Difference From 10 Years Ago?

[Ahnehnois]

Your experience, and your description of it, is wildly different from mine

Well, that's not surprising. But it is my experience, as I'm sure yours is yours

As to the issue of "ownership" - I don't agree. If I decide to run a game with elves, dwarves etc - an idea borrowed from Tolkien - and/or with knights and castles - an idea borrowed from fairytales and romances - am I forfeting ownership by looking to a game designer to give me mechanical models of elves, dwarves, knights, etc?

To some extent, yes.

That's why I see so much homebrewing. Races are such a small part of a D&D character (mechanically) that they don't seem worth it, and it's hard to create new and meaningfully different ones, but I've seen many a DM who tried. I've also seen DMs try to make classes that look nothing like anything in the D&D books. I've seen them try to remove fantasy tropes like castles and knights. I've seen people change basic mechanical tenets of the game. Everything's up for grabs.

Personally, I piloted several very different (in my eyes) full classes, races, monsters, and other mechanical elements back in those ten-years-ago days. These days, I'm still writing them to some extent (though the proliferation of published material has made it easier to find things that are unexpected/original but in print). It's just harder to get a good discussion going about them. My setting is also somewhat in the whole magic-as-technology vein and does not have much in the way of fantasy tropes like castles, and contains a variety of basic assumptions that are very different than what you'd find in Greyhawk or FR (or any fantasy setting that I'm aware of).

Again, my view of the use of official D&D rules and other elements is that it's easier to start with examples than start with nothing. It's easier to read a bunch of rules and say "I'll keep this and redo that" then it is to write a complete game, and it's easier to read a bunch of Greyhawk infused books and then make your own setting than it is to read a bunch of generic mechanics and make your own setting. Just because Greyhawk is the default presented in the 3e books doesn't mean you actually play the game in Greyhawk. Some do, most don't.

Or if I read a module - say, Bastion of Broken Souls for 3E - and see some interesting ideas in it - say, a Night Hag dream traveller oracle, or an angel who is a living gate for a pocket plane where a god has been exiled - am I forfeiting ownership by incorporating those ideas into my game? When I used those ideas I had to mechanically translate them from 3E to RM; and I also had to ignore some silly advice from the module writer around framing and NPC motivations and possible actions - but I don't generally buy modules for those sorts of details - I am looking for cool ideas, and for nice maps and locations.

There are no original ideas. Everyone gets theirs from somewhere; usually from novels, film, and TV, but sometimes from other sources.

There is a large difference between saying "I *ran* an adventure path" and "I read one and stole some ideas", just as there's a difference between writing an academic paper with quotes and cited references as opposed to simply copying another paper. If you're taking ideas from multiple sources and then running your own game based on them then you're just as original as the rest of us, even if some of those ideas were taken from D&D-specific sources that you paid for. That isn't the kind of behavior that inspires these debates.

I do find it odd that someone would pay for those ideas in that format. I do own one published adventure (which was bought for me as a gift by someone who didn't know anything about D&D). It doesn't strike me as having anything useful in it.

I see plenty of 4e people talking about what they do in their own games - me, [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], [MENTION=305]Storminator[/MENTION], [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION], [MENTION=59411]Pour[/MENTION], [MENTION=21556]Jester[/MENTION] and others

And that's fair. The article quoted on the first page of this thread suggested that WotC would kill creativity or take the human element out of the game. Sometimes, it seems like they're trying, but I don't think they could ever fully succeed.

It's not like a published adventure or even a bad ruleset can prevent an individual group from running an enjoyable game. It doesn't exactly help, but I'm sure it's possible to have a good time in a variety of different ways.

They may not be conversations that you are personally interested in, given they are relevant for categories of RPGs that (as far as I can tell) you don't play (with the exception of MHRP? In which case discussions about 4e techniques for framing and resolution would be highly applicable). But they are happening.

Can't say I'm really all that interested in that whole approach no. Somewhat intellectually interested, but it's not practically applicable to my games or my players. Again, that's something that IME is a non-starter; I don't know anyone who would play an rpg without having the sense of a shared objective reality and the idea of some kind of ingame physical laws, or who would be willing to learn and engage a highly metagame system.

Even if those discussions are happening, in my eyes it's less common to talk substantively about the game at all these days.

Probably unsurprisingly, I have my own views on the attitude of ENworld posters to diversity of play and techniques in RPGing

Yep, I'll file that under unsurprising.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Not so much from rules point of view tho... in that case, I always kept house rules at a minimum. I was largely playing the game by the 3.0 books, and tried to resist changing stuff as much as possible, mostly because I wanted to convince myself that it wasn't really needed. However I do not count character material restrictions e.g. (dis)allowing something for the purpose of setting the tone of the fantasy world as really changing the game.

To me, those elements removed can be pretty significant changes, and are underrated as such. If player 1 comes in wanting to play a paladin, and player 2 makes a new fighter/caster class and plays that, player 1's experience is basically unaffected (assuming the new class works and is reasonably balanced). Conversely, if player 1 always plays paladins and the DM says "there are no paladins in my campaign", that player's opinion of the game is really going to change.

OTOH as a player, I played in games heavily house ruled in every possible way. Other DMs really liked changing all sort of stuff, and often I've participated in that.

According to some, that makes you an "outlier".

What has changed for me after 10 years, is simply that I have different life restrictions now, and I do not see myself spending evenings studying rules and planning adventures.

I get that aspect of it. I don't have as much time either. To me, that just makes me more of an improv DM. I prepare as much as I feel like and have time for, and then I run a game. I don't do nearly as much homebrewing as I did ten years ago, but I'm still just as much of an individual running my own game.

I do wonder if there have been demographic changes that have changed how people approach the game.

Ten years ago it seemed to me that there were two sides: on one side, old-school fans gravitating towards smaller dedicated forums and websites or generally not being very active on the main WotC and ENW forums, and these people seemed to me like they disapproved 3e but didn't look at it like something that damaged their own older-edition game,

Yep, those people were easy to ignore.

and on the other side a 3e crowd who was only concerned about what new stuff could come out of their edition, without seeing old-school gamers as a threat.

Of my whole group, one of us had a parent who'd played D&D in its early days. It was pretty apparent that we were doing a very different hobby, but we looked at the old D&D as quaint, nothing more. Playing Gygaxian or "old school" D&D to me is pretty much like playing tennis with wooden rackets.

 

[Li Shenron]

To me, those elements removed can be pretty significant changes, and are underrated as such. If player 1 comes in wanting to play a paladin, and player 2 makes a new fighter/caster class and plays that, player 1's experience is basically unaffected (assuming the new class works and is reasonably balanced). Conversely, if player 1 always plays paladins and the DM says "there are no paladins in my campaign", that player's opinion of the game is really going to change.

I understand that changing the availability of characters, races, magic items etc. can be also seen as altering the shared D&D game experience. But It's borderline in terms of "are you changing the rules or not?". For some people, what classes/races/magic items are available is rules territory, while I am just used to see it as a matter of campaign setting rather than rules.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I understand that changing the availability of characters, races, magic items etc. can be also seen as altering the shared D&D game experience. But It's borderline in terms of "are you changing the rules or not?". For some people, what classes/races/magic items are available is rules territory, while I am just used to see it as a matter of campaign setting rather than rules.

Given the existence of published variant rules, the DM's best friend, and Rule Zero, what isn't within rules territory?

 

[ExploderWizard]

To cross threads for a moment, the other thing that seems different-and perhaps this is just from my perspective-is ownership.

When I was a regular at the WotC community back in those days, it was assumed that anyone discussing anything on those forums was running their own game. There was a lot of great troubleshooting discussion, a lot of great ideas (of course, there was also plenty of chaff to separate that wheat from). Everyone ran their own setting. Everyone used extensive and individual houserules. In fact, that was the reason you were online in the first place. If you wanted to discuss FR, there was a special forum for that. If you wanted to discuss Dungeon magazine, there was a forum for that. Those forums were not high traffic, and it was assumed that if you were not posting there, you were running a game with an original plot in a homebrewed setting with ample houserules to meet your needs, and you wanted to discuss those things. That's the default. And that was when I was on WotC boards and meeting people at their store.

And the same in my personal experience. My own group tried something with a published adventure in a published setting once, and dropped it quickly, with prejudice. All of the dozens of people that I played with in those days held essentially the same opinion on the subject: that we're playing our game and that published material detracts from our ownership of it. Even slavish adherence to the rules detracts from our ownership of it. My current players are basically people that I taught to play (starting around ten years ago); I don't know if they're even familiar with the concept of a published adventure, and Forgotten Realms is just the place where Baldur's Gate 2 was set. If you're playing, say, the Dragon Age rpg, the setting of Ferrelden is implied. If you're playing D&D, that means homebrew; either putting in some work and creating material in advance, or improvising on the spot. That's what D&D is. It's the game where you make stuff up. And as a DM, your job is to create a game experience, and you're judged on how well you do that.

It's only within the last few years and only on ENW that I see the term "module" used to describe something in D&D rather than a part of the Apollo spacecraft, or people talking about "OP" as a venue for playing D&D, rather than the original poster in the thread. People use proper nouns referring to old D&D material as if the reader is expected to understand the reference. And more recently, I see claims that it's actually common or even normal for a DM not to create his own game. All of which is just weird.

I don't know what the reason is. Maybe it's just because I gradually went from WotC to ENW, and this is an older and different crowd. Maybe it's a generational or regional thing. Maybe it's because WotC cancelling the magazines drove a bunch of angry Dungeon fans out of the woodwork. Maybe it's just because some people like arguing. If someone is actually out there buying Paizo's "adventure paths" (what does those two words together even mean?) and using them to run a game, I don't begrudge them that, but I don't understand it at all, and I wonder why that same person did not, as far as I can tell, exist ten years ago.

All of which is part of a larger philosophical shift, in my opinion. Instead of giving examples of what you do in your own game, people seem to have moved towards discussing a "standard" game experience, ceding some of that sense of ownership of one's own game in the process. Maybe it's a 4e thing or even a 3e thing or a WotC thing in general. I mean, trying to design a "balanced" game around the assumption of four characters of equal level covering the four basic classes fighting thirteen and a third battles against opponents with an EL equal to the part level, all while adhering to the RAW in every way, is absurd. No one (virtually) does that. It would be like making public policy around the assumption that everyone is a middle-class white suburban family with 2.5 kids. They aren't. There isn't even such thing as half a kid.

All of which is why I think the level of discourse has dropped. Don't get me wrong, ENW is still notable for its overall stability and civility. But I've read at different times that "everyone's D&D game is basically the same" (it isn't), or that "houserules aren't normal" (they're the norm) or that because I don't play the game in the "standard" way that my opinions on it are invalid (they aren't). The inability of some people (and companies) to acknowledge diversity in the D&D gaming world plays into a lot of other negative things and has, to me, been a change for the worse over the last decade.

The industry has been moving away from the hobbyist and more towards the consumer model for a while for obvious economic reasons. Adventure paths, subscriptions, and the like are consumer models designed to generate steady revenue. This is smart for the industry because steady revenue is required for sustainability. What is best for the industry isn't always what is best for the hobby. With just the most basic products, the hobbyist can game a lifetime never needing anything else. Hobbyists are thus no longer the prime demographic of the industry. Any industry designed to provide goods & services needs consumers as a customer base. Carving a strong customer base out of hobby populated by do-it-yourself types is not an easy task. After all, if one can game forever with just a basic rule set, how is an industry supposed to keep the revenue flowing?

The key is in convincing the customer base that it needs what you have to offer, same as any other business. Thus the "standard" game is pushed as normal play, and gaming material is marketed as a canned experience instead of an unlock your imagination starter kit, for the benefit of sustaining the industry. The whole balance fixation is really about convincing a customer base that they need constant industry product to get the full enjoyment from sitiing around pretending to be an elf with some friends. Based on the frightening demand from consumer gamers, about being told how to go about this I say the industry is doing a heck of a job.

 

[Ahnehnois]

The industry has been moving away from the hobbyist and more towards the consumer model for a while for obvious economic reasons.

That makes sense to me. Commercialization is one thing that's likely caused changes over the past decade.

Carving a strong customer base out of hobby populated by do-it-yourself types is not an easy task. After all, if one can game forever with just a basic rule set, how is an industry supposed to keep the revenue flowing?

It isn't. To me, that's the end of it. There really isn't a lot of money to be made in the rpg hobby, and the better you are at it, the less money you'll spend. Which is lousy for the company but great for us hobbyists.

The key is in convincing the customer base that it needs what you have to offer, same as any other business. Thus the "standard" game is pushed as normal play, and gaming material is marketed as a canned experience instead of an unlock your imagination starter kit, for the benefit of sustaining the industry. The whole balance fixation is really about convincing a customer base that they need constant industry product to get the full enjoyment from sitiing around pretending to be an elf with some friends. Based on the frightening demand from consumer gamers, about being told how to go about this I say the industry is doing a heck of a job.

I don't know if I would have worded it that way, but that argument does hold water. It is puzzling to me that, at least on some level and to some extent, consumers seems to have fooled into some of these things. Then again, in the 21st century, consumers get fooled about all kinds of things.

 

[Gilladian]

I don't know that ALL consumers are fooled into believing they need canned content; I suspect the hobbyists go right on doing their own thing, making up their own stuff, etc...

I know that I always used modules to a certain degree, and with the arrival of the glut of such materials in the 3e era, I was happy to buy a lot of it. I ran a FR campaign for a short time, and I ran one Paizo adventure path (about half of it, anyway). In the long run, they weren't for me, and I have gone back to running a lot more of my own stuff. But my most recent 3e campaign was based on Dragon's Delve, an online subscription dungeon that I LOVED. I modified bits and pieces of it, but I'd still be running it if I hadn't had to stop for personal time reasons, and still may go back to it if my players want to do so. On the other hand, I'm also running an online Dungeon World game that is totally freeform, and participate in a play-by-post where we're making up the world as we go along.

As time has gone on and my life has gotten busier, I've been forced to cut back on ALL my hobbies; DnD is just one of them; premade materials give me a wealth of options, and I don't think anyone is wrong who follows the "consumer trend" - they're just doing what is easy at the time they choose to do it. Later, their options and decisions may well change; but the consumers are the ones who are vocal about their consumer purchases!

 

[Andor]

To cross threads for a moment, the other thing that seems different-and perhaps this is just from my perspective-is ownership.

(snip)

All of which is why I think the level of discourse has dropped. Don't get me wrong, ENW is still notable for its overall stability and civility. But I've read at different times that "everyone's D&D game is basically the same" (it isn't), or that "houserules aren't normal" (they're the norm) or that because I don't play the game in the "standard" way that my opinions on it are invalid (they aren't). The inability of some people (and companies) to acknowledge diversity in the D&D gaming world plays into a lot of other negative things and has, to me, been a change for the worse over the last decade.

Well, this looks to me like a badwrongfun rant. [paraphrase]I homebrew, what's wrong with you lazy people who play in different ways? You're all playing the same way, which is not the way I play and therefore wrong. You're supposed to be different just like I am![/paraphrase]

I'm under the impression you haven't branched out far in your gaming choices. Adherance to the game world depends on the system and what it's designed for. Shadowrun for example is played within Shadowruns own world, because the system is tied very heavily into a particular social, magical, and technological framework. No one uses Shadowrun to play low-tech, high-fantasy Sengoku era feudal Japanse clan wars, there are several games actually designed to do that like Bushido, Sengoku or Legend of the 5 Rings. Conversely it would be ridiculous to try to adapt Lot5r to a game of high-tech spacefaring corporate espionage.

GURPS or HERO on the otherhand are toolkit systems designed to allow you to model what ever you want to play and I've been in GURPs games that ranged from magicless Matrix-tech to the bronze-age mysticism of Glorantha.

D&D has never been a monolithic setting with an assumed world although pseudo-feudal social structures are a strong default and murder-hobos are kind of baked into it. But even the very early D&D writings included advice on building your own worlds, and that is the default mode of play. D&D has never had a meta-plot the way Shadowrun does.

There have always been modules however, and they have always been used. They included suggestion for how to fit them into your campaign world, or modify them to fit. Some of them are classics still discussed and played today. Campaign worlds have also been perennial sellers. Ravenloft, Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, Planescape, Council of Wyrms, Spelljammer, Birthright, Al-Qadim and DragonLance were all distinct campaign setting (Or meta-settings for Spelljammer and Planescape) that pre-date 3e. In fact the 3e and 4e between them had far fewer settings released than AD&D and 2e. Eberron is the only new major setting that springs to mind for 3e.

Before 3e there was no right or wrong campaign length. Modules had a range of levels they were intended to serve and if your group was 9th level and was at loose ends then you might pick up "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks" and watch them wonder what a spaceship was doing in their fantasy world. What was new in 3e was the explicit assumption of a "Full campaign" meaning character growth from level 1 to 20 followed by retirement. (Ignoring the ELH which came later.) With that explicit goal laid out, there came a demand for what are essentially super modules whose purpose was to give a single over-arching plot to that intended, "correct" campign length of 20 levels. The fact that it's new doesn't make it right or wrong, just different. That it doesn't suit your style of play or fufill a need you have in your game is also not right or wrong.

[edit]Another factor, which does stretch back to 2e as well, is the shared world "Living Campaigns." These were the life blood of a lot of people who had trouble finding groups and only played at cons. The living campaigns meant that they got to keep and build a character and experience long term growth and plot. But it also (obviously) demanded a standardized style of play and introduced plots that a lot of people shared. I suspect that the Living Campaigns may have shifted a lot of peoples default assumption from the "Every table is homebrewed and homeruled" that held in the early days of D&D to an assumed standard mode of play. It also helps that we got better rulesets that required less homebrewing.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Well, this looks to me like a badwrongfun rant. [paraphrase]I homebrew, what's wrong with you lazy people who play in different ways? You're all playing the same way, which is not the way I play and therefore wrong. You're supposed to be different just like I am![/paraphrase]

Well, it definitely was a pretty rant-y post. But I'm always pretty clear that I don't understand or care about the non-homebrew crowd. I'm not criticizing them any more than I'm criticizing the LARPers, wargamers, MMO-ers, or adherents of any other hobby for doing what they want with their spare time.

Again, at the old WotC, you had FR forums and LG forums and Dungeon magazine forums. Everything else, the Charop, character development, the what's a DM/player to do, and the myriad of forums for specific parts of the game, and the generic D&D, all assumed that you were there to talk about a game that was basically just you and your friends and which you wanted to talk about houseruling and homebrewing for. I don't mind the other people as long as they aren't in my space telling me I'm doing something wrong. Same with ENW. There used to be a ton of houserule and game theory discussion (I got a lot of ideas here that I use), and it's kind of shifted away from that.

I just find it odd that communities that were at one point pretty much exclusive devoted to what I do seem to have become increasingly hostile towards it.

Adherance to the game world depends on the system and what it's designed for.

True. D&D is, as I said somewhat of an exception, particularly the 3e version which was designed to be generic and the core of which was adapted to numerous wildly different settings for other d20 system games. I tend to use generic systems rather than licensed rpgs or other ones that are strongly setting- or genre-specific.

There have always been modules however, and they have always been used.

To me, it seemed like precisely that: modules were something from the early days of D&D; that old-schoolers talk about but which none of the people of my generation ever gave much thought to. AFAICT, they fell out of favor. And then people started talking about them more recently again for some reason. Again, this is just an observation of something that stands out to me.

In fact the 3e and 4e between them had far fewer settings released than AD&D and 2e.

True, which lends itself to a couple of things.
One: It makes it clear that there is no one D&D playstyle. After all, balance between mages and fighters obviously means something different in FR than in Greyhawk.
Two: It's another old-school thing. My group used published settings in our 2e days, but when 3e came it it seemed like we were discouraged from doing so, which was fine by us.
Many of us read FR or Dragonlance novels, but the idea of running an actual game in those settings never made much sense. It was just inspiration for whatever we did run, just like any other novel.

Before 3e there was no right or wrong campaign length.

There still isn't.

 

[Ratskinner]

I don't know that ALL consumers are fooled into believing they need canned content; I suspect the hobbyists go right on doing their own thing, making up their own stuff, etc...

I don't think its a matter of "fooling" anyone. I think that the history of the tabletop incarnations of this hobby have left many of us with the (perhaps false) impression that customizing the system is both necessary and desirable. Given the popularity of computerized and boardgame versions which are (by and large) not very customizable in the manner we are talking about, I don't think that that's a given for a large part of the potential audience. Full disclosure, I am an inveterate tinkerer myself. However, many of the players I meet anymore either don't care about system very much, or have grown so weary of it that they just "go with the flow".