New D&D: What's Really Important

[ChainSawHobbit]

Dungeons & Dragons is a game where people sit around a table, and dream together. They don't want to play Strikers, Leaders, Defenders, and Controllers; they want to play mysterious wizards, and gallant knights, and grim warriors, and wild druids who dance in moonlit groves and continually make love to the raw essence of nature. They don't want to battle Skirmishers, Elite Soldiers, and Minion Artilleries; they want to battle savage orcs, and dreadful dragons, and mind-violating horrors from beyond the void.

I don't see why anyone cares if spells and swords have similar effects during combat. Warriors should feel like Conan, thives should feel like Bilbo, paladins should feel like Galahad, and mages should feel like Merlin. Magical items should be rare and mysterious things of wonder, not required mechanical benefits. Swinging axe should should be a genuinely different experience from hurling a bolt of magic. Orcs should be diseased, horrific cannibal fiends; and the players should really experience this when fighting them. Mind flayers should be terrifying alien entities, unknowable and unfathomable, and the players should feel this as they are mercilessly mind-raped.

Adventurers should delve into forgotten catacombs and ruined temples, facing horrifying creatures and sadistic traps, either emerging rich or dying entertainingly. Problems should be simple, men should be mighty, cities should be great, women should be beautiful, dragons should be vile, and fae should be beguiling.

This is Dungeons & Dragons.

 

[DEFCON 1]

What's your point?

Some of us have played like this during every edition of the game.

 

[thedungeondelver]

I think what ChainSawHobbit is saying is that tone is important.

And I agree with him. Words mean things, and I'd like to get back to the paradigm of "Fighter"*, "Magic-user"*, "Thief"*, and "Cleric"*, additionally "Paladin", "Ranger", "Druid", "assassin" and even "Monk", "Bard", and "Illusionist" respectively.

No more "striker", "leader", "linebacker", whatever, please.

*=or Warrior, mage, rogue, priest, whatever. I know what I prefer.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Dungeons & Dragons is a game where people sit around a table, and dream together. They don't want to play Strikers, Leaders, Defenders, and Controllers; they want to play mysterious wizards, and gallant knights, and grim warriors, and wild druids who dance in moonlit groves and continually make love to the raw essence of nature. They don't want to battle Skirmishers, Elite Soldiers, and Minion Artilleries; they want to battle savage orcs, and dreadful dragons, and mind-violating horrors from beyond the void.

I think you can do that in any edition of D&D. I don't tell my players which orcs are minions and which are leaders or soldiers. They might have different weapons, but that's really the only difference my players can tell - at least until they drop a minion on one hit.

 

[hanez]

I think you can do that in any edition of D&D. I don't tell my players which orcs are minions and which are leaders or soldiers. They might have different weapons, but that's really the only difference my players can tell - at least until they drop a minion on one hit.

As a DM who sold all his 3rd edition books and got his 5 players to sell them all when 4e came out, subscribe to the adventure paths and DDI.... I can say that it was really hard for us to do it in 4e. It can be done in any edition of D&D i agree, it was just harder, and we failed at it in 4e. I want an edition that makes it easier for my players to role play and for us to collectively imagine and the clearcut focus on rules, mechanics, minis and balanced characters made it harder for us.

 

[Keldryn]

I think what ChainSawHobbit is saying is that tone is important.

And I agree with him. Words mean things, and I'd like to get back to the paradigm of "Fighter"*, "Magic-user"*, "Thief"*, and "Cleric"*, additionally "Paladin", "Ranger", "Druid", "assassin" and even "Monk", "Bard", and "Illusionist" respectively.

No more "striker", "leader", "linebacker", whatever, please.

*=or Warrior, mage, rogue, priest, whatever. I know what I prefer.

I agree with you and ChainSawHobbit.

I think that modern incarnations of the game have lost sight of what drew many of us to RPGs in the first place.

I was drawn to D&D because I loved the idea of portraying a courageous warrior or a mysterious and powerful wizard in an imaginary world. How this was realized in terms of game mechanics was a whole lot less important than the character concept.

And to me, a character concept is something like "a half-elven warrior, the bastard son of a tyrannical noble, travels the land helping those who have been the victims of his father's unjust laws." (Not super-original, but I needed to come up with something in a pinch) "A half-elf fighter who is good at Diplomacy and fights with a nine-bladed sword in one hand and a chain-axe in the other" is not a character concept. The rise of Internet popularity messes with the perception of course, but since 3e came out, I've read a lot more "character concepts" that simply state what a character can do than anything about the character's background or motivations.

There are a lot of players who enjoy character-building (in terms of abilities and game mechanics) as a game in and of itself. I went through a phase like that myself, when I thought that GURPS and Hero were the most awesome games ever created. Most people that I played D&D with didn't want to be bothered with those games.

I think that extensive character-building and rules-specific terminology appeal to a large number of gamers. I think that these same elements are a huge turn-off to an even larger number of people who are interested in fantasy fiction and even role-playing but don't want to think about what they're doing in terms of game mechanics.