D&D 5E What happened to the punk aesthetic in D&D?

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Mercule]

So, I've read numerous threads where people have argued that something isn't acceptable unless it is an official, WoTC product. And this very much goes against the grain of how I learned to play and run D&D. While I sometimes call it a DIY thing, I really think of it as more of a punk aesthetic.

I'll start off by saying that I think the DIY attitude is something that's key to the D&D identity. If the PHB was integrated with a single setting, say, using a model like Shadowrun*, I probably wouldn't play it. That's just not D&D. It wouldn't matter which setting; I'm just not interested in a fantasy system tightly coupled to a setting. More than any other genre, other than maybe sci-fi, fantasy is about unique worlds.

So, a bit of grognard history. D&D (OD&D) was originally a confusing mismatch of rules and supplements that required a fair amount of work and houserules just to, well, get it to work. It was the definition of a "hobby." With the advent of BECMI (Holmes first) and AD&D a lot of this was systematized ... and yet, it was still a punk hobby.

I had literal reams of home brew material for AD&D, plus several Role Aids products and Dragon Magazines. I still have a couple folders of home brew and six magazine boxes (about 2 linear feet) full of Dragon.

However.... I have no interest** in DM Guild material or non-WotC material. More on that, in a second.

Well, there was a lot of mixing and matching between rule sets. BECMI and AD&D were largely compatible, and many tables used rules and books from them interchangeably.

I'm a BECMI/AD&D grognard, too. Even several years into the 2E run, I was "officially" running 1E AD&D with cherries picked from 2E. Specifically, I thought (and still think) TWF Rangers were stupid, so you played 1E Rangers with 2E Ranger stealth. On the other hand, Priests completely replaced the 1E Cleric. Most expansions worked with either edition and, by the time I took a break from D&D, I think we were probably more playing 2E with cherries picked from 1E. Regardless, it was almost totally transparent and clearly the same game.

Now, the pendulum began to swing, certainly by the 3e era. And I can understand why people are more comfortable with branded material. But in essence, this is a hobbyist's game still. It is about creation, not just consumption. Or, to put it in the punk parlance, about being given the basic tools to create your own band, not about listening to ELO.

So, I can understand and sympathize with the desire to have WoTC release products. Roughly, this can be boiled down to the following factors-
1. Convenience. I'd rather have someone else create it than me. (But this shouldn't apply to the wealth of material on the DM's Guild or, more importantly, that is freely available on the intertubez).
2. Brand. WoTC has a brand, and an interest in protecting same. As such, their products will be a higher quality in order to protect it. I will pay a premium for that assumed protection.
3. Consistency. I would like my product to be the same as that used by others.
4. Emotional support. I enjoyed X from the past; since WoTC is not "officially" supporting X, they are not supporting something I liked, and therefore, they do not like me. WHY DON'T YOU LIKE ME?
5. Moar Product. I just want WoTC to release more stuff, because I love 5e; it just happens that I want them to release more of what I want.

I am sympathetic to all of these claims (even (4)). But what I guess I don't understand is what happened to hobbyist/DIY/punk aesthetic that animated D&D? It's not missing; look at the threads and you can see people recounting their own, highly modified, campaigns. And I'm not arguing that "back in the old days," everyone did it right and customized the heck out the system. Naw; it wasn't born out of desire, but out of necessity; many "table rules," were often because of convenience or not reading all the cross-references and asides that Gygax buried, and the adoption of additional materials was because, TBH, you had to.

But still ... I like 5e because it is so highly adaptable. What do you think?

I think there are a number of factors in play. A certain amount of it comes from aspects of 3E and some of it is just being in a different phase of life.

1) The SRD boom created a lot of white noise. In 1E it wasn't always a win, but it was easy to differentiate companies and determine which ones I liked. In 3E, there were just too many third parties to sort through. Trying to read reviews online didn't help because some folks loved things I found completely unusable, so I could try to vet the reviewers or just wing it. Blech. DM Guild looks like more of the same glut. I'm sure there's some good stuff, but I just don't care enough to bother.

2) 3E moved a ton of the rules "in front of the screen". It empowered the players tremendously. Regardless of whether that was right or wrong, it does impact house rules. Even players who "grew up" with AD&D started getting into dark nooks and crannies that they hadn't previously been checking. Having even one rules-lawyer turned every potential house rule into a potential argument or intentional abuse with a "nuh uh, no take backs". (Really, this seems to be more symptomatic of people who started with 3E, but not exclusive or absolute.)

3) 3E was not friendly to rules tweaks. The math was wound so tight that they could cascade in weird ways. Change the wrong thing, and the whole house of cards can come down (armor as DR, from freaking Unearthed Arcana taught me that). Not worth puttering.

4) I have four more kids now than I did when 3E was released. They bring a lot of activity, especially at the middle and high school level. Add in full time job and volunteer activities, I don't have much time to either search out new vendors or to make my own stuff.

My time available is my own. I think the tone change with 3E endures, though. I hope to see it shift back to AD&D tone, but we'll see. Ironically, it's the indie game market that may be the home of that sort of thing. I've been eying Fate as being simple enough to kitbash in my limited time.

* I could have used multiple examples, but Shadowrun was the first that popped into my head. For those unaware, SR has a single core book that gives full character creation/advancement rules, a good amount of setting, combat and specialty (rigging, magic, decking/hacking, cyberware) rules, and some critters. There are splat books that expand pretty much everything, including the setting.

** OK. Not zero interest, just minimal interest.

 

[Ancalagon]

Could it be that some of this moved to adventure/campaign/setting design?

My last campaign had over 90 000 words of notes...

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

My last campaign had over 90 000 words of notes...

First reaction: Jeez, that's a lot of words.
Second reaction, moments later: ...wait, if I'd have actually written down everything I thought up for my last campaign in full form rather than ultra-terse short-hand reminders and an outline, it probably would have been at least that many words.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[ProgBard]

What I find most baffling is that so much of the demand for "official" product is coming from folks for whom it seems WotC hasn't done anything right since the launch of the edition. It's the RPG hobby's "the food here is terrible, and the portions are too small."*

For this, I can only consider that, for at least some (probably small) sector of the D&D community, asking (demanding) for official content of the "right" kind seems to be a particularly quirky version of Fannish Entitlement: "I want those so-and-sos at Wotsy to admit they were WRONG WRONG WRONGITY WRONG and fix it by doing X." Which, jeeze, whatever gets you up in the morning, I guess, but really, now.

The irony of it all is that, from what I can see, the DIY aesthetic is practically baked in to 5e. It's an edition, more than any before it, which has as part of its subtext-and-sometimes-text that if you don't like what the rulebooks give you, you should change it to something you DO like. I feel like 5e wants you to adjust, sample, remix, and especially add your own stuff to it - which isn't to say it doesn't run perfectly fine out of the box, if that's not your jam, but I suspect the answer to most of the "But where are the rules for X?" questions is intended to be, "Well, that's where you come in." As if the creation of DMs Guild weren't evidence enough for that, Dragon+ just devoted a whole issue to celebrating D&DIY in a variety of media. So part of what I love about 5e - which is, for me, the version of D&D that I wished AD&D was when I was first into it thirty-mumble years ago - is that it knows its audience of tinkerers and kitbashers and sees that as part of the heart and strength of the game, and all but comes out and tells you, "Whatever you choose to do with the parts in this box, you're Doin It Rite."

*Very nearly typo'd this as "potions," and very nearly considered not fixing it.

 

[innerdude]

At risk of oversimplification, I think an enormous factor in the desire for "officially" supported material can be attributed directly to Sturgeon's law.

Sure, there may have been a big "punk"/DIY aesthetic or ethos around the early RPG scene, and by golly, everybody had tons of ideas and house rules, and kitbashing, and homebrewed settings, and custom classes, and new spells, and yada yada yada . . . .

And 90% of it was crap. 90% of it was the product of the kinds of GMs we all learned to loathe early in our RPG careers.

If a lot of us want "officially supported" materials now, it's to save us from the unmitigated piles of crap we had/have to wade through.

The unstated assumption in the OP is that "Homebrewed stuff = better play experience." Statistically, this simply isn't the case the majority of the time.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

What I find most baffling is that so much of the demand for "official" product is coming from folks for whom it seems WotC hasn't done anything right since the launch of the edition.

Careful, some folks get really upset when you point out how unlikely it is that the people that wrote what they don't like would end up writing something they do like if they just took a second crack at it.

 

[Morrus]

No, more that home brewing is a fundamental *part* of the experience. RPGs, of all things, support that like a video game or a movie would not. I'd go so far as to say I wouldn't be a tabletop gamer without that fundamental dimension to the hobby. I find tweaking rules and stuff as satisfying as the actual gameplay. RPGs give me twice the fun - I get to do both things.

I can't even conceive of gaming without sticking my oar into it. Being an official stuff only person would bore me, I think. I don't think I'd enjoy the hobby half as much.


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[Jer]

So, I've read numerous threads where people have argued that something isn't acceptable unless it is an official, WoTC product.

Eh - people like that have been around since I started playing in the early 80s. Did you ever read the Forum in Dragon Magazine back in the day? The complaints have changed because there is a larger weight of previous product, but the same attitude towards "official" material was definitely there. And then there's the Internet. When you remove the geographic boundaries it makes various smaller groups seem much larger because instead of just one or two people you know with a particular viewpoint now there are dozens or more that you know (at least virtually).

Also I suspect there's some self-selection involved here. Folks coming to ENWorld are more likely to be interested in official material in general than folks over at Dragonsfoot (for example). This did start as a site for people who wanted to obsess over every snippet of the release of 3rd edition after all.