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

[overgeeked]

In older editions, my mom would bring everyone an ice cream sandwich about 2/3rds of the way into the game.

In newer editions, she does not.

When we played as kids, we'd get pizza. When we played as adults, we get pizza.

Therefore the game hasn't changed at all.

 

[Lanefan]

When we played as kids, we'd get pizza. When we played as adults, we get pizza.

Therefore the game hasn't changed at all.

Sure it has: the percentage of pizza eaten vs. pizza thrown at other players has, I hope, increased significantly over the years.

 

[payn]

OK, how else do you enforce rarity?

Let's take my current setting as an example, so I can't be accused of picking on anyone else.

In that setting Gnomes are a rather rare sight - there's only a few tens of thousands of them left worldwide, and many of those are widely scattered. Gnomes are, however, still a PC-playable species in my game. To reconcile the low odds of ever even meeting a Gnome with their PC-playable status, I want to somehow make them rare - but still available - as PCs, so as not to end up with a disproportionate number of them in adventuring parties.

Who cares if two or three of them are in a party? I mean, tens of thousands can be rare, but are you really saying they never ever travel together? Family of gnomes never appear? Gnome friends never travel together? The idea that they are so rare you never see more than one at a time seems more strange than to encounter a couple in an adventuring party.

It should be noted also that for a few classes Gnomes are a very optimal/powerful choice - their generally high Con, high Dex, and reasonable Int lends itself extremely well to low-hit-die back-line classes such as Thieves and Mages.
How would you mechanically enforce that rarity?

Dial back races/species/ancestries/ethnicities in RPGs so they all are playable choices that dont require janky random rolls and other oberoni balance solutions.

 

[Azzy]

OK, how else do you enforce rarity?

Let's take my current setting as an example, so I can't be accused of picking on anyone else.

In that setting Gnomes are a rather rare sight - there's only a few tens of thousands of them left worldwide, and many of those are widely scattered. Gnomes are, however, still a PC-playable species in my game. To reconcile the low odds of ever even meeting a Gnome with their PC-playable status, I want to somehow make them rare - but still available - as PCs, so as not to end up with a disproportionate number of them in adventuring parties.

It should be noted also that for a few classes Gnomes are a very optimal/powerful choice - their generally high Con, high Dex, and reasonable Int lends itself extremely well to low-hit-die back-line classes such as Thieves and Mages.

How would you mechanically enforce that rarity?

Why not ask the players to not have more than one (or any) in the party?

The best way to enfore rarity in a campaign is doing so on the DM's side, by not having a lot of gnome npcs.

 

[overgeeked]

Sure it has: the percentage of pizza eaten vs. pizza thrown at other players has, I hope, increased significantly over the years.

Oh, no. It's dropped dramatically. We used to sling it around all the time. It was free when we were kids, now we have to pay for it. That stuff is like gold.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Who cares if two or three of them are in a party? I mean, tens of thousands can be rare, but are you really saying they never ever travel together? Family of gnomes never appear? Gnome friends never travel together? The idea that they are so rare you never see more than one at a time seems more strange than to encounter a couple in an adventuring party.

Dial back races/species/ancestries/ethnicities in RPGs so they all are playable choices that dont require janky random rolls and other oberoni balance solutions.

In what way does that enforce rarity?

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Again, you already are, effectively, doing just that when you're rolling stats.

I'm not sure why you're obsessed with this caricature of machismo and manliness in old-school play. I get that you don't understand the OSR, that's fine. It's not for everyone. But at least stop with the bizarre strawman.

Do you happen to have been around gaming long enough to remember the Dungeon Bastard? You know that was a parody, right?

Double penalty bro! Imagine the fun when a pal gets a 7 strength AND a d12 attack dice!!

It has been my experience that the OSR tends to attract a certain type of toxic "gaming jocks", and there is a high amount of problematic behaviors among its fans. If not inherently toxic itself, OSR spaces seem pretty content to allow them under their tent. Whenever there are threads on making D&D more inclusive, respecting player boundaries, etc, I can count on the usual suspects to get it locked. So yes, I have a problem with the type of adversarial "Git Gud" game style that attracts those individuals. See also the Dark Souls fandom for how playstyle and the people it attracts also produces an environment I find distasteful.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

OK, how else do you enforce rarity?

Let's take my current setting as an example, so I can't be accused of picking on anyone else.

In that setting Gnomes are a rather rare sight - there's only a few tens of thousands of them left worldwide, and many of those are widely scattered. Gnomes are, however, still a PC-playable species in my game. To reconcile the low odds of ever even meeting a Gnome with their PC-playable status, I want to somehow make them rare - but still available - as PCs, so as not to end up with a disproportionate number of them in adventuring parties.

It should be noted also that for a few classes Gnomes are a very optimal/powerful choice - their generally high Con, high Dex, and reasonable Int lends itself extremely well to low-hit-die back-line classes such as Thieves and Mages.

How would you mechanically enforce that rarity?

Just saying, adventurers are pretty damn rare. So are mages. Why do you let PC's be them if they're supposed to be that rare? And, if the player jumps through your hoops to get the right to play a gnome, it demystifies them pretty fast, as now there's a gnome in every encounter.

 

[beancounter]

When we played as kids, we'd get pizza. When we played as adults, we get pizza.

Therefore the game hasn't changed at all.

Yes, of course the game has changed

Pizza and soda ====> pizza and beer.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Just saying, adventurers are pretty damn rare. So are mages. Why do you let PC's be them if they're supposed to be that rare?

Because it doesn't feel rare if all your spotlight characters are "rare" things. In what way is magic rare, for example, if all the party are spellcasters?