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

[AnotherGuy]

I can honestly say my experience is similar to @Helldritch's and @Remathilis's. BECMI to 2e (even though we had 1e materiaI, but that was used for homebrewery). I, as primary DM, resisted 3e for a good long while, by the time we made the move 3.5e had just been released, saving me from losing out monies on 3.e

But as much as I loved the books and system of 3.5e - that edition crippled me. I could never go back to it unless it was an E6 style game. I still use the books though for monster referencing and idea mining.

 

[Baron Opal II]

How do you define "Bringing your A game" in the framework of playing DnD.

Is taking 30 real time minutes to search for traps in a 10' square room by "roleplaying it" a higher level of play than comparing a DC to a Passive Perception score in 5 seconds and if so can you explain why in a factual way?

Simarly is playing a Human Fighter with innate abilities, feats, and powers a higher level of play than a Human Fighter that has none?

No.

For me, it is figuring out how the capabilities of the different characters synergize and the players being creative.

For example, the party is running away from a demon through a cave tunnel. After some intense discussion, the cleric stone shapes a teardrop boulder in the ceiling with a shaft that allows someone down the hall to have line of site to the point of the teardrop. The fighter gives up his magic sword to be melded into the base of the drop, giving it a sharp, magical point. He then stands with his shield on the near side of the teardrop. The demon charges forward and begins to hammer the fighter. The wizard magic missiles the stem of the teardrop, causing it to fall. The massive weight of the boulder drives the magical sword through the demon, pinning it if not outright killing it.

They couldn't kill it in a fair fight, so they made the fight decidedly unfair in their favor. That's "A Game". Not just looking at your character sheet as a set of keys to clear the DM's locks, but actually figuring out what your character can do in the setting of the game and working together.

 

[tetrasodium]

Ha... that is a different experience than mine.
I have seen more TPK in 5ed than in anyother edition.
Survivability is so high that players used to take the "easy" solution, since I will heal over long rest. They used to really extend their capacity. It is only when I went full grimdark and gritty realism (my version of it) that TPK ceased. By being more careful and knowing that they would have to spend resource to actually heal that the players stopped acting like their actions could have repercussions. Now, in our current campaigns: OotA (second try for the young group) 4 death, 2 revived, 2 permanent ones. They are now level 11.
2nd group does various adventures (a mega dungeon). 12 death, 8 permanent ones, 2 characters remains from the original groups. All new characters are former henchmen/hirelings or npc that were rescued. Characters are around an average level 13 now (lowest is 12th highest is 16th). And that is but two campaigns. Do you understand why background does not ring so much interests for us?

My experience as well. I think the only TPK I had in 3.x involved a good bit of barely legal drinking, players would be thinking tactically & planning ahead so were primed & already trying to run like hell if it looked like things were heading in a direction towards going south. In 5e I've had a couple with a regular group and countless with open AL tables at a flgs. In all cases with 5e the players took it as a shock that it was even possible

Spoiler: and usually turned back at blaming the gm

How do you define "Bringing your A game" in the framework of playing DnD.

Is taking 30 real time minutes to search for traps in a 10' square room by "roleplaying it" a higher level of play than comparing a DC to a Passive Perception score in 5 seconds and if so can you explain why in a factual way?

Simarly is playing a Human Fighter with innate abilities, feats, and powers a higher level of play than a Human Fighter that has none?

I've seen that kind of That hyper cautious tomb of horrors style quare poking pixel scrubbing/save scumming analog referred to similarly in the past but I was speaking in terms of combat & possibly even creative use of abilities like @Baron Opal II mentioned in 1322. In 3.x terms it would be things likebeefier crunchier & squishier types communicating towards engaging in coordinated efforts to maximize each other's strengths & mitigate each other's weaknesses. Often this included discission over positioning (de)buff control etc & general planning.

I. Modern d&d I too often see characters built in order to do those things desperately trying to get others to cooperate enough just to use their group assisting thing. In 5e:

• I regularly see players excited about having the fighting style that allows them to add their shield to an ally within 5 feet desperately trying to remind players to stay within 5 feet so they can shield them & being snubbed even though the opportunity cost of doing so is regularly zero.
• Fairly often I see artillerists desperately trying to remind players that their heal turret has a 15ft move speed & if anyone is within x feet of it they can pulse the temphp thing every single round only to have the thing spend most if not all of the fight chasing after "allies" who refused to allow the artillerist to help them by simply moving more slowly or letting enemies come to them a bit (I forget how many feet right now).
• Rarely are players willing to work with a caster trying to cast Web vision obscuring spells & so on in order to maximize those spells or communicate why they think it's a bad plan to use it that way.
• players simply solo near each other & expect everything to work out fine

 

[Thomas Shey]

I can honestly say my experience is similar to @Helldritch's and @Remathilis's. BECMI to 2e (even though we had 1e materiaI, but that was used for homebrewery). I, as primary DM, resisted 3e for a good long while, by the time we made the move 3.5e had just been released, saving me from losing out monies on 3.e

But as much as I loved the books and system of 3.5e - that edition crippled me. I could never go back to it unless it was an E6 style game. I still use the books though for monster referencing and idea mining.

This is why, in the end, I understood why 4e, PF2e and similar moved away from treating NPCs/monsters similar to PCs, even though, coming from a Hero and RQ background I don't like it; things that work for PCs in terms of complexity are a nightmare when you're trying to manage them as a GM, as I learned while running D&D3.5 in the low teens.

(There are other issues where people have carried over expectations from the 3e design era--which after all, PF1e was pretty much an extension of--that aren't too benign either, but, well, people want what they want and not everyone who has these are players).

 

[Lanefan]

The plural of anecdote is not data.

Perhaps not; but given as there isn't any hard data, collective anecdotes are all we've got.

Take lots and lots of anecdotes, take a rough average of what they say, and trends should become apparent enough even if the info-gathering methodology might not stand up to peer review.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Perhaps not; but given as there isn't any hard data, collective anecdotes are all we've got.

Take lots and lots of anecdotes, take a rough average of what they say, and trends should become apparent enough even if the info-gathering methodology might not stand up to peer review.

Only true if there isn't a lot of selection bias built into how you acquire the ancedotes. Even its true its hard to demonstrate that.

 

[Lanefan]

In my experience with 5e, I haven't found this to be true. I guess you can say I haven't had a TPK since 5e, but I've dropped plenty of PCs to death saves even with moderate treasure drops into high-middle levels (5-9). Again, your experience is not universal and we're back to dueling anecdotes.

There's a very, very big difference between dropping PCs to death saves and dropping PCs to dead.

 

[Lanefan]

As aside, in my experience death while it was extremely common for the first 2-3 levels in OD&D started to drop off after that and fell off a cliff statistically as soon as there was a 7th level cleric anywhere in the ecosystem (remembering my experience back in the day involved a lot of interlocked groups, so all it needed one one or two there to make that be true).

I find death in my 1e-variant games remains about equally frequent after maybe 3rd level (it's more frequent before that) but perma-death drops off fairly sharply at around 5th-6th because by then a) players have more invested in their PCs and b) said PCs have accreted enough resources to afford revival spells without bankrupting themselves.

 

[Lanefan]

Only true if there isn't a lot of selection bias built into how you acquire the ancedotes. Even its true its hard to demonstrate that.

Nearly all of the anecdotes I have to go by that aren't from my own crew come from these forums. Make of that what you will.

 

[tetrasodium]

Only true if there isn't a lot of selection bias built into how you acquire the ancedotes. Even its true its hard to demonstrate that.

There's also the weight of ""I see X & these things contribute to it like so" stacked against "I don't see it". Some of these things like magic items not being needed by design are objectively true things wotc themselves regularly say as a thing that was done intentionally.