D&D 5E State of D&D

[Mistwell]

I will say this- you spend a light of time clarifying what everyone else misunderstands

Everyone else? There you go again. It was you that misunderstood during that conversation. And after I clarified a couple hours later you then (knowing what I had just said in the clarification) switched it back again to boss (and even mentioned big bad). I made it clear again, and then again, and you kept switching it back. That's all on you and nobody else. I don't know why you opted to play that game of switching what was said and then bashing the switch rather than just talk about the issue and maybe use your experience to offer advice on how to address the issue I was experiencing, but for whatever reason that's what you did. I just re-quoted it for everyone to see, so there can be no confusion over what happened.

You didn't respond to the overwhelming bulk of it - so I take that as you saying you don't have a response. OK then. I answered your question about Gygaxian boss creatures (twice) giving you a long list of those guys Gygax liked for that (twice)...and got crickets in response from you (twice). Even though that wasn't the topic I was referring to, but for respect to what you wanted to talk about I looked it up and responded anyway. Nothing in return from you except more personal bashing. Nothing at all on either topic.

 

[Mistwell]

[MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION] to be fair I thought you were focused on the boss monster idea vs the solo monster idea.

I do agree that a single level appropriate monster in 5e is easier than a group of level appropriate monsters. But it's easy to adjust for if one were apt too.

Also I think OD&D and 1AD&D didn't really do "level appropriate". It sorta did but not like 5e.

It's not that easy to adjust for it, which is my point. You start with a lack of comparable monsters at that CR, and then it's compounded by a lack of Legendary monsters and Lairs at that level, and adjusting becomes quite the pain. If you think it's easy to adjust, tell me how you do it. How would you, for example, make a level 12 solo that's a decent challenge for a party?

 

[Remathilis]

Early D&D was modeled after wargaming (Arneson) and expanded on by Gygax, and had a rotating cast of players in an underground dungeon with little-to-no plot overriding plot, often involving items such as a fountain that would generate monsters. If you look at the early modules, whether they are BECMI (Chateau D'Amberville) or not (Barrier Peaks, Tsojcanth), the one thing you will note is the conspicuous absence of a "Boss Fight." If your concept of a "Boss Fight" is just "one creature" without any other connotation, then, um, sure. Sometimes you fought a single creature. But that's not a "Boss Fight," that's fighting a single monster. The concept of the "Boss Fight" that I see with pathfinder and 3.5e players (and 4e players), which is to say, a single, very difficult creature you face after numerous other encounters is one that is foreign to me as a grognard. But maybe I wasn't in the right grognard circles?

Strahd. Lolth. King Snurre. Lareth the Beautiful. Sakath the Lizard King.

Sure, there were modules that had no overarching plot beyond get rich or die trying (B1, B2, X1) but certainly many dungeons had big bad evil guys who own the dungeon and control the monsters therein, commonly called "boss monsters". The module assumes you defeat them to win, die, or leave and they win.

 

[GreenTengu]

To be fair though, it was very rare that these creatures, other than dragons, would be "solo's". The orc chief wasn't alone - he had lots of other orcs around him. Same with that giant King. The idea of the "solo" encounter is something of a later development, although, I would say that it wasn't from video games. The capstone encounter in many modules were not solo encounters.

Granted, but adventures that actually had a story, actually had an end goal at all tended t finish with a planned encounter with something that was stronger than anything previously-- even if it did have helpers, it was still at least a level or a few levels higher than anything else the party had come across.

 

[MerricB]

Paizo and GURPS both do, and guess which are the two most successful game systems that aren't D&D...

Not GURPS?

http://www.enworld.org/forum/hotgames.php

 

[seebs]

Not GURPS?

http://www.enworld.org/forum/hotgames.php

I could be totally wrong, but I was under the impression that it was economically successful, and had been for quite some time. Which doesn't necessarily correlate directly with discussion levels on enworld.

 

[darjr]

Those are discussion levels from a lot of sources.

 

[Kite474]

Theres still the good chance it's economically successful. I alsl know quite a few folks who dont play GURPS but use the books for other systems.

 

[darjr]

Well economically successful for sjg might be a complete disaster for Paizo. For instance I found 540+ scheduled games for pathfinder at GEN CON and only two for GURPS.

 

[Morrus]

Those are discussion levels from a lot of sources.

And, indeed, not from EN World at all now. Since WotC's forum community largely moved here, this place skewed the data too much (it doesn't include any official forums either) so I decided to exclude EN World from the sample.