D&D 5E Defining "gamestyle" elements of D&D editions so far

[ExploderWizard]

This is apt. People joke about the Gygaxian dungeon master, but it is very true that in early D&D the dungeon master was encouraged to be far more objective than he is today, and players came to the table with less of a sense that they were in starring roles.

I don't mean to pass judgment -- I am intentionally and very carefully avoiding the use of the word "entitlement" -- but campaigns from late AD&D2 on have been "about" the PCs, where as previously they were "about" a crisis, which the PCs then resolved.

Character death is a great example of the changing state of play -- today it's a huge bogeyman, but back in the day death was just part of the job. I don't think players were less attached to their characters; there was just a better sense of perspective. The party's success was your success.

I think the overall shift is more about expectations of play due to game presentation than player entitlement although the former feeds into, and tends to create, the latter.

I think that D&D as always been "about" the PCs and very player focused from day one of OD&D. Unless large portions of the game are run that don't involve the PCs I don't see how it could be any other way. What has changed is the whole approach to D&D. I approach and enjoy playing D&D as a game. I play for the fun and to find out if I win or lose. Unlike other games, when you lose at D&D the game doesn't have to end. You can quickly generate a new PC and continue playing. Approaching D&D as a storytelling exercise is something that came later. In this approach, the characters are actually protagonists and the "game" is about telling their specific tale. Under this approach character death throws a wrench into the flow of the story and is avoided as much as possible. That take kind of ruins the game aspect of play that appeals to me. If I'm playing to see if we as a party, can win or lose and the whole process shifts to becoming merely all about how we win then I no longer see the point of the experience of playing a game. I can still see it as a fun experience of its own but it doesn't scratch the same itch as actual gameplay in much the same way that a boardgame doesn't fill the role of playing an rpg.

The largest shift in style from early D&D to later was the role of the actual player in the game. The earlier in the lifecycle of D&D you go, the more the capabilities of the player impacted gameplay. Using the plain old fighter as an example, in OD&D the mechanical difference between a 10 STR fighter and an 18 STR fighter largely amounted to the 18 STR fighter gaining a 10% bonus to earned XP. Thats it. Keeping the character alive was the player's job. The challenge of gameplay was for the player to enjoy. The concept of challenge to set of values on a sheet came later and I still don't see how that is possible to this day. A set value vs a difficulty will result in some probability of success which is then rolled. The luck of that roll determines success. The player does his/her best when building the character to make the probabilities of desired activities as favorable as possible. Thus most of the challenge for the player is over before play begins.

Preferences being what they are, everything hinges on what you are looking for from the experience.

 

[Remathilis]

The largest shift in style from early D&D to later was the role of the actual player in the game. The earlier in the lifecycle of D&D you go, the more the capabilities of the player impacted gameplay. Using the plain old fighter as an example, in OD&D the mechanical difference between a 10 STR fighter and an 18 STR fighter largely amounted to the 18 STR fighter gaining a 10% bonus to earned XP. Thats it. Keeping the character alive was the player's job. The challenge of gameplay was for the player to enjoy. The concept of challenge to set of values on a sheet came later and I still don't see how that is possible to this day. A set value vs a difficulty will result in some probability of success which is then rolled. The luck of that roll determines success. The player does his/her best when building the character to make the probabilities of desired activities as favorable as possible. Thus most of the challenge for the player is over before play begins.

I think this is an important element of the "evolving" of D&D playstyle.

In Basic/1e/Original, the character was an avatar. He represented the player in the world, but for the most part it was "you" in the role. Your intelligence figured out the puzzle. Your charisma determined if the noble was convinced. Your ingenuity found the secret door, etc. Your avatar could be bone-stupid (4 Int) or ultra suave (16 cha) but aside from a few modifiers (languages known, retainers gained) those attributes didn't matter. It was what YOU did.

2e began a tonal shift from Avatar to Character. The game began to see a PC as a character somewhat separate from the player, akin to a character being different from his actor. Thus, the game began to ask questions like "Well, what does Dwurn the Dwarf see?" or "Can Electra the Sorceress seduce the guardsman?" Unfortunately, 2e was thinking loftier thoughts, but still married to AD&D's avatar rules. 3e would come in to change that.

3e began to argue your character could do things you (as a player) could not. Emphasis on a proper skills system codified in the rules began to measure how knowledgeable, perceptive, or sly you were. Ability scores gained greater emphasis. You looked for feats, skills, and prestige classes that tried to explain who Dwurn or Electra was. You jumped class to class mixing skills to round them out. The rules began to cover things that previously was the onerous of the player. 4e continued the trend.

Is it good or bad?

Depends. Some people like to be challenged as a player. Some people look at the Tomb of Horrors as a test of their mettle; the reward was bragging rights that *I* outsmarted the tomb. But others couldn't find a sane reason that Frodrick the Fighter would EVER go in there, let sleeping liches lie! Thats not what their character would do.

Note: as with all generalizations, some people cared more about characters in 1e and some play toon-ready dungeon hacks in 3e/4e. Its not about rules complexity or roll/role playing, its about the idea who is really being challenged: Frodrick the Fighter or Bob, his player. Earlier D&D said the latter, later the former.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think any attempt to define an edition's style is going to run up against the "all lemonade is local" problem hard and fast and often.

You can maybe get a kind of style preference from the RAW, but the RAW has very little bearing on what someone at the table actually played the game like, and tended to be almost as schizophrenic and self-contradictory as the Bible.

You're also going to run up against obfuscating jargon and genre tribalism pretty fast, too, because that is what people do, especially people who have heard the teachings of Ron Edwards.

THAT SAID! I can't resist.

OD&D/BEMCI = Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson pen a polyhedral fanfiction of their favorite fantasy genre books. Imagination and inventiveness trump rules. When in doubt, roll a d6. You don't need dice to tell you what to do.

AD&D = This is a GAME. With RULES. And there are winners and losers. Can you survive the dungeon?

2e = You have a CHARACTER in a STORY, and the DM is the creator of conflict in the story, and the ultimate arbiter of it. Tell me about your troubled past and your heroic destiny!

3e = Man, what's with all these restrictions on what kind of characters you can tell stories about? And what's with all these sloppy, inconsistent rules? And what's so wrong with kicking in the dungeon door and surviving to the next level? Here's some instructions. Go out and do what you want with them. And don't worry if it's not like Tolkien.

4e = You are a HERO in an ACTION-PACKED ADVENTURE, and the game is there to make you feel like a hero all the time every time. Lets get rid of all that stuff that doesn't work toward that goal that we've picked up over the last 30 years and define D&D as that experience rather than as any particular bit of fiction or weird fiddly rule.

5e (so far) = D&D is that game you remember from being a kid, but it's updated now, and you can do a lot more with it, so OSR, what's that, no one mentioned that, come on, Pathinder, whaaaaaat, no, it's D&D, baby, come on.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Technically, there is very little within the rules of any edition encouraging "avatar" play vs "character" play.

If we are talking about "gamestyle" elements that come directly out of the rules, I'd say that "avatar" play is a very small part of the rules in 1e. The rules that encourage this were mainly the lack of non-physical skills. If your character wanted to figure out a puzzle you'd have to do it for him since the character themselves didn't have any rules given ability to do that....except a Int Check which some DMs still used.

I started in a 1e/2e hybrid game that used what our DM thought was the best of the rules from the 2 editions. We weren't hardcore "avatar" players. When I first learned to play my DM definitely told me that I was to consider what my character would do over everything. Metagaming(using information my character didn't know) was strictly forbidden and we'd get yelled at each time we tried to have our 6 Int Half-Ogre character come up with a good idea. Though we still died on a fairly regular basis and just rolled up new characters.

I'd say that purely following the rules, the "gamestyle" elements that would come out most often at the table in the editions are as follows:

1e: Keeping track of lots of fiddly rules and restrictions(you can't wear this armor...why? You just can't). Playing in dungeons that were randomly created with lots of random encounters. Attempting to collect as much treasure as possible for XP. Attempting certain actions over and over again to get XP(stealing things as a thief). A focus on always starting at level 1 and attempting to claw your way to higher levels. The adventures that came out were almost entirely dungeon crawls.

2e: The rules were very similar to 1e so they created a similar game style. However, the DMGs focus and recommendations were completely different so it tended to focus the game a different direction. The emphasis was on story above all else. No gold piece values on magic items or XP for finding magic items meant some campaigns would go the entire run from 1 to 20 without ever finding magic items. The rules for creating them implied they should take a year or two in game and likely months of out of game time to successfully create one(if it was even possible at all). Non-weapon proficiencies and Weapon Specialization made an attempt at customizing the character and having a better idea of what the "character" was capable of rather than the player. No rules for when to use each monster meant you might randomly come across an ancient dragon or a beholder at 1st level depending on how mean your DM was. A lack of abilities on your character sheet encouraged you to come up with any idea you could off the top of your head. Many adventures coming out were about epic multi-part adventure where you defeated Grand Evil.

3e/3.5e: Lots more customization. A focus on character building above all else. Each level you needed to consider how to build your character next level, so there was a cycle of character building(in 1e and 2e, character building was what you did at level 1 and never changed, you just got better). This caused a focus on rules. Characters were now a collection of even more fiddly rules that needed to be kept track of. Each character would have a list of feats, each of which was an exception to the rules. There were also just more rules in the book to keep track of, period. Gameplay was filled with "gotcha!"(play and counter play. "I sneak past the guard"-"No you don't, he has darkvision and can see you!", "I tumble past the guy"-"No you don't, his special ability makes it impossible to tumble around him"). This meant the focus switched even further to relying on the abilities listed on your character sheet more than anything else. A focus on CRs, Encounter ELs, proper level pacing, wealth by level guidelines, and gold piece values on magic items created a game where balance was also the focus. The game attempted to spell out precisely what the power level was for any NPC or PC at a given level. Since they all had the same XP, wealth and magic items, they should all be equally powerful. They were all able to defeat equally powerful enemies. This created a focus on adventure creation that was also balanced and fair. Since magic items were freely purchasable and craftable, they added to the character creation aspect I mention above. Magic items became part of character creation since you were essentially doing character creation at every level. Skills and feats now made the game even more a focus on what your character can do over what you can do. This also with the EL guidelines really created an atmosphere of "Test the characters". A focus on the rules as "laws of physics". The rules were the same for all NPCs, all monster, all players. Anything that happened in the game needed to be explained within that framework. Symmetry was very important. Adventures during this edition were all over the place without a focus on any one thing.

4e: Still lots of focus on the character over the player. However, the focus switched from feats and class features to powers. An even greater focus on the balanced encounter and balanced play(everyone get the same framework so everyone should be more balanced). Scaled back on the character building aspect on the game though it is there fairly strongly(most levels you went up you were just getting a new power because that's what the next level on your class chart said you'd get, you weren't deciding between every class and PrC in the game). While there was a focus on equality(all monsters had close to the same bonuses to hit at the same levels, all PCs had the same number of powers at the same levels), there was no longer the same focus on symmetry: Monsters used different rules than PCs, NPCs could have a list of abilities that were just made up and didn't come from the list of player options. Feats were less rules exceptions than just extra abilities so there was less focus on constantly remembering fiddly bits. The game still maintained a focus on balance as 3e did. However, the balance of focus switched from a day to an encounter. Each battle was to be as dangerous and epic as the one before it. This tended to change the focus of the game into a string of encounters(which was there during 3e, 4e just solidified it). There is an emphasis on tactical play because of this. Using your abilities to solve the encounter whether it was combat or skill challenge was paramount. In fact, it caused the focus to be even more on the character sheet and what abilities were written on it.