D&D General Rules, Rules, Rules: Thoughts on the Past, Present, and Future of D&D

[Snarf Zagyg]

The term predates this, as it was used in reference to Counterspells in MtG in the 90s. He might have been the one to term it for use in RPGs, however.

First used by Mearls in relation to RPGs (February 2005, hired by WoTC in June 2005) .

Archived here-

mearls: The Metagame of RPGs

eta- apologies for being brief, but I forget not everyone participated in the overly-long "MMI" thread that already went through this.

 

[TwoSix]

To be specific, the term was actually first used by Mearls (as far as people can determine) shortly before he was hired by WoTC.

The concept predates him.

I don't think I can pull back an exact reference, but I swear I remember seeing that term on rec.games.frp.* Usenet groups in the late '90s.

 

[Bedrockgames]

In the Dedicated Mechanics thread, I discussed some of the ways that D&D is sui generis- unique- and therefore not a good comparator for most other TTRPGs. Given that I have written extensively on this topic before, I wasn't sure I wanted to do another dive into it again ... but you know ... Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more; Or close the topic up with my words unheard.

If you are one of the people who do not enjoy reading, and instead simply want to get to arguing without wading through these vast fields of verbiage in the belief you might get tripped up by the landmines of nuance, I will put forth the basic idea here and save you the time of scrolling so that you angrily denounce something or other:

1. D&D, by virtue of possessing a different position through history and market power, should be viewed differently than other TTRPGs. It is not simply a ruleset, but the interplay of diffterent factors, including but not limited to its history (past editions), rules, the community (incl. homebrew), third party product, and norms, as well as its position vis-a-vis the remainder of the market.

2. Bonus speculation- to the extent that WoTC is attempting to "tie down" D&D (rules, not rulings), this will eventually lead to the loss of those things that make D&D different than other TTRPGs.


1. Understanding the History of D&D Through the Year 1981.
You're drowning in the past, Mike. But I've got your life vest right here: it's called the 80's, and it's gonna be around forever!

I really wanted to use 1983 (a merman I should be), but I'm going with 1981. Specificity is the soul of narrative, and I think that the use of the year 1981 provides the best example for understanding how the history of D&D isn't like that of other games, and why that matters today. I've written about this before, but I'd like to concentrate on a specific year that (in likelihood) many people aren't familiar with in order to illustrate the essential weirdness of D&D in the TTRPG (hereafter, just "RPG") market.

As I've previously covered elsewhere, the great debates in RPGs were already in full force. People arguing for strict RAW, and people arguing against it. People arguing for more rules for social occasions, and people arguing that specified rules stultified roleplay. People arguing for more rules, and people arguing for fewer rules (and more rulings)- heck, people arguing for the importance of the rules, and people arguing that the actual rules weren't important. People who wanted more realism, and people who wanted more abstraction. People who came up with familiar typologies for different games and different gamers, and people who thought those typologies were facile and self-serving. People who wanted to play a game, and people who wanted to participate in a story. Heck- by 1981 we already had old timers (grognards was still used to refer to wargamers) from the 1970s complaining about the munchkins who were only interested in power due to the influx of younger gamers who weren't playing the game right. In short- same as it ever was ... time is a flat circle. If EnWorld existed back then, the majority of the threads would probably look pretty similar.

But looking more closely at D&D in 1981, we see why it was so profoundly weird, and how that weirdness set up the gestalt for D&D in the future. In 1981, you had:

OD&D. Yes, OD&D was not only still around, in the form of Holmes Basic it was incredibly well-known. While the core set and supplements for OD&D was complete by 1976, the 1977 Holmes edition had been a bestseller ever since the Egbert incident in 1979. And yes, they kept printing and publishing Holmes through 1982.

AD&D. By 1981, you had the core three (the DMG was published in 1979) as well as Deities and Demigods and the deeply weird Fiend Folio.

B/X. 1981 also marked the publication year for Moldvay/Cook (Basic/Expert).

Thing is - while today we understand that these are different rules, back then it was pretty much "mix-n-match." So to start with you had three different "rules" for a game circulating at the same time. To give you an idea of how strange this might be- B2 (Keep on the Borderlands) was written by Gygax to be used with OD&D, so if you look carefully you'll notice that it complies with those rules. But B2 came included with Moldvay Basic. And many people used it in their AD&D campaigns. So you could have a table running an OD&D module that they bought with Moldvay Basic with AD&D rules. And no one would bat an eye. In short- there was already an idea of remix culture in terms of rules that was alive in D&D.

And that's because D&D, for many reasons, contained multitudes. On the one hand, the game was so "loose" that if you talk to people who actually played then, you will quickly learn that no two tables played exactly alike or with exactly the same set of rules. On the other hand, D&D was so omnipresent and "standardized" that they ran competitions during conventions (the "C" series of modules was just the release of the competitive tournament modules, and had the included rules as to how to "score" PCs). Because D&D was such a major force in the market, you not only had the TSR magazine (Dragon) releasing constant new material (including "NPC-only" classes) for use in games, but a deluge of third party product for the market leader. Moreover, the rules themselves (dating back to the "incomplete" OD&D approach) were never considered mandatory, but permissive. The most basic concepts in the game- things like ToTM or miniatures - were left undetermined.

In addition, 1981 is also a useful snapshot of the market for D&D. As reported in (I believe Game Wizards) the majority of the D&D market was pre-college by 1981. In fact, you already had D&D products sold at Scholastic middle school "book fairs" in addition to D&D becoming increasingly common for middle school and high school kids (pace the depiction in Stranger Things and E.T.). D&D was a game designed by (and for) middle-aged wargamers that was also, for lack of a better term, a kids' game. This dual focus, which became more of an issue with the Satanic Panic, was inherent in the game from 1979 on- Dragon 36 (April 1980) recounts the experience of one DM at a convention being flustered when running a dungeon for a group with mixes ages that had prostitutes (of both genders) that were offering their wares to the party, because the dungeon had been designed for the older players that the DM had expected and younger players had shown up.

The reason I bring up 1981 (arguably, the 1979-1983 period was the original "golden age" of D&D, not to be repeated until 5e) is because we can see that the basic issues that animated D&D and the conversations around it were already in place then.



2. The History That Carries Through
An amazing sight, seeing someone you’re infatuated with trying to fish something out of a jeans pocket.

And while D&D has had good times and bad times since 1981, and editions, and arguments, and SPLITTISTS! (ahem, Pathfinder), the core concept has remained. D&D is constantly in a conversation with its past and with its community. Other game systems do things very well- for example, if you have a focused system like Blades in the Dark (BiTD), you have a specified default setting (the city of Doskvol). You have a specified type of adventure (crews performing heists). The mechanics are suited to that setting and that type of adventure; to the extent you want to muck around with it greatly, you create a new game (using the Forged in the Dark base system). Heck, I do something similar when I create one-page bespoke rules-lite games for running one-shots! I make a game tailored for what I want to do.

That's not D&D. D&D has always been, for both better and worse, a system that isn't defined by its ruleset. This leads to frustration in two different ways- one that tends to annoy me personally (and I am easily annoyed, as I am a person who has strong opinions that are lightly held), and one that I see re-occur regularly here.

The first is a common mistake when people are looking at history- its the mistake of assuming that history is like the present. We had a recent thread that went through this debate again; the mistake that is often made when people look back at older rule sets for D&D is assuming that they can extrapolate how the game was played simply by looking at the RAW. The fetishization of RAW, however, is not something that was always so prevalent, especially in D&D. While there were always rules lawyers (the original term, barracks lawyers, was well-known in the '70s), the actual importance of RAW qua RAW is an artifact of the early 2000s - both within D&D (there is a reason that we had 3e and the coinage of Oberoni Fallacy at that time) and in opposition to D&D and other prominent RPGs from the 90s ("System Matters" and related ideas).

When looking at the rules for D&D in a historical sense, you always have to be aware not just of the rules of particular editions, but of norms as well- which could be wildly varying (the lack of internet in the old days meant that different localities would often have wildly varying playing styles and content). Anything prior to 1989 (and the simplification and codification of the OD&D / 1e rules into 2e, and the general marginalization of the Basic line) is especially fraught. Just as saying, today, that "5e tables all do X" would be a strange statement to make, it would likely be even stranger to say about pre-'89 D&D simply because there was such a diversity of both rulesets, 3PP, and the malleability of the rules themselves.

Second, D&D today is not defined by its ruleset alone. The combination of the history and the primacy of D&D within the market means that the ruleset will necessarily be incomplete, as the rules do not define the game. To explain within the parameters of 5e-
The game must be both welcoming to newcomers as well as crunchy enough for people that have been playing for years (or decades)- in other words, it has both serve as the entry point for kids as well as the game for long-term players.
It must support both ToTM and grid-based approaches to the game.
It must be able to have a regular "basic" game, as well as be able to support innumerable expansions from both WoTC and 3PP.
It must have elements that are familiar to people who have played before ... from 0e to 4e.
It must support a diversity a playing styles- everything from set-piece combats to diplomatic intrigue to sea journeys.

In short, D&D has to be a little of everything, to everyone ... often at the expense of doing some things particularly well. Which is why a lot of the heated debates about D&D are often just people talking past each other- many times, it's simply a question of perspectives. If someone is bending 5e to play it more like 1e, and another person is playing it more like a 3e, and a third person is trying to play it as close to RAW 5e as possible, the three people will often have difficulty determining how to "correctly" play the game - and will end up arguing over the results.

This lack of uniformity is something that most (not all) RPGs don't have. Many modern RPGs are designed to be played "by the book," and it's relatively trivial to discuss best practices when it comes to those games. That doesn't mean that there aren't vibrant communities that discuss the games ... far from it ... but the nature of the conversations tend to be very different. It is rare to see the types of infighting that you do for D&D, because D&D lacks that definition within the rules- for better and worse.


3. Brief Thoughts on the Future
I'm not interested in heaven unless my anger gets to go there too.

One of the things that caught my eye with the recent flurry of announcements on 1D&D was this (quoted from the survey results thread)-
Thief subclass's cunning action does not interact with use an object; this is intentional. Removed because the original version is a 'Mother may I?" mechanic - something that only works if the DM cooperates with you. In general mechanics which require DM permission are unsatisfying. The use an object action might go away, but that decision will be a made via the playtest process.

So I have a very deep dislike of this term, partly born out of the history of its use. Originally traced back to Mike Mearls (go figure!) the avoidance of so-called MMI mechanics was a driving force behind late-3.5e and 4e design principles. Without going too far into the weeds of this part of the history, one thing definitely stands out about this concept- given that WoTC has announced that they are going heavily into having a more on-line presence (via DDB etc.), and given Hasbro's stated desire to extract more money from D&D, this seems awfully familiar.

The reasonable concern I would have, then, is that this is part of a desire for increased uniformity of play. Which might sound like a great thing to many people- I know that there are a lot of people out there that, pace Oberoni, are looking forward to our new rules standardization overlords. That said, it would seem that the periods of greatest success for D&D have generally not occurred during standardization, but far from it- when there was ferment and division, and the game itself was merely a scaffolding erected upon which many styles could climb.

But perhaps I am wrong! The sun will rise, the sun will set, and I'll have lunch. Anyway, thought I'd throw this out there.

I tend to agree with a lot of your points. I think one is especially important to me: I evaluate D&D differently than I would other systems because of its place in the hobby and its history (and how tricky preserving "D&Dness" over time and change seems to be (i.e. the difficult balance of updating and modernizing the game while retaining the features that make it what is).

I think I agree with you largely on point 3. I did like 3E, but I do remember becoming frustrated with elements of it, and I had particular trouble running certain types of settings. For example my Ravenloft settings felt off. They just felt way, way off in 3E, and I could never put my finger on it. Doubly so under 3.5. When pulled out my 2E books and ran it with that system, the setting suddenly popped for me again and felt as I had remembered. There were a lot of reasons to do with the mechanics, but certainly, now that you bring up this point, I think the avoidance of mother-may-I type mechanics were a part of that. I'm not a fan of the term either. At the same time we've had endless discussions about it here, so I don't think debating it is going to get anyone anywhere. But I share your wariness when I see that quoted text and a reference to a desire to avoid MMI.

All that said, I never adopted 5E even though that seemed more my speed than 4E (I think having a full edition break from current editions of D&D made me realize I was more comfortable with older editions anyways, and for the most part I play games other than D&D).

I do want to also discuss this paragraph in particular:

The first is a common mistake when people are looking at history- its the mistake of assuming that history is like the present. We had a recent thread that went through this debate again; the mistake that is often made when people look back at older rule sets for D&D is assuming that they can extrapolate how the game was played simply by looking at the RAW. The fetishization of RAW, however, is not something that was always so prevalent, especially in D&D. While there were always rules lawyers (the original term, barracks lawyers, was well-known in the '70s), the actual importance of RAW qua RAW is an artifact of the early 2000s - both within D&D (there is a reason that we had 3e and the coinage of Oberoni Fallacy at that time) and in opposition to D&D and other prominent RPGs from the 90s ("System Matters" and related ideas).

While I was somewhat on the other side of you in the thread referenced (I agreed in part but didn't share the OP's reaction), in this instance I think the above is quite true and I agree with it. RAW really wasn't something I saw people get particularly zealous about until 3E (and even then it took a few years for there to be a culture change in many of the groups I was in because we initially approached 3E as we did previous editions). Again I've been going back to 2nd edition a lot lately. I just ran a short campaign in October, and there are so many rules in that system we didn't use at all. Many of the rules were already highlighted as optional in the rulebook (I think because they understood adherence to the written rules varied a lot from table to table). One thing I enjoyed this time around was engaging rules we didn't use or used very little to see which ones might have more to them than I thought. But you are right, just looking at the books to get a sense of the history of the game can be quite misleading. One could, for example, look at the 2E era with its complete books, and compare that to the 3E era with its complete books, and think the splat and optimization were the same. But the fact was in 2E it was standard for the GM to disallow tons of the complete material (any kit you wanted to bring in was vetted and if a GM didn't like the look of it, it wasn't allowed). That is a sharp contrast to how the Complete books were handled in 3E (I know because I remember players had an expectation that if they bought the book, they could use the prestige class or feat from the book).

Also the rules lawyer is an interesting point. I recently picked up the campaign source book and catacomb guide in PDF (one of my favorite 2E era books) and it has this wonderful illustration of player types, which includes my favorite 'rules lawyer' image:

 

[Oofta]

I like the flexibility that we have with 5E, it does concern me when we go back to things like gaining the hidden condition with a DC 15 dexterity check. Blech. First, if it works for the PCs it works for the bad guys. Maxed out your perception and have passive of 20 at level 4? Too bad! That T-Rex rolled really good on their hide check and surprises you from the bushes.

But the biggest issue that I have is that it doesn't really change anything, and in fact in my games if I followed it (I have no plans to) it would actually make stealth worse. The DM will always be the one to decide if you have enough cover to hide. Does that bush provide 3/4 cover? Who knows? Ask your mother DM. Rules like this only give it the semblance of standardization, either the DM will give you PC the option to hide or they don't. Rules like this change nothing in that regard. In addition, unless there's rules we don't know about it also means you can't sneak past someone if you're out in the open but the guard is half asleep or distracted by that clever illusion you just cast.

Ah well, I'm not planning on changing how I handle this or social encounters, I'd prefer that my DMs don't either. Trying to eliminate bad DMs who make Mother May I an issue for players will never suddenly turn into better DMs because of rules that give the illusion of control to the PCs.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Ah well, I'm not planning on changing how I handle this or social encounters, I'd prefer that my DMs don't either. Trying to eliminate bad DMs who make Mother May I an issue for players will never suddenly turn into better DMs because of rules that give the illusion of control to the PCs.

Conversely, pretending that there isn't a problem here, or that literally nothing useful at all can be done, will never be any more productive.

The middle between "you are puppets dancing to the Viking Hat's tune" and "the DM is a slave to the rules, unable to ever make any decisions" is vast and feeling very excluded.

 

[Malmuria]

The reasonable concern I would have, then, is that this is part of a desire for increased uniformity of play. Which might sound like a great thing to many people- I know that there are a lot of people out there that, pace Oberoni, are looking forward to our new rules standardization overlords. That said, it would seem that the periods of greatest success for D&D have generally not occurred during standardization, but far from it- when there was ferment and division, and the game itself was merely a scaffolding erected upon which many styles could climb.

I think there will be more interesting (from a historical perspective) overlaps between ttrpgs and video games in the future. Many people who work in ttrpgs seem to find themselves in the videogame industry at one point or another (probably because there are more jobs) and, as playing videogames is an extremely widespread phenomena now (compared to 1981), more people bring videogame assumptions within them into ttrpgs. I don't just mean themes or IP, though will certainly be markets for Dark Souls or Elden Ring themed ttrpgs. Nor just in business practice, though I think the practices of microtransactions and "day 1 patches" will be a feature of mainstream ttrpgs in the future. I mean at the level of design/mechanics. 5e is hard to write for because, "natural language" notwithstanding, designers have to write each feature as if it were a bit of code, not the least because you'll have optimizers searching out every possible interaction. Whereas with early versions of dnd, there's no singular 'system' as such. Sure there are procedures like dungeon turns that form the foundation of a lot of the gameplay, but the saving throw, ability score, thief skill, and x-in-6 subsystems don't interact with each other at all in ways that throw off players used to "modern" design.

For 1dnd, there is something a bit bleak about all this, in that the vtt+dndbeyond promises to be a walled garden. But I can also see indie rpgs that are built assuming vtt support to take care of the math, thus allowing for a greater level of complexity (arguably we are already there with some games). Or, interestingly, custom vtts for even narrative games, like this. Also note the 8- and 16-bit aesthetic of that vtt, also present in other games. It's ironic as early video games borrowed the tropes of dnd to create crpgs that were always striving for more of the open feeling of early dnd, leading eventually to "open world" games. There are games like Divinity Original Sin that privilege interactivity and experimentation in ways surprising for a videogame even if mundane for a ttrpg. Yet it seems there is also a desire to play ttrpgs with something of a video game framework. (note: I like all games--table top, board, video, card, etc. I'm not saying one is better or worse than another).

 

[Malmuria]

Conversely, pretending that there isn't a problem here, or that literally nothing useful at all can be done, will never be any more productive.

The middle between "you are puppets dancing to the Viking Hat's tune" and "the DM is a slave to the rules, unable to ever make any decisions" is vast and feeling very excluded.

Well, consider what they are doing with background features, which is essentially replace them with feats. Is that a good solution? You do lose out on some flavorful features even if they required dm cooperation for them to work.

 

[Oofta]

Conversely, pretending that there isn't a problem here, or that literally nothing useful at all can be done, will never be any more productive.

The middle between "you are puppets dancing to the Viking Hat's tune" and "the DM is a slave to the rules, unable to ever make any decisions" is vast and feeling very excluded.

I don't have a problem and you don't play 5E. I don't see what the issue is. Bad DMs that laugh maniacally at their puppet PCs will A) not be fixed by more rules and B) not have players for long.

If the DM wants to allow options for hiding, they will provide them. A facade of control on the player's part doesn't change anything.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't have a problem and you don't play 5E. I don't see what the issue is. Bad DMs that laugh maniacally at their puppet PCs will A) not be fixed by more rules and B) not have players for long.

If the DM wants to allow options for hiding, they will provide them. A facade of control on the player's part doesn't change anything.

You repeatedly caricature the opposition, and wonder why these threads get so contentious.

Maybe if you allowed for the possibility of something other than "a facade of control on the player's part," a productive discussion could occur, rather than a contest to see who can optimize their Sling Mud rolls.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Well, consider what they are doing with background features, which is essentially replace them with feats. Is that a good solution? You do lose out on some flavorful features even if they required dm cooperation for them to work.

Given how ready, even willing, folks were around here to casually dismiss said features, I'm not really seeing how it makes any difference. Which is, in part, my point. We can do better. No, rules cannot make good faith actors out of bad ones. But by putting the effort into rules design, we can make better results more likely, forestall common problems before they even happen, and significantly reduce the experiential burden required to learn to use the rules well. This is, quite literally, the entire point of most human design efforts: to take the experience of those who came before, who already made tons of mistakes because no one knew better, and prepare the next generation to make fewer, smaller, easier-to-fix mistakes.