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

[Zardnaar]

Not with an avatar like that!

Got really drunk one night.....

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I haven't read the 36 pages, and it is an old thread now. But I have a different take on it...

You can't go home again.

Really, you can't. Even if you played the exact same game, it would no longer be the same experience for you, because you change over time - for every "you" around here. Trying to recapture an RPG experience from your youth is like trying to recapture your first solo ride on a bicycle, or your first kiss. It cannot be done.

And that should be okay. If the world has only one, sole awesome experience... that's a very sad world indeed. There are other awesome experiences - hunt them down and embrace them.

Yup. If the problem was really "the rules have changed" you could just dust off your old Basic D&D boxed set and play with that (or download it (or something very like) from the internet if you've lost it).

The issue is we have changed. And that's only a problem if you make it so.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I haven't read the 36 pages, and it is an old thread now. But I have a different take on it...

You can't go home again.

Really, you can't. Even if you played the exact same game, it would no longer be the same experience for you, because you change over time - for every "you" around here. Trying to recapture an RPG experience from your youth is like trying to recapture your first solo ride on a bicycle, or your first kiss. It cannot be done.

And that should be okay. If the world has only one, sole awesome experience... that's a very sad world indeed. There are other awesome experiences - hunt them down and embrace them.

Chasing the Dragon.

Beyond just being wisdom for life as noted above, these things are incredibly relevant for one of the claimed design goals of 5e, and why it was always a flawed approach, because of another design goal.

Goal the first: "Make magic feel magical again." Goal the second: "Everything you loved about D&D."

Magic felt magical whenever any given person began learning D&D, because when you know nothing at all about a complex system, "magic"--in the colloquial sense of the term--is precisely what it looks like. If you showed a 13th century peasant a smartphone, they would likely have no way to characterize it other than "magic". If we (somehow) instantiated the ability to use and manfuacture smart phones in the 13th century, it would eventually become common knowledge (...if it weren't abjured for being devil-worship or the like), but for quite a long time it would be a supernatural tablet that glows with life and speaks with an impossible voice etc., etc.

When each of us was first learning D&D, that's exactly what we encountered. It was a system--we knew that, it's literally called a "system" on the front cover in most cases--but the "system" is a mystery to us, veiled behind the pages of a grimoire, so to speak. We become initiated into those mysteries by learning to play....but that very thing is what rips away the illusion of mystery. Once we have learned what the system is, what the system does, we can see it for exactly what it is: a systematic structure attempting to codify specific effects in specific ways.

But what this means is, you cannot possibly fulfill both goals. You cannot capture that experience of fantabulous wonderment if everything is required to work in familiar ways. Exactly as Umbran said, "Trying to recapture an RPG experience from your youth is like trying to recapture your first solo ride on a bicycle, or your first kiss. It cannot be done." But that's precisely what made magic magical when we were first learning the game. Everything was possible because ignorance shielded us from the harsh truth that it was always only one specific thing, and a pretty rote thing in most cases.

I railed against this all throughout the "D&D Next" playtest, and was roundly ignored, because the paradoxical promise of mystery-in-familiarity was a siren song to the folks to whom 5e was specifically targeted. It, like "modularity", promised everything folks ever wanted. Now, today, folks have (at least begun to) come to terms with the disappointing truth: those promises could never have been fulfilled.

Which is part of why focusing your design, not on airy-fairy awesome-sounding buzzword phrases (like "Make magic feel magical again"), but on the specific experiences you want players to have, is so incredibly important in game design. Airy-fairy promises can help a game coast, potentially for years. But when the honeymoon finally wears off--as it always will--the criticism will begin, and it's not going to be satisfied with buzzwords anymore.

 

[Theory of Games]

"It is said that what is called 'the spirit of an age' is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world's coming to an end. For this reason, although one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation." - Hagakure, The Book of the Samurai

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yup. If the problem was really "the rules have changed" you could just dust off your old Basic D&D boxed set and play with that (or download it (or something very like) from the internet if you've lost it).

The issue is we have changed. And that's only a problem if you make it so.

I....really really don't agree with that second claim. Because that very sentiment is a direct denial of the above truth, that you can't have a second first time.

Some changes, yes, you can circle back. But others? No, you can't. Some changes are in fact irreversible. "Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions." (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.) When the illusion of awe and mystery has been pulled away from a structure crafted by people (and thus necessarily imperfect), you can never go back to pretending that the awe and mystery are still actually there. You can accept that the awe and mystery isn't there, and try to find a new and different joy in it. Or you can move on and look for something else, whether mysterious by novelty or mysterious because it was constructed to be so (e.g. how magic works in White Wolf's Mage games). But you can't un-do the process of losing the state of innocent ignorance you once had, unless you literally wipe your own memories which (thankfully!) is not something we can actually do.

That is: We have changed. If we wish to have the old experience again, from the old source again, that is an irresolvable problem. Unless and until we resolve this conflict, we will have a problem, it cannot be avoided. Either we must accept the passing of the old experience and accept the old source for what we now see it as, or we must pursue (something akin to) the old experience from a new source. There is no other resolution.

And sometimes, it just isn't possible to have the old experience a second time. You only have your first kiss once. In those cases, we must learn to write new laws on new tablets.

 

[KYRON45]

The trick is to play with the rules you like and hope that no one notices they are playing a different edition.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The trick is to play with the rules you like and hope that no one notices they are playing a different edition.

I have heard that doing a "D&D Mojave" can in fact get more than a few folks to like and appreciate The Edition That Must Not Be Named. Of course, no one who has any strong opinion in any direction on this can be bias-free, so I'd have to test it myself...and I just don't feel capable of that kind of deception.

 

[Aldarc]

Beyond just being wisdom for life as noted above, these things are incredibly relevant for one of the claimed design goals of 5e, and why it was always a flawed approach, because of another design goal.

Goal the first: "Make magic feel magical again." Goal the second: "Everything you loved about D&D."

Magic felt magical whenever any given person began learning D&D, because when you know nothing at all about a complex system, "magic"--in the colloquial sense of the term--is precisely what it looks like. If you showed a 13th century peasant a smartphone, they would likely have no way to characterize it other than "magic". If we (somehow) instantiated the ability to use and manfuacture smart phones in the 13th century, it would eventually become common knowledge (...if it weren't abjured for being devil-worship or the like), but for quite a long time it would be a supernatural tablet that glows with life and speaks with an impossible voice etc., etc.

When each of us was first learning D&D, that's exactly what we encountered. It was a system--we knew that, it's literally called a "system" on the front cover in most cases--but the "system" is a mystery to us, veiled behind the pages of a grimoire, so to speak. We become initiated into those mysteries by learning to play....but that very thing is what rips away the illusion of mystery. Once we have learned what the system is, what the system does, we can see it for exactly what it is: a systematic structure attempting to codify specific effects in specific ways.

But what this means is, you cannot possibly fulfill both goals. You cannot capture that experience of fantabulous wonderment if everything is required to work in familiar ways. Exactly as Umbran said, "Trying to recapture an RPG experience from your youth is like trying to recapture your first solo ride on a bicycle, or your first kiss. It cannot be done." But that's precisely what made magic magical when we were first learning the game. Everything was possible because ignorance shielded us from the harsh truth that it was always only one specific thing, and a pretty rote thing in most cases.

I railed against this all throughout the "D&D Next" playtest, and was roundly ignored, because the paradoxical promise of mystery-in-familiarity was a siren song to the folks to whom 5e was specifically targeted. It, like "modularity", promised everything folks ever wanted. Now, today, folks have (at least begun to) come to terms with the disappointing truth: those promises could never have been fulfilled.

Which is part of why focusing your design, not on airy-fairy awesome-sounding buzzword phrases (like "Make magic feel magical again"), but on the specific experiences you want players to have, is so incredibly important in game design. Airy-fairy promises can help a game coast, potentially for years. But when the honeymoon finally wears off--as it always will--the criticism will begin, and it's not going to be satisfied with buzzwords anymore.

This reminds me a bit of the issue that a number of people have with video games, including MMOs. A lot of people had fun discovering and exploring MMOs for the first time but there is a point where that feeling fades. When previous players try to go back to the game, that feeling is no longer there because by that point, the game is now a "solved game." While Classic WoW is still popular,* just as many people realized when they went back to play it, their feelings of nostalgia also came with the realization that the "magic" was no longer there and the challenges weren't as challenging as they remembered because the game had also been "solved" and they had also improved as gamers in that time. That same sense of discovery, exploration, and learning with the game wasn't there anymore.

* One reason being that people are basically playing it as a different game with additional rules they have to follow to add challenge.

 

[payn]

This reminds me a bit of the issue that a number of people have with video games, including MMOs. A lot of people had fun discovering and exploring MMOs for the first time but there is a point where that feeling fades. When previous players try to go back to the game, that feeling is no longer there because by that point, the game is now a "solved game." While Classic WoW is still popular,* just as many people realized when they went back to play it, their feelings of nostalgia also came with the realization that the "magic" was no longer there and the challenges weren't as challenging as they remembered because the game had also been "solved" and they had also improved as gamers in that time. That same sense of discovery, exploration, and learning with the game wasn't there anymore.

* One reason being that people are basically playing it as a different game with additional rules they have to follow to add challenge.

I played DDO and Eve for a handful of years. Initially, the games brought me but the folks I met kept me. For a time anyway.

 

[DarkCrisis]

OSE and Shadowdark has given me life.

I say this have finally learned to not hate 5E for what I consider flaws and just roll with its power level.