D&D 5E D&D and who it's aimed at

[Zardnaar]

I hate to raise it, but there is an elephant in the room that everyone is skirting around: gender.

The change isn't "Disneyfication" for a younger audience, its a shift away from testosterone-fuelled macho male focused imagery to something that can appeal to a wider range of genders.

Well there's multiple things going on. Other terms you could use are "dumbed down", "simplified", "kiddiefied" etc. Seems clear what they're generally meaning.

It's like 4E most of the complaints boiled down to the power structure (which is gone in 5E but other 4Eisms survive).

And then everyone nitpicks over it and claims "you're not meaning that" when it's exactly what they mean. You might not like that opinion but that's all it is.

Ultimately I don't care about things like cheesecake going away but I don't have a problem with things like slavery, genocide etc in gaming products (depending on how it's done). Eg 2E Darksun.

Others might that's on them. I don't cate to much as it's a preference not a requirement. I also don't want it all of the time either.

 

[Maxperson]

How much chainmail bikini art was in 1st and 2nd edition AD&D? The most egregious example I can remember is from 2nd edition featuring a woman, perhaps a sorceress, on her knees in front of a smoking brazier with her arms stretched upward (for the life of me I can't remember if that was in the DMG or another book). And while I can recall some armor featuring plunging necklines with battle action cleavage, I don't remember the cheesecake in AD&D to be particularly bad.

I think there was quite a bit of it in the 2e collector's cards. Below are just a few cards. There are multiple examples in just that small batch.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

that I look down on anyone who enjoys it

You seriously can't see how your very first post in this thread can be very easily perceived as you doing exactly that? The smug, "have fun with your totally mature D&D, I'm going to go back and play the real, adult OSR D&D" post? How you've adamantly stated that you think modern D&D is becoming more and more silly despite a boatload of evidence to the contrary and even doubled down on this after the evidence was presented?

You seriously can't see why all of that might upset some people?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Other terms you could use are "dumbed down"

I would suggest that a move away from black and white alignment, and the presentation of violence as the only solution to problems is exactly the opposite of "dumbing down".

 

[Zardnaar]

I would suggest that a move away rom black and white alignment, and the presentation of violence as the only solution to problems is exactly the opposite of "dumbing down".

More in mechanics that one. I'm not much of a fan of ye olde dungeon hack anyway.

See previous state on what people say vs what they mean.

Doesn't bother me if people insult my favorite editions. For the record they're 2E, B/X and 5E.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Is there a sinkhole of evil where Darklords can track down paladins and good clerics as if they're beacons of light?

I don't know if the book does exactly this, but it does try to get the theme of the setting pretty clear (i.e. "this is an awful place to live, so awful that you'll never escape, and even if you defeat a Dark Lord, they're never gone permanently and you can only temporarily make things slightly better. Oh, and also, most of the people in these domains don't actually possess souls.")

When you Detect Evil, can you become overwhelmed by the presence and pass out (or worse)?

Detect evil really isn't a spell in D&D anymore. The 5e equivalent (Detect Good and Evil) actually just detects the location of otherworldly creatures and desecrated/consecrated areas near you.

Does it discuss rituals needed to permanently break the curse of lycanthropy?

Kind of, where it mentions the requirements for curing lycanthropy spread by a Loup Garou. You have to cast Remove Curse on the night of a full moon, and it only works after the Loup Garou that turned you into a werewolf has been slain. Oh, and you can only try this once a month. And succeeding on getting rid of your lycanthropy automatically kills you if you happen to have 3+ exhaustion when the ritual is completed.

A lot of the monsters the book have stuff like this. There's a Bodytaker Plant that can only be permanently killed if you salt/poison the ground by its dead body, you can permanently lose control of your body to a Carrionette if you don't stab yourself with its needle before killing the doll or cast Protection from Evil and Good, the Priest of Obsyus could be able to come back to life 6 times unless you somehow figure out that you need to attack its tattoos, trying to hide inside a bag of holding might turn you into a horrifying monster (or draw the attention of one), and so on.

 

[Jahydin]

You seriously can't see how your very first post in this thread can be very easily perceived as you doing exactly that? The smug, "have fun with your totally mature D&D, I'm going to go back and play the real, adult OSR D&D" post? How you've adamantly stated that you think modern D&D is becoming more and more silly despite a boatload of evidence to the contrary and even doubled down on this after the evidence was presented?

You seriously can't see why all of that might upset some people?

I do. And I apologized for it when Umbran corrected me. I'm pretty new to posting on forums, so I imagine I'll trip up every now and then.

Yes, I adamantly think D&D is getting soft and boring; I'm not saying it is though. Even despite everyone's "evidence". Sorry if that makes you mad, but you're just going to have to get over that not everyone thinks the same as you. I also think vanilla ice cream tastes better than chocolate. Going to tear into me for that as well? Maybe pull up statistics on how much more popular chocolate is? No, cause that would just be silly, right?

I think we have a lot more in common than you think and wasting all this energy on what we don't just isn't very constructive.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Yes, I adamantly think D&D is getting soft and boring; I'm not saying it is though. Even despite everyone's "evidence". Sorry if that makes you mad, but you're just going to have to get over that not everyone thinks the same as you. I also think vanilla ice cream tastes better than chocolate. Going to tear into me for that as well? Maybe pull up statistics on how much more popular chocolate is? No, cause that would just be silly, right?

Ice cream flavors are a matter of taste. Whether or not things are goofy is slightly subjective, but not subjective to the point where you can deny that many of the things that would be labeled goofy about modern D&D have been around for a very long time in the hobby. No one would deny that Terry Pratchett's Discworld books are goofy. That's just a fact. Literally everyone on the face of the planet can agree with that. Terry Pratchett would agree with that if he was alive. That's kind of a major aspect of Discworld.

I think the same applies to much of early D&D. Planescape, Spelljammer, Flumphs, Owlbears, the original beholder art, the cover of the 1e Monster Manual, mermaid lions, etc. That's just goofy. Denying that or saying that the inclusion of a Mardi Gras-style adventure, cooking competition, or fairy carnival is somehow goofier than all of that . . . just seems disingenuous to me. You might not have played the game in a goofy way . . . but it sure had quite a few goofy things in it. Probably as much as (if not more than) recent D&D 5e books. Especially given that a lot of the people complaining about goofiness in recent books haven't actually read them and are just overblowing small parts of the book that they just saw online.

 

[Lanefan]

No. I don't think that WotC would ever give the option of buying slaves in a modern D&D 5e book. I don't think that WotC would do anything that would even appear to be endorsing the idea of the characters buying and owning slaves.

But I don't really think that qualifies as "sanitizing" the hobby. And if it does, it really isn't something worth complaining about. I'd be more concerned with the people complaining about the removal of rules for buying slaves than I would be with the removal of them in the first place.

Funny that this comes up now, in that in our game on Saturday we PCs - in an off-world colony where slavery is very much a thing - were looking to buy a couple of slaves in order to free them; and the DM had no idea what the selling price would be. Via google he ended up finding a reference to slave prices in ancient Rome, and more or less went with that.

What's worth noting here is that there's valid reasons for PCs to be buying slaves other than wanting to own them - freeing them being the most obvious - and thus having a few game-based guidelines around such could at times be helpful for a DM.

 

[Jahydin]

Ice cream flavors are a matter of taste. Whether or not things are goofy is slightly subjective, but not subjective to the point where you can deny that many of the things that would be labeled goofy about modern D&D have been around for a very long time in the hobby.

Again, I don't think that. There's plenty of goofy things in older editions. AD&D had funny cartoons in it for instance.

I think the same applies to much of early D&D. Planescape, Spelljammer, Flumphs, Owlbears, the original beholder art, the cover of the 1e Monster Manual, mermaid lions, etc. That's just goofy. Denying that or saying that the inclusion of a Mardi Gras-style adventure, cooking competition, or fairy carnival is somehow goofier than all of that . . . just seems disingenuous to me. You might not have played the game in a goofy way . . . but it sure had quite a few goofy things in it. Probably as much as (if not more than) recent D&D 5e books. Especially given that a lot of the people complaining about goofiness in recent books haven't actually read them and are just overblowing small parts of the book that they just saw online.

Not much of this feels like it applies to me. I said I thought the Mardi Gras idea was silly. From that it seems you extrapolated a whole lot. Really sounds like you have a chip on your shoulder with those that like the older editions more than the new one. Why?