D&D General On the Evolution of Fantasy and D&D

[Micah Sweet]

1) The current demographics do not say "fans of older editions". They say, "Broad age range".

2) Saying that going with the classic ideas was "to help bring in fans of previous editions" is likely an oversimplification.

2a) You seem a little vague on which "classic ideas" you think brought those supposed fans in, and are currently being violated.

In the end, the past will not sustain them forever - those fans of older editions will age out of the market, and must be replaced with new players if the game is to have a long future. Thus a focus on things relevant to a younger market is called for.

Sure. Which is why I suggest they just bite the bullet and release 6e, preferably with an all-new campaign setting that makes things the way they want. This half-measure is, imo, a terrible idea.

 

[Umbran]

Sure. Which is why I suggest they just bite the bullet and release 6e, preferably with an all-new campaign setting that makes things the way they want. This half-measure is, imo, a terrible idea.

You are still vague on which classic ideas, exactly, are being left behind.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You are still vague on which classic ideas, exactly, are being left behind.

Honestly, I'm mostly hung up on my by this point well-known campaign setting issues. That being said, I am not a huge fan of either whimsy for it's own sake or the Feywild in general, none of the MtG settings appeal to me, and I miss classic fantasy settings that are somewhat human-dominant, with other races seen primarily by how they differ from humanity, like AD&D or Star Trek.

Mechanically, I feel the current game is sacrificing good complexity for ease of use. The new monster book would be an example. The likely removal of the short rest is another. I've never liked the lack of long-term effects from combat. I feel most of Tasha's was designed to let players ignore necessary choices in character creation, and I liked having to make those choices (although I have accepted the removal of racial ASIs, I'm still not happy about it).

Shall I go on?

 

[Mercurius]

Any time we see the word "evolution" in this context, we ought to be aware of the meaning.

"Evolution" is not movement "forward". Direction is a thing game design can have, that evolution does not. Game designers make choices, while random changes in DNA do not. Evolution does not have will.

If evolution is movement at all, it is a drunkards walk that, if a line survives, turns out to have been, out of sheer luck, toward being more effectively adapted to a niche in an ecosystem. If the ecosystem changes, or if niches become available, the species available will, through random changes, either meet the new needs, or not.

Meanwhile, game design and fiction writing can be aimed at a niche. The author's vision of the viability of the niche may be hazy, but it

You seem to be using evolution in a very specific sense, relating to biological organisms changing over time. That is just one definition and contextual usage of the word, but not the only one. I am not using it in that sense, more towards directional unfolding over time. Or to use a synonym, development.

 

[Mercurius]

I want to add something to this that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere; 5e's approach to adventures is changing right now. For a long time, D&D 5e only had big adventure paths meant to span an entire campaign (Tyranny of Dragons, Curse of Strahd, Princes of the Apocalypse, Storm King's Thunder, Out of the Abyss). Early D&D adventures were mostly just short modules that you could mix-and-match to add to your campaign. 5e didn't really have these until when Tales from the Yawning Portal was released in 2017, reprinting a lot of classic adventures from older editions of D&D (unless you count the Lost Mines of Phandelver).

But since Tales from the Yawning Portal we've gotten Ghosts of Saltmarsh (another classic adventure anthology book), Candlekeep Mysteries, and now Journeys Beyond the Radiant Citadel. While they're not "modules" (because they're all printed in the same book instead of smaller pamphlets that can be bought individually), they are similar in being smaller adventures that can be inserted into an ongoing D&D campaign. So while D&D 5e is transitioning away from some older trends, it is also embracing some of them more than it did at its start.

(Not to mention the fact that we literally only had the Forgotten Realms as an official supported setting for the longest time, and we're now getting more and more reprinted older settings. Or that a lot of older monsters keep reappearing in new monster books like Mordenkainen's and Fizbans. Or how they're bringing back the D&D Multiverse.)

tl;dr - While 5e is definitely transitioning away from some older trends/themes/content (even ones that it focused on more towards the start of the edition), it is also transitioning towards some older ones.

Yes, I've had a similar thought - and with increasing frequency: first Tales in 2017, then one in 2019, then one each in 2021 and 2022. So yes, while it isn't distinct modules, it is essentiallly "module compilations." And this isn't even only a shift within 5E but different from what we saw in 4E which, if I remember correctly, had very few short adventures.

 

[Mercurius]

I'd really like to believe that. But lately I've seen no indication that WotC remembers why 5e became popular in the first place.

Well, aside from the fact that I'm not promising anything, it might take a few years, or at least a period in which "classic elements" are de-emphasized. But things come around, and one thing that seems consistent is a "back to our roots" cycle.

 

[Yora]

I agree with this philosophy in principle, but I have two comments.

1. D&D is an interactive game, and in order to play it you need people who sufficiently share your fantasy preferences for all of you to be satisfied. If the leading edge swings away from your preferences, it get increasingly difficult to find these people.

2. Similarly, while I believe you are correct in that no aspect of fantasy jusy disappears entirely, it might be a while before the cycle comes back to something you like. What the leading edge is doing matters whether you like it or not.

Precisely because RPGs are an interactive medium and not one that is passively consumed, the prevalence of any general or specific fantastical traits really depends on what the players choose to focus on. Traits don't become prominent by waiting for them to become popular. If you want certain traits in your capaigns, you have to put them in.
Evwryone has the same tools. All it needs is the confidence to run a game with certain elements and making them fun and exciting.

 

[Hussar]

Honestly, I'm mostly hung up on my by this point well-known campaign setting issues. That being said, I am not a huge fan of either whimsy for it's own sake or the Feywild in general, none of the MtG settings appeal to me, and I miss classic fantasy settings that are somewhat human-dominant, with other races seen primarily by how they differ from humanity, like AD&D or Star Trek.

Mechanically, I feel the current game is sacrificing good complexity for ease of use. The new monster book would be an example. The likely removal of the short rest is another. I've never liked the lack of long-term effects from combat. I feel most of Tasha's was designed to let players ignore necessary choices in character creation, and I liked having to make those choices (although I have accepted the removal of racial ASIs, I'm still not happy about it).

Shall I go on?

How is a "short rest" mechanic a "classic idea"? Two step recovery didn't exist in the game until 4e. Human dominant settings haven't been a thing since 3e was released. And whimsy is a FAR more usual thing in earlier D&D - Beyond the Magic Mirror is a classic adventure after all.

See, the problem is, your issues are largely yours alone. They have nothing to do with the history of the game or how the game was presented in the past. You are simply choosing to rewrite history in order to pretend that you are being somehow excluded from the hobby.

 

[Malmuria]

One quality, among others, of this shift, is the idea that "violence isn't always the answer."

The association, or not, of classic/old school play with combat and violence is interesting. On one hand, you have a prevailing attitude that dnd is about "killing things and taking their stuff," and that this is all we did in earlier editions of the game. This is either a virtue or criticism depending on who you are talking to. On the other hand is the OSR analysis that concludes that combat in early dnd is a fail state. Because survival is low, encounters not balanced, and with low xp rewards, dungeon crawling was actually about taking stuff without getting into combat. I don't know what accounts for this divide, but it's either that different players played differently in all eras, or perhaps it refers to the original grognard/munchkin divide, with now very old munchkins remembering dnd as primarily a combat game.

For example, people often look back at 2e as this golden age of settings for D&D. And, it's an understandable POV. Most of the iconic D&D settings (outside of Eberron) have their genesis and development in 2e.

And yet, many of those settings were not very popular during the 2e era. Spelljammer lasted for what, two years? Planescape products are worth so much now in part because they had such a low print run to begin with. And dnd players at the time criticized both settings for not being "classic" dnd. Planescape was very whimsical and explicitly not about combat, because you couldn't fight every extraplanar being you came across.

Mechanically, I feel the current game is sacrificing good complexity for ease of use. The new monster book would be an example. The likely removal of the short rest is another. I've never liked the lack of long-term effects from combat. I feel most of Tasha's was designed to let players ignore necessary choices in character creation, and I liked having to make those choices (although I have accepted the removal of racial ASIs, I'm still not happy about it).

To me, Tasha's is the opposite of a simplification. Each class option adds so many more things to track and is a significant power creep compared to core 5e. The removal of short rest abilities seems more a corrective on the original design based on how people actually play (e.g. 2 combats and then long rest).

Yes, I've had a similar thought - and with increasing frequency: first Tales in 2017, then one in 2019, then one each in 2021 and 2022. So yes, while it isn't distinct modules, it is essentiallly "module compilations." And this isn't even only a shift within 5E but different from what we saw in 4E which, if I remember correctly, had very few short adventures.

Short adventure "modules" is as classic dnd as it gets. So it makes sense that Tales from the Yawning Portal is a compilation of older adventures.

 

[Hussar]

I don't know what accounts for this divide, but it's either that different players played differently in all eras, or perhaps it refers to the original grognard/munchkin divide, with now very old munchkins remembering dnd as primarily a combat game.

I blame fudging.

Actually, as flip as that is, I wonder if there isn't some truth to that. The notion that AD&D is this very high lethality game is predicated on the notion that the players are not creating characters that are ... shall we say... suspiciously ahead of the probability curve?

But, then you run into things like generous creation methods - even before Unearthed Arcana, we mixed both 4d6 drop the lowest with Basic/Expert rules that let you trade 2 for 1 Str, Int and Wis up or down or increase Dex. Only Con and Cha were not adjustable. So, when I talk about fighters always having 18 percentile strength, well, of course we did - you simply dropped Int and Wis and got that all important 18.

Multiply that by all PC's and suddenly you have a group that is punching WAAAAAY above it's weight class. Instead of doing d8+1 damage, you're dealing d8+4 or 5 plus magic items and whatnot. Then, you get into 2e where the fighters are absolute killing machines capable of dealing 30, 40 points of damage in a single round, even at 1st level and suddenly those old 1e modules are made of so much tissue paper.

The issue with older D&D is that the math was so fragile that you actually had to work pretty hard not to break the system. Robustness was a much later development.