times. XP for gold would probably make a more distant 4th place.

I get why most people don't lament it, because I don't import it into my house rules in the already complicated 3e D&D I play because that extra complexity in an already complex game is not be worth it, but I do really miss it.

 

[Lanefan]

Here's a quick list of the 10 reasons (though the video goes into more detail than I can here)...
10. They don't outstay their welcome. They have a definitive end that can be predicted. This builds tension and excitement.
9. Every turn is fun. You don't get a dead turn spent just rolling to move and not getting to a destination. All players are equal (same number of actions). There's always something worth doing. You don't have skipped turns (no "Go to Jail" cards.)
8. No player elimination in modern boardgames.
7. Scores are less varied. Objectives can be hidden and not revealed until the end. Scores are often not tallied until the end, so a player doesn't sit around for the whole game feeling like a loser.
6. Different set-ups mean there are unique dynamics to change strategies. It's not always the same game (i.e. chess).
5. Players have agency. Failure isn't controlled by luck.
4. When luck is used, you roll (or draw cards) before deciding what action to take.
3. Boardgames used to be intended for children or were based on war/fighting. There is more working together and less conflict now.
2. Games are less aggressive as a result. You aren't required to bankrupt or wipe out your opponents. They can be competitive without being aggressive.
1. There are many options.

Nearly every one of those is IMO either a neutral or negative development. If a game has a win condition, the point of playing the game is to - within the rules - achieve that win condition; and if achieving that win condition means other players lose then tough: so be it.

And if the game doesn't have a defined win condition then, in most cases, what's the point?

After watching the video, I went through D&D and put it through the same metric.

10. There is no definitive end. We have no idea how long the session/campaign will last (usually). The game usually ends by scheduling problems, lack of interest, TPK, etc. (What if we actually set a limit on a number of sessions? Or an achievable level limit?)

One of the true beauties of most RPGs is the very fact that they can be completely open-ended in duration, be it the duration of an individual session or the campaign as a whole. Why would anyone want to mess with this other than for externally-limiting reasons e.g. a convention game where you've only got a set block of time?

9. There are dead turns. Characters have to spend actions to get into position. Or other times they're Held, Petrified, etc. This is very noticeable in games where it takes 10-30 minutes to go around the table. (What if we rethought the action economy that movement doesn't take the standard action - just makes it a little less effective? Like your damage is halved if you have to run across the battlefield?)
8. Characters get killed - or sometimes just get stuck doing nothing.

Tough. Fact of life: there's going to be times during the game when for one reason or another you're not going to be involved. No sympathy here.

[I once had a game where I had to go sit in another room because my character got imprisoned - for TWO sessions!]

That's not good; and is part of why I allow players to run two characters at once if they want: if something bad happens to one, you've still got the other.

(What if character death happened at the end of the session? Like the final effect of the death didn't occur until after the last encounter of the night?)

How would this work in practice if the in-fiction death happens early in the session? Does the character tag along as a ghost for the evening?

5-4. It stinks to lose your high level spells to bad die rolls. What if we allowed you to roll before you cast the spell? If you roll bad, maybe you hang on to the spell slot?

Again, tough, Fighters don't hit on every attack, why should casters succeed on every spell?

Do you think RPGs need to modernize like we've seen in the boardgame hobby?

If by modernize you mean adopt what you're suggesting here, that's a fairly hard "no" from me.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I would put the weapon vs. AC table as one of the three things I most miss about 1e AD&D. The other two are exponentially increasing XP in order to level up and casting times. XP for gold would probably make a more distant 4th place.

I get why most people don't lament it, because I don't import it into my house rules in the already complicated 3e D&D I play because that extra complexity in an already complex game is not be worth it, but I do really miss it.

I think that it was a cool idea, and I liked the cool table, but running into a person who utilized that table is much rarer than finding someone who strictly applied the "dead-eyed soulless elves cannot be resurrected" rule.*

*Which, as we all know, is the bestest and most correctest rule ever.

 

[Aldarc]

Nearly every one of those is IMO either a neutral or negative development. If a game has a win condition, the point of playing the game is to - within the rules - achieve that win condition; and if achieving that win condition means other players lose then tough: so be it.

And if the game doesn't have a defined win condition then, in most cases, what's the point?

"Tell me that you don't play modern board games without telling me that you don't play modern board games."

 

[Celebrim]

I think that it was a cool idea, and I liked the cool table, but running into a person who utilized that table is much rarer than finding someone who strictly applied the "dead-eyed soulless elves cannot be resurrected" rule.*

I can't recall a situation were raise dead was ever used on an elf, so I don't know if we would have applied this rule or not.

As for the table, the real irony is it is much easier to apply to 3e than it was to apply it to 1e. In order to get the table to work in 1e in anything like a coherent manner, you had to go part of the way toward 3e anyway. I think what stopped most people from using the table beyond the fact that people in 1e AD&D tended to ignore any rule they didn't immediately understand is that it was a ton of work making the rules and the table play together. For example, to make the table truly useful, you needed to alter how AC was recorded for every monster in the game.

 

[Lanefan]

My thought is that many RPGs are so preoccupied with "the way it's always been done" that they're satisfied with a hybrid of tradition and change that make for a worse experience without thinking how it influences the play experience.
A few examples...
1) It was less terrible to have "dead turns" in the early days because turns were fast. Now, it can take 5-10 minutes to go around the table. A dead turn in today's game is unacceptable.

OK, so fix it such that turns are faster.

2) You can extend "dead turns" to "dead combats," "dead sessions," and "dead campaigns." Classes are still designed that if you don't have the right abilities, you're worthless in a fight. Maybe you're worthless for an entire session - or the entirety of the game. It should not be possible to make a reasonable build of a character and be "pointless" in the mechanics of the game. I've had sessions (online) where I could put my head down and nap for an hour because there was nothing my character could contribute.

Unless every character can do everything equally well, that some characters are going to at times be more or less "useful" depending on the situation in combination with their class/abilities is IMO naturally to be expected. A good GM will vary things such that over the long term each character type has a chance to show off its stuff (even if for whatever reason that character type doesn't happen to be in play at the moment!), but asking that each character type be front and centre all the time is a fool's errand.

Of course, it also depends on whether one wants to put game-play consideration ahead of in-fiction considerations or vice-versa. Your posts tell me your main focus is game-play concerns. Mine is the fiction, and IMO game-play at the table should adapt to suit the fiction when possible.