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

[Minigiant]

Ahh, thanks gents. I KNEW I'd read that somewhere.

How's this for a big change in the game?

It displayed where the "silly rules" of the game came from.
Since RPG design didn't really exst then, it took a loooong time for official rules to match how people played.

Gygax designed asa location driven game not a character driven game. That's why PCs died randomly and there were few safety nets. D&D wasn't built for characters until 3e and built for character stories until 4e..

 

[Fifth Element]

It displayed where the "silly rules" of the game came from.
Since RPG design didn't really exst then, it took a loooong time for official rules to match how people played.

RPG design didn't really exist in D&D. You could say it existed in other early RPGs though. D&D tended to lag behind, and at least at first this was probably because everything had to go through Gygax and/or Mentzer.

 

[Thomas Shey]

In some ways that's even worse than the deadpool/wolverine regeneration & superman level toughness granted by modern d&d's fast & trivial recovery.

Still using hyperbole I see.

• In 1e I believe gold was also how players leveled up and they knew it, getting gold back out of the dungeon was a big undertaking.

Getting the gold was important in OD&D too; but once you did, you could give it all away for all it really mattered to most characters.

• In 2e it was used to buy things that had prices (like dmg120 "readily available 200gp" potion of healing or dmg116-120 guidance on designing & crafting/commissioning magic items, level based living expenses, etc.

I believe I mentioned the random healing potions and scrolls; past that, feel free to ask around how often people could get magic items commissioned in the 2e days. Past that, note the phrase "for half the lifespan of the game." The game had been out for 25 years by the time 3e came around.

It has nothing to do with the topic of the gm choosing to provide more needed gold for doing one thing (ie "quest") or less needed gold for another.

I've explained it twice now. I'm not going to bother a third time.

 

[Thomas Shey]

As a counter to that: what injury does psychic damage do?

Neurological?

 

[tetrasodium]

Still using hyperbole I see.



Getting the gold was important in OD&D too; but once you did, you could give it all away for all it really mattered to most characters.



I believe I mentioned the random healing potions and scrolls; past that, feel free to ask around how often people could get magic items commissioned in the 2e days. Past that, note the phrase "for half the lifespan of the game." The game had been out for 25 years by the time 3e came around.



I've explained it twice now. I'm not going to bother a third time.

You are confused, that bolded bit is all that matters. The point is not if gold is needed by players for a specific thing. The point is that in every edition of d&d other than 5e the gm was able to influence player behavior by offering more or less gold for one thing over another because gold was needed for something. You are attempting to make a different point about why the players need the gold that is simply not relevant to the (in)ability to leverage the supply to influence player behavior

 

[Lanefan]

As a counter to that: what injury does psychic damage do?

Moy brayne 'urts!

 

[Lanefan]

XP for gold encourages playing for nothing but gold.

One could argue that given the choice between that and playing for nothing but blood, playing for nothing but gold is preferable.

I don't care for XP for monsters, either(if i play d&d, i usually do milestones), but I don't think 'be smart" is what XP for gold encourages. What I got was more players itemizing every possible thing they could empty from a dungeon and somehow finding ways to pawn off everything they found. I could be realistic about it, but then i'd just be robbing them of character progression.

I've never used xp-for-gp in my life and yet they still pull out everything they can carry that's worth anything at all.

The experience of cashing out every iron thing on the enemies they just bushwhacked drove me off of that paradigm forever.

I'm just used to it, I guess; and sometimes encumbrance rules really can be your friend.

 

[Lanefan]

So, if HP are partially meat, and our characters aren't superheroes, that explains how all hits are minor.

But, it doesn't really explain how my character can swim in acid without dying or ever being so much as scarred. So on and so forth.

And, since we are claiming that HP mean that successful attacks are turned into minor wounds, what is the problem with overnight healing again? Since I've never taken a serious wound until I fall down (which, in AD&D means I'm dead), why does it take significant time to get HP back?

Also, on the, "play occurs in real time" I'm pretty sure there's a quote in Moldvay Basic that talks about this. Gonna go do some closet diving to dig up my book. But, I'm 99% sure that there is something in there about real time being used to measure time passage in a campaign.

Can't speak for Moldvay but real (down)time=game (down)time is in the 1e DMG - I think somebody pulled the quote upthread a (long) ways. ETA: And @Fifth Element pulled it again much more recently.

It's a really dumb idea, but it is in there.

 

[Minigiant]

It's a really dumb idea, but it is in there.

It's not a dumb idea. It makes sense within context to make the style of game Gygax ran.

It is not a popular idea and the genre became outdated. The importance of PCs has changed with the generations.

 

[Remathilis]

It displayed where the "silly rules" of the game came from.
Since RPG design didn't really exst then, it took a loooong time for official rules to match how people played.

Gygax designed asa location driven game not a character driven game. That's why PCs died randomly and there were few safety nets. D&D wasn't built for characters until 3e and built for character stories until 4e..

The Gygaxian play style didn't even survive AD&D. Moldvay/Cook didn't seem to acknowledge it, though the vestigial rules remain. Dragonlance certainly did a lot to encourage narrative/character driven play. 2e and BECMI were the nails in the coffin of this particular style, though it would take till 3e for the rules to catch up. It's no wonder that anyone who started playing after 1985 (and maybe even earlier) has no memory of this style of play and moved the rules to fit the narrative-focused PC centered style of play emphasized in Dragonlance and later in settings like Ravenloft, Planescape and Forgotten Realms.

Really, a lot of the debate about 5e's mechanics is akin to buying a PS5 and wondering where the coin slot is because "video games were designed to take your money." (Though ironically, it makes dlc loot boxes the heir to quarter-munchers. A thought for a different time.)