D&D General On Grognardism...

[Blue]

Entirely depends on the mechanics being discussed.

Yes, but that's not the end of the discussion. It's very possible to cherry pick better systems. When every subsystem is unique, some of them are a better fit then a boolean universal mechanic. But when you look at them in aggregate, it's clear that the mechanics of D&D as a whole have improved over the past 40+ years.

I don't think D&D was the end-all-be-all of systems. But I do believe that it got some things right that have gotten worse or entirely gone away in later editions.

Oh, I definitely agree with you there. Heck, 5e is my favorite D&D but it's not even my favorite D&D-like (that's 13th Age). But really I don't think it is possible to have a "end-all-be-all" system in the first place - different systems have different feels that cater to different tables. This table wants more narrative, this wants crunchy, this wants light but balanced - there are lots of axis to measure games.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

They consulted very widely, including with OSR people, but lots of other people too. And the game is very successful. You think the OSR influence is some kind of taint on 5e?

Given the individuals selected? ABSOLUTELY!!! Absolutely. Yes! If they'd selected different OSR people, it wouldn't be at all (and indeed the OSR movement in general has been "reclaimed" so is no longer like that), but one was so bad they literally disavowed him and removed him from the credits, the other has views so broadly unacceptable he'd be banned from ENworld (indeed, he may well be). These two weren't merely "grogs", they were the tip of the spear of what you might call RPG ultra-conservatism (talking design not politics here), that make conventional grogs look very moderate indeed. The latter didn't even really have enough experience to qualify him to advise on basic RPG design, let alone a new edition of D&D, which made it particularly shocking, given his name was next to RPG design titans like Robin D. Laws, for god's sake!

So yeah, they made an extremely serious unforced error there. And from the playtesting iterations it was very clear that they were discarding ideas which seemed popular, but also were non-groggy. We can never really know how popular they were, but the initial, closed playtesting stuff certainly largely or entirely went out to people on the groggy end of the scale too.

None of these mistakes are particularly likely to be made today, thankfully.

 

[Sacrosanct]

They consulted very widely, including with OSR people, but lots of other people too. And the game is very successful. You think the OSR influence is some kind of taint on 5e?

An aspect of "grognard" desires in an RPG that did, IMO, lend to part of the success of 5e was rulings over rules. That's a big part of the old school way of running games, and going back to that (not things like retaining alignment, or mundane fighters, or whatever else was claimed), helped the overall 5e game succeed.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Maybe it got mixed up with the "only 10% of players are 40+" thing and the apparent anti-OSR thing - I think the bulk of OSR fans are likely Gen X or thereabouts.

No gen Xers are "in their 30s", man. Not a single one. Sorry to make you feel old. The youngest possible definition of Gen X is 1980 births. That's people who are 40-41 today.

More realistically, Gen X ends somewhere in the 1970s and the Xennial (aka Generation Catalano or The Oregon Trail Generation) micro-generation/cross-over generation, which is different from Gen X culturally is there instead (typically regarded as like 1976-1984 or thereabouts - you can shift it around a little).

Millennial starts as early as 1981, or as late as about 1985, depending on who you ask (the latter figure will be for people who use Xennial broadly). The bulk of 5E players are in that and younger generations.

 

[Lanefan]

One edition isn't better than another edition any more than football is better than basketball

As a Canadian it's my national duty to point out that hockey is better than both of these, eh.

 

[jgsugden]

I reread this sentence a couple of times and I'm still scratching my head...

4E narrowed the band of power levels considerably. There were a lot less 'world shattering powerful magic spells' and more 'slightly upgraded or degraded fireball'. The powers were very similar between classes, giving everything a generic and non-iconic feel. That makes it hard to have a high fantasy adventure with the feel of Lord of the Rings ... everything felt like a slow moving World of Warcraft. This is all hashed out over and over and over in a decade of threads.

...4E barely killed any sacred cow — Vancian magic and Saving Throws are the only that come to mind.

The entire Daily / encounter / at-will structure. The flip side of removing vancian magic - the inclusion of rituals. The monster design. Introducing new classes like Invoker, Avenger, Warden, etc... The mathematical structure where everything went up by 1. Introducing minions. I could go on for a long time about how 4E was an abrupt change from prior editions. I don't need to, however, as there are countless threads on it - especially from the early days of 4E. You can do a Google search and read all night about it.

 

[Campbell]

As a Canadian it's my national duty to point out that hockey is better than both of these, eh.

As a contrarian hipster I am honorbound to let you know that lacrosse and rugby are actually better than all of the above.

 

[CleverNickName]

As a contrarian hipster I am honorbound to let you know that lacrosse and rugby are actually better than all of the above.

And as a self-avowed dice goblin and gamer-geek, it is my religious duty to let you know that D&D is the best game ever and all other games tie for last place.

 

[not-so-newguy]

And as a self-avowed dice goblin and gamer-geek, it is my religious duty to let you know that D&D is the best game ever and all other games tie for last place.

And as a 'Murican, I need to remind everyone that baseball season has just started and the Giants beat the Reds today

 

[Minigiant]

4E narrowed the band of power levels considerably. There were a lot less 'world shattering powerful magic spells' and more 'slightly upgraded or degraded fireball'. The powers were very similar between classes, giving everything a generic and non-iconic feel. That makes it hard to have a high fantasy adventure with the feel of Lord of the Rings ... everything felt like a slow moving World of Warcraft. This is all hashed out over and over and over in a decade of threads.

Actually that stuff was still in. The main sacred cow 4e killed was that before "martial stuff was freeform and magic stuff was defined." to "all combat stuff was defined and all noncombat stuff was freeform (aka a ritual), regardless on it being magical or not".

This made 4e very high fantasy as gold converted directly into fantasy.

And this goes back to my idea of bases and grognards.

Grognards typically had hard base assumptions for the foundation of the game. Class X can only be Race X. Class Y must be Alignment Y. Race Z can only be Class Z. Race Q is banned. Rules AB and C are in use and enforced. But once you play, you are very free.

New Gen typically is more free in foundational control. Races A-M and/classes N-Z are allowed. Restriction 1-19 are removed. However ifyou play a warlock, your patron will bother you and make demands.However you PC will be weaved into a plot as the games tend to be more narrative. If you pick wizard, you must choose one of the Wizard houses even if you dropped out of Goatboil's School of Magicians. Andthe elves are in civil war, your elf must have an opinion AND it will matter. Choo Choo Here Comes the Train! ALL ABOVE THE MAIN PLOT RAILROAD!