D&D General D&D Editions: Anybody Else Feel Like They Don't Fit In?

[Quickleaf]

Sure yeah, I can relate - I’m definitely an outlier and my tastes don’t neatly line up with any edition of D&D.

That is one of the reasons I picked up my old setting and instead of continuing to write it for D&D, I’m letting it become its own thing (aka fantasy heartbreaker).

A GM who lives long enough will become a games designer, right?

I’ve been enjoying playing other games right now - I’m playing Delta Green tomorrow and then in a few weeks running AD&D1e with Unearthed Arcana/Dragon mag/OSRIC. Deepening your exposure to games may not “answer” all your questions, but every couple games you might have an ah-hah moment “THAT’S what I’m looking for!”

 

[JohnSnow]

You are thinking of Dragonslayer. Dragonbane is from Free League Publishing.

Start - Free League Publishing

freeleaguepublishing.com

Oops! That is probably right - I got them mixed up.

 

[jerryrice4949]

I get this. I really do. 1st and 2nd edition felt faux medieval to me. Middle Earth with a little more magic to it. Once 3rd edition/Pathfinder went dungeon punk and whatever it is 5th is now, I felt left behind. Once everyone has magic, NPC and PC alike, that feel has gone. It's Eberron and that was a setting a despised for being magic as technology. Sorry Eberron fans.

Some will say you can't run D&D as Sword & Sorcery, but I disagree. It's how you present the world. PC's can be the magic types. They are the heroes after all. Merchant's shouldn't be magic users and most priests would be the non-spell casting lay priests. Higher level play is a bit different I grant you, but then you are usually looking at outer planes and the weirdness that entails.

The thing is 1E/2E were never low magic. Wizard, bard, druid, cleric, paladin and ranger all had some elements of what could be described as magic. Not to mention that multi classing was much more prevalent during those editions so you often saw a magical and non magical class together. Elves had magic powers as a race and magic items were ubiquitous. Even setting specific subclasses say the Knights of Solamnia had magic per se.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The thing is 1E/2E were never low magic. Wizard, bard, druid, cleric, paladin and ranger all had some elements of what could be described as magic. Not to mention that multi classing was much more prevalent during those editions so you often saw a magical and non magical class together. Elves had magic powers as a race and magic items were ubiquitous. Even setting specific subclasses say the Knights of Solamnia had magic per se.

Who said low magic, and what does that even mean?

 

[jerryrice4949]

Who said low magic, and what does that even mean?

I am sure you know. You have been on these threads long enough. That aside it has been implied in this thread that magic in 5E is much more common than previous editions.

 

[DEFCON 1]

There isn't any "fitting in" with Dungeons & Dragons. Or any game. A person grabs some rulebooks and they either like the rules and choose to play them, or they don't and they don't. There's no special club or anything with a velvet rope that someone is being stuck behind.

If someone doesn't like the current rules of this particular version of D&D... that's fine. They don't have to play it. Just like tens of thousands of other roleplayers out there who also aren't playing it. And even all those people who are playing it are not all playing it the same way, so it's not like they are all actually in that special club either. Because there is no club. People are just playing games they wish to play and not playing games they don't.

 

[el-remmen]

BTW, I started a very similar thread back in early 2022:

D&D General - How am I a D&D outlier? How are you one?

Way back in the early days of these boards, before they were officially these boards even, was when I first began to realize that what my approach to running (and to some degrees playing) D&D was not as standard and common as I had thought it was before I was involved in any gaming internet...

www.enworld.org

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There isn't any "fitting in" with Dungeons & Dragons. Or any game. A person grabs some rulebooks and they either like the rules and choose to play them, or they don't and they don't. There's no special club or anything with a velvet rope that someone is being stuck behind.

If someone doesn't like the current rules of this particular version of D&D... that's fine. They don't have to play it. Just like tens of thousands of other roleplayers out there who also aren't playing it. And even all those people who are playing it are not all playing it the same way, so it's not like they are all actually in that special club either. Because there is no club. People are just playing games they wish to play and not playing games they don't.

I'm not sure how this helps the OP in any way.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I'm not sure how this helps the OP in any way.

As opposed to the 8 pages of posts before me? They all "helped"?

 

[JohnSnow]

The thing is 1E/2E were never low magic. Wizard, bard, druid, cleric, paladin and ranger all had some elements of what could be described as magic. Not to mention that multi classing was much more prevalent during those editions so you often saw a magical and non magical class together. Elves had magic powers as a race and magic items were ubiquitous. Even setting specific subclasses say the Knights of Solamnia had magic per se.

Re-check that.

In 1e, Bard was an optional prestige class. Yes, Magic-Users, Clerics and Druids had spells, but Druid shapeshifting? That was a 7th-level ability.

As for the others, yes, Paladins had some magical powers early. They got Lay on Hands, Detect Evil, Protection from Evil, eventually gaining Turn Undead, and even more abilities if they had a Holy Sword. But their spell-casting didn't kick in until Level 9 (yes 9!).

Rangers didn't get any magical powers or spell casting until 8th-level, at which point they got 1 -2 first level druid spells, eventually adding 2nd-level spells at 12th, and 3rd-level ones at 16th. Level 1 Magic-User spells followed at Level 9, followed by 2nd-level ones at 13th.

From 1st to 7th-level, the Ranger's magical powers were non-existent. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. That is vastly different from getting a pile of spells and supernatural abilities starting at 1st-level.

I recognize this is a flavor distinction as much as a power one. It's all about the feel of a setting, not power level. Part of it is that the ubiquitous magic hurts my ability to suspend disbelief - a lot. I want magic to feel magical.

Magic in baseline D&D feels...productized.