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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9239612" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Except D&D is still a bespoke game. It's just a bespoke game which avoids telling you what it's bespoke for, because that's apparently upsetting to people...even if they're already doing the things D&D is bespoke for!Each edition has, of course, colored the overall D&D direction or concept in its own way, pushing it toward one interpretation or another, but by and large it has been intended for one of two general bespoke applications, which I think we can positively entitle "Gygaxian" and "Lancian" (or, if you prefer, "Hickmannish/Weisian"). The "Gygaxian" experience is quite specific, and often captured by what is referred to as "hexcrawl" play today, though actually traversing hex-gridded space is not strictly required for it. The "Lancian" experience is looser, still committed to particular things.The "Gygaxian" experience is logistics-focused, gritty, casual about story (and often spoken RP) but methodical and precise about tracking time/weight/hirelings/etc. and Exact Words, relatively high lethality but (generally) low volatility*, treating balance as something which occurs only at the level of multiple adventures or entire campaigns (so unusually powerful actions or even sessions are normal), obscurantist rule design (so players who can pierce the obscure presentation to discover the truth behind it feel good and are rewarded for their understanding), and heavy reliance on DM skill in numerous ways. Ironically, despite being rather obscurantist about player-facing rules and such, text regarding how to DM for the "Gygaxian" application was generally pretty up front about a lot of this. The infamous claim, "YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT." Magic items, outside of (deprecated) "Monty Haul" campaigns, are extremely rare and precious things, if they are present at all.The "Lancian" experience is somewhat tactics-focused, heroic (often disparaged as "superheroic" by fans of grittier experiences), serious about story and RP but generally more casual about "bookkeeping," unreliable for both lethality and volatility* (see the controversy about rules regarding "important" character deaths), treating balance as something both tactical and strategic, an odd contrast of obscurantist presentation but transparent design (meaning it isn't actually that hard to pierce the obscuring veil), and some but generally less reliance on DM skill in favor of already-functional systems. It's best exemplified by 3e.5e aims to offer something sort of like "Gygaxian" experience, but informed by "Lancian"--there's a very good reason so many people refer to 5e as "AD&D3" without having any particular thing they can point to to explain why. The problem, of course, is that much of its rules structure is in fact actively opposed to the "Gygaxian" experience: it has far too much powerful magic, too much quick healing, too many ways to ignore or even subvert resource tracking, little if anything at the broad, whole-adventure strategic layer to support interesting play, and very weak design with regard to the "adventuring day" (as demonstrated by the need for 5.5e.) It preserves, however, the obscurantism, massive dependence on DM skill, and high lethality and low volatility* of the "Gygaxian" experience. Conversely, it brings in the tactics-focused gameplay, some of the heroic bent (too much for anyone who likes grit, but often not enough for folks who like Big Damn Heroes), and emphasis on personal story and growth over timekeeping/logistics/SOPs/etc. It tries to have its cake and eat it too with regard to magic items, but has pretty clearly ended up on the "Gygaxian" side, where magic items are extremely rare, with the "magic items are optional" concept having been interpreted as "magic items shouldn't be given out in most cases."All three--"Gygaxian," "Lancian," and 5e--are very heavy on combat vs. all other modes of interacting with the world and, naturally, feature the classic D&D tropes like six stats, chunky levels, unrealistic training methods or processes, the quirk that defense protects you from attack, not from damage (hence the common "AC becomes DR" rules hacks/homebrew/etc.), and various other mechanical elements that have been present in every edition of D&D, even 4e.5e is rather poor at supporting anything outside of the above, unless the DM effectively designs a new bolt-on ruleset to support it. This is both a function of the rules themselves (they're already somewhat rickety and need frequent DM attention just to function smoothly), and of the extreme dearth of useful, productive DM guidance in the book allegedly there to "guide" them. 5e was a system written for old hands, not for helping people get into it.*The lethality/volatility distinction came from discussing various editions on another form. TL;DR: lethality = PC death chance, volatility = chance of dramatic status change.[SPOILER="Longer explanation"]"Lethality" is a loose description of how likely actual character deaths are, while "volatility" describes how much character status changes from one round or even one turn to the next. 4e is a mid-to-low lethality, high-volatility game basically the whole way through. 3e starts off relatively low on both, but becomes relatively high in both at high levels, what is often called "rocket tag." 5e is often considered more "old school" than other WotC editions because it is relatively high in lethality (especially for the first few levels) but relatively low in volatilty.[/SPOILER]But...that has essentially nothing to do with the rules of the game. You could say exactly the same thing about any system: design good adventures of different types, and suddenly any game can offer a "general experience."Adventures need to make use of the game's rules, but adventure design as a whole is genuinely a separate topic from system design. Hence why using a very well-made system cannot protect you from making $#¡+ modules (just look at 4e's Keep on the Shadowfell or Pyramid of Shadows, which were both absolutely awful), while a system generally recognized for extremely flawed design does not prevent you from making excellent adventures (just look at 3e's Red Hand of Doom, or the numerous beloved APs for PF1e, which even its own creators admitted was too broken to continue developing for.)If D&D is bouyed by adventure design, all that that says is that it's had authors who could write good adventures--and enough market share to make writing such adventures actually worthwhile.</blockquote>

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