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

[Thomas Shey]

Thought of a couple more.

7. The Meat Grinder: The whole adventure is a deadly obstacle course, and the object of the game is to survive it. Don't leave home without your ten-foot pole, your bag of ball bearings, and your ladder, and don't even think about sticking your head into any Green Devil frescoes. Every door is a boobytrap, every treasure chest is a mimic, and the floor is an illusion over a spike-filled pit. Your mission is to be the last character standing at the end of the night. Seems like this was a popular playstyle in the 80s, but has fallen out of favor.

I don't know if "popular" described it, but it was certainly on the plate a fair bit in the 70's.

8. Historical Reenactment: The campaign is based on real-world history. The DM uses a real-world map. Your character has a historic name that fits the period, the region, and their status. You use real-world technology based on an agreed-upon date, and everything is rigorously reviewed by everyone at the table for accuracy. The Exodus. The Wars of the Roses. The Crusades. Discovery of the New World. There are no dragons, elves, or magic...but that's okay: there are fifty-six different polearms, gunpowder, and the Bubonic Plague. Lots of overlap with the SCA. Gaining in popularity with the advent of the Internet.

Pretty rarely done with D&D IME.

 

[tetrasodium]

I wish they'd have kept the more explicitly Fate-like use of inspiration from the playtest.

Or at least tossed it in the dmg optional rules if not a UA. From his description It doesn't sound like it was all that fleshed out. You can absolutely see how other areas of the game like devauling gold/magic items/etc were adjusted to make room for that kind of Fate-like push/pull mechanic. I ran fate for years & it's really easy to show someone how it plays at a table of people who are up to speed but extremely difficult to break them out of the d&d box once they start so I can see why they dumped it. In one of my games I use death at zero no death saves & fate style conceed/taken out to avoid early/don't dare die which works well.

Trying to get the fate style collaborative phase trio character creation running with players can be really tough too, without that you either need lots of generic aspects (like 1 BIFT each for more than one of background/race/class or archetype), the suggested ones are too specific & niche for a small number to be useful in any meaningful way then they get invoked for a compel with things like NPC persuade/intimidate/etc=DC & inspiration for fail by dice or fail by choice. It takes a while for players to think of aspects as something that should grow & evolve during a story/campaign so there would need to be ways to regularly allow/force them to change or just a ton of them. Fate characters have a high concept+trouble+3 character aspects so 1 each BIFT is super anemic already if characters don't have more piled on from things like race/class/etc too.

Interesting that the point about the amount of threat to an npc should relate to the benefit that npc grants the pc.

Not a bad idea.

So what benefit does a little sister commoner NPC grant my character? A place to stay if I happen to be in town? Maybe a handful of copper if I really needed it?

You'd be surprised, once you start letting players leverage NPCs in their orbit they start getting real creative. Here's a few off the top of my head

• My sister works in the kitchen/laundry/etc at lord whathisface's manor.
  • I bet she could get us in
  • I bet she could get us an audience with someone
• My sister is very religious. I bet she could help us get a deal on removing this curse/raise dead on bob/etc
• said to the herbalist:My sister grows herbs for you, any chance we can get a deal on these potions/sell us the illegal poisons we have trouble buying/etc?
• in all seriousness I once had a player declare out of the blue mid session that the lolipope was his sister. Think of how often a player has declared themselves blood relatives & students of to high nobles gods eleminster types & so on.
• etc

The trouble is not usually with mundane NPCs who are usually tough to involve too much though. Things start getting hairy when bob is playing something like a noble, guild artisan, folk hero, soldier, criminal/spy, accolyte, etc. Those backgrounds come with connections to powerful people with real clout who players might often expect to call in favors from

So what’s a “fair” threat for that benefit?

• Your sister got you in a while back & is in desperately in need of steady work elsewhere cause lord whatshisface suspects what she did. Lady whosit has a position but she 's only willing to hire her if you fix the problem with the mine she owns fast. No you can't just give her a thousand gold to support her bob
• the church has voluntold you for dealing with this problem, your sister's job is in the lurch.
• etc

To put it another way. What benefit does Aunt May grant that she should be put in mortal danger?

Depends on who aunt mae is, I think some versions of her have her working pretty well connected jobs. In a dresden files rpg (fate variant) game I had a player build a real frank castle(punisher) type PC with no ties to anyone save his love for his [trouble aspect] love for his wife. The wife's development went something like this

• someone needed to recover>she was a doctor
• Not just any DR the department head or something nurse or something
• There was some kind of magical virus similar to one that got mentioned or actually came up in the novels. Investigating it would have required going through some things to build a lab> she has sway with the virology department
• and she is working in the ER today which is important because we can see bob's lung right now & need to start healing it
• And I know the layout of this conference hall because my wife the doctor has given presentations on cutting edge medicine here so often
• none of us have any computer skills but my wife the doctor uses them all the time because of electronic medical records laws, we could get her* or the IT department there to look at this & use their computer skills.
• My wife the doctor has her medical kit in the trunk of my car, we could use that to start the recovery on this
• Somewhere along the line the player had gotten many warnings about leaning too heavily on his trouble aspect wife to solve problems & that he's need to put some refresh into things other than murder skills but he never did & never changed his aspects even though those warnings came with it being pointed out what the point of a trouble aspect is.
• After almost a year of this a BBEG started something in the hospital putting her position at risk . The player ignored it after the group a monster of some forgotten kind in the lobby with magic & heavy weapons.
• Things continued for a couple months as before & a BBEG outright kidnapped her, the player lost it in a fit of rage

* as an IT person with multiple family members in various aspects of healthcare I'm sure a few people will understand why I lost it laughing at this when it came up.

 

[pemerton]

Take the "overprotective of young women" that you yourself said is a desired personality trait of a hypothetical character & apply the pulp detective trope that often starts out with a thought/voiceover along the lines of: "I could tell the young woman wanting my help was all kinds of trouble I didn't need". with d&d characters they are free to ignore it entirely the second they decide they don't need that trouble & the GM is powerless to do more than ask if the player really want to ignore the npc with problems knowing full well he or she is powerless if the player says yes they do want to ignore the npc's complications.

I'd argue that a fair number of players, maybe most of them, dislike strongly reactive hooks (i.e. ones that they feel obligated to respond to, as compared to being interested in responding to). They don't want the hook to be too personal, either because it makes them uncomfortable or feel pressured.

so many players have been taught the only function of connections, friends and family is to give the GM levers to apply to you.

The state of affairs that these posts describe strikes me as slightly dysfunctional: D&D, or FRPGing more generally, even RPGing more generally, is typically adventure-focused; but we're talking here about players who don't want the adventure the GM is offering.

That suggests that the GM needs to work on their offerings, or that different techniques need to be looked at: I don't know HERO/Champions well enough to comment on it, but what is being described here is not an issue in games that use Kickers (eg Sorcerer, but I've used Kickers in D&D), or in games like Burning Wheel that have the players establish dramatic priorities for their PCs.

I mean, ultimately, if no one is interested in the fiction that's on offer then we're all better off just packing up and going home, aren't we?

 

[pemerton]

You'd be surprised, once you start letting players leverage NPCs in their orbit they start getting real creative. Here's a few off the top of my head

• My sister works in the kitchen/laundry/etc at lord whathisface's manor.
  • I bet she could get us in
  • I bet she could get us an audience with someone

I'll stop with this one. What's the problem?

 

[Lanefan]

And if 95% of the players you run into don't like the kind of drama you're offering, then shouldn't there be some reevaluation of the drama being offered? Different solutions being considered?

Thing is, it's not that 95% of the players encountered don't like the specpfic kind of drama someone's offering; it's that there's a very large cohort of players out there - maybe even an outright majority of them - who don't really want or like much drama in their D&D at all. These would generally-but-not-always include:

--- kick-in-the-door players (kill the foe, take its stuff, repeat, little or no further action required or welcomed)
--- beer-and-pretzel players (drama makes me think and-or makes me uncomfortable, and I ain't here for that)
--- tactical squad team players (drama is an annoyance; a complication to be excised as it gets in the way of completing the mission)
--- casual players (drama makes me pay more attention to what's going on than I otherwise want to)

Trying to force drama on to these players is usually a waste of effort. Asking or expecting them to generate it themselves, and-or to care about it regardless of its source, is also pointless.

When playing with friends, it's likely some of the group will be of this type and some won't, leaving a delicate balancing act for the DM.

 

[Lanefan]

I'll stop with this one. What's the problem?

The problem is, as with all the other examples listed, the player is leveraging this self-created NPC to (attempt to) gain an in-game advantage the PCs wouldn't otherwise have access to.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Pretty rarely done with D&D IME.

It's a question of if it's done competently or not.

I've walked away from multiple games where 'This weapon or armor is banned because it didn't exist in Medieval Times; it was five years too late!' and also 'The wizard can do whatever he wants because magic, which we all know was discovered in 1214'.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'll stop with this one. What's the problem?

Her help comes with strings that snap back later, sometimes that might put her in danger or uncomfortable situations. Just look back over the last few pages for examples of people derscribing that overreach of dm power. Also like I said later in that post.... "The trouble is not usually with mundane commoner NPCs who are usually tough to involve too much though. Things start getting hairy when bob is playing something like a noble, guild artisan, folk hero, soldier, criminal/spy, accolyte, etc. Those backgrounds come with connections to powerful people with real clout who players might often expect to call in favors from"

 

[Thomas Shey]

The state of affairs that these posts describe strikes me as slightly dysfunctional: D&D, or FRPGing more generally, even RPGing more generally, is typically adventure-focused; but we're talking here about players who don't want the adventure the GM is offering.

I think its more a case of few people wanting to feel like they're forced into the adventure, and personal stakes tend to be closer to that than less personal ones. People like to think they can have the option to walk away, either because they have some dissonance with the GM on occasion or because they just don't like the degree of pressure.

That suggests that the GM needs to work on their offerings, or that different techniques need to be looked at: I don't know HERO/Champions well enough to comment on it, but what is being described here is not an issue in games that use Kickers (eg Sorcerer, but I've used Kickers in D&D), or in games like Burning Wheel that have the players establish dramatic priorities for their PCs.

Well, its usually not as bad an issue with Hero and similar games because taking DNPCs is optional; you essentially get rewarded for it because its a common trope at least at one time, and its basically a contract with the GM: "I get these extra points, you sometimes get to throw a problem at me based on this NPC I'm associated with." That doesn't mean if you have an NPC you're associated with they absolutely never will become involved in the plot as a motivator, but its understood outside of DNPCs that'll be done sparingly, where with DNPCs its a Tuesday.

(Note it also depends on what kind of game and the GM as to whether someone will be likely to do that. I'd be much less prone to taking any DNPCs in an Iron Age inspired game, though even there its possible for the GM to use them in a way that's motivating without applying too much pressure. But I'd want to know the GM pretty well before I took the chance).

I mean, ultimately, if no one is interested in the fiction that's on offer then we're all better off just packing up and going home, aren't we?

But there's fiction and there's fiction. Some forms many players just don't appreciate, but GMs sometimes have very different ideas of where that line is.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's a question of if it's done competently or not.

I've walked away from multiple games where 'This weapon or armor is banned because it didn't exist in Medieval Times; it was five years too late!' and also 'The wizard can do whatever he wants because magic, which we all know was discovered in 1214'.

Note the example I responded to was a no-magic one. I'm hard pressed why someone would use D#D for that, other than kneejerk familiarity issues.