Difference From 10 Years Ago?

[Gilladian]

Right! My comment about "being fooled" was really a response to another poster. Anyway, the tinkerers and creators will do their thing, and the casual gamers and pre packaged materials will help those who can't or won't tinker.

 

[Ratskinner]

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.

To some extent, I think this crops up online any time a new edition or major update is in the wind. Perhaps its even exacerbated by the PF&3.x/4e split amongst their online edition warriors as they are often called upon to defend the RAW and making homebrew changes is viewed as evidence of weakness within the particular system. Additionally, I think that the shorter edition "lifespan" since WotC took over has lead to people feeling less confident in homebrewing/houseruling. I mean, folks had plenty of time to get used to (or fed up with) earlier editions and feel like tweaking them a bit more.

Of course, the online community is not representative of the audience as a whole. I have no idea of how popular homebrew or houseruling the modern incarnations actually is "out in the wild". Personally, I don't know that I've ever played or run any edition other than 3&4 at anything close to what you'd call RAW.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Of course, the online community is not representative of the audience as a whole.

One hopes not. It's easier to discuss this online community though, since we know more about it. Who knows what the landscape of actual games looks like?

I have no idea of how popular homebrew or houseruling the modern incarnations actually is "out in the wild". Personally, I don't know that I've ever played or run any edition other than 3&4 at anything close to what you'd call RAW.

Interesting.

 

[Ahnehnois]

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...

True, but I can think of specific examples where people seem to have developed a need that I didn't know they had.

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

Me too.

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.

I think it's a problem only wherein people are essentially tricked into paying money for things they don't really need. If you buy things that you do need; that's the free market at work.

 

[ExploderWizard]

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!

Buying and using some published material doesn't make one a hardcore consumer.

Hardcore consumer behavior involves stuff like refusing to play a game without continuing ongoing support, only playing such games if they are run RAW, etc. It goes way beyond just buying or not buying stuff.
If you cannot stand the thought of playing a game because there isn't a steady IV drip of new bits to stick to your character, then we are getting into deep consumer territory. If you can't stand the thought of including something in your game that hasn't been given the seal of approval from a game designer, then likewise.

 

[billd91]

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.

If that's the case, I don't know what rock you've been hiding under or how you've missed the threads on them or discussions elsewhere. They've been going since before 2004 when you signed up and have continued on the entire time you've been here.

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.

"That same person" has been around for a long time. We were running TSR's AD&D modules back in 1981 as well as our own creations. If the adventure looked cool, we ran it. If we had a cool idea, we ran it. It wasn't one or the other. Some DMs did have distinct preferences but we mixed up who was running the game often enough that we had a lot of opportunity for diversity.

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.

Let's not mix too many things up here. There actually has been a shift in philosophy as far as publishing the D&D rules goes and Skip Williams is one of the people we can thank (or rage at) for it. Despite being as much a D&D grognard as anyone else can claim in this industry, he was a primary advocate for laying comprehensive rules out for the players to know so they can make rational decisions within those rules. This gets at Majoru Oakheart's jumping distance post (in another thread, I think, I've been reading a bunch lately that all blend together). If the PC has an idea how far he can jump, he can make a rational decision when faced with a gap without having to ask a DM who may or may not have a good grasp on that topic. The rules are already out there and in his hands. I believe that philosophy has governed the rules published as of 3e and 4e but not really for 1e or 2e.

The idea of a balanced encounter, however, has always been around - it just had a looser definition. An even less scientific one compared to the definitions in 3e and then 4e. And yes, the definition has become more scientific as the editions have progressed in the 2000s, but as a critic of focusing on the technique exclusively, I'm not sure it has actually let to better games. More advanced techniques in game design, maybe, but that doesn't necessarily make for a better game.

It is true, though, that public policy is based on statistics like the 2.5 kids - it just doesn't reach down to the individual family level as much as it deals in broader aggregates. If families have an average of 2.5 kids, then 2 families can be expected to involve 5 kids, 10 families involve 25 kids, and so on. Those kids of statistics will help school district and city planners look at the growth in population and estimate when (or if) they need to build more schools. Game designers don't have that luxury. They have to design around the dynamics of a single group of players, thus the need to estimate how many players there probably are in the average group, how long the group lasts playing the same game, and so on.

 

[Ahnehnois]

If that's the case, I don't know what rock you've been hiding under or how you've missed the threads on them or discussions elsewhere. They've been going since before 2004 when you signed up and have continued on the entire time you've been here.

"That same person" has been around for a long time. We were running TSR's AD&D modules back in 1981 as well as our own creations. If the adventure looked cool, we ran it. If we had a cool idea, we ran it. It wasn't one or the other. Some DMs did have distinct preferences but we mixed up who was running the game often enough that we had a lot of opportunity for diversity.

I suppose that was the kind of perspective I was looking for. I don't recall hiding under any rocks though; it seems like there must have been some de facto segregation of people with different mentalities. I remember quite clearly that when I joined ENW I did not know what a "module" was or what was actually in "Dungeon" magazine. If there were discussions on those topics, I ignored them. I did not learn about them for several years at least, because I remember the surprise and thinking "oh that's that weird book I have in my closet that I never thought to use".

What definitely didn't happen as much is these discussions where one person says "I do things this way" and another person says "I do things that way" and a third person says "well that doesn't count because it isn't published in a book". Nor did you see people claiming that the entire game was "broken" simply because they had a bad experience with their group. There was definitely more acknowledgement of how different our individual games are.

Let's not mix too many things up here. There actually has been a shift in philosophy as far as publishing the D&D rules goes and Skip Williams is one of the people we can thank (or rage at) for it. Despite being as much a D&D grognard as anyone else can claim in this industry, he was a primary advocate for laying comprehensive rules out for the players to know so they can make rational decisions within those rules.

Maybe, but comprehensive isn't the same as standardized. For example...

This gets at Majoru Oakheart's jumping distance post (in another thread, I think, I've been reading a bunch lately that all blend together). If the PC has an idea how far he can jump, he can make a rational decision when faced with a gap without having to ask a DM who may or may not have a good grasp on that topic. The rules are already out there and in his hands.

What I see is that the language of Jumping has been standardized. But now it'll get argued who should have Jump as a class skill. Players will ask for traits and racial bonuses and magic items to change their Jump skill. DMs will assign circumstance bonuses and penalties, either explicitly, or in the background as "DM cheating". The result is not that every 1st level fighter jumps the same distance, but that everyone is speaking the same language and we know how far he jumped and why.

The idea of a balanced encounter, however, has always been around - it just had a looser definition.

Loose enough to be easily ignored, AFAICT.

I'm not sure it has actually let to better games. More advanced techniques in game design, maybe, but that doesn't necessarily make for a better game.

Newer isn't better. I think a lot of the grognard-ism when 3e came out boiled down to "the game we made up in our heads is better than the game you wrote. Why did you have to fill in all those blanks and 'fix' all those problems". Which I increasingly understand.

 

[Viking Bastard]

I agree with [MENTION=17106]Ahnehnois[/MENTION] on that change in attitudes towards houserules, being an avid tinkerer myself. From it being considered the norm, to the general community coming off as somewhat hostile towards it.

But it was already starting to feel like that in the mid-2000s, when I was drifting out of the hobby. Now it feels less overtly hostile, and more like I'm some weird alien being.

 

[Andor]

I suppose that was the kind of perspective I was looking for. I don't recall hiding under any rocks though;

...

If there were discussions on those topics, I ignored them.

- Underline added for emphasis.

There ya go. Willfull ignorance is exactly what "Hiding under a rock" means. There were aspects of the game that did not interest you, and you paid them no mind. That does not mean they weren't there. They were, trust us.

I think people are slightly more reluctant to homebrew these days, but I disagree with what seems to be your view: That it's because they are uncreative lemmings only capable of running other peoples modules. I think there if greater awareness that systems were designed the way they are for a reason by talented people and that tinkering always has unintended consequences. I also think people have enough options within the systems to achieve their goals without the wholesale kitbashing we used to induldge in. Plus I think in an age when most new gamers cut their teeth on console games there are probably altered standards for how much people expect to be able to muck about with things.

 

[Ahnehnois]

- Underline added for emphasis.

There ya go. Willfull ignorance is exactly what "Hiding under a rock" means. There were aspects of the game that did not interest you, and you paid them no mind. That does not mean they weren't there. They were, trust us.

My point is that now those aspects have now intruded into areas of the game that do interest me, where they didn't before.

I think people are slightly more reluctant to homebrew these days, but I disagree with what seems to be your view: That it's because they are uncreative lemmings only capable of running other peoples modules.

Well, that's kind of the strawman version. I wouldn't go quite that far. I think a lot of it is fear; it's not that people lack the creative talent or inclination, but that they are afraid that if they put their ideas out there, something bad will happen. I also think it's because people simply don't understand what they're capable of in the absence of external help, and how easy and effortless it can be to improvise.

I think there if greater awareness that systems were designed the way they are for a reason by talented people and that tinkering always has unintended consequences.

IME, there are a lot of intended consequences, then some unintended consequences, the bad of which are easy to ignore and the good of which are easily pervasive on aggregate.

I also think people have enough options within the systems to achieve their goals without the wholesale kitbashing we used to induldge in.

Depends what system.

Plus I think in an age when most new gamers cut their teeth on console games there are probably altered standards for how much people expect to be able to muck about with things.

As I've said elsewhere, I've been somewhat influenced by moddable computer games.