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

[Lanefan]

Do you understand, then, that this specific sentiment is why you will--always--get pushback?

"I don't mind those people being excluded from the hobby" becomes "I don't mind you being excluded from the hobby" when the preference you're talking about is widespread and more common than your own preference.

That's the problem here. You don't care whether a preference opposite your own is allowed on the playground or not. And that will absolutely guaranteed ALWAYS get pushback.

Fine. Push away. But it's a game, and games involve both moments of winning and moments of losing; and players not willing to accept in good sportsmanship those moments of losing aren't a good fit for any game. D&D is not exempt from this.

And this is the second thing that will get you a ton of pushback.

Why should a brand-new person stick through that trial-and-error?

The only time a brand-new player should need to stick through that period of trial and error is if-when the DM is also brand new. You're all learning the game together and, fact of life, there's going to be slip-ups.

In any other situation the DM will have already more or less gone through that trial-and-error period

That's the thing you're not explaining here. Why should they bother with something that requires literal years of trial-and-error before they develop the gut-instinct required to make a system work properly? What value are they getting during those years, apart from "very slow accretion of intuition", that makes this process worthwhile?

A fun game is, one hopes, what they're getting. Not every error is a tragedy. Some DM errors lead to grand tales re-told for ages.

Because from where I'm sitting, this is like telling someone, "Well it gets good once you've played for 500 hours" when they complain that the beginning isn't fun. Their reply, in nearly all cases, is going to be, "Why should I do this, then, when I can get 500 hours of actually having fun doing something else?"

To me it's like most things: practice makes better even if it doesn't always make perfect.

Note that I'm not defending the ridiculous, risible notion that games should be instantly 100% amaze-balls fun from the first instant. It's okay for a game to require some time to grow and develop. I'm instead putting forward the rather more modest assertion that this lead-up, grow-and-develop period should be not just temporary, it should be as short as the designers can reasonably make it.

Meh - I'm still, I think, growing and developing as a DM and I've been at it almost non-stop since 1984. It's a neverending process.

 

[Lanefan]

Not on the front cover but on the back cover and the intro it is explicitly for Dark Sun and it begins in the Dark Sun city-state of Tyr.

View attachment 402564

Of course they then screw up the Dark Sun flavor with stock D&D non-Dark Sun horse- and ox-drawn mounts on the map instead of kanks and crodlu ones.

Ah. That'll teach me to look at the back cover as well as the front.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Not on the front cover but on the back cover and the intro it is explicitly for Dark Sun and it begins in the Dark Sun city-state of Tyr.

View attachment 402564

Of course they then screw up the Dark Sun flavor with stock D&D non-Dark Sun horse- and ox-drawn mounts on the map instead of kanks and crodlu ones.

View attachment 402565

Christ, that is the least Dark Sun looking map possible short of covering it in trees!

 

[SteveC]

"I don't mind those people being excluded from the hobby" becomes "I don't mind you being excluded from the hobby" when the preference you're talking about is widespread and more common than your own preference.

That's the problem here. You don't care whether a preference opposite your own is allowed on the playground or not. And that will absolutely guaranteed ALWAYS get pushback.

I think this is very well said, and very important to the hobby. I grew up in the 70s and 80s playing, and there were a lot of social outcasts and odd people who were welcomed into the game. Nowadays, I realize that they were neurodivergent, but we didn't know it back then. Other social circles excluded them and gaming was a welcoming home.

I think those kinds of people are currently being subtly and not so subtly pushed out of the hobby because they have issues fitting in and don't understand some of the social dynamics that people have that are new to gaming. And I don't think they should be excluded. I don't think people should be excluded for politics, bad smells, or wanting to tell me about their character too much.

It's not that I don't find those things annoying; I just want gaming to continue to be as inclusive as possible. And, no, that doesn't mean I have no standards, I just relax them when I'm playing at a Con or my FLGS. Because gaming in public spaces, where a lot of gaming happens, is where you see this. Frankly, the people who want to gatekeep the hobby are the only ones I want to keep out of it.

I come at it from the perspective of having gamed with a lot of people on the spectrum, and having a daughter who's neurodivergent. She works very hard to fit into group environments, and we want to help her as much as we can, but in the end, it's on her. In my opinion, it's on all of us to be as understanding as possible because we all have something odd about us, and we're all just looking to have some fun.

 

[Nightfly]

Christ, that is the least Dark Sun looking map possible short of covering it in trees!

It's made out of WotC's Dungeon Tiles, which they were pushing hard at the time. There was only one outdoor city set, so that was by gawd what a Dark Sun town square was going to look like. Just like a lot of insane evil cults building their underground shrines suddenly got really obsessed with right angles.

 

[Zardnaar]

Wheel of Time fans definitely scared me away. "14 books and only half of them are bad!"

Chucked it in book 7. No fans required.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This is me when someone tells me that the first 100-200 episodes of some anime is not as good as the 300+ episodes that follow. This is also why my rule of thumb with anime was generally "you have fifty-two or less episodes to tell me your story."

For TV shows, I will usually try to judge by the best (not the worst) episodes of the first season, and the proportion thereof.

Because let's be real. The first season of TNG, and the first season of AtLA, were both...not as good on average as 3/4 of the remainder. Both have great episodes and some...well, stinkers in TNG's case, merely weak-and-skippable in AtLA's case. Overall, some of the best television ever produced. (And, notably, neither even cracks 200, let alone 400-500!)

I have a similar policy with fantasy books as a result of my experiences with the WoT and ASoIaF style "epic fantasy" of the '90s and '00s. I came to appreciate an author who knows how to write a well-written story that is memorable and succinct. IMHO, some of the best fantasy prose comes from authors who know how to do more with less using language.

FWIW, Lord of the Rings is 481,103 words total. Ursula K. Le Guin's six-book Earthsea series is 480,503 words total. George RR Martin's Storm of Swords alone has 424,000 words, and who knows when he will ever be finished with the series.

While I enjoyed reading of the antics of Mat Cauthon in WoT or Tyrion in ASoIaF and ruminating over fan theories and predictions, I don't feel any desire to re-read these books. However, I am forever drawn back to the prose of Ursula K. LeGuin in A Wizard of Earthsea, the prose of JRR Tolkien in Lord of the Rings, the prose of Peter S. Beagle in The Last Unicorn, or the prose of Gene Wolfe in Book of the New Sun. Such artful prose is transformative and enduring. It's writing that makes me feel as if I am scamming the author, who divulges the arcane secrets and richness of the English language to me through their wordcraft.

I think what I would say, on that front, is that (like with a TTRPG! Back on topic, baybee!), long prose is only worth it if it's really good and thus shortening it would genuinely weaken it. Some stories can only be told when they have the chance to stretch out. Recently watched Overly Sarcastic Productions' video on "Redeeming Revenge of the Sith", and the sheer outright operatic prose of the novelization is 100% what that story needed. Trying to "punch it up", trim it down, stuff it into a single movie with actors that aren't right for the parts, hilariously wooden dialogue, and egregiously unnecessary and out-of-character choreography solely because ILM already rendered stuff for it, ruins the story. I genuinely need to get my hands on the novelization because it sounds absolutely perfect--and it is long. It needs to be. It is the story of the collapse of a civilization, of the destruction of a religious order that has been the backbone of a society of trillions of people for tens of thousands of years.

So, just as with TTRPG design: complexity must be for a purpose, and that purpose needs to be worthy. Obviously, nothing is inherently worthy to all people all the time. But outside of simplicity-purists who won't accept anything but damn-near-maximum simplicity, there's usually something you can point to to say, "It's worthwhile to learn this, because grappling with it makes for an enjoyable challenge."

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Fine. Push away. But it's a game, and games involve both moments of winning and moments of losing; and players not willing to accept in good sportsmanship those moments of losing aren't a good fit for any game. D&D is not exempt from this.

Are you seriously accusing me of being a poor sport simply because I don't want to be forced to play a game where my characters will die, over and over and over again, before I'm allowed to get to the part of the game I find mechanically engaging?

I can get roleplay anytime, without any need for complicated rules. I have entire worlds of roleplay at my fingertips that don't require that. Why should I put up with rules that require me to suffer through stuff I hate?

And why should your vision be the one and only vision allowed into the rules? Again, you haven't actually answered the question. You've just thrown an ad hominem my direction and called it a day.

Why should the rules actively exclude my preferences in order to make it very slightly easier for you to enjoy yours?

The only time a brand-new player should need to stick through that period of trial and error is if-when the DM is also brand new. You're all learning the game together and, fact of life, there's going to be slip-ups.

"Slip ups" don't usually ruin experiences. Except in the kind of situation you're talking about. Where they do on the regular. That's literally the reason people use to justify fudging.

In any other situation the DM will have already more or less gone through that trial-and-error period

A fun game is, one hopes, what they're getting. Not every error is a tragedy. Some DM errors lead to grand tales re-told for ages.

But lots of them don't. As in, almost all of them don't. It's the extremely rare exception that does.

To me it's like most things: practice makes better even if it doesn't always make perfect.

Again: why should I practice something I don't enjoy, which isn't adding anything to my life, and isn't developing any skills other than ones used by this thing I'm not enjoying?

That's what you're failing to answer here. It's like saying that practicing 52-pickup to become really good at 52-pickup is for some reason worth doing because...getting better at something is always worthwhile? Or something? I literally can't parse an argument out of this that isn't either completely circular or trivially false.

Meh - I'm still, I think, growing and developing as a DM and I've been at it almost non-stop since 1984. It's a neverending process.

There is a vast difference between "there's always more to learn" and "you must put in at least 500 hours before you're able to start having fun the way you want to."

 

[Belen]

Are you seriously accusing me of being a poor sport simply because I don't want to be forced to play a game where my characters will die, over and over and over again, before I'm allowed to get to the part of the game I find mechanically engaging?

I can get roleplay anytime, without any need for complicated rules. I have entire worlds of roleplay at my fingertips that don't require that.

I never played in older edition games where characters die over and over again. It was a running joke in most groups to create backup characters but it was a meme.

You hate it when you feel that people mischaracterize 4e even when they are giving their opinion and argue that the opinion is wrong. This is a consistent characterization of older edition play from you.

Why should I put up with rules that require me to suffer through stuff I hate?

As for your last statement, we agree. If you hate some, then you should not play. A lot of people felt that was about each edition of D&D. It is not wrong, in fact, I think it is healthy.

 

[dave2008]

There is a vast difference between "there's always more to learn" and "you must put in at least 500 hours before you're able to start having fun the way you want to."

Absolutely, I 95% agree with you hear (there are arguments for getting benefit from struggling against the no-win situation). However, there are many people who do get enjoyment on 5 hours of play if not 1-2! I don't necessarily know how to help Paul and not potentially hurt Peter. For example, your have said you experience at low level 5e has been horrible (lots TPKs). On the other hand, many people think low level 5e is where it is at its best. Is it possible to satisfy both those groups with the same game? IDK