D&D General Did D&D Die with TSR?

[wicked cool]

speaking of werewolves i just noticed the new werewolves introduced in the new Van Richton book makes it that you cant just cure the disease (this feels like someone had old school nostalgia when creating this). Theres another monster that you can turn back with its reflection. This is so easy to implement back into the game

I think down the line there needs to be a return to this. Like you stated you had to prepare for a werewolf encounter (akin to the Witcher series)

 

[Jack Daniel]

My statement isn't that post-3.0 D&D isn't a fun time. It's that maybe enough has changed that it's a different game from TSR-era D&D. Like as different as Savage Worlds is from Genesys.

Is that even controversial? The TSR editions are all fairly compatible with each other on a base mechanical level. Even if D&D and AD&D had to be "different games" for legal reasons, they're still not really "different" games.

3e/3.5/d20/PF1 used a completely different mechanical engine. Yes, it kept the same basic structure as AD&D 2e; borrowed some verbatim text (e.g. spell descriptions) here and there; and was, fundamentally, a reorganization and rationalization of 2e at its most complex (with all the options, like kits, proficiencies, skills & powers, combat & tactics, etc., "switched on"). But at this point, the argument could definitely be made that D&D3 was an entirely different game from what had come before. On a fundamental mechanical level, it just didn't play the same way.

And as for D&D4 and D&D5, these too are completely unrelated to earlier editions mechanically. "Full reboots" I'd call them, without even that bare thread of connection that D&D3 had back to late option-heavy 2e. You can't move characters between TSR, D&D3, D&D4, and D&D5 campaigns without full mechanical conversion — and that's the most surefire sign there is that you're dealing with different games!

So as to the Thread Necromancy Question: did D&D "die" with TSR? Well, it depends on what you mean by "D&D." Is D&D a name-brand, a game-system, or an idea? Obviously the name-brand didn't die, but who here is such a corporatist zombie that they care about a name-brand before anything else? As to the game system — the TSR D&D engine — well, that's being kept alive by a dwindling pool of grognards and a decidedly more vibrant OSR scene that may not be growing like it was five or ten years ago, but which is at least firmly entrenched as a permanent corner of the RPG hobby. So the old rules aren't going anywhere.

But what about the idea? The big idea of D&D is, in a sense, the RPG hobby itself, which is flourishing like never before. But the devil is in the details. The kind of game that Gary and Dave created before they even knew what they had created — the "fantasy wargame" that didn't even have the (at the time) pop-psych term "roleplaying" applied to it yet — is a little idea that got partially revived by the OSR. But the OSR tends toward nostalgia and revisionism, and its dominant theory will always trump authenticity or rigorous reconstruction. People playing old-school D&D in an early 80s, B/X or AD&D1 influenced style — using old-school rules in an old-school way, but still just playing trad campaigns in small, fixed groups — are the bulk of the OSR. But what about playing in a 70s LBB style — the Lake Geneva or Twin Cities "fantasy gaming club," where lots of players run lots of characters in a persistent sword & sorcery milieu? That's pretty much dead. It might have even died back in the late 70s before gaining any real traction with the player-base that actually developed once D&D was released into the wild.

 

[Burnside]

Here are some differences that were baked into the rules, pre-WotC

1) Monsters were scary and invulnerable to basic attacks.
If you wanted to harm a werewolf, you had to have silvered weapons. You had to study its weaknesses. If you contracted lycanthropy, you had to perform a ritual to undo the effects. (Wolfsbane, full moon night, killing the werewolf that gave it to you.) [Today this is damage reduction - so it effectively just has double hit points. Lycanthropy is a simple saving throw or cured with a spell.] See also mummies, vampires, etc. The monsters actually resembled creatures of folklore and legend, not just stat blocks made to fit the game.

2) Spells were open to creative use.
You could use Command to issue any number of commands, instead of a pre-ordained list to hamper creativity and usefulness. You could cast Light on the eyes of a creature to temporarily blind it.

3) Spells were effective
Hold Person, Sleep, etc., lasted long enough to sway a combat. Now, they last for a round - if you're lucky enough to have a creature fail its save. This means that the only option available to most parties is to swat at an enemy until its HP are whittled away.

4) Poisons were scary
Now they're just HP damage, maybe giving you disadvantage for a round.

5) Passive Perception
Finding traps and spotting enemies required paying attention to the fiction, the DM's description. Interacting and asking questions. Now, you don't even have to roll a die. You can play on your phone, scroll through social media.

My statement isn't that post-3.0 D&D isn't a fun time. It's that maybe enough has changed that it's a different game from TSR-era D&D. Like as different as Savage Worlds is from Genesys.

You're getting 5E's rules wrong quite a bit while criticizing them here.

1. Many of the powerful monsters are still invulnerable to basic attacks. In 5E, werewolves, the example you cite, are in fact totally immune, not resistant, to damage from non-magical weapons unless they are silvered.

2. Most spells are still open to creative use - or at least, as creative as a given DM will allow. Regarding the Command spell, the list provided in the spell description isn't a finite, pre-ordained list. It's a list of "typical" commands (i.e. suggestions). The description says, " You might issue a command other than one described here. If you do so, the GM determines how the target behaves."

3. If a creature succumbs to the Sleep spell, it's unconscious for a minute. And there is no saving throw - if the spell covers a sufficient number of hit points, the creature goes down. Not just for one round, and there are no additional saves. They wake up early only if attacked or if another creature uses an action to wake them.

4. There are many different kids of poisons, described both in monster descriptions and in the DMG, that cause lingering, debilitating effects.

5. Passive perception - this very much depends on how the DM is running the table, but in practice the vast majority of DMs won't allow passive perception to work in the way you're describing.

 

[Weiley31]

Since we're on 5th Edition, I'd say no it didn't. It encountered a moment where it had to make a Death Saving Throw(4E) but it scored a Nat 20 when the jump to 5E happened. Now it's doing its best Warlock/Paladin multi-class combo in success.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

As long as people are attacking other roleplaying games as inferior and copy-cat, especially if they are similar to older editions of D&D, TSR and D&D will still be alive. TSR did that alot.

 

[Jaeger]

The game looked different too. The art style was no longer based in fantasy illustrations, rather than "this is D&D 'dungeon punk' and it can't represent a character from history, fantasy fiction, etc."

This was 100% intentional.

Because Johnathan Tweet said so:

D&D 3E/3.5 - 3E and the Feel of D&D
"Personally, one part of the process I enjoyed was describing the world of D&D in its own terms, rather than referring to real-world history and mythology. When writing roleplaying games, I enjoy helping the player get immersed in the setting, and I always found these references to the real world to be distractions. In the Player’s Handbook, the text and art focused the readers’ imaginations on the D&D experiences,..."
...
"For the art in 3E, we took pains to have it seem to illustrate not fantasy characters in general but D&D adventurers in particular. For one thing, lots of them wore backpacks. For the iconic characters, we wrote up the sort of gear that a 1st-level character might start with, and the illustrations showed them with that gear. The illustrations in the 2E Player’s Handbook feature lots of human fighters, human wizards, and castles. Those images reflect standard fantasy tropes, while the art in 3E reflects what you see in your mind’s eye when you play D&D."

Your lying eyes were not sending you false information:

But it seems to be that the game forever shifted in 3rd edition.

Because it did.

Just the removal of moral rules, and the NPC reaction rolls have had long term effects on how players react to D&D combat and social encounters.

Then you have the mechanical knock on effects of having PC hit dice go up every level instead of PC 's no longer gaining hit dice around level ten or so.

And the list goes on...

Levels, classes, hit points, AC, alignment, the monsters, spells, settings, and a bunch of other D&D sacred cows, the list goes on and on.

Levels, classes, hit points, AC? Just 'window dressing'? They're the main features of the game!

Yet how they are applied can greatly effect how the game is played.

B/X gives a very different play experience at the table compared to 4e, yet they both have many for the self same 'sacred cows' in their core design.

In my opinion:

D&D "Died" in 1986 when Gygax lost control.

For all his business failings, he at least had a personal stake in what the game meant to people, and a fairly consistent vision of what it should be.

His lack of control was mitigated a bit in the Williams era of TSR because a lot of employees who worked directly under Gygax still had input into the game.

Things just got accelerated under WotC with 3e, as different people with different experiences of what D&D was to them, and different visions of what it should be going forward, have taken control of the games development.

Is 5e still D&D? Yes, it says so right on the cover. Because the current IP holders put it there.

Just as the current IP holders of D&D have the right to mine all the legacy material, change it how they see fit, and then release them as "classic" settings/adventures/modules.

D&D has died, and yet it still continues to live.

Whether fans view D&D as being either resurrected, or un-dead, depends on whether or not they agree with the current design direction that game has taken.

 

[GreyLord]

This was 100% intentional.

Because Johnathan Tweet said so:


Your lying eyes were not sending you false information:


Because it did.

Just the removal of moral rules, and the NPC reaction rolls have had long term effects on how players react to D&D combat and social encounters.

Then you have the mechanical knock on effects of having PC hit dice go up every level instead of PC 's no longer gaining hit dice around level ten or so.

And the list goes on...





Yet how they are applied can greatly effect how the game is played.

B/X gives a very different play experience at the table compared to 4e, yet they both have many for the self same 'sacred cows' in their core design.

In my opinion:

D&D "Died" in 1986 when Gygax lost control.

For all his business failings, he at least had a personal stake in what the game meant to people, and a fairly consistent vision of what it should be.

His lack of control was mitigated a bit in the Williams era of TSR because a lot of employees who worked directly under Gygax still had input into the game.

Things just got accelerated under WotC with 3e, as different people with different experiences of what D&D was to them, and different visions of what it should be going forward, have taken control of the games development.

Is 5e still D&D? Yes, it says so right on the cover. Because the current IP holders put it there.

Just as the current IP holders of D&D have the right to mine all the legacy material, change it how they see fit, and then release them as "classic" settings/adventures/modules.

D&D has died, and yet it still continues to live.

Whether fans view D&D as being either resurrected, or un-dead, depends on whether or not they agree with the current design direction that game has taken.

NOT to disagree necessarily, but slap another viewpoint into this just because...

Or maybe it was neither...

Perhaps it's just a different thing completely with the name slapped on it's cover...

Sort of like How you have The Mummy from the black and white era...The Mummy with Brendan Frasier...and the Mummy with Tom Cruise.

Same name...completely different films.

 

[teitan]

speaking of werewolves i just noticed the new werewolves introduced in the new Van Richton book makes it that you cant just cure the disease (this feels like someone had old school nostalgia when creating this). Theres another monster that you can turn back with its reflection. This is so easy to implement back into the game

I think down the line there needs to be a return to this. Like you stated you had to prepare for a werewolf encounter (akin to the Witcher series)

You don't run it this way? I sure as heck do.

 

[Olrox17]

Considering I never played anything before 3.0, i'd be interested in knowing what I have been playing for almost 20 years

 

[AtomicPope]

I would say yes, but we're getting back on track. I would place D&D on life support during the tail end of 2e when we were under constant attack by an army of splat books. Second Edition D&D was taking a lot of rules supplements (Unearched Arcana, Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, Wilderness Survival Guide, et al), ironing them out, and incorporating them into the system. I fondly remember running AD&D, and I still consult my Campaign Sourcebook & Catacombs Guide even when running a 5e or non-D&D game like Mage the Awakening or Gamma World. At the height of D&D we had gamers making games for gamers, and the CS&CG was just that, a D&D product that had DMing tips from experiences in Runequest. It transcended the game. I think that's when D&D as we know it was really born. Yes, we can talk about Chainmail and miniatures games but in today's terms they're closer to Necromunda/Mordheim than D&D. When D&D grew into AD&D and 2e that was birth of the heroic mode of D&D that we see today. Many of the mechanics that were born back then are still here today, they just have different forms.

Without getting into the nitty gritty I'll make a sweeping statement about 3e and 4e: 3rd Edition reduced PCs and Monsters to an aggregate of numbers; 4e reduced PCs and Monsters to an aggregate of powers.

5e brings back some of the general principles of character classes that AD&D had, that classes were exclusive, even if some powers and abilities might be shared; and that class levels mattered greatly.

I believe this does a lot to restore the heroic mode of game play, where the lowly 1st level Wizard that can get killed by a house cat will one day grow into a powerful, fireball flinging Wizard who gets killed by a tiger.