D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[payn]

I have heard it repeated with 100% seriousness--or, at least, zero effort to communicate joviality--multiple times on this forum, to say nothing of hearing it elsewhere.

"It's a joke" is one of the worst excuses for perpetuating incorrect or harmful things.

It’s usually used by an arbitrator between two parties, so easier for them to say.

The best compromise viewpoint I ever got was in a negotiation course I took. You need to be negotiating with interests in mind, not positions. Then, the ball everyone has eyes on is mutual benefit instead of a loss state. YMMV

 

[TiQuinn]

And that's cool. I disagree with your disagreement.

Seriously, yes, a lot of TSR-era stuff wasn't great, either, but much of it was done in-house and they made a lot of stuff (yes, much of it mediocre at best). WotC in 5E has fallen very far behind that curve IMO, so yeah 3PP picks up the slack. But IME 3PP often doesn't produce gems either. So, over all, we're left with a lower standard than before IMO.

I don’t see in-house vs 3PP as either a good thing or a bad thing, and my point was in-house didn’t necessarily lead to greater quality. It certainly didn’t rise to a higher level simply because it was in-house.

 

[Kromanjon]

One other thing that I take exception to: I disagree that D&D in the TSR era was more creative or rather that because what creativity that occurred in-house was somehow better than today’s model of 5e with 3PP support. The idea that playtesting is a thing that occurs at all is relatively new but it’s much more likely now. In the 80s, it was virtually non-existent short of the writer of a new rule tried it once at a convention and it worked for them. The quality of Unearthed Arcana, the Dungeoneer’s and Wilderness Survival Guides, and the various rules scattered about Dragon magazine varied widely. It’s very strange for me to remember that era and the sometimes terrible quality amongst the gems and to have them presented all as equally valuable. For me, there’s still a need to wade through good and bad material today, but on the whole I find 3PP to be much closer to the mark of what works in a 5e game than those even some of the work that came out of TSR…for their own game!

I would go so far as to agree that creativity has improved significantly since "back in the days" but I would state that that most of todays creativity happens in the indie scene and has little to nothing to do with D&D. D&D is a behemoth, it basically dictates wat ttrpgs are today and in doing so it has a hard time exploring things a bit more out there. It might be because it won't sell or because it isn't accessible or for any other reason but either it can't or i won't stretch itself too far in terms of innovation.

Looking at the indies today though, and I'm talking from OSR to story-first games, it amazing the wild things you can find. And I'm willing to bet that TSR wouldn't be able to think that far outside the box either.

 

[TiQuinn]

I've personally "bounced off" of some games because they didn't reflect the playstyle they were marketted as having, and/or the way they were pitched by the GM. Thus I didn't engage the games properly due to mismatched expectations, some outside of my control.

Sure, players might be going in with incorrect assumptions (God knows that I've experienced this) but I've met DMs who also didn't quite properly grasp the system either...

For example, about a year ago I joined a brand new group with a GM who pitched a particular non-d20 game to us, insisting that it was "faster and more action-oriented than D&D". He also promised that fights would be shorter and more exciting and that characters "roles / classes" would be more compelling, with more intuitive rules that allow for more stunts.

It... didn't quite meet up to that at all. It wasn't all that fun, but it turned out that it wasn't the system's fault: he was running a specific setting module... with pre-made "Core" characters. So my "Rogue" didn't have any classic typical Rogue abilities. Cool stunts were discouragingly difficult to accomplish (and our skillsets weren't really the greatest).

At one point the GM, seeing my character being quite ineffectual in the combat scenes, reminded me that I should really be taking advantage of the Rogue's abilities like sneak attack and other maneuvers to better engage with the action aspects of the game. However I showed him the pre-made character he printed out for me, which had none of those abilities, in fact, the strongest abilities were related to connecting with underworld city contacts (the adventure was entirely out in the wilderness) and acrobatics (none of the fights had any cool terrain to exploit). There was a pause, he looked around the table, shrugged and we moved on.

A very specific anecdote, but I wanted to explain how it isn't just the players' fault when player germs vs. game terms are mismatched.

Agreed, it can definitely fall on the GM as well. Selling people on a game is not just a matter of “hey, let’s play this game.”

As a simple example, I’ve played Monopoly before but if I hadn’t and someone said let’s play it, I wouldn’t realize that game might take MANY HOURS longer than say, Clue.

 

[TiQuinn]

I would go so far as to agree that creativity has improved significantly since "back in the days" but I would state that that most of todays creativity happens in the indie scene and has little to nothing to do with D&D. D&D is a behemoth, it basically dictates wat ttrpgs are today and in doing so it has a hard time exploring things a bit more out there. It might be because it won't sell or because it isn't accessible or for any other reason but either it can't or i won't stretch itself too far in terms of innovation.

Looking at the indies today though, and I'm talking from OSR to story-first games, it amazing the wild things you can find. And I'm willing to bet that TSR wouldn't be able to think that far outside the box either.

I think modern NSR games are far, far more creative than the games of the TSR era. The community has gotten far better at designing games.

 

[ezo]

I don’t see in-house vs 3PP as either a good thing or a bad thing, and my point was in-house didn’t necessarily lead to greater quality. It certainly didn’t rise to a higher level simply because it was in-house.

No necessarily, true, but often yes IME. YMMV.

It is one reason why 3PP material doesn't appeal to me much. This has always been the case, even in TSR-era. Role-Aids was the only supplements I found value it.

But I understand this is all subjective and tastes vary.

 

[TiQuinn]

No necessarily, true, but often yes IME. YMMV.

It is one reason why 3PP material doesn't appeal to me much. This has always been the case, even in TSR-era. Role-Aids was the only supplements I found value it.

But I understand this is all subjective and tastes vary.

Yes, but maybe, but also, not always and no.

 

[FrozenNorth]

And that's fine!

It's far FAR easier on the DM to softball a brutal game than to brutal up a softball game.

No. It’s far easier for a DM to make a softball game more difficult than the reverse.

Throw an adult red dragon against a 1st level party in any edition of the game. See how well the party does.

 

[payn]

Yes, but maybe, but also, not always and no.

 

[TiQuinn]

Speaking of Role Aids, I also remember when TSR also tried to sue them out of existence.