D&D (2024) What could One D&D do to bring the game back to the dungeon?

[Micah Sweet]

Once you've got a squad of one or two dozen drow hand crossbowmen, resolving them individually becomes impractical, and also unrealistic in the sense that D&D's rules for AC don't really take into account the challenge posed by a dozen or two shots taken simultaneously.

And yet when Bounded Accuracy was introduced, people talked about how dozens of peasants with crossbows could threaten a dragon (which was and remains a cool idea to me). Not really possible unless they all get to make an attack.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Here's another question to consider; why are the characters crawling around in a dungeon??

The old days had gold and magic items as a driving factor; but those things arn't really carrots to a 5E character. There's few in game uses for gold and it's "assumed" that characters get no real increase from magic items.

Magic items are the opposite actually. The math assumes you don't have them, but if you do, they provide a significant increase in PC power that needs to be addressed to keep things challenging.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Presumably in the fiction the PCs want to be rich, for the same sorts of reasons as real treasure hunters in the real world.

At the table, they players would be doing it because that's the game they sat down to play.

All you have to do is reintroduce uses for gold. TSR's games had them, 3e had them, and its not an insurmountable task. Level Up, for example, provides numerous ways to make gold useful.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's interesting that those goals are things that have been stripped away from the game over time. We lost training in 2e, and automatic followers in 3e (though Leadership was still something that could be used, though it quickly proved to be one of the game's most busted options).

I can only assume, based on what I witnessed myself, that players were less concerned with becoming landed movers and shakers in the world as a goal, and just wanted more adventuring. I have a friend who runs a 2e campaign (he refuses to even look at more modern editions, grumbling about there being no reason to change Thac0- no matter how many times over the past 3 decades he's watched me fumble trying to figure out what AC I hit, lol).

Not long ago, he was running a game for his nephew and some other friends- they were fighting a zombie horde and trying to figure out what to do with The Crown of Evil Might.

During the session, apparently his nephew was griping about the endless combat, and his desire for more treasure (it turns out zombies don't really have a lot of loot, go figure!), and my friend was complaining to me about it, since it had basically soured the rest of the evening.

To which I was like "wait. I know he's name level. He's the baron of Falkrest!"

"Yes, that's right."

"The guy has an army and a fleet, if he wants treasure, why doesn't he just go knock over a small country somewhere? And why is he fighting zombies by himself anyways? He has men-at-arms, and isn't he still bound to Blackrazor? I thought that thing was useless at fighting undead!"

My friend just shrugged. "He doesn't want to do anything with his army, other than have it protect his lands. He wants to adventure."

I'm not saying that bringing back these things would be bad- I certainly liked them (and I'm hoping Bastions won't be a waste of time). And I know the thread is about "how we could change the game", not "should we change the game".

But I think it's still worth reviewing why the game has changed in the first place.

There's no reason they couldn't still have provided those older options for players who wanted them.

 

[pemerton]

And yet when Bounded Accuracy was introduced, people talked about how dozens of peasants with crossbows could threaten a dragon (which was and remains a cool idea to me). Not really possible unless they all get to make an attack.

I'm talking about 4e.

If people want to use the 5e D&D combat rules to resolve battles between dozens of peasants and dragons that's on them, but to me that doesn't seem a use case that D&D's rules are ever supposed to have covered.

 

[pemerton]

All you have to do is reintroduce uses for gold.

Presumably in the fiction, as in the real world, the use of gold is to wield economic power.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Presumably in the fiction, as in the real world, the use of gold is to wield economic power.

True. We just have to find a way to make economic power sexy.

 

[FrogReaver]

I feel like I've been transported by to late 2012/2013 where I was saying these same things; from an applied science perspective, its infinitely easier to loosen and remove structure from a tightly designed game engine (and insert GM mediation and curation in the stead of those things) than it is to do the inverse.

I think from a mechanical perspective you are right. But from a human behavioral perspective I’m not so sure. Taking anything away from a player tends to be infinitely worse than adding something for them.

 

[Bill Zebub]

All you have to do is reintroduce uses for gold.

You gotta figure that previous adventurers must have used their gold to build elaborate but pointless dungeons filled with treasure. It’s the only thing that could explain the presence of so many of them.

Why did they squander their gold this way? Because the adventurers before them must have done the same thing.

It’s “Pay It Forward” and I, for one, am not going to break the chain.

 

[Reynard]

You gotta figure that previous adventurers must have used their gold to build elaborate but pointless dungeons filled with treasure. It’s the only thing that could explain the presence of so many of them.

Why did they squander their gold this way? Because the adventurers before them must have done the same thing.

It’s “Pay It Forward” and I, for one, am not going to break the chain.

Think of all the inns run by retired adventurers, charging like 2cp for ale. There was no way those places were solvent with all the offered amenities. Obviously they had a hoard somewhere in the cellar with all their treasure and they were just draining it slowly to give new adventurers a place to rest up and heal.