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

[ExploderWizard]

I think that some here may be confusing plug-in expansion material with actual houserules.

IMHO:

If you add a ton of 3rd party feats its not really a houserule.

If you change how a particular feat works in your game its a houserule.

Same for spells, prestige classes, etc. What material there is to choose from for a given campaign isn't the same as houseruling.

If I announce a by the book 3.5 game [core 3 books only] that isn't a houseruled game even though a huge pile of official material is being excluded.

If I then decide that I hate sorcerers and decree that all arcane casters must have a spellbook, then I'm houseruling.

So, while I think 3E saw more published optional material than any other edition that doesn't mean it was the most heavily houseruled.

 

[TarionzCousin]

This thread is fascinating and informative, but I feel some points are being overlooked:

1. A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.

2. I meet a lot of people and I'm convinced that the vast majority of wrong-thinking people are right.

3. Without change something sleeps inside us and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.

 

[billd91]

So, while I think 3E saw more published optional material than any other edition that doesn't mean it was the most heavily houseruled.

Not every 3PP just added new feats and prestige classes, though. Some actually made adjustments to the rules of the game. That was also part of the point of the OGL. The Green Ronin Thieves' World supplements, for example, made a variety of changes to the rules of the game. So did the Rokugan supplements.

Ultimately, it depends on what you consider to be house rule-like. I think DM-added subsystems usually count as house rules. And most of the 3PP stuff I have, which admittedly isn't tons, has something I'd consider a house rule if the DM included it in a D&D game.

 

[Ourph]

I would point out two other things though - third party products produced under the OGL are not 'house rules', they are third party products.

I'm not sure I see the distinction. I create changes in the basic structure of the game rules for my private home game, it's a houserule. I incorporate changes in the basic structure of the game rules created by someone else in my private home game, now it's not a house rule? Sure, you can be hyper-pedantic about the term "house rule" but I don't think it invalidates my point that the base system of 3e was folded, spindled and mutilated in any number of ways over the last decade by both private rules changes and published d20-derivatives and most, if not all, of the experiments generated an entirely workable game.

 

[carmachu]

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.

Oh hell no. I had enough of that crap in 2nd edition. I dont want a system thats vague and needs help. 2nd edition needed ALOT of PUSP and was unworkable after a while.

I think your vision is colored between 3.x/4e era and the 1st and 2nd one.

 

[Mercurius]

The problem with 21st century D&D is that so many players still have a 20th centurty mindset. Guess what? It will never be the same again. It never is.

What do you mean by "20th century mindset" in relation to D&D or this thread?

The problem with your statement is that you could just as easily say "The problem with 4E is that so many players still have a 3.x edition mindset. Guess what? It will never be the same again. It never is." Actually, I've seen a lot of folks say that and people get pissed off.

 

[pawsplay]

What do you mean by "20th century mindset" in relation to D&D or this thread?

The problem with your statement is that you could just as easily say "The problem with 4E is that so many players still have a 3.x edition mindset. Guess what? It will never be the same again. It never is." Actually, I've seen a lot of folks say that and people get pissed off.

You could say that, but they are not interchangeable statements. I am not talking about someone's poison of choice. Rather, I am talking about a cultural experience. Your statement is nonsense, since anyone could play 3.5 pretty much whenever they want.

You mentioned in the OP a "good starter set." Well, no one knows for sure what that would look like, because every other time there's been a starter set, the market, the whole culture, was quite different. The original Red Box was a smash hit because it successfully introduced D&D to the kids who bought it at the toy stores it was sold at. If you published the exact same product today, would people even connect with it? And yet I don't think today's 12-year-olds are all that different in nature.

Think about swing music. It's great music. But almost no one's writing it today. There's no market for it. There was a swing revival fad in the 1990s. Why then and not now? Why swing in the 1930s and 1940s, and hip hop now? For a swing revival, are we all just waiting for a good swing band? It's not as if swing music has been rendered obsolete.

You seemed to be saying in the OP that you had found a singular solution to a basic problem. Yet I do not agree with either your diagnosis nor your cure. I like 3.5. The things I don't like about it would not be "fixed" by your proposal, while things I enjoy would probably be diminished. You are evidently not the only person who thought D&D had to be destroyed in order to save it; WotC seems to agree. Paizo pursued a less radical solution.

The "20th century mindset" is the belief that the state of gaming is as it was in the 20th centurty. But it is not. Recreating the golden years of gaming (say, 1980 to 2001) is probably impossible. It's possible some new game will give the whole genre a shot in the arm, but I suspect it's not going to be a "good starter set" that has some particular kind of simplicity.

 

[Glade Riven]

It seems ironic to me that part of the "golden years" is when TSR went under...

 

[Hussar]

/snip
So, while I think 3E saw more published optional material than any other edition that doesn't mean it was the most heavily houseruled.

I'm not sure that's true. I've seen the lists that someone has put out (and I apologize for forgetting the name) that showed just how much material TSR churned out for 2e. Even counting 3pp, it's a pretty close race as to how much material there was for 2e or 3e.

Again, I really don't understand this call for a stripped down Basic game. In 1980 (ish) when Basic D&D was getting going, that was pretty much the only entry point into RPG's. There just weren't anything else that really encapsulated what you were doing when playing an RPG - the basic concept of a game that you never really win and all the players should work together was a huge paradigm shift.

Today, it's old hat. There are any number of cooperative video and board games. There's a list as long as my arm for people of virtually any age starting at about 5 years old.

Why do we need a stripped down D&D to induct people into RPG's? There's a bajillion ways to teach the basics of D&D - creating characters, playing a role, exploring a fictional setting, combat, mechanics, whatever - that don't need a boxed set to do.

Thirty years ago, if you told someone you played an RPG, they'd have no idea what you were talking about. Today, I can tell my 20 year old Japanese students that I play an RPG and, while they might jump to the idea of Japanese JRPG computer games, they absolutely have the basics down.

IMO, the point of Basic D&D back in the day was to introduce very new concepts to young players. Today, those concepts are present in many, many games they play now.

Let me turn it around. What would a basic D&D game teach potential new players that they cannot learn from a host of other sources?

 

[Hussar]

It seems ironic to me that part of the "golden years" is when TSR went under...

To be fair Transbot9, that was more to do with some very questionable business practices than any lack in the 2e system. It wasn't that 2e players were dying on the vine, it's that TSR was run by people who had the business sense of concussed gerbils.