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

[Umbran]

5e partisans complaining about other editions and those who play them is common on ENworld.

Eh. Unless we are careful, "partisan," is just code for, "people who persist in disagreeing with me".

We get game-partisans of all stripes here - the internet is filled with them.

If you don’t agree “most recent from WotC is automatically the best and everything before 2024 is trash and so offensive it needs content warnings”, ENworld is sometimes frustrating.

You realize the hyperbole... makes you look partisan?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If you don’t agree “most recent from WotC is automatically the best and everything before 2024 is trash and so offensive it needs content warnings”, ENworld is sometimes frustrating.

Mod Note:

Let’s leave the content warnings issue discussion out of things, thank you very much.

 

[haakon1]

Eh. Unless we are careful, "partisan," is just code for, "people who persist in disagreeing with me".

We get game-partisans of all stripes here - the internet is filled with them.

You realize the hyperbole... makes you look partisan?

Fair. I could have worded that better.

 

[haakon1]

Does anyone believe this?

I do. In my perception, posts about “I like X” are likely to draw responses like X is “broken” and wrongbadfun.

Which I think is how this “don’t fit in” long thread started?

 

[dave2008]

I do. In my perception, posts about “I like X” are likely to draw responses like X is “broken” and wrongbadfun.

Which I think is how this “don’t fit in” long thread started?

(Emphasis mine) You believe everything before 2024 is trash?! That is the first I have seen anyone say that!

 

[Kannik]

I've been playing AD&D for 36+ years, starting with 1e. Cut my teeth on the classic modules. I've played consistently the entire time. Do not feel left out nor like I don't fit in.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

I've been playing AD&D for 36+ years, starting with 1e. Cut my teeth on the classic modules. I've played consistently the entire time. Do not feel left out nor like I don't fit in.

I'm happy for you, really. I still like the game too.

Did you happen to take that survey Wizards of the Coast released back in 2022, or thereabouts? The survey that asked how old you were at the beginning, then gave you a number of questions about what you would like to see in the future development of the game?

When I took that survey the number of questions seemed to be really short (few?), it was weird and notable. We started asking each other about it on this message board and discovered that some people got many more questions than others. It seemed from what we were able to gather that young respondents got the actual survey whereas older people got snowed.

 

[Lanefan]

Perhaps it is more complicated--but intricacy for some benefit is no sin, if the benefit is worth it.

In this case, the benefit of Healing Surges (which are 4e's "Wound" points) is that they can be deducted separately from hit points, in ways that are always costly to a given character, no matter what level they are.

So, to give some examples:

• As noted, in 4e Dark Sun, losing Surges because traveling through the wastes is hard is a common occurrence. But this then directly leads to knock-on behaviors: players have a clear, direct incentive to protect their food and water supply (can't regain surges if you can't rest, can't take a long rest if you don't have food and water), to avoid conflict when possible (Dark Sun monsters are MEAN, and unforced combat is a huge risk), and to consider options or features that might otherwise be overlooked, such as the Endurance skill or the Tough feat.
• By having Surges come in chunky blocks rather than the fine-grit sand of HP, you can punch the players where it hurts, in a way they can clearly see. An enemy that steals healing surges is very scary, for example, since that's directly reducing your ability to fight. But this is a cost that scales cleanly across any character level, because surges have scaling value, while a fixed quantity of HP will always become less and less scary until eventually it's a speedbump. Even in old-school D&D, this was true (it's pretty much the root of Gygax's argument for why HP can't be meat points), so the DM has a powerful tool in the toolbox for motivating or scaring PCs by including them.
• Consider the problem of "cursed" gear. In most cases, most players will be far too afraid of the negative consequences of a "curse" to ever take it, even if they know it's quite powerful, particularly since most "cursed" equipment either risks literally surrendering your character for a mere momentary power boost, or suffering some permanent debility or the like. But what if you could get (say) a +5 sword...but you must sacrifice your own life-force to it in order to get that power, otherwise it's barely more than adequate as a weapon. Now you have the temptation of "minor" sacrifice for major power. And you can even leverage it further--perhaps the more surges you feed it, the stronger it becomes, but the more power it can exert over you--allowing an actual slow, creeping change rather than what D&D usually does with "cursed" items.
• One of the ongoing tensions between different interest groups within D&D centers on the rate of rest and recovery. Having two different levers for this can be a huge boon, as dave2008's BHP and Healing Surges alike both provide. So, imagine that your HP are fully restored with a night's rest, so long as it was truly restful, but you only get back 1d2 surges if it wasn't safe and cozy etc. Sure, you've got most of your mojo, but you're running on empty--you're fatigued, but not suffering a death spiral. Having those two different levers opens up a lot of options for varying how resting works and what impacts it has, potentially allowing more granularity with resting, which seems to be a pretty big OSR-type-fan goal.

There are probably more but I'm tired and really need to head to bed. Point being: having these systems that directly connect together, but still remain separate, really can provide benefits--for people of all sorts of tastes, not just contemporary-design fans.

In a way, this explains to me how 4e Healing Surges work better than anything else ever has. On reading the initial 4e PH and DMG the HS system completely baffled me, so I largely ignored it and moved on to other things the 4e books had to offer.

That said, of those four examples three of them can be fairly well emulated in a straight BP-FP system. The Dark Sun one is the outlier - a straight-up hit points system can't replicate non-hp exhaustion the way HS or 5e's Exhaustion mechanic can.

For the others: the second "punch them where it hurts" example could be (and in our system, sometimes is) replicated by having effects that not only take away some hit points but make those hit points impossible to recover by any means until x-amount (usually hours, sometimes days) has passed; and in one specific instance* in our system they can never be recovered at all.

For the cursed gear example, we've got such a wide range of potential curses in our system already, ranging from mild annoyance to deadly-plus-extras and including a few that make it harder or even impossible to recover hit points, that adding one more would be a mere drop in the bucket.

And as you say, rest and recovery - the fourth example above - is a bone of contention among supporters of different editions. In our BP-FP system we just have it that BP are harder to rest back and also harder to cure; and even if ou're resting back FP only you still only get 10% (rounded up) of your total FP on an overnight or "long" rest in the field (safe-and-cozy is different, but for most play purposes field resting is what matters).

Now, is the added complexity of a Surge or Exhaustion system worth it just to cover the Dark Sun (or similar) situation? My honest answer there, looking at it from my own system's point of view, would be "maybe".

* - the one specific instance is that shapeshifting or polymorphing takes a short bit of time; and any damage taken during that time is internalized as you shapeshift and thus permanently comes off your hit point total. Rationale: to make an otherwise brokenly-powerful ability just a bit more risky. Result: shapeshifters are more careful as to when they do it; I think the permanent damage loss has happened maybe twice in the 35-ish years I've had that rule.

 

[haakon1]

(Emphasis mine) You believe everything before 2024 is trash?! That is the first I have seen anyone say that!

Man, I got on my iPad to buy coffee from Amazon because I’m out.

Maybe best day not to drop by ENworld when lacking coffee.

 

[Kannik]

Did you happen to take that survey Wizards of the Coast released back in 2022, or thereabouts? The survey that asked how old you were at the beginning, then gave you a number of questions about what you would like to see in the future development of the game?

I think I did... there were a number of their surveys/playtest surveys I responded to during that time (due to the 2024 playtest packets) and so I likely did that one too.

When I took that survey the number of questions seemed to be really short (few?), it was weird and notable. We started asking each other about it on this message board and discovered that some people got many more questions than others. It seemed from what we were able to gather that young respondents got the actual survey whereas older people got snowed.

Yeah, it's hard sometimes to know what the design parameters of the surveys are, or how to interpret the questions, when we're getting different numbers of questions based on partially randomization and partially based on answers provided early in the survey. Doubly so if/when the surveys were designed by some third-party firm who has more experience with marketing research for soft drinks or action figures and playsets than for TTRPGs. Plus that perhaps that they felt (correctly or not) they already had enough of a sense of the desires of more aged players. FWIW, in all of their surveys I took I never felt deliberately or intentionally snowed.