The Problem with 21st century D&D (and a solution! Sort of)

[Neonchameleon]

My problem reading the above is that I see AD&D as actively more complicated than 21st century D&D. Thac0? (Or worse, unnecessary lookup tables?) Weapon vs Armour type? Only thieves get skills? Other people just get Non-weapon Proficiencies (which have ... awkward knock-on impacts and many are their own rules in a way that 3.X and 4e skills aren't). Saves vs spell, staff, petrification, etc. with no obvious indication which to use in random cases. I could go on.

I therefore dispute any claim that 21st Century D&D is more complicated as opposed to more complex than AD&D. The big enabler of the house rule in AD&D was the sheer level of complication - to the point that any sane group started by throwing out rules (weapon vs armour type being an obvious one) in order to preserve their sanity. The biggest enabler of house rules was that people were already houseruling in order to make AD&D playable, even if only to ignore rules right there in the PHB. So it didn't seem like a jump. 3.x and even more so 4e can be played straight out of the box. Which makes houseruling a mental hurdle.

 

[Gryph]

My problem reading the above is that I see AD&D as actively more complicated than 21st century D&D. Thac0? (Or worse, unnecessary lookup tables?) Weapon vs Armour type? Only thieves get skills? Other people just get Non-weapon Proficiencies (which have ... awkward knock-on impacts and many are their own rules in a way that 3.X and 4e skills aren't). Saves vs spell, staff, petrification, etc. with no obvious indication which to use in random cases. I could go on.

I therefore dispute any claim that 21st Century D&D is more complicated as opposed to more complex than AD&D. The big enabler of the house rule in AD&D was the sheer level of complication - to the point that any sane group started by throwing out rules (weapon vs armour type being an obvious one) in order to preserve their sanity. The biggest enabler of house rules was that people were already houseruling in order to make AD&D playable, even if only to ignore rules right there in the PHB. So it didn't seem like a jump. 3.x and even more so 4e can be played straight out of the box. Which makes houseruling a mental hurdle.

And I dispute your claim that house rules were the result of complication. 80+% of the house rules I've come across playing 20th century D&D had the effect of adding complication rather than seeking to simplify the game structure. The very sparseness of formal rules in BECMI, 1e and early 2e led to the plethora of house rules. There are certainly a lot of quirky and finicky rules in older D&Ds, but they aren't particularly complicated.

To hit tables are easy to use, they can just slow down the action if the player didn't write his line on the table on his sheet. There are very few situational attack bonuses in early D&D, compared to the mass of feat/stance/spell/power and ongoing effect adjustments in 21st century D&D.

Here's my simple rule of thumb based on a very recent experiment with my regular players. I've been running 4e for 2 years with the same 5 players. In a recent session we played 1e. Took 20 minutes to roll up 7 characters. An average combat took a little over 10 minutes to resolve. Compared to the hour+ to resolve a 4e combat and character generation takes so long we never do it at the table. Complicated my ass.

 

[NewJeffCT]

True, but the difference with all those books (and even rules like weapon vs AC tables) was that they were generally listed as 'optional rules'. That is, the books would actually have them in a different coloured box with the heading 'optional rule', or say in black and white in the book "Ask your DM before you use anything in this book". Psionics is the classic example - it was never in a core rulebook until 4E (because I don't think you can call PHB3 an 'optional rulebook' per se - although I must admit I haven't read it thoroughly, and it may have a "you don't need this to play" bit in it), and you could always just ignore it.

True, you can ignore the Complete Books, Skills & Powers, etc in 2E. However, you can just as easily ignore the equivalent "splat" books in 3E and 3.5E as well.

I think one of the good things about 3E/3.5 was that it allowed 3rd parties to come up with their own material using the d20 rules. It made it easy for a DM to ignore those those extra rules, if they so chose. When my 3.5 campaign started in Sept of 2007, it was initially core rules only. However, it slowly grew to include all the WotC books, including the can of worms called the Spell Compendium. (Wow, did that make prepping an evil level 20 cleric a lot of work!!)

With 4E and DDI, however, that is out the window, as everything seems to be part of the Core Rules and third party stuff seems limited.

 

[howandwhy99]

I therefore dispute any claim that 21st Century D&D is more complicated as opposed to more complex than AD&D.

I disagree, especially if you play with the rules behind the screen. For DMs, running the game as a puzzle is more work prior to game, but I would contest far less during the game. The map is already drawn. There is no need to improvise it at the table.

Knock On effects is a cool buzzword I take to mean unintended consequences. Earlier design is difficult to understand without prior knowledge to the game design philosophy they were working under. I find it hard to believe wargame designers intentionally put in rules with unknown consequences. The better ones were very particular with their additions.

All those specialties and exceptions in AD&D were seen as benefits rather than drawbacks, sort of like the open-ended design with powers in 4E or with cards in CCGs. It was a categorical design with encapsulated categories possible within each, and then greater granularity often assigned for more refined focus. For instance, a d6 as standard for the few abilities defined behind the screen, then more refined abilities like the thief's encapsulated within those and d20 or d100 for more defined advancement within them.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I think that layered onto the whole simple/complex/complicated issue there is another issue which is, in its way, even more important.

Cohesion vs Coupling.

It's an old IT term, probably still in use today. Good programs have high cohesion within modules, low coupling between modules. Bad programs have the reverse.

In other words, if there are lots of inter-related side effects, then things are more complex/difficult/prone to failure.

AD&D had lots of different possible rules you could use, many have been called out here, but it had low coupling. You could swap them in or out and hardly notice as there were no knock on effects.


3e introduced myriad knock on effects. Something boosts strength which affects skills and hit chance and damage and other stuff. Something else depletes Dex which has knock on effects on saves and AC and missle attacks and initiative. Too many things became inter-related, which made it harder to change one thing without knock on effects elsewhere.

4e does this even more so. Sure it is simple to houserule in the sense of giving something a different name, flavouring it differently, but coming up with a new magic system? weapons vs armour modifications? Different way of doing saves? really tricky, as everything is so tightly coupled together.

20th Century D&D had low coupling, so it was easy to put things in and change them around. Sure, some of it looks pretty baroque to 21st century eyes, but that is what made it less complicated in many ways then things are today. Much easier to simplify if you want to (and as apparently many people did!)

Cheers

 

[thedungeondelver]

The problem with 21st century D&D is the same problem 20th century D&D had after the original set: it's aimed at D&D players, not people who have some time and an inclination to do something new and fun. AD&D suffered (somewhat) from being what it was: advanced. Read the DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE and it is clear that the aim is that you, reader, already have D&D down pat and this is now a graduate course.

TSR addressed the problem whether by design or merry happenstance with Basic D&D. That one word - Basic - is such a soft-cornered, well-considered word (whether it actually was or not) that it assisted many, many people into RPGs whereas they would have been immediately turned off by the textbook layout of AD&D.

But TSR later abandoned that, left the now superfluous "Advanced" attached to D&D - but that was OK. Everyone knew what it meant.

WIZARDS OF THE COAST dropped it entirely and returned the game to the moniker DUNGEONS & DRAGONS (even though it was essentially a third edition of AD&D, right down to default WORLD OF GREYHAWK and little tiny details like the sample dungeon in the DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE). However, they didn't have the "soft open" of a "basic" game. People opening the 3rd edition books looking for an "in" were confronted with a bunch of confusing stuff, just like AD&D before it.

Fumbling attempts like the D&D ADVENTURE GAME were just that - fumbles. They were boardgames that sorta-kinda went there, but not enough, in that (for example) they were gimped in terms of how much latitude players and DMs had to create and expand. It was like a two minute swimming lesson before being told "Now go to the deep end for your PADI certification."

Frankly, I think what's stopping WotC from revisiting a real honest-to-God BASIC D&D is pride. Pride, and a fear that they'll "dilute the market". I don't know that as a company they're even capable of addressing the problem.

 

[Mercurius]

After reading through the replies to my OP, I think I can boil down a key point to the following: 20c D&D may not have been less complicated--especially AD&D--but it was easier to ignore layers of detail. Weapon speed? Really? I don't remember ever using it. Spell components? Nice idea but kind of a hassle. Actually, I don't know if it was simply because I was young when I played 1E, but I ignored a ton of rules.

In 21c D&D, it is harder to ignore rules, to play a simplified version of the game. Everything is too entwined. And that's the point - it isn't that 21c D&D is actually more complicated, it is that it requires one to use a larger percent of the RAW. In 20c D&D (as far as I can remember) it was easy to just use what you wanted to use.

3e is no no way too complicated. The case can be made that the core books are too information heavy simply by dint of being so exhaustive.

This, I would think, is true from the perspective of someone familiar with the game and comfortable with rules heavy games in general. But what about a newbie? A friend's girlfriend that isn't into gaming but wants to try it out? What about the millions of potential fans that might give it a whirl if making a character didn't take two hours?

Again, I like the density of 21c D&D, but my point is that there needs to be a simpler option, a "Basic" version of the game that is very simple and onto which all rules can be interchangeably used as modular options. WotC has not done that with 3E, 3.5 or 4E (and no, Essentials isn't really what I'm talking about, although you could argue it takes a half step in the right direction).

Part of the problem with your argument, however, is that 2E is pretty complex when you added in non-core books - skills & powers, kits, Complete Books of everything and so on & so forth. If you stick with just the core rules for 3E or 3.5E, the game remains nearly as simple as 2E core rules.

See my point above - it is easier to pay a simplified version of 20c D&D than it is 21c D&D.

What drives people away from RPG's is two things:

1. Time sink....
2. Options....

Good points, although I don't think they replace what I'm talking about but are additional reasons. I hear your point about many other games being complicated, but I still think it is a major factor in why newbies don't play or even give the game a shot.

Actually, it reminds me of fantasy or science fiction novels in which there is a period of time in which one has to acclimate to a new world, learn how things work, get a sense of the rules of the setting, so to speak. Fans of the genre love that experience - it is discovering a new world, akin to figuring a puzzle out. But for those not used to reading sf/f works it can be disorienting to say the least, at worst off-putting altogether. As a fan of sf/f, the experience of "What the hell is going on?" is a pleasant one; for many, however, it is not.

The same goes for RPGs. Anyone sitting down to play 4E for the first time has to go through a significant time period before they're really up and running with the game. However, that's not the problem. 1-2 hours making a character? Not ideal, but it isn't a deal-breaker. A combat or two to get the hang of how the rules work? Fine. But the real problem is the many sessions afterwards where every new situation requires a rulebook lookup. When I first started playing 4E this went on for a year or more (granted, we only played once a month for the first year or so, and that was part of the problem because it took a longer period of time for the rules of the game to "stick" because we had so much time between sessions).

I think people are forgetting how complicated 1e and 2e could be and I have a theory why. 1e had some fairly complicated rules about shield use, facing, helmets, and that's all without getting into weapon vs armor type modifiers.

True - and see my first couple paragraphs. These rules were easier to ignore in 20c D&D. I am arguing that it is harder to not play the RAW in 21c D&D.

 

[Mercurius]

dungeondelver, excellent stuff. I've been advocating a return to the Basic/Advanced format for some time (including in my OP), although as two versions of the same game, perhaps with the names Core and Advanced.

I've been dabbling with ideas for what "Basic 4E" would look like, but have never really done more than type up some notes. I'm a teacher so a lot of my creative ventures get put off for the summer, so maybe then...

 

[ExploderWizard]

D&D has needed an actual basic starter set for a very long time. Not an advertisement that just whets the appetite but an actual functional basic game that some non-gamer might be willing to flip through and try.

The Moldvay basic set was great at that job. 64 pages cover to cover and you had everything you needed to both run and play in a level 1-3 campaign. Since the RC era every D&D basic set has been little more than a snapshot preview of a huge game consisting of stacks of books that would make any non-hardcore gamer shudder.

Sometimes the couple hours of play that such a set provides isn't enough to hook someone with a casual interest. A basic game that doesn't require hours of study and is replayable might get played with enough to cause one member of the casual group to become curious enough to see what all those books are about.

The weakness of D&D today is that it is a closed club. New players have to find an existing player to show them whats what. There isn't a product newb friendly enough to teach a whole group without the benefit of at least one experienced gamer.

 

[dunbruha]

...want simple skills? Easy - just use your ability scores with some kind of level and class adjustment. Want more detailed skills? No problem - just add skills, either groups like Athletics and/or specialties like Jump.

The same approach would work well for feats. Want a simple character? Do away with feats and have better class features and builds. Want feats? Sure - they could be modifications and specialties off of class features.

And so on. Best of all, a simple, core game would better allow for house ruling - you just paste it onto the core game and, voila, a house rule. The Pick-Up-Sticks Problem (PUSP) isn't as much of a problem because there aren't as many sticks.

This game has already been invented: Castles & Crusades.