[EDITION WARZ] Selling Out D&D's Soul?

[Crothian]

Huh? What else could it possibly be?

Just a game. I have no desire to actually be a paladin, but I'll play on because it can be fun.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I seem to be hearing some of the usual "3e coddles players" talk, which seems to me to be in the same vein as "I can't believe kids these days need BOOTS! In my day, we walked through four-foot snows in SANDALS and were glad for wet socks!"

Something changes to make the pain of life (or the game) less evident or does away with them all together, and people claim that it makes people weak and immoral and all sorts of things...it's an argument at least as old as the Amish, and likely as old as Atl-Atls (Pheh, you kids use THROWERS for your spears?! Back in my day, we threw with our hands! And sometimes we'd get right up in the woolly mammoth's face and stab 'em, ya young pansies!). And the counter-argument always seems to be more persuasive to me, being basically "The less pain, suffering, coping, and toughness one has to deal with in life, the better the quality of that life."

With regards to D&D specifically, this is even MORE true, since it is an elective activity that is ostensibly for enjoyment...making one XP chart instead of 13 means that there is less pain, suffering, coping, and toughness to deal with in the game, and thus the game is of better quality. If I have to basically re-make the game in my own image (something I see a lot of elder-editionists holding up with understandable pride), it's a very poor game to begin with. Fun? Sure, but watching Univision when I can't understand Spanish is fun, too. And requires significantly less investment of time and effort.

And, yes, investing time and effort into something to make it fun is a waste of time when that thing purports to provide you with fun. It's like being given a comb when you asked for a toy. Sure, you can make it INTO a toy, but obviously it's much worse than, say, an action figure for that purpose. A comb makes a low-quality toy, and the older editions of D&D make a pretty low-quality game, it seems, since they had to be adjusted, ignored, and kit-bashed into functionality. It wasn't a game, it was inspiration for you to make up your own game and call it D&D.

And then I'm seeing that the "soul of D&D" seems to be very general and pervasive...it's even been referenced as expanding to fill all of role-playing in some posts, but even when more codified, the soul doesn't seem to lie in the mechanics or the specifics of the system or edition. I could be playing GURPS Fantasy and just call it D&D and I'd be meeting many of these definitions.

So what makes 3e any less "D&D" then running my own kit-bashed homebrew AD&D campaign without level limits? Is it merely a matter of degrees, a slippery slope?

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

There's a reason D&D is called a FANTASY role playing game. Playing it allows the players to enact their fantasies. The whole point of the game is to make your character more and more powerful, able to take on bigger and bigger challenges, collect ever more astounding treasures, accomplish increasingly impactful deeds.

Erm... I'd say most Science Fiction, Pulp, Space Opera and Modern Action roleplaying games offer the same thing, and they're never called FANTASY roleplaying games. The fantasy in this case refers to the genre, not to wish fulfilment.

Even if your premise is right, your terminology... isn't.

 

[Zaruthustran]

Erm... I'd say most Science Fiction, Pulp, Space Opera and Modern Action roleplaying games offer the same thing, and they're never called FANTASY roleplaying games. The fantasy in this case refers to the genre, not to wish fulfilment.

Even if your premise is right, your terminology... isn't.

LOL, and totally right. I retract the argument.

I stand by the claim that RPGs (whether fantasy or otherwise) are played because the player says to him or herself, "wouldn't it be cool to be X". Where X = a spaceman, a vampire, Indiana Jones, a paladin, an investigator, a street samurai, etc. etc.

For those more mechanically minded / powergamers (to be clear: a term that, to me, carries no negative connotation), replace X with: able to do over 1,000 damage per round, able to be more effective than any other player's character, able to do anything else one sees posted as challenges on character optimization boards.

Still wish fulfillment and, IMHO, the soul of D&D.

-z

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

LOL, and totally right. I retract the argument.

I stand by the claim that RPGs (whether fantasy or otherwise) are played because the player says to him or herself, "wouldn't it be cool to be X". Where X = a spaceman, a vampire, Indiana Jones, a paladin, an investigator, a street samurai, etc. etc.

For those more mechanically minded / powergamers (to be clear: a term that, to me, carries no negative connotation), replace X with: able to do over 1,000 damage per round, able to be more effective than any other player's character, able to do anything else one sees posted as challenges on character optimization boards.

Still wish fulfillment and, IMHO, the soul of D&D.

Quite possibly true. Certainly this is the main reason I've seen for playing "traditional" RPGs. Some of the more off-the-wall types, perhaps not so much.

For my part, I'm usually more interested in genre emulation, often as specific as a single other media (wouldn't it be cool to have a new Conan story - that didn't suck - or a side story in the world of FF6?). RPGs for me are probably closer to interactive fanfic than wish fulfillment.

 

[Glyfair]

If the goal was to increase the "fun" time then why did WOTC design a system that makes statting up NPC's such a labor intensive chore..

I've said this before, but I think it's a matter of two conflicting guidelings about the "right way" of game design that work against each other.

1) The more options and customability for player characters, the better.

2) PCs and NPCs should play by the same rules.

I happen to agree with #1, but I'm not 100% on board with #2. However, there is a large, vocal group of roleplayers that consider it to be paramount.

So, because you are giving players all these options for character design, you have to give them to NPCs. That makes NPC design such a headache.

In my option, rule #2 should be tossed. PC character design should be an option for NPCs, but there should be a faster design method for quick fast minimalistic NPCs.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

In my option, rule #2 should be tossed. PC character design should be an option for NPCs, but there should be a faster design method for quick fast minimalistic NPCs.

I would agree, in spades.

I consider it highly desirable that design rules for NPCs can sensibly follow those for PCs closely. I do not like that every single Drow Wizard/Fighter I meet happen to be characters that the DM would never even theorectically let me play regardless of the level of play, etc. I do not see any compelling reason to require all NPCs follow such rules.

I am a big supporter of the idea that DMs should "cheat, fair and square". What I mean is that DMs should not be the least bit ashamed or uncomfortable about using extreme shortcuts, as long as they are making a good faith effort that the shortcut is fair to the PCs on average even if it may not quite be fair for this particular occasion.

Suppose I need a CR 9 fighter. I have a CR 7 Fighter on hand. What do I do? Add 20 HPs, +2 to hit, +2 to damage, +2 AC, +2 to saves, +2 to all skills. Give him two or three potions. Boring? Yes. But this is close enough.

We can tweak this rule of thumb up and down (it is probably a tad on the weak side), but it is really good enough 90% of the time. Most NPCs just do not live long enough for subtle hues in character generation to be noticed by the players.

We already have the differentiation between CR and ECL/LA, so it is not as if we require some a perfect match between PC and NPC rules.

 

[Lanefan]

No. The older editions didn't give you any advice at all. This is a point I see people constantly making about 3E and it's just wrong, the same thing with the idea of a standard GP wealth valve.

Old Editions of the game gave you almost nothing. You'd know that the adventure was for however many players of whatever level. That's it. No information on class, no information on how many magical items they should have.

Which forced the DM to use his-her own observations as to what the party could handle, and go with that. To me, that's a Good Thing.

The ‘problem’ only arises when there's an expectation by the players that there will be so much treasure, that they will face encounters designed for the classic 4, that they will gain levels so fast... These are all play style decisions. These are issues within a gaming group, flaws in the system. I'll be the first to amid that issues with player expectation are worse by these assumptions, but all the info given on how the system works in the DMG makes it very easy to change these to suit your group.

And other than the level-gain points, none of that was even thought of in earlier editions, so nobody worried overmuch about it. But now it's in the books, it de facto becomes a standard; players come to expect it (as you mention) and any DM who wants to change it is immediately on the defensive.

Lanefan

 

[Aus_Snow]

Huh? What else could it possibly be?

Different things to different people.

There's a reason D&D is called a FANTASY role playing game.

Yes. Yes, there is: it's a fantasy roleplaying game.

Playing it allows the players to enact their fantasies. The whole point of the game is to make your character more and more powerful, able to take on bigger and bigger challenges, collect ever more astounding treasures, accomplish increasingly impactful deeds.

For some. Perhaps many.

Wish fulfillment.

Or just plain ol' fun. Or something else, for others.


It seems some people continue to confuse the fantasy genre with the acting out of fantasies. They are not (necessarily) even related.

Fantasy settings are defined by being strange, otherworldly, filled with the supernatural and/or highly unusual, etc. etc.

Acting out one's fantasies - in a roleplaying kind of way - is not limited to the fantasy genre, any more than roleplaying in any kind of fantasy setting is limited to acting out one's fantasies.

I think that covers it pretty well.

 

[Lanefan]

The game may well be, in essence, wish fulfillment...but:

The question then becomes one of how relatively easy or not fulfilling that wish is going to be. 3e seems to make it generally easier than 1e, at least from what I've seen, and that may be at the root of many an argument both here and elsewhere...

Lanefan