D&D 5E Behind the design of 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons: Well my impression as least.

[pemerton]

Another thread prompted me to quote some passages from the AD&D PHB (Gygax, 1978, pp 7, 8, 18). They seem relevant to this thread also:

A fantasy role playing game is an exercise in imagination and personal creativity. The organizer of the campaign . . . must use the system to devise an individual and unique world. Into this world of weird monsters, strange peoples, multitudinous states, and fabulous treasures . . . stride fearless adventurers - you and your fellow players. Inexperienced and of but small power at first, by dint of hard fighting and clever deeds, these adventurers advance in ability to become forces to be reckoned with . . . By means of group co-operation and individual achievement, and adventurer can become ever more powerful. . . . There is no "winner", no fnal objective, and the campaign grows and changes as it matures. . . .

[O]ne player must serve as the Dungeon Master, the shaper of the fantasy milieu . . . The other participants become adventurers by creating characters to expore the fantastic world and face all of its challenges - monsters, magic and unnamed menaces. . . . [E]ach character begins at the bottom of his or her chosen class . . . By successfully meeting the challenges posed, they gain experience and move upwards in power, just as actual paying experience really increases paying skill. Imagination, intelligence, problem solving ability, and memory are all continually exercised by participants in the game. . . .

As players build the experience level of their characters and go forth seeking ever greater challenges, they must face stronger monsters and more difficult problems of other sorts . . .

Skilled players always make a point of knowing what they are doing, i.e. they have an objective. They co-operate . . . in order to gain their ends. . . . Superior players will not fight everything they meet, for they realize that wit is as good a weapon as the sword or the spell. When weakened by wounds, or nearly out of spells and vital equipment, a clever party will seek to leave the dungeon in order to rearm themselves. (He who runs away lives to fight another day.) . . .

The approach you wish to take to the game, how you believe you can most successfully meet the challenges which it poses, and which role you desire to play are dictated by character class​

My take home from this is that the game will involve challenges, and the my choice of character class is central to determining the way in which I will be able to, and expected to confront, those challenges. There is a very strong implication that those challenges will be physical and potentially violent (weird monsters, stronger monsters, unnamed menaces, etc) and even lethal in nature (eg the references to hard fighting, to wounds, to running away, etc).

Exploration is framed as a means to an end - the end of meeting challenges. Wit and words are presented as means to an end - the end of surviving (potentially lethal) challenges.

This is a very specific focus on "exploration" and "interaction". At first blush it suggests Conan, perhaps Tolkien , maybe even the Seven Samurai. There is less of a sense of Ashes of Time, or Hero, let alone a game of exploration (in the literal sense) and colonisation, or a game of political intrigue among professional courtiers and diplomats. There is nothing to suggest that the game will involve (say) trading, or charting coastlines, as major focuses of play, and the only thing that even hints at (say) political negotiations as part of the game is the reference to "multitudinous states" (an allusion to the "thrones of the Earth", to be trampled underthe PCs' sandled feet?).

Fabulous treasure is mentioned, but from this introduction to the game I woudn't realise that treasure acquisition is the main way to gain experience: this introduction suggests that I gain experience by "successfully meeting challenges". It is not until I get to p 106 that I learn that "As a rule, one pont of experience will be awarded for one gold piece gained by a character". At this point it becomes clear that the evocation of Conan, LotR, etc is in some ways purely superficial. Consider Tower of the Elephant, for instance, perhaps the best Conan story but one which in AD&D terms would be a total flop because no treasure was removed from the dungeon; or the absence of mercenary motivations in LotR. As the game is presented, AD&D players who engage in those sorts of adventures are playing the game wrong, because earning no XP and hence failing to progress their PCs.

There is some uncertainty with respect to the interaction between class and experience. Page 106 of the PHB also says that "the Dungeon Master will award experience points to the character for treasures gained and opponents captured or slain andforl solving or overcoming problems through professional means." But in the DMG there is no suggesetion that XP are awarded for anything but "monsters slain" (p 84) or treasure "physically taken out of the dungeon or lair and turned into a transportable medium or stored in the player's stronghold" (p 85). Character class operates only as a consideration for training time (p 86). I also note that, contra some assertions upthread, there is no suggestion that you get monster XP for anything other than kills (though as noted the PHB also mentions captures).

that is why you were given XP for completing the challenges not just killing them.

In the AD&D DMG, XP is awarded only for treasure gained and for monsters slain. The PHB also allows that monsters captured will earn XP. There is certainly no such thing as the "story award" or "roleplaying XP". A game in which the PCs sailed the seas, charting new coastlines, but avoided combat whenever possible and never engaged in looting or piracy - a game which is actually quite feasible, if perhaps a little boring, in Classic Traveller (substituting planets for coastlines) - would be one in which the D&D PCs gained very few XP and hence very few levels. It would not fit the description of the game that I quoted above.

From what I can remember, older editions of D&D didn't assume anything but everyone having fun.

<snip>

You made your character and you did whatever you felt like doing to interact with whatever adventure the DM took you on.

In AD&D, if you didn't play your class in accordance with its role then you had to spend a lot more time and money on training. From the DMG, p 86:

Consider the natural functions of each class of character. Consider also the professed alignment of each character. Briefly assess the performance of each character after an adventure. Did he or she perform basically in the character of his or her class? Were his or her actions in keping with his or her professed alignment? . . . Clerics who refuse to help and heal or do not remain faitfhul to their deity, fighters who hang back from combat or attempt to steal, or fail to boldly lead, magic-users who seek to engage in melee or ignore magic items they could employ in critical situations, thieves who boldly engage in frontal attacks or refrain from acquisition of an extra bit of treasure when the opportunity presents itself, "cautious" characters who do not pull their own weight - these are all clear examples of a POOR rating.​

A POOR rating means you have to take 4 weeks to train, costing 6000 gp times current level. Conversely, an EXCELLENT rating will divide both that time and that money by 4 (ie 1 week and 1500 gp times current level).

AD&D, taken as a whole, gives a pretty clear impression of what the game is about.

 

[Cadriel]

I repeat my assertion from upthread that the non-combat pillars are not as well-supported as the combat pillar.

With respect to exploration, only a very narrow and rather artificial sort of exploration is supported. There are very detailed rules for finding, listening at and opening doors. But there are no rules for hunting and foraging, for finding water, for charting coastlines, etc - all of which are real elements of exploration in the real world. There are no rules for trading (contrast, say, Traveller, which comes out aroud the same time as AD&D). The wilderness rules in OD&D book 3 include travel times, chances of getting lost, and chances of encountering castles and creatures - and the main significance of these encounters is the threat of combat (eg there are rules for surprise, and evasion, but no rules to determine the likelihood that encountered merchants try to enter into trade negotiations).

In the social pillar there are (i) no rules for dipomacy (you can't even use the reaction table - not even 5% of diplomatic interactions result in immediate attack), for the effects on loyalty of arranging marriages (a stock-in-trade of the mediaeveal era), etc, and (ii) no rules for finality of social interactions - if I bribe the orcs on the way through, do they stay bribed when I come back or do we have to check again? if my henchmen resists a bribe offer from an NPC today, can the GM force a new roll by having the NPC try again tomorrow?

These sorts of questions are answered for combat (via rules for zero hit points, hit point recovery etc) but the social rules are silent on them. The DMG gives no advice in respect of them. It has no example of play involving negotiation or social interaction. The claim that AD&D's social pillar is as well-supported as the combat pillar (which has far more detail rules, plus a worked example of play) is not sustainabe when one actually looks at the rules provided.

If your definition of exploration is exploring dungeons and your definition of social interaction is bribing your way past potentially hostile dungeon denizens then there is a degree of support. But someone who wanted to run a scenario involving complex social interactions among multiple NPCs (say, like the Penumbra d20 moudle Maiden Voyage, which I have been running recently) would have to do most of the mechanical legwork him-/herself.

How many d% rolls, modified by CHA, are required to negotiate an alliance with a dwarven chieftain? The rules don't answer this question (unless you use magic, like a Charm spell or a Rod of Rulership), although they certainly will tell us how many d20 rolls, modified by STR, are required to beat that chieftain in melee.

This is why I say the rules do not support social interaction as a mode of conflict resolution to the same degree that they support combat.

OD&D is a game about exploring dungeons and wilderness, and that is what the exploration rules focus on. Complaining that these aren't about broader forms of exploration seems to me to rather miss the point, and doesn't somehow prove that the game was really about combat.

As far as the castles in the wilderness, only fighters want to joust. Magic-users and clerics are likely to send the PCs on some kind of quest rather than fight them.

As far as social interaction, you really need to read Playing at the World to understand where the creators were coming from. Gygax and a number of people in his circle were fanatic players of Diplomacy, a game that spontaneously generated intense role playing, alliances and backstabbing. But it had no social rules at all - it was simply an emergent feature of the game's rules. Compared to that, OD&D did have some significant social rules. Again, complaining that they related to the overall theme of dungeon exploration misses the point; that's what roleplaying in OD&D was for. Just like in Diplomacy, it was a weapon in your arsenal. Negotiation was a strategy for getting an advantage, gathering intelligence, or just getting out of a dangerous situation without having to fight.

You reference AD&D here, which is quite a different beast from OD&D. The years between the release of D&D to the world and the publication of the AD&D DMG were years of dramatic change, literally a whole hobby growing where only the vaguest predecessors had existed. As I said above, the game changed and how people played it changed. It stopped being a game of college age wargamers and became a game aimed at teenagers with no such experience. Combat did take on a bigger and more detailed role, although its supremacy is still being vastly overstated. AD&D still had all the social and exploration elements of OD&D, but it had a lot more stuff as well. But how AD&D was played in the 80s was very different from how D&D was played in the mid-70s. That discovery was a big force behind the OSR and ideas today like three pillars of play.

 

[Iosue]

MIn AD&D auto-attacks occur on 5 or less on the reaction table (ie 1 in 20). But a result of 6 to 25 (ie another 1 in 5) result in a hostile reaction precipitating immediate action. In many cases, that immediate action will also be an attack.

Furthermore, p 63 of the DMG tells us that "Reaction is determined by rolling percentile dice, adjusting the score for charisma and applicable loyalty adjustment as ifthe creature were a henchman of the character speaking." Those adjustments (found on pp 36-37) include penaltis of -5 for racial antipathy and -20 for racial hatred (reduced to -15 if the hated character isn't doing the talking but is merely in the company of the negotiator). So a party with elves or dwarves in it may have trouble negotiating with orcs or goblins.

The alignment adjustments are also very severe: -35 for opposed alignments (eg CE to LG), and -15 for hotile alignments (eg LE to LG); although some of this may be ameliorated by the general alignment modifications (+15 for LG, +5 for neutral good - NPCs prefer to negotiate with those who might keep their promises). NPCs won't always be able to judge PC alignments, but often will (eg via a holy symbol for a cleric character).

I don't think the rules of AD&D make negotiation, and avoiding automatic hostilities, quite as easy as you are saying. And even if only 1 in 4 encounters resuts in combat, that means that a group of PCs has to be capable of engaging in combat successfully. Which makes planning for combat a significant part of the game even when the goal is to avoid combat. At least from my perspective, that is one part of what is meant by saying that the game leans towards combat as a principal mode of conflict resolution.

But the module under discussion is B2, which was designed to be played with Holmes and Moldvay Basic, so I'm not entirely sure the AD&D reaction rules (which I've long thought are needlessly complex, and are possibly the reason reaction eventually fell by the wayside) are really applicable.

As for avoiding combat, sure that takes time, but that's time spent in the exploration and social interaction pillars, not the combat pillar.

I repeat my assertion from upthread that the non-combat pillars are not as well-supported as the combat pillar.

With respect to exploration, only a very narrow and rather artificial sort of exploration is supported. There are very detailed rules for finding, listening at and opening doors. But there are no rules for hunting and foraging, for finding water, for charting coastlines, etc - all of which are real elements of exploration in the real world. There are no rules for trading (contrast, say, Traveller, which comes out aroud the same time as AD&D). The wilderness rules in OD&D book 3 include travel times, chances of getting lost, and chances of encountering castles and creatures - and the main significance of these encounters is the threat of combat (eg there are rules for surprise, and evasion, but no rules to determine the likelihood that encountered merchants try to enter into trade negotiations).

"Narrow and artificial sort of exploration" is still exploration. I mean, when we get to brass tacks, only a very narrow and rather artificial sort of combat is supported. Not to mention that (IIRC, I don't have my books on hand at the moment) there are for hunting, foraging, and finding water in the Expert set. I'm surprised if they are not also in the AD&D DMG.

But more to the point, I think the paradigm you are describing here is quite different from the paradigm in which D&D was designed and developed. In the paradigm you are describing, the medium through which the players interface with the game is through mechanical resolution. Ergo, if there are no rules for a thing, that thing is not supported, and thus doesn't really play a part in the game.

The disconnect here, IMO, is that OD&D and B/X D&D (and to perhaps a lesser extent 1e) were designed with the idea that player interaction with the DM is the interface of the game. And that as such, IC and OOC lines are blurred. The goal of the game is to put the player, to an admittedly artificial and limited degree, into the mind of the character. So that the choices the players makes are exactly the choices the character is making. Do we go left or right? What gear should I take? What spells should I prepare? Mechanics, then, are not an interface, but merely the game's representation of random chance.

Take the reaction table. PC's never get better at monster reactions. Players, however, do; as they through trial and error and practical experience develop strategies that encourage the DM to give a bonus to the roll, if not do away with it altogether. PCs do get better at the raw probabilities of combat, mainly because players can never practically get better at that. Better at avoiding it, better at settings up favorably tactically or strategically, sure. But not better at literally surviving and winning at an exchange of blows.

Consider mapping, both dungeon and wilderness hex mapping. Anyone who's played with a mapper can tell you that making the map takes up some time. But the mapper isn't just a metagame job for one particular person -- his character is mapping (remember, blurred lines), and the map represents the players' greater understanding of their surroundings, which maps (no pun intended) to the characters' understanding.

I can't speak for [MENTION=15700]Sacrosanct[/MENTION] and [MENTION=66434]ExploderWizard[/MENTION], but I suspect their games may resemble mine, where a lot of game is spent getting the map made, debating choices that need to be made, scouting ahead, racking our brains and brainstorming ways to search a room, tracking encumbrance and who's carrying what, and so on. This is the meat of the game. Straight up combat, OTOH, tends to be dispassionate die rolls; "AC 5." "Okay that's a hit." "7 points damage." "Okay, that goblin falls, dead." That's just resolution, and on the whole, I'm not in my character's head-space, not feeling what they're feeling and thinking what they're thinking. (Unless, of course, things go south, and both my character and I are going, "Oh crap, oh crap, OHH CRAAP! Run away! Run away!")

So, even when you have 50% of encounters going to combat, that doesn't account for all the stuff that happens between the encounters, stuff that's as much part of the game as anything else. Our group may get into combat five times in a session, but only choose and buy equipment once. And the rules for buying equipment and the equipment lists take up far less space and have far less intricacy than the combat rules. But that choosing and buying of equipment is probably going to take more time than those five fights put together.

Another (anecdotal) example is this write up by Luke Crane about playing Moldvay basic. Yeah, there's a little combat in there, but the meat of the story, the thing everyone remembers is the stuff other than that combat.

I don't believe this kind of play is an outlier. I do think through the 80s and 90s it became an old-fashioned, out-of-date, unpopular way to play, and changes were made to the game to reflect that. But I also believe that it was the kind of play Arneson, Gygax, Holmes, Moldvay, and Mentzer were designing the game around.

 

[pemerton]

OD&D is a game about exploring dungeons and wilderness, and that is what the exploration rules focus on.

In real life, a big part of wilderness exploration is foraging, hunting, finding water and making maps/charts. There are no rules for any of these things (other than the combat rules once you actually encounter game) in either OD&D or AD&D (before the WSG).

That is not a criticism of those games. It is simply to make the point that the sort of "wilderness exploration" that they focus on is (as I said upthread) very particular.

As far as social interaction, you really need to read Playing at the World to understand where the creators were coming from. Gygax and a number of people in his circle were fanatic players of Diplomacy, a game that spontaneously generated intense role playing, alliances and backstabbing. But it had no social rules at all - it was simply an emergent feature of the game's rules. Compared to that, OD&D did have some significant social rules. Again, complaining that they related to the overall theme of dungeon exploration misses the point; that's what roleplaying in OD&D was for. Just like in Diplomacy, it was a weapon in your arsenal. Negotiation was a strategy for getting an advantage, gathering intelligence, or just getting out of a dangerous situation without having to fight.

I am familiar with Diplomacy. Many of the people I have played RPGs with, including two members of my current group, are skilled Diplomacy players.

But playing D&D (including in its original version) is not much like playing Diplomacy, unless you confine yourself to player-to-player interaction. When PCs are negotiating with NPCs, the dynamics do not resemble Dipomacy at all - for instance, the GM has no position to defend, no -for-tat style incentives to hold his/her NPCs to agreements, etc.

The reference to Diplomacy does, however, reinforce my point about the significance of alignment rules in D&D play. Once the game starts to be built around an assumption of Good PCs engaged in heroic play - which begins some time in the early-to-mid-80s - then play is not going to resemble the amoral, realpolitik world of Dipomacy. The orcs aren't another sovereign nation to be bargained with; they have been reframed as a threat to life and to morality, who have to be defeated, or at the least held off.

Basing your whole social system on the Diplomacy model has other (not dissimilar) consequences too. For instance, it is going to support only a very narrow form of social roleplaying. Just to give one example - it makes the play of romantic love (whether between PC and NPC, or between two PCs whose players are not in love in real life) virtually impossible. If you want to play a game of essentially amoral self-aggrandising soverign entities (the individual correlates of the Westphalian/Clausewitzian nations one plays in a game of Diplomacy) then a Diplomacy-style approach will give you that. For good measure, make character advancement contingent on taking loot out of the dungeon!

But if you want other sorts of characters and other sorts of play, you need different social rules from that. Early D&D itself recognises this by way of its henchman loyalty rules - henchmen aren't free to stab at wil like a Diplomacy player, but can be bound to loyalty by non-self-interested factors manifested through a loyalty mechanic. But as I've noted upthread that mechanic is incomplete (eg how long does a successful loyalty check last?) and there is no robust framework for extending this to other contexts, nor to PCs (except via enchantment magic).

 

[Iosue]

Another quick thought.

Remember my "Let's Read Moldvay" thread? Based on the monster and treasure section, most monsters (even humanoids) had negligible treasure, and the majority of the monsters in the book are animals, both natural and fantastic. Treasure found in empty rooms, OTOH, was always lucrative. Hence my half-tongue-in-cheek suggestion that "the point of Basic D&D would be to go into a dungeon and grab loose treasure in empty rooms while avoiding fantastic wildlife". But that's really just another way of saying "exploration".

 

[billd91]

The reference to Diplomacy does, however, reinforce my point about the significance of alignment rules in D&D play. Once the game starts to be built around an assumption of Good PCs engaged in heroic play - which begins some time in the early-to-mid-80s - then play is not going to resemble the amoral, realpolitik world of Dipomacy. The orcs aren't another sovereign nation to be bargained with; they have been reframed as a threat to life and to morality, who have to be defeated, or at the least held off.

Or bought off, or distracted by getting the goblins into a war with them, or a whole bunch of other alternatives that require social interaction rather than combat. What's mostly off the table, if you're playing a good game with heroic characters, is to simply and expediently kill them.

 

[Anth]

Luxury! /yorkshireman

What can I say. We were young and didn't seee the sin in our erroneous way. :smile:
Actually we used one of those strange methods described in the DMG. I think it was Method IV: "roll 12 characters with 3d6, pick the best", but as far as I know it's equal to 4d6, and it's easier to explain 4d6 to the players of today.

 

[Lanefan]

First off, to something [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] said upthread: yes some new rules were included in 1e's published adventures (and much more often that's where new monsters and-or items showed up), but most of the new rules ideas came out in Dragon; sometimes concurrently with an adventure in which they were used. Those rule ideas that passed muster ended up in UA.

They have made assertions. Assertions do not equate to proof. For instance, did you read the tournament play report I posted upthread for G1? This was describe as a non-hack-and-slash module, yet in the report the winning team describe their approach as exactly one of hacking-and-slashing!

True, but a few things in that report suggest that party had a bit more badassery going for it than the average group to hit G1. Passwall is a 5th level spell, meaning there's a MU-9+ in the party. Blade Barrier is 6th, indicating a 12th+ level Cleric in the party. A 9th-12th level party *should* be able to tank through that adventure without too much trouble. But try the same tactics with a group of 5th-7ths and see how well you do.

Classic D&D, including Gygax's AD&D, is written around an assumption that the typical PC will not be good, and is essentially a Conan-esque mercenary. Being good is a burden - eg it prevents you parleying with orcs - but also a benefit, because it opens up help from friendly temples etc.

But most modern D&D is written and played under the assumption that the typical PC is good, and committed to heroic endeavours.

A sad development, really...

When players are playing those sorts of PCs, in adventures and campaign worlds framed in those sorts of terms, it is not reasonable to expect them to bargain with orcs, wererats etc. A truce with such creatures is, in this framing, tantamount to treason.

...and this is part of why. As soon as the general game design expects the PCs to act a certain way it has limited itself. The game design should be alignment-neutral as far as possible thus allowing goody-good parties, mercenary parties, burn-it-to-the-ground parties, greed-for-greed's-sake parties, etc. to work equally well within it.

Lan-"I have shiny armour and they call me Lord, but I don't do this to be anyone's stinkin' hero"-efan

 

[Anth]

Your system for stat generation is a house-ruled one - one could even say "a more gritty house rule world" than the default world of AD&D. None of the four methods for stat generation set out by Gygax in his DMG makes a paladin likely, but each makes it more likely than the stat-generation system you describe.

I don't quite follow you, I actually described one of the four methods in the DMG.

Each ability score is determined by random number generation. The referee has several methods of how this random mumber generation should be accomplished in the DMG.

So all of the four methods described in the DMG are the default for ADnD. I described Method I, so it's defenitely not a house rule.
Yes it correct that none of the four default methods for ADnD makes a paladin likely, so paladins should ne quite rare, like one paladin in every tenths campaing or so.

 

[Lanefan]

In AD&D, if you didn't play your class in accordance with its role then you had to spend a lot more time and money on training. From the DMG, p 86:

Consider the natural functions of each class of character. Consider also the professed alignment of each character. Briefly assess the performance of each character after an adventure. Did he or she perform basically in the character of his or her class? Were his or her actions in keping with his or her professed alignment? . . . Clerics who refuse to help and heal or do not remain faitfhul to their deity, fighters who hang back from combat or attempt to steal, or fail to boldly lead, magic-users who seek to engage in melee or ignore magic items they could employ in critical situations, thieves who boldly engage in frontal attacks or refrain from acquisition of an extra bit of treasure when the opportunity presents itself, "cautious" characters who do not pull their own weight - these are all clear examples of a POOR rating.​

A POOR rating means you have to take 4 weeks to train, costing 6000 gp times current level. Conversely, an EXCELLENT rating will divide both that time and that money by 4 (ie 1 week and 1500 gp times current level).

AD&D, taken as a whole, gives a pretty clear impression of what the game is about.

Or what it thinks it's about.

Though I've had training rules from day 1 I remember throwing out the above passage even while reading it for the very first time. Clerics who break faith with their deity have bigger things to worry about, up to (and on one occasion including) the legendary divine 'ZOT!' from the sky. Fighters who steal are my kind of Fighters! Thieves who don't steal everything not nailed down are prefectly viable. Being a class gives you certain abilities but shouldn't pigeonhole you into how, or when, or why you use them.

The only one on that list who I *would* like to find a way to punish are the last lot - cautious (read: cowardly) characters who do not pull their own weight. These annoy me to no end, both as DM and as fellow player; mostly because they're the ones who survive and prosper while I'm getting raised from the dead yet again.

Lan-"who says Fighters shouldn't steal? I won an award once for a theft I pulled"-efan