D&D 5E Changes in Interpretation

[Emerikol]

Yes. You're definitely on to something here. The whole 'Mother may I' thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth every time I hear it, but I couldn't articulate why until now:

It's practically edition warring in my book. I generally am predisposed to dismiss everything they say after that.

DM and players seem to trust each other less. The rules delineate what can be done to protect the players from the DM, it seems at times.

I mostly DM and I find it amusing. There is no set of rules on earth that I couldn't pretty much torture any group with. I wouldn't have any players though if I behaved that way.

I can see how this came about. There is nothing so magical as a great DM... but the flip-side is that there is nothing quite so horrible as a really bad one. Codification of rules MAY help insulate groups from some of the horror, but it may also insulate them from some of the magic.

Good DMs will grow the hobby. They are the seed corn of success. I've known a few other good DMs in my time and appreciate them.

I'm one of the lucky ones. I found a truly great GM and have stuck with him. It comes naturally to trust him to do his thing. If I put something on my sheet, I know he'll take it into account, in his own byzantine fashion. (No doubt in ways I wouldn't have expected!) That's not 'Mother May I'. It's 'We're building this game together, and I trust you to hold up your end.'

+1000 sorry no xp left

Don't get me started. I've never played on a grid, and never want to.

I don't mind the grid but there are many times I could forego it.

I get the idea of 'meeting your character' instead of creating him... but this really is a Great Divide in gaming mentalities, I think. I've always preferred 'creating', and the dice got in the way. I do think the 'default' position has changed a lot over the years, though. It used to be almost all 'meet', now it's almost all 'create'. Probably we could all stand to broaden our horizons a bit.

Create is great the first ten times. After that sometimes meet is fun. But I am of the opinion you can roll in way that always produces a good character without using point buy.

Some people seem to need to see it in black and white before they feel able to do it. There's a spectrum in these matters... 3e skills are a little too granular for my taste, while 5e seems about right.

Skill system is probably the #1 reason I don't just play a retroclone. I like a long set of skills. I guess I like the simple dungeon game but I prefer a bit more complexity on the non-dungeon side. So I want lots of skills. This is just the kind of thing though that modules were made for.

There's also the fact that bigger books full of more rules probably make WotC more money. There are some great, rules-lite indie games out there, but they're not making millions of dollars.

This is the crux of it.

Overall I really liked your post and wish I had xp to give.

 

[pemerton]

Let me explain here for some people a little bit about the history of D&D.

<snip>

In the beginning these guerilla warrior games, focused no realism. D&D is not realistic they'd cry! And promptly give us oodles of complex rules and obscure tables. (Palladium/Rolemaster I'm looking at you). D&D crushed them all. Any sales chart that included D&D wouldn't even show these other games.

To the best of my knowledge, at one time (mid-to-late 80s?) Iron Crown Enterprises, the publisher of Rolemaster, was the second largest RPG publisher (on the strength of its Middle Earth licence).

 

[Emerikol]

To the best of my knowledge, at one time (mid-to-late 80s?) Iron Crown Enterprises, the publisher of Rolemaster, was the second largest RPG publisher (on the strength of its Middle Earth licence).

This does not conflict with what I said. #2 until Pathfinder was an ant beside D&D. Monte Cook worked at Rolemaster and has written that they had this attitude. Be different because you can't beat D&D at D&D.

 

[Hussar]

Umm, Emerikol, you do realize that Pathfinder is not the first game to knock D&D off the top spot right?

 

[Iosue]

After glancing into the boss monster thread, I've recalled one particular point that someone brought up on 3e is likely to disagree with me on: using the mechanics as simulation of the physics of the world. E.g., in particular wanting PCs and NPCs/monsters built on essentially the same mechanical base. The idea of monsters having classes is not something I can get on board with.

 

[pemerton]

This does not conflict with what I said.

You said that:

Early on D&D was huge. The 800lb gorilla as they say. No one was close. So other companies designed games to chip away at D&D's marketshare. They didn't take D&D head on.

<snip>

Any sales chart that included D&D wouldn't even show these other games.

Here are the figures from the famous WotC turn-of-the-millenium market research:

Getting back to the people still playing the games, when asked what games TRPG players play monthly, the answers (multiple choices allowed) were:

D&D 66%
Vampire: the Masquerade 25%
Star Wars 21%
Palladium (assume this is RIFTS) 16%
Werewolf: the Apocalypse 15%
Shadowrun 15%
Star Trek 12%
Call of Cthulhu 8%
Legend of the Five Rings 8%
Deadlands 5%
Alternity 4%
GURPS 3%​

Palladium is visible there. BRP (in the form of CoC) is visible there. If the snapshot had been taken 10 or so years earlier, I am confident that ICE (in the form of MERP) would have beeen visible there - especially as many people bought MERP supplements to run in other systems (and ICE deliberately caterered to this, with extensive conversion guidelines in their MERP books).

And as [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] pointed out, White Wolf (in the form of Vampire and Werewolf) was highly visible there, and had earlier outranked D&D as the top-selling RPG.

In any event, while Pathfinder is not D&D from the point of view of trademarking and corporate profits, it very obviously is D&D from the point of view of audience uptake and participation. Here is a poster from Paizo that illustrates that point (and if there is one thing that Paizo is great at, it's marketing - they know their audience):

[section][imagel]http://paizo.com/image/product/catalog/PZOP/PZOPFLAUNCH_500.jpeg[/imagel][/section]

I don't think there is any ambiguity about what "3.5" in that poster is referring too!

 

[Emerikol]

Umm, Emerikol, you do realize that Pathfinder is not the first game to knock D&D off the top spot right?

There was a rumor that World of Darkness surpassed D&D in it's last death throws in the early 90s. That rumor proved to be false. I've heard of no other game even getting close until Pathfinder. Now in fairness, Pathfinder is D&D so D&D still isn't really getting beat, it just split.

 

[billd91]

And as [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] pointed out, White Wolf (in the form of Vampire and Werewolf) was highly visible there, and had earlier outranked D&D as the top-selling RPG.

I think there's a difference worth noting here. White Wolf, as I recall, had the top spot when TSR was unable to get anything to the printer due to cash flow problems. So it's not like WW knocked it from the top spot by out competing it. Pathfinder has done so, which I think it is a more significant event.

It's true that's an unofficial D&D taking on official D&D, but it appears that may just underline the comment that you can't compete with D&D.

 

[Emerikol]

After glancing into the boss monster thread, I've recalled one particular point that someone brought up on 3e is likely to disagree with me on: using the mechanics as simulation of the physics of the world. E.g., in particular wanting PCs and NPCs/monsters built on essentially the same mechanical base. The idea of monsters having classes is not something I can get on board with.

Well it's really not an either or. I think it makes eminent sense for humanoids but I agree that adding wizard levels to a beholder doesn't really make sense. But it does work as a clear (if not easy) way to add ability to a monster. 5e seems to be going towards the either or strategy. Have lots of templates AND allow the adding of class levels. So we all should be happy. I'll be using both.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Anyhoo, the first and most primary one I've noticed, and it seems you have as well, is a breakdown in the trust between DM and players. I was first struck by this difference reading some threads about "Rule 0".

I agree with this completely. In some of Old Geezers posts he comments that the players never even saw the full rules for years - only Gary did. I think that is epitome of "trust the GM". I think it moved from being a game the GM ran to one the rules ran. The rules, I think, originally were to give a very basic structure that the GM then used to make his own game. These days it's just the opposite - the GM is facilitator, and the rules run the game.

As for not trusting the GM - read (IIRC) Burning wheel - it has rules for the players to overrule the GM when they think he did something bad.