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

[jasper]

1E DM. Do you want to play? Here’s what I have prepped.

5E Players. We do what we want and you have to do what we tell you.

I had that (Players) happen back in 1E before I bought the UNO deck. Ad remember games no gaming is better than bad gaming.

 

[overgeeked]

no gaming is better than bad gaming.

I really dislike this phrase. I get it. But it puts newb DMs in a bad spot. You don’t have to run a perfect game. As long as the DM is trying, it’s good gaming. It might not be the gaming you want as a player. But that doesn’t make it bad.

 

[CleverNickName]

Here's how my gaming experience has changed.

In the 1980s, I would go to school and tell my friends "hey guys, I got a copy of Master of the Desert Nomads! You should totally come over Friday after school so we can play it!" They would say something like "cool sounds fun, can we roll up our own characters?" and I would say "Sure, I'll make some blank character sheets at the library on my way home." Friday would come, we would order a pizza, and the brand-new characters would be ready to play before the delivery guy arrived with it. We'd play it all night long. By the time the sun came up, they had made it to the Abbey and were eager for the next part of the story. So at breakfast, still exhausted from being up all night, I'd beg mom to take me to the mall to look for a copy of Temple of Death.

Now in the 2020s, I post a message in our feed: "Hey, are we still on for Friday?" and I get 1d4+1 responses of "Yep" or "I'm down." Come Friday, we all log into Foundry, log into Discord, and order up some GrubHub. By the time the last person's food arrives, we have worked out all of the connection issues, headset issues, and server issues. It's 7:00 p.m., so I load the same game that we've been playing in since the pandemic began, and I tab over to the latest map...the one that I spent hours on last week, drawing, scanning, and rigging for light. Of course there's a problem with it and I scramble to fix it in the background--but nobody notices, because there are also problems with someone's character sheet, or someone's kid needs attention, or someone's connection keeps dropping. Finally at 7:30, the bugs are all squashed and the game begins. Combat starts at around 7:45, and doesn't resolve until after 9:00. We take a break, resume play at 9:15, and combat starts again at 9:30. Combat resolves at 11:30, and we take a vote as to whether or not we should keep playing or call it for the night. We call it. "Same time next week?" I ask, and everyone says "Yep, see you then!"

 

[Thomas Shey]

I understand this.

This particular line of discussion in the thread began with a complaint that players make PCs who are "men with no name", who have no connections to the setting, etc.

A GM who makes the playstyle choice of insisting on unilateral control over every aspect of the fiction other than the PCs' bodies, but who then complains that players won't connect their PCs to other parts of the fiction, strike me as having made their own bed to lie in.

Well, there's an answer that avoids either one, but I'm not going to say there aren't people who complain about PCs with extensive backgrounds, too.

 

[tetrasodium]

See, but, that's the thing. The Backgrounds in 5e already specifically allow for this sort of thing.

Unidirectionally. The players don't need anything from the GM. Swap "sister" to a soldier's war buddy, a spy's former contact with ties to x or whatever & it becomes trivial for the player to simply have the PC shrug it off when the PC's background yoinks back with conflicts & complications because of things happening in the world.

The first disjunct is a red herring. No one is suggesting that it contradicts the established fiction for the PC to have a sister, or for that sister to work for the mayor.

The second goes exactly to @Remathilis's point about the GM wanting to control the fiction. The player has an idea about how to "drive the story" - the PC's sister leaves a side gate open - and the GM objects because they wanted the fiction to be different.

No, that statement was in reference to the "I mean, has nobody ever heard of "yes, and..." Before?". In Improv "Yes And" very much requires accepting the shared fiction given to you by your improv partner plus maintaining everything you've given them previously or the skit falls apart but the same is not true in d&d. It's great if a player has "an idea" about driving the story, but the GM is the one who has to make it work & make it keep working without devolving into an improv comedy sketch. Not every idea is a good idea, plus by simple virtue of how d&d works there will often be times where the player or their character should have no way of knowing details that make "yes but" or "no because" a better tool for the GM to use than endlessly looping "yes and". The post you quoted has a video in the spoiler that details & gives an example improv of all three.

 

[overgeeked]

Here's how my gaming experience has changed.

In the 1980s, I would go to school and tell my friends "hey guys, I got a copy of Master of the Desert Nomads! You should totally come over Friday after school so we can play it!" They would say something like "cool sounds fun, can we roll up our own characters?" and I would say "Sure, I'll make some blank character sheets at the library on my way home." Friday would come, we would order a pizza, and the brand-new characters would be ready to play before the delivery guy arrived with it. We'd play it all night long. By the time the sun came up, they had made it to the Abbey and were eager for the next part of the story. So at breakfast, still exhausted from being up all night, I'd beg mom to take me to the mall to look for a copy of Temple of Death.

Now in the 2020s, I post a message in our feed: "Hey, are we still on for Friday?" and I get 1d4+1 responses of "Yep" or "I'm down." Come Friday, we all log into Foundry, log into Discord, and order up some GrubHub. By the time the last person's food arrives, we have worked out all of the connection issues, headset issues, and server issues. It's 7:00 p.m., so I load the same game that we've been playing in since the pandemic began, and I tab over to the latest map...the one that I spent hours on last week, drawing, scanning, and rigging for light. Of course there's a problem with it and I scramble to fix it in the background--but nobody notices, because there are also problems with someone's character sheet, or someone's kid needs attention, or someone's connection keeps dropping. Finally at 7:30, the bugs are all squashed and the game begins. Combat starts at around 7:45, and doesn't resolve until after 9:00. We take a break, resume play at 9:15, and combat starts again at 9:30. Combat resolves at 11:30, and we take a vote as to whether or not we should keep playing or call it for the night. We call it. "Same time next week?" I ask, and everyone says "Yep, see you then!"

Yeah. Exactly. Man, I miss the old days. So glad there's an OSR and people still playing the old games.

 

[Remathilis]

1E DM. Do you want to play? Here’s what I have prepped.

5E Players. We do what we want and you have to do what we tell you.

Again, the 1e DM comes off like a power-tripping egomaniac who thinks the player's job is to bask in awe at their creation.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Again, the 1e DM comes off like a power-tripping egomaniac who thinks the player's job is to bask in awe at their creation.

And the players in the 5e example come off as a gang of whiny entitled punks. The truth may be somewhere in between.

 

[Remathilis]

I really dislike this phrase. I get it. But it puts newb DMs in a bad spot. You don’t have to run a perfect game. As long as the DM is trying, it’s good gaming. It might not be the gaming you want as a player. But that doesn’t make it bad.

This is not about the DMs quality, it's about their play style meshing. You might run a perfectly good, technically sound and otherwise enjoyable game, but based on everything I've read in this thread, if my only choice was your game or not playing, I'd rather not play because I'd be miserable trying to adapt to your style. And it's completely fine that if the DM's ultimatum is "my way or the highway" that players can choose the highway and find a DM that suits them.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is not about the DMs quality, it's about their play style meshing. You might run a perfectly good, technically sound and otherwise enjoyable game, but based on everything I've read in this thread, if my only choice was your game or not playing, I'd rather not play because I'd be miserable trying to adapt to your style. And it's completely fine that if the DM's ultimatum is "my way or the highway" that players can choose the highway and find a DM that suits them.

Yeah, I tend to criticize that term because its often used to blow off people who are trying to address problems with groups they have rather than just flush the whole thing, but knowing not to play with people who's styles just aren't going to work with yours is a virtue, and if its extreme enough a clash, deciding just not to do it rather than play in a game that will make you miserable is just common sense.