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

[Thomas Shey]

I guess I just haven't run into the problems others here have experienced when it comes to players and DMs having different visions.

I certainly have, but some people's ideas of the best way to handle it could definitely have died in the 70's for all of me. There's such a thing as a cure as bad or worse than the disease.

 

[Ovinomancer]

There’s a definite Mr Pink, Mr Black, Reservoir Dogs thing whenever I’ve played with a group of mostly strangers. As long as someone’s in charge and has the final say (the DM), then things can work out. If everyone’s equally in charge, things never move forward.

Well, yes, if you're playing a game that puts the GM in the driving seat for fiction, this is so. It's not universal, even within D&D.

 

[Remathilis]

That is what makes it an excellent example of how the modern GM is backed against the wall & left with nothing.

I'm no longer going to debate this point by point because I no longer feel there is any attempt to find consensus. Enjoy knocking down your strawmen about those wicked players who don't appreciate your genius. I spent years playing under a DM whose game philosophy bordered on gaslighting because he was my friend, and I have no desire to ever be subject to the tyranny of God-King DMs enthralled with their own greatness again.

Have fun screaming into the void.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Bold emphasis mine. Other types of challenges such as?

In my campaign the PCs are working at changing the world for the better by backing and helping various group in various struggles. Currently they are tasked with travelling to the Court of the Fey (In the feywild) as emissaries of an army building up for an invasion of a continent.

Theoretically they could get through the entire arc of allying with the Court (or alternately a Fey banished from the court) and gaining valuable allied help for their invading army without any sort of risk of death or dismemberment.

The stakes of success or failure of their mission is how much or little they contribute towards achieving the short term goal of gaining allies, the medium term goal of invading successfully, and the long term goal of unseating a corrupt theocracy of Tempus from it's grasp on the continent.

Dying in a battle isn't much more than a speed bump in the game....they have already been TPKed once before which resulted in a failed defense of a city by mind flayer seeded abberations.

They were raised and used as tools by one of the corrupted Tempsians (word?) which is why they now side firmly against them.

 

[Fifth Element]

Reducing one kind of challenge (especially the original one) is reducing challenge. It just doesn't matter to you because you care about different things.

And if it also increases another type of challenge? Would you describe it with a blanket "reduces challenge" when it in fact reduces some types of challenge but increases others? That would seem to be a dishonestly selective description in such a case.

 

[Fifth Element]

Bold emphasis mine. Other types of challenges such as?

Already provided an example of this - developing new character personalities is discouraged when you have reason to believe your character is unlikely to survive more than a few sessions. Why spend time and effort on a new personality when it will likely last only a very short time? If you expect the character to survive a decent amount of time, you have more incentive to develop a personality for that character, so you can challenge yourself to develop new character personalities you've never played before.

 

[Fifth Element]

That is what makes it an excellent example of how the modern GM is backed against the wall & left with nothing.

Goodness gracious. Of course we don't know if you're running something specific as a DM because this is a discussion that involved hypotheticals. If we were actually in your game you would have already told us about what you were intending to run. So it's really unfair to react to someone posting about a hypothetical as if a real-world situation wouldn't have more context to inform it.

And if the players lose interest in what you have to say about the game world, maybe it's because it's not an interesting game world. Why do you assume it must be a problem with the players? If every player at your table has no interest in your game world, that sounds like your game world just isn't interesting to them. Maybe try another game world.

 

[Fifth Element]

Maybe it's just the difference between gaming with longtime friends vs. gaming with strangers or casual acquaintances?

I think this is a big part of it. I've been playing for 35 years or so (which is quite weird when I write it out like that, there's no way I'm that old, am I?), and at least 98% of that has been with my friends, for instance.

 

[Lanefan]

The idea that a game is "less demanding" because your character is less likely to die at first level comes from a narrow point of view. It suggests that the the "challenge" of the game rests in having your character survive. That's certainly one perspective, and one that fits certain rulesets quite well.

But please don't make the mistake of thinking that this is the only way in which an RPG, or D&D specifically, can be challenging. It isn't. When you have the expectation that your character will likely perish quickly, you don't put nearly as much effort into developing a personality for that character, for instance. That's a great way to challenge yourself in D&D. Play a character with a very different personality than your own. It's challenging, and only makes sense if you have an expectation that you will be playing that character for a significant amount of time. Otherwise the effort you put into the character's personality will feel wasted.

Oddly enough, by one way of reading what you say here I think you're agreeing with me...underneath all the disagreement bits.

Your last sentence - the effort...will be wasted - ties it together. Yes that effort will be wasted, which means having it not be wasted only adds to the stakes in the challenge of keeping the character alive.

You're quite right that survival isn't the only way an RPG can be challenging. It's one of many ways which in total add up to the overall challenge, or demands, presented by the game. Removing or greatly nerfing the survival portion of that challenge therefore reduces the overall total challenge; hence my here-paraphrased statement lower lethality makes the game less demanding is and remains true.

And if it was only that one piece that had been reduced then, well, OK. However, side-along with this numerous other once-challenges have also been reduced or greatly mitigated - level loss, item destruction, rest-recovery-healing speed, spellcasting in combat, to name a few* - which makes the lower-lethality piece simply a part of an overall trend: the game is less demanding on its characters and therefore is less challenging to its players.

* - worth noting that none of the examples I listed cause the effort put into developing personality etc. to go to waste as (with the painful exception of losing more levels than it has to give) the character will very likely remain alive and playable after encountering any of them. Now, obviously that play might have to be approached a bit differently - if it takes a few days to recover one's hit points, for example, a modicum of caution around taking on more combats might be called for - but the personality etc. is still there.

Plus, the idea that a game publisher would not take into account what the players of its games prefer when designing a game is...baffling.

A slightly-hyperbolic example, then: players in Monopoly would doubtless all prefer to start with loads of money and be unable to lose the game. Once this became apparent in the wild, should Parker Bros. have altered Monopoly's design to make it this way? Clearly, no; or the game becomes pointless.

The same principle holds true in D&D: make it too easy and remove most of the "loss conditions" and eventually much of the point goes away.

 

[Lanefan]

Already provided an example of this - developing new character personalities is discouraged when you have reason to believe your character is unlikely to survive more than a few sessions. Why spend time and effort on a new personality when it will likely last only a very short time? If you expect the character to survive a decent amount of time, you have more incentive to develop a personality for that character, so you can challenge yourself to develop new character personalities you've never played before.

Flip side: why stop at developing just one new personality when I can develop six over the same period of time?