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

[Cadence]

What an interesting reaction to inclusivity.

So folks have stopped griping - based on their own preferences - about DMs who volunteer to run campaigns with: strong built in back-stories and only races and classes that go with them, no restrictions on character options, relatively high chance of dying at level one, near guaranteed path to level 20, aiming low on the metagaming, no headshakes about any metagaming, not running complete sandboxes, low magic item prevalence, magic item shops, using alignment, not using alignment, not having any plot driving things, rolled stats in order, choose your own stats, serve pizza with pineapple, and/or ban pizza with pineapple? Awesome!

...

But what are we going to post about!?!?

 

[Ovinomancer]

So folks have stopped griping - based on their own preferences - about DMs who volunteer to run campaigns with: strong built in back-stories and only races and classes that go with them, no restrictions on character options, relatively high chance of dying at level one, near guaranteed path to level 20, aiming low on the metagaming, no headshakes about any metagaming, not running complete sandboxes, low magic item prevalence, magic item shops, using alignment, not using alignment, not having any plot driving things, rolled stats in order, choose your own stats, serve pizza with pineapple, and/or ban pizza with pineapple? Awesome!

...

But what are we going to post about!?!?

How to do those things (they don't all work the same)? I mean, that's the goal of most of my posting. I got involved in this thread not because people wanted to say they want to run a certain way, but because they were saying that current edition no longer offers GMs tools for things I saw current edition beef up from the last two editions.

 

[Hussar]

I have a fairly new group right now. We've been gaming together for about a year or so now. Half of the group I met through the game, while the other half came with me when our last group parted ways.

So, I've been through the "rebuilding a group" process for the first time in about 10 years.

I really, really haven't seen any difference. Some people want to be able to show up to the table, play their time, and that's the sum total of their contribution. Some people want to dive in a bit more. Some people want to dive in a LOT more. This is edition and age independent.

Since this is a thread about changes in D&D over time, I'm frankly baffled the people see this as edition dependent.

Wayyyy back in the day, I had players try all sorts of stuff. They saw something in Dragon and wanted to try it out - resulting in a Son of Kord character from an ancient Dragon (might even have been The Dragon at the time). Minotaur characters after Dragonlance made an appearance but long before the DL hardback. Gunslingers a la The Dark Tower were a HUGE thing. So on and so forth. Players coming with massive backstories or complete blank slates.

None of this has changed at all.

I think something that has changed though is the level of self-examination we tend to do. The language around "social contract" and "play preference" has expanded considerably. Session Zero is a pretty common thing now that, once upon a time, was a new idea. Some groups took the "Only the DM should see the DMG" advice to heart. My group didn't. We all took turns running adventures. It wasn't until I got into university that I had even heard of the idea that a group only had one DM.

Perhaps the largest change in D&D is the level of communication between tables and the ability to be exposed to different playstyles.

 

[Cadence]

How to do those things (they don't all work the same)? I mean, that's the goal of most of my posting. I got involved in this thread not because people wanted to say they want to run a certain way, but because they were saying that current edition no longer offers GMs tools for things I saw current edition beef up from the last two editions.

It feels like an edition can make some things harder or easier (either by default rule or by signaling), but none of those in my list feel that hard to me to do running a game in 5e (except making folks happy with pizza toppings or not shake their head about things that annoy them in general).

As always, finding players to play in the style one wants to run - or a DM who runs the style one wants to play - feels like it could be tricky. Is it trickier now because more people have thought about more playstyles (or at least read about them in the books)? And does social media make it easier to find folks who strongly agree with ones preferences, or find posts by those who like the opposite?

 

[Cadence]

Wayyyy back in the day, I had players try all sorts of stuff. They saw something in Dragon and wanted to try it out - resulting in a Son of Kord character from an ancient Dragon (might even have been The Dragon at the time). Minotaur characters after Dragonlance made an appearance but long before the DL hardback. Gunslingers a la The Dark Tower were a HUGE thing. So on and so forth. Players coming with massive backstories or complete blank slates.

None of this has changed at all.

I really miss Dragon magazine.

(I started at issue 64 and kept subscribing for 6(?) years before drifting away when I went off to college).

 

[Scott Christian]

Perhaps the largest change in D&D is the level of communication between tables and the ability to be exposed to different playstyles.

This, in my opinion, is insightful. It is easy to forget when you only had friends that you convinced to try D&D, or maybe, the one gaming store in your city, where you could find players on a pin-up wall.
I lived in Orlando, and we had one store. Now, last time I visited Orlando, my friend told me about four different stores. The pool of options has gone from Red Lobster to Cheesecake Factory.
All that said, while the players may not have shifted for you Hussar, have the theme, tone, and aesthetic?

 

[tetrasodium]

Okay, so if the table decided that they want to do the thing with the dwarf and the dragon, but the GM had different plans, what happens?

It depends on what part of hashing things out we are at. Sometimes I'll say "I'm running a game in x (eberron/raveloft/etc) and the session zero for characters is going to be about characters that must fit the setting along with the rest of the group. Other times I have a group who I feel is better able to handle a more collaborative session zero that includes deciding the world. Even in that second group I've seen players try to force a background while we are deciding the world (often by describing their family keep and such then getting upset with the gm or group saying hell no when they want to declare moria their family thing because that was the time to be inserting high level* world elements) in the first type I frequently run into authors who declare they are being denied and having their creativity shut down when I explain how a backstory conflicts with the setting & ways that can be fixed.. Ironically communication is easier than ever with discord Facebook & everything else but the level of resistance is just as if not higher.

*10,000ft broad strokes overview type not cr/character level.

 

[Hussar]

/snip
All that said, while the players may not have shifted for you Hussar, have the theme, tone, and aesthetic?

Oh sure. Latter era DnD is just as much a product of its time as earlier.

Fantasy as a genre has changed hugely in the last 50 years. So of course DnD has too.

Much broader themes for one. The advent and then almost standardization of the idea of Adventure Path is a huge shift. Back in the day I think most dms didn’t think much past the next adventure. The idea of having an entire campaign ready to go from day 1 was practically unheard of.

 

[GuyBoy]

I really miss Dragon magazine.

(I started at issue 64 and kept subscribing for 6(?) years before drifting away when I went off to college).

I really miss Dragon magazine too. And Dungeon.
That’s a market change for the worse.

 

[Minigiant]

Is new damage types one?

acid, bludgeoning, cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, piercing, poison, psychic, radiant, slashing, and thunder

Could we get new damage types in 6e?
bleed damage?
time/temporal (aging spells, haste and slow deal damage, elves and dwarves resist to time damage)
a proper holy damage?
EMOTIONAL DAMAGE? (I cast Cringe on the orc)