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

[d24454_modern]

While the setting has expanded greatly, the gameplay feels much more constrained than before.

 

[Fifth Element]

The proposed play type in which the DMs fully give up his control over the game in not suited for a long term campaign world.

Can you point to an instant where anyone has actually proposed this type of play (emphasis added)?

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm not sure what happened to the quote tags either since some of the post seems to have gotten eaten iby the mixup or while trying to fix it in with edit earlier.

That explains why you don't like fate but not what actually supports the playstyle that you seem to be defending in your 2733 response to helldritch or how it functions. There's been a lot of posts about how certain styles of campaign/gm'ing are dictatorial regimes giving players zero agency & so on along with questions about parts of those play/gm styles that frequently seem to lead into why it's a bad or inferior style but precious little about what the distinctly different alternative actually looks like in play & what rule structures support it. How is it distinct & what rules structures enable it to keep functioning?

Sorry, can you repeat what your question is without the loaded verbiage? Kinda seems like I have to take the bad side to talk here, and that's not kosher.

 

[Hussar]

Can you point to an instant where anyone has actually proposed this type of play (emphasis added)?

Hang on a tick. I am very aware of the irony of me saying this, but, we really need to roll back the rhetoric a bit. Yes, I am 100% guilty here. I know. But, the main problem, I think, is that we're mostly talking past each other and that's why people are feeling attacked.

It's not about attacking traditional play. I think, from what I've read here, that everyone has played traditional style games and we've all probably enjoyed them. I know I have. The reason I advocate a more shared authority approach is because I honestly believe that it is an improvement on traditional play. That doesn't mean that trad play is bad or wrong or anything like that. It's not. It absolutely works and it can be a lot of fun.

Just because I think something might work better does not mean that trad play is somehow flawed. It's very much in a similar vein to the recent thread on fudging when I pointed out that fudging was largely a DM thing in early play. It was assumed at the table (typically) and it worked. But, an improvement on DM fudging is moving a lot of that into the player's lap and giving the players lots of mechanics in which the players can choose when and how much they want to fudge the dice. They took DM side fudging, gamified it and turned it into mechanics.

And, for the most part, I'd say they were spectacularly successful. Going from, say, 2e through to 5e, you can see the proliferation of player side fudging mechanics absolutely explode. And, at least from the feedback I've seen, the players love it. Fantastic.

This is the same sort of thing. There's nothing wrong with Trad play. It works. It can be a ton of fun. But, it's not perfect. It does disincentivize players engaging directly in the setting - I mean directly, not through their characters. Which in turn CAN (note the modal there, it's really important, I'm not saying it's guaranteed, I'm saying that the possibility exists) lead to players who are passive consumers simply reacting to whatever the DM puts in front of them. Which in turn CAN (again, not guaranteed) lead to shallow games where it's just the DM wheeling up the plot wagon week after week and the players shoveling down whatever the DM serves.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Hang on a tick. I am very aware of the irony of me saying this, but, we really need to roll back the rhetoric a bit. Yes, I am 100% guilty here. I know. But, the main problem, I think, is that we're mostly talking past each other and that's why people are feeling attacked.

It's not about attacking traditional play. I think, from what I've read here, that everyone has played traditional style games and we've all probably enjoyed them. I know I have. The reason I advocate a more shared authority approach is because I honestly believe that it is an improvement on traditional play. That doesn't mean that trad play is bad or wrong or anything like that. It's not. It absolutely works and it can be a lot of fun.

Just because I think something might work better does not mean that trad play is somehow flawed. It's very much in a similar vein to the recent thread on fudging when I pointed out that fudging was largely a DM thing in early play. It was assumed at the table (typically) and it worked. But, an improvement on DM fudging is moving a lot of that into the player's lap and giving the players lots of mechanics in which the players can choose when and how much they want to fudge the dice. They took DM side fudging, gamified it and turned it into mechanics.

And, for the most part, I'd say they were spectacularly successful. Going from, say, 2e through to 5e, you can see the proliferation of player side fudging mechanics absolutely explode. And, at least from the feedback I've seen, the players love it. Fantastic.

This is the same sort of thing. There's nothing wrong with Trad play. It works. It can be a ton of fun. But, it's not perfect. It does disincentivize players engaging directly in the setting - I mean directly, not through their characters. Which in turn CAN (note the modal there, it's really important, I'm not saying it's guaranteed, I'm saying that the possibility exists) lead to players who are passive consumers simply reacting to whatever the DM puts in front of them. Which in turn CAN (again, not guaranteed) lead to shallow games where it's just the DM wheeling up the plot wagon week after week and the players shoveling down whatever the DM serves.

This isn't the fudging thread, please don't bring that here.

 

[Hussar]

Sorry, can you repeat what your question is without the loaded verbiage? Kinda seems like I have to take the bad side to talk here, and that's not kosher.

Heh. This is pretty much what I am talking about. Talking past each other. And, I'm afraid that it's probably entirely my fault.

 

[Hussar]

This isn't the fudging thread, please don't bring that here.

It wasn't my intention to relitigate things. I know you have very strong feelings here. My point was that saying I think something works better does not automatically mean that I hate the other thing, nor does it mean that the other thing is bad.

I mean, good grief, pointing out that DM lead games don't allow for player authority shouldn't be a terribly controversial point. But, apparently, saying that Trad games are DM lead and generally don't allow for player authority over the game means that I'm calling these games dictatorial regimes that give players zero agency and so on.

The points I've made have been taken so far to the extreme that it's bizarre. I never said that players had no agency. I never said that DM's have zero control. There's all these claims about things that I never even hinted at.

 

[Lanefan]

I fully agree. The less experienced the player, the more die roll that player want.

To a point.

I think much depends on how the game is first explained to them. IME if it's explained along the lines of "Yes there's rules but your job is to come up with a character and then just have it do what it would do, and I-as-DM and-or the other players will sort out the rules side until you get the hang of it" then you end up with players who trend more toward character-first, mechanics-second even after they figure out the mechanics (though in fairness there's also often a transition period where after learning the mechanics the player pushes them a bit to see what they can do, before backing off on realizing it's just less fun that way).

Feedback: I need to know what your character want. If you say nothing. You get nothing.

Not quite. With me it's if you say nothing you're stuck with whatever you get, 'cause you've left it in my lap.

Interaction: If you stand there doing nothing, taking no risk. You get nothing. No pain, no gain.

Yes.

The ability to listen: Even if it is not your turn, listen. Interaction with other players do not limit itself to tactical combat and planification. Carousing, arguing and telling that you are right (even if wrong) are great story movers.

Not so much the ability to listen as the ability and willingness to speak, preferably in-character. The bolded is essential.

 

[Lanefan]

Our central conceit is that we agree on a premise and then create characters together. Then we build a world around them. The point for us to basically find out who these characters are. When we are done with the characters we're basically done with the setting.

I guess that's one big difference between our approaches; in that I-as-player can quite happily use one setting to develop any number of characters, either side-along or one after another, and I-as-DM can use one setting to either tell (if I'm driving) and-or referee (if the players are driving) any number of stories.

Yes the general genre and tone has to largely stay the same within a given setting - I can't do Space 2099 very well in a faux-medieval setting, for example - but that's fine as long as everyone's cool with that genre and tone.

Building a whole new setting is a hell of a lot of work, which I'd rather not have to do if I don't have to.

 

[Campbell]

Here is an example from way back of what this sort of play can look like in D&D.

The chamberlain, the king, and the dragon (drobe)

Alright. Lets get this started then. We will perform the Action Scene of the chamberlain/king/dragon after we establish and resolve the Transition Scene. "You are standing on the grand, stone steps to the gargantuan entrance hall of the castle. A servant has answered the door and has rung the...

www.enworld.org

On a fundamental level I have been engaged in our hobby using collaborative world building techniques on both sides of the screen for damn near 15 years. I have never had problems finding people to play with or teaching new players how to play. The idea that this requires some diamonds in the rough to work at all is simply not true. As is the idea that games will fall into dysfunction if you let players have some say over the content of the setting.

There are plenty of reasons to prefer other ways of playing including an interest in setting exploration or players not being interested in doing the setup work required. I'm sure there are many more, but dysfunction or most players being incapable of it are simply not true in my experience. Maybe I have just been supremely lucky.