D&D General How has D&D changed over the decades?

[Thomas Shey]

Why would you assume people didn't have fun?

I find it odd that people, you among others, choose create this narrative that classic edition games are just dirt farmers and drudgery and death.

That's hyperbole if people are doing it, but I can promise there were a large number of people who didn't enjoy random generation and early level character churn, because I knew a pretty large number of them.

I think an interesting poll for those who promote this narrative of older editions would be what age did you play older editions and when was the last time you played them.

18. Since there's nothing attractive about OD&D to me, why would I play it more recently? I barely find any D&D derivative attractive at all.

 

[Minigiant]

I think another way D&D has changed is that it went from being designed to replicate a sinle subgenre and flavorof fantasy to being an all rounder game that is decent at many subgenres and flavors but not excellent at any single one .

This allows, lated editions of D&D to be tweaked easier to a group's preference IF the group preferred a deep mixture of genre/flavors, wan't deeply tilted to a single one, or prefferred rotating in and out of subgenres and flavors to curb staleness.

Where older edtions for swords and sorcery better, 4e and 5e let to run a mix of intrigue, mythic, and high fantasy easier.

 

[Lanefan]

Why is it that players must never be expected to work with their gm on a mutually desired starting point or find a gm that is willing to run a game that fits their unreasonable pc idea? I'm sure I've seen Lanefan say that at least some percentage of his games start above first level.

Some - as in quite a few - new characters certainly start above 1st level, based on the average level of the party they're joining; but if I'm starting an entirely new campaign (which is rare - 3 times in 38 years) then everyone starts at raw 1st.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Where older edtions for swords and sorcery better, 4e and 5e let to run a mix of intrigue, mythic, and high fantasy easier.

It was never really sword and sorcery. Not out of the box. There was always too much magic, both in terms of spellcasters and in terms of items. Heck, in terms of the number of fantastic monsters, far as that went.

 

[Thunderfoot]

I think another way D&D has changed is that it went from being designed to replicate a sinle subgenre and flavorof fantasy to being an all rounder game that is decent at many subgenres and flavors but not excellent at any single one .

^^^This. Much more succinct than my clumsy attempts.

 

[Minigiant]

Another thing.

D&D not longer humancentric in rules.

One my train ride to work yesterday, Ipondered how 1e would look and what subclasses would be in the PHB if every race was treated equally for classes. Then which subclasses would be full classes now in 5e.


For example, the only fighter subclasses in 1e were Paladin (Human) only and Ranger (Human or Half Elf only). But would if 1e had Runeknights (Dwarf only) Battleragers (Dwarf only), Arcane Archers (Elf and Half Elf only), Gadgeteers (Gnome only).

We coulda had a Runeknight full class withtons of official runes to play with, man. My dwarf is over here with no glowing squiggles on his axe!!!

 

[Lanefan]

I spent a lot of years rolling up PCs, both in 3d6 Basic and 4d6 AD&D.

I don't agree that playing a concept I want to play is entitlement. RPGs are a type of entertainment and the player should have a say in it. Would you watch a Netflix like service where you have no control on what show you watch? You turn it on to watch the next episode of Stranger Things and it decides you can only watch Gilmore Girls? No. You want to watch what you want to watch. Time is too short to let dice determine if you're going to be a paladin or not.

Thing is, I prefer a system where some classes are less common than others, and the only real way to enforce that is to gate them somehow. High stat requirements are a convenient means of achieving this, meaning that if a player's concept going in involves playing a gated class that concept is going to have to be put on hold until-unless the dice co-operate.

Stepping back a bit, the idea of having a character concept in mind before roll-up night is the root of the problem.

Besides: the longer I played the more me and my DMs cheated the chargen rules anyway, either the DM allowing a player to raise his highest score to the minimum anyway or the player "magically" rolling the exact scores they needed for the class and race they wanted to play.

It seems others did so as well, but not here.

If you want to pick a fight over players wanting options not normally allowed in a setting or but the DM, you might have a conversation worth exploring. But "you didn't roll a 16 dex, so no gnome illusionist for you!" is a relic of the game that can rot with level limits and strength capped by gender.

What I'm talking about here could be summed up as options that are intended to be partially allowed in a setting; where the specific intent is that when those options do appear in play they will be uncommon and known to be so; reflective of the setting's general population where such things are also quite unusual. Some species in my setting (Gnomes, for one) are far less common than others, but playable if you happen to roll into one on a species-abundance table. Some classes in my setting are similarly gated, in this case behind stat limits, so as to enforce some degree of rarity.

Level limits are another means of gating class-species combos but nowhere near as effective and generally not worth it. Variable xp requirements would, I suppose, be another e.g. a Gnome Fighter needs 1.25x the xp a Human Fighter does to advance each level but a Gnome Illusionist only needs .85x; but that too is more work than needed and would provide, I suspect, a very sub-optimal end result.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't remember out and out cheating, but I remember a lot of 'rolling up lotsa PCs.' One really common thing was not rolling '3d6 in order', but 'rolling 3d6 6 times, and rearrange them as you please.' Even back in those olden days, you had players who liked particular classes, and letting them rearrange stats let that happen. I really don't remember much of 'roll in order and play what the dice say.'

We've allowed rearranging since forever, but it still don't help if you're thinking about a Paladin and your best roll is 14.

 

[Lanefan]

Look back to 83 and the covers of the BECMI sets. Look at that greatsword on the cover of the Companion set in particular! Not realistic. Also, the earlier Erol Otis art—not realistic in the slightest (a lot of times just goofy).

Erol Otis' art is anything but realistic.

The age of realism in D&D art was the late 1e-early 2e era, when Elmore, Parkinson, and Caldwell were at their peak. A lot of that art truly rocked, if one ignores the cheesecake.

3e's art is generally hideous - ugly characters portrayed in ugly colours, mostly - and 3.5 added ridiculously out-of-scale weapons and armour to everything.

It's improved some since; 5e's art is generally not too bad.

Fantasy "literature" of all eras has been "pop culture". That means nothing.

I suspect had JRR Tolkein ever heard his works being referred to as "pop culture" he'd have blown a gasket; even though they somewhat became so late in his life.

 

[Minigiant]

Stepping back a bit, the idea of having a character concept in mind before roll-up night is the root of the problem.

Its only a problem if you have access to every major playstyle with whatever set of rolls.

If you gate certain playstyles behind being lucky with rolls, it becomes a problem. At that point, I can't fault people for having character concepts head of time. D&D has become better at that.