D&D General Why Editions Don't Matter

[Thomas Shey]

Worth mentioning that some older editions of D&D had rules for acquiring and running domains in downtime, which was a big motivation and a way to spend your cash. So, your wizard could build a wizard tower, hire some guards, and spend their downtime cloistered with books inventing new spells and magic items. AD&D had rules for all of this (at least, 2e did).

Though how much this got used varied considerably, and often it was more a thing to do with all the gold you accumulated rather than something you accumulated gold for if you understand the cause-and-effect distinction I'm making (i.e. a number of characters would get into building a keep/running a business/etc just because they had all that money that wouldn't have sought out money just for that purpose).

 

[hawkeyefan]

Well… I’ve also seen the opposite criticism from others. That combat is too structured and would be better with less structure closer to out of combat. But I get your point. I’m just not sure of a way to encapsulate both positions better than ‘handling different parts of the game differently’.

Not sure. Asymmetric design? Inconsistent? I suppose it depends on if you consider it a positive or a negative.

XP for gold hasn't been around for a long time. Gaining levels is only rewarding for some people, and only rewarding so long as it really means something. If you just level up and simply face more generic boring but more difficult encounters, what's the point? Leveling up can be motivating for some but if you just keep giving people gold stars and that's all you give them, after a while the stars lose meaning.

It depends on what edition you're playing. I offered it as an example of rules that provide a goal for play because you said D&D never had that and doesn't need it. Clearly, it has had it. Whether or not it needs it is a matter of preference.

I'd say that clearer mechanical rewards would probably help 5E a bit. As it is, XP is mostly gained by killing things, which shifts the game heavily toward combat. There are suggestions in the DMG on how to change this a bit, or to reward players for solutions to problems other than combat, and of course they bolted on the BIFTs and Inspiration as an attempt at rewarding roleplaying, but that's like the first thing people seem to ditch when they play 5E. And it seems like the shift to 1D&D may put that to rest for good.

Or ... one aspect of the game needs more structure and a different aspect doesn't need that structure. Having that difference is part of the reason D&D works for me. I enjoy combat, but after a while having a fairly constrained system of conflict resolution gets old. Meanwhile the non-combat aspect of the game feels different and lets me stretch different mental gaming muscles. Having the two aspects of the game is a big benefit.

Some groups can focus on the combat if they want a relatively constrained system while those that like more free format immersion can focus on the RP aspects. We get the best of both worlds.

Sure, I'd say that this is a big part of why "editions matter".

 

[Oofta]

But how long XP for gold has been around is not really what is being discussed. You made this assertion:

To which hawkeyefan responded with a valid counter-example:

So let's be clear here. XP for gold is something that D&D unquestionably had as part of its Skinner Box for a good portion of its history. It was part of OD&D, B/X, and 1e. B/X is probably one of the most popular iterations of the game, especially in the TSR era.

I am playing a BX/1e hybrid game right now, and XP for gold is a big part of how that game is being played. IME, it does make a difference with how the other players engage the game. They have gold on their minds because gold is how they gain XP. It's little to no surprise then that this is also something that a lot of OSR has picked up on too. There are a LOT of OSR games that use "gold for XP" (e.g., Black Hack, OSE, etc.). Similarly in Numenera, players get XP for making discoveries rather than defeating monsters. This too impacts, IME, how players engage the game.

Now whether D&D needs that sort of thing is a separate argument than whether or not D&D "[ever] really had that." But it definitely did have the latter and the fact that XP for gold gets picked up in a lot of OSR as a "lost art" of the game is pretty telling as well IMHO about player incentive structures regarding "old school" style games.

I don't consider gaining levels alone to be a goal unless gaining levels allows you to achieve something you couldn't achieve before. If I gain a level and find that I'm still just walking around a plain vanilla dungeon fighting slightly stronger orcs, I don't consider it motivation. If I'm gaining levels it's so I can someday confront whatever BBEG destroyed my home city.

Of course leveling is part of the reward system so let me say instead: "outside of leveling, there has been little motivation built into the game." Getting gold for xp just speeds up leveling.

 

[SkidAce]

Complete tangent, but: Morrowind had the best story of any TES game, IMO. The problem was that the designers were so averse to railroading people into following it that most people never found it. Later games learned from that, but also had worse writing, so.

Quoted for truth.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't consider gaining levels alone to be a goal unless gaining levels allows you to achieve something you couldn't achieve before.

You may not, but its very clear that a large number of people do.

 

[gorice]

I do not think there is really any issue with different parts of a game being structured differently. I am really not comfortable with using need rather than desire for the sort of structure we prefer different parts of a game to have.

I think I would say that there are some structures that are more or less necessary, and some that are merely nice to have and a matter of taste and/or debate.

Necessary structure might go something like: who has control over what, how to resolve conflicts or disagreements, and how the current scene/moment relates to others, and to the big picture. You can't play without this stuff.

Nice to have would be stuff that supports whatever the game is supposed to be about. For a game doing 'D&D' (as a genre, if you will), I think some kind of wilderness travel/adventure system, a basic means of dungeon-delving, an economic system (as in: stuff to spend money on, and ways to earn it) and some method for negotiations/intrigue would do it. Oh, and combat, obviously. None of these procedures need be complex; the most important thing is that they relate to the 'necessary' bits in some way (I'm especially thinking of costs of failure/time pressure).

I think 5e is about halfway there on the necessary stuff, and pretty bad on the rest, aside from combat.

Oh, and I think this has been established, but just to be super clear: I don't think a game needs to play itself to be 'complete' according to this schema. I wouldn't want to DM a game where all I do is manage The System!

 

[Aldarc]

I don't consider gaining levels alone to be a goal unless gaining levels allows you to achieve something you couldn't achieve before. If I gain a level and find that I'm still just walking around a plain vanilla dungeon fighting slightly stronger orcs, I don't consider it motivation. If I'm gaining levels it's so I can someday confront whatever BBEG destroyed my home city.

Different strokes for different folks. I think that we can acknowledge that this does not align with your preferences while also acknowledging that "XP for gold" was a significant part of the incentive structure for the game and how it remains played among a number who still play older editions or OSR variants. I suspect that 2e began gravitating away from this and more towards GM as storyteller, which is unsurprisingly the edition where 5e takes a lot of its major beats from when it comes to GMing.

Of course leveling is part of the reward system so let me say instead: "outside of leveling, there has been little motivation built into the game." Getting gold for xp just speeds up leveling.

Maybe in 5e, but no one has reached level 2 yet in my West Marches group after about 10 sessions. In 5e that pacing would almost be outrageous, whether that is XP for gold or milestone leveling.

 

[Oofta]

You may not, but its very clear that a large number of people do.

Which is why I corrected to: "Other than leveling..." yada, yada, yada.

 

[Oofta]

Different strokes for different folks. I think that we can acknowledge that this does not align with your preferences while also acknowledging that "XP for gold" was a significant part of the incentive structure for the game and how it remains played among a number who still play older editions or OSR variants. I suspect that 2e began gravitating away from this and more towards GM as storyteller, which is unsurprisingly the edition where 5e takes a lot of its major beats from when it comes to GMing.


Maybe in 5e, but no one has reached level 2 yet in my West Marches group after about 10 sessions. In 5e that pacing would almost be outrageous, whether that is XP for gold or milestone leveling.

But the reason to have XP is to level, correct? So leveling is still the reward. Even in 5E one of the options is to forego XP and do milestone leveling. So hitting that milestone could be a goal.

I thought I was being clear but let me reiterate: leveling is rewarding but not a motivation for me. I want in story motivations that make sense to my PC.

 

[hawkeyefan]

So let's be clear here. XP for gold is something that D&D unquestionably had as part of its Skinner Box for a good portion of its history. It was part of OD&D, B/X, and 1e. B/X is probably one of the most popular iterations of the game, especially in the TSR era.

I am playing a BX/1e hybrid game right now, and XP for gold is a big part of how that game is being played. IME, it does make a difference with how the other players engage the game. They have gold on their minds because gold is how they gain XP. It's little to no surprise then that this is also something that a lot of OSR has picked up on too. There are a LOT of OSR games that use "gold for XP" (e.g., Black Hack, OSE, etc.). Similarly in Numenera, players get XP for making discoveries rather than defeating monsters. This too impacts, IME, how players engage the game.

Now whether D&D needs that sort of thing is a separate argument than whether or not D&D "[ever] really had that." But it definitely did have the latter and the fact that XP for gold gets picked up in a lot of OSR as a "lost art" of the game is pretty telling as well IMHO about player incentive structures regarding "old school" style games.

Something interesting about my gaming history and D&D compared to other games.

My group and I have almost always abandoned the XP system of D&D dating back to the 2E era when we first started gaming together. We've pretty much always done some form of milestone XP, although not usually triggered a specific event so much as X number of sessions or "adventures" or similar. The few times we've decided to start tracking XP per the rules, it never lasted and we always went back to just kind of eyeballing it.

What I've realized is that D&D is the only game where this is the case. The XP system is just cumbersome and there's nothing compelling about it, so we just get rid of it. I don't think we're alone in that, and I think the Milestone option being an official option in 5E says a lot.

But in all the other games I've played over the last few years, we always follow the XP/advancement systems.

The end of session questions of PbtA and FitD are a great reward structure. They reward examination of character and interactions with the world and other characters. It involves the players in the process.

Spire: The City Must Fall rewards players for making changes in the city. So it actively promotes what the game is meant to be about. Go out and try to change the situation in the city.

Heart has Beats, which are player chosen goals for every session of play. If they manage to hit the Beat for a session, they get a new ability. This gives players a wide range of choices for what to focus on in play, and gives the GM cues about what to involve in play.

So yeah... I can't agree that RPGs don't benefit from reward structures... I just don't think D&D's has been all that useful for quite some time.