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

[Ourph]

Why do all Dwarven magic items have to be divinely-created? Why aren't Dwarves allowed to study how to craft and enchant these items on their own? Given their connections to the earth, why don't Dwarves have the ability to learn any earth-based arcane magic? I think it robs Dwarven crafters of some of their legendary abilities, by requiring the actions of an external divine entity in order to create anything magical.

Dwarven items aren't divinely created. All "dwarven" items were simply expertly crafted items of dwarven make that were enchanted with the aid of elven magic-users (long ago when the elves and dwarves lived in peace, harmony and cooperation). The rift and enmity between the elves and dwarves occured when the elves (disagreeing with the uses the dwarves were finding for some of their items) withdrew their assistance in creating more magical artifacts. The dwarves, in their anger, destroyed all records of the elves aid in creating these items and reimagined them as family heirlooms handed down through hundreds of generations from mastercraftdwarves of ancient history whose skill alone was enough to imbue the items with magical puissance. This is why all dwarven-make magical items are 1) old, 2) rare and 3) jealously guarded by their dwarven owners.

 

[Keldryn]

True, but the requirements certainly don't have to be "read Tolkein and Leiber." They could be "Read a Drizzit novel," or "See the LotR movie" or "Know an older brother who played D&D" or "Heard about it from a Weird Al song" or "Played Neverwinter Nights" or "Read Harry Potter" or even some fantasy manga such as "BLEACH." Indeed, they could be "Interested in being a legendary hero like Arthur or Achilles or Goku?"

Exactly. I hadn't really read much fantasy before getting into D&D. I had both AD&D licensed games for my Intellivision when I was about 9 or 10. I remembered seeing the cartoon on TV when I'd spend the weekend at my cousin's house (we only got two channels out in the sticks where I lived at the time). So I was aware of the name Dungeons & Dragons. A couple of years later, I was really into the Choose Your Own Adventure Books. My mom would pick them up for me at garage sales, and one time she bought me a bunch of TSR's Endless Quest books with some of those CYOA books. Around the same time, I was seeing a lot of ads for the D&D Basic/Expert/Companion/Masters/Immortals sets in my G.I. Joe comics. Those sparked my interest enough to start looking at D&D books in toy and book stores, and soon I bought the "red box" Set 1: Basic Rules.

So it was Endless Quest and G.I. Joe comics that originally led me to D&D. Not exactly classics of literature there. I didn't read Tolkein until several years later, and I've still never read Leiber or any of the other books that inspired Gygax. I started reading Moorcock, but never really got into it.

This isn't just my opinion, either. In order to survive, the game needs to be fit for it's environment. The world has changed, and the "olde classics" of fantasy have become more irrelevant in the light of a new wave that is in multiple media. The game *must* adapt to this, or die the slow withering death of all things that do not change.

Yes. Future D&D gamers are going to be those who grew up on Harry Potter, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Final Fantasy. It's unavoidable, as this isn't the 70s and 80s, and tomorrow's gamers are growing up with different influences than we had.

There's no reason -- no excuse -- for D&D to cater only to the elite nerds at the top of the dorkpile. Intelligent people who love fantasy of all stripes (which includes a VERY large number of people) should be welcomed to play with open arms.

Totally agreed. Actually, I generally can't stand to play D&D with the "top of the dorkpile" elite nerds anymore. They take the game too seriously. Yes, by all means give your character some personality and backstory -- but eight pages of handwritten backstory, both sides, is perhaps excessive. They take an interest in the fact that I want to run a game, but then tell me they won't play if I'm not running it on a weekly basis. They take fifteen minutes to open a door and enter a room because they insist on probing the floor in front of the door with a 10' pole, listening at the door several times, searching every inch of it for traps, arranging the rest of the party members around the doorway, searching the walls across from the door for traps, searching the keyhole for traps, finally opening the door but only a crack ... for crying out loud, there's NOTHING THERE, get on with the game already.

Of course I'm generalizing, and that was said with tongue-firmly-in-cheek, but yeah, the elite D&D nerds tend to get on my nerves too much to spend much time with.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Hmm. Not really. I find it really helpful that there's a suggested amount of stuff that a character probably will have as of such-and-such a level. It's good for a couple of things:

1) If I'm starting out a campaign at something other than 1st level, I can give them a chunk of money and know that their character will be on par with the challenges for that level. They won't have magical equipment so powerful that they will blow away the monsters, but on the other hand they're not likely to be caught short without some appropriate magical assistance, such as AC boosters for wizards or magical arms for a warrior.

... and the hammer meets the nail head. "On par with the challenges for that level" is precisely what d20 fantasy's all about. Apart from me, hardly anyone even challenges that any more.

Ask yourself: What does "on par with the challenges for that level" mean?

It means: "This party can, statistically, kill four encounters a day with a moderate and acceptable level of risk." Which creates the mindset: "This challenge is fair, that challenge isn't." Which creates the whole sense of entitlement that really frustrates me about 3e. "I'm x-level so I should have y-wealth and be facing z-CR creatures."

I'm sure you can see where I'm going now, but I'll spell it out in case anyone's feeling lazy: The assumptions behind these recommended wealth levels and CR calculations are mathematical. The whole game's in the dice rolls and the stacking modifiers and the mechanics.

[This is actually an oversimplification. d20 fantasy is basically two games.

The first game is where the players match the stacking modifiers on their character sheets against the stacking modifiers on the DM's adventure sheet and roll the dice, as I've explained above.

The second game is basically amateur theatrics for people who like to "get in character." That's fun sometimes but it's system-neutral; you don't even need dice for it. You can have fun "getting in character" in a game of Let's Pretend.

Therefore roleplaying is irrelevant to the discussion. Any comparison of editions has to ignore roleplaying considerations and focus on the mechanics before it can be productive. So I felt free to help myself to the oversimplification.]

Does anyone object to that characterisation of d20 fantasy? Or fail to understand how 1e was different?

 

[Keldryn]

I definitely agree. 2e's changes to the spell lists were awful beyond belief. I *much* prefer individual spell lists for each class.

In some ways, 3e actually does it better...
* Ranger, Bard and Paladin now have their own unique spell lists, rather than piggybacking on the magic-user, druid or cleric lists
* Druid is back to a unique list, which feels *very* different from the cleric list.

Oh, and if you want the 1e illusionist... both the 3.5e Bard and the Beguiler come the closest.

Yeah, I agree with you. I like that the Ranger and Bard, for example, actually have a handful of spells unique to their lists. The PHB2 Beguiler makes a nice substitute for the 1e Illusionist, and is perhaps a better favoured class for the Gnome then is the Bard.

The Wizard spell list in 3.x is still kind of bland and bloated though. I wish that it had a bit more flavour, even if it organized spells into some sort of themes or paths. For example, if spells like Burning Hands or Scorch were prerequisites to learning Fireball. Learning the basics of one theme before learning the more advanced spells. GURPS Magic is kind of set up like this, and I do remember a Dragon article or two detailing a D&D version of this.

 

[Henry]

Does anyone object to that characterisation of d20 fantasy? Or fail to understand how 1e was different?

A good question arises from this: Did and do you ever run games starting at a level other than first character level? If so, what criteria do you use in character creation -- one from a source other than you, such as the DM appendix, or something that you and/or your group created over time?

The reason for the mathematical baseline is just for the sake of establishing a baseline, where none existed before. One of Gary's strongest admonitions was to avoid Killer DM-ism as well as Monty-Haul-ism, and establishing a baseline is one way to avoid both. (Not that 3E necessarily has it right, but they try to establish a line between too much and too little). I think that most 3E gamers don't mind having a baseline other than 1st level that is official, even if nothing else but to have something to deviate away from.

 

[Keldryn]

It also rewards cherry picking 1 level here and there of both base classes and PrCs - the famous "1 level dip".

That's more a side effect of allowing more freedom in multi-classing. A big part of it is simply in how class abilities are allocated per level, and 3.5 saw some changes here. If a class (like the 3e Ranger) has a lot of abilities granted at 1st level, and your current class doesn't offer anything more than a few hit points and skill points at the next level, it can certainly be tempting to dip for a level. But it ends up being at the expense of your primary class, and as you reach higher levels in your primary class, that 1-level-dip often becomes a pretty weak choice. When your Wizard hits 11th level, you may very well be wishing that you hadn't taken that one level of Fighter, because the extra caster level and spells that you could have for being a 12th level Wizard are a lot more useful now than the extra 10 hit points, Power Attack, and +1 BAB.

If the DM is allowing 1-level dips into PrCs... that's the DM's fault, not the system. If he's letting PrCs just be basic classes with mechanical requirements, then that's his choice. In my (admittedly limited) experience in DMing 3e, my players have generally be sticking with one class.

In general terms, though, I agree that 3.X has a better system for multi-classing than earlier eds, although I should mention this is something I houserule, too. I won't allow a player who is a Fighter to suddenly up and grab a level of Wizard out of the blue, without some solid "in character" justification, for example.

I don't see it as too much of a problem, aside from PrCs, which I think are intended to have a role-playing justification for taking them -- although a lot of DMs and players don't seem to bother. If a party of characters are adventuring together for a while, it doesn't seem like that much of a stretch of the imagination that they would be able to pick up enough from the others here and there to be able to justify taking 1st level in another class.

 

[Keldryn]

There's a reason it was called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, you know!

Yeah, because Dave Arneson had some claim to the Dungeons & Dragons name.

When I first started with my old Basic Set, I just assumed that Advanced was some step beyond Basic and Expert. It wasn't that clear to me until later that it was an entirely seperate game, it just seemed like additional stuff to add later on.

See, now we're back to the "more popular/better selling = better product" reasoning, which I strongly diagree with.

I don't think he's making that argument at all. Our generation isn't going to live forever. And I've watched most of my gamer friends get married, focus on their careers, start their own families... none of us have the time and money for gaming that we did in our teenage and university years. It's not about making the game more popular or better selling, it's about making sure that new people are coming into the hobby to replace those who are no longer actively gaming. And they are going to respond to different things than we did when we started playing D&D. I do think that a "better product" takes into account the nature of its customers -- and not just the existing customers, but the new and future customers as well.

Like chess, for example. They better start making it with electric, flashing pieces that hover above the board in three dimensions, and simulataneously make the rules simpler while we're at it, otherwise it will surely suffer "withering death", hundreds of years of continuing popularity notwithstanding.

That sound kind of cool, actually. Except the rules aren't really that complicated. I do like the hovering above the board effect though. I'm sure that I'd still find it a boring game.

 

[Ourph]

Does anyone object to that characterisation of d20 fantasy? Or fail to understand how 1e was different?

I understand the point you are trying to make, but don't necessarily agree. 3e does mathematically and systematically what any good AD&D DM was doing for themselves organically and with guidelines from the rulebooks like HD and the "Level" entry included in the AD&D MMII and FF (i.e. - looking at the strength of an encounter and determining whether it was going to be easy, medium, hard or nearly insurmountable for the characters that would be facing it). There is, after all, a reason why the published AD&D modules had recommended party level and size listed. AD&D assumed that the majority of challenges faced by a party would be neither cake-walks nor insurmountable but somewhere in between. The fact that there is more detailed guidance and hand-holding in the 3e rules when it comes to judging encounter difficulty doesn't require that the game become a "victory factory", nor do I think that the rules assume the game is going to be run that way any more than the recommended party size and composition guidelines in published AD&D modules indicate that every challenge therein was going to be automatically overcome.

On the other hand, the "victory factory" style game IS (IME) very prevalent in the hobby these days, but (as I said earlier in the thread) I think that stems much more from a change in player personality and viewpoint than from changes in the rules. Our culture (at large, not just gamer culture) is much more focused on entitlements than it used to be. Maybe it's easier to accomodate that mindset with 3e than with AD&D, but IMO it's the culture shaping the rules, not the rules shaping the culture. It's not that the rules force a "victory factory" style of play, it's that many players (for whatever reason) want that kind of game and DMs use the more detailed guidelines of 3e as an aid in giving players what they want.

So no, I don't really see that the 1e rules were vastly different philosophically, but the 1e culture (say late 1970s through late 1980s) was certainly different.

 

[Keldryn]

Why? It's a dice based game, why wouldn't dice be able to make major changes? Becuase it conflicts with a DM's story? Story be damned I say!

I'm not saying that the dice shouldn't be able to make major changes. I just don't like setups where the players have no reasonable way of anticipating and/or avoiding what is about to happen, something springs on them, the player or DM rolls a die, and due to an unlucky roll, the PC dies, loses a point from an ability score permanently, loses a level permanently, or what have you. And I'm not just talking from the perspective as a player, but also as a DM. I think it punishes the players unfairly for essentially playing the game the way it is meant to be played. Looking at it in terms of operant conditioning, it's just the application of a negative stimulus at random intervals. If you believe that players should be rewarded for clever ideas, playing in-character, making smart tactical choices, retreating when outmatched, and the like (which are all pretty clear examples of positive reinforcement), then why would you believe in inflicting severe consequences the die came up a 1 or 2 while the player wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary? The player isn't doing anything wrong, he is just doing what he is normally rewarded for but every once in a while he gets punished for it instead.

And then you get situations where the player knows what could happen but because his character doesn't know, he plays in-character and doesn't act on the player knowledge. Due to an unlucky role, the player ends up being punished for playing in-character, despite the fact that you are trying to encourage and reward such behaviour. It strikes me as inconsistent and unfair at times.

 

[Keldryn]

This can be a problem with 3e's symmetrical design for monsters/PCs. The PCs are at the right level of complexity for one person to handle, but as NPCs they can be too complex for the DM to handle. (This is, of course, a generalisation - many DMs don't really have that much trouble with the level of detail.)

This is one of my (relatively few) complaints about 3e. Although I have come to realize that the DM doesn't really need to specify every NPC and opponent in that level of detail if his obsessive-compulsiveness doesn't drive him to do it. Some of the stuff in the DMG2 helps quite a bit in providing a "good enough" base to use for an NPC who is only going to be alive for an encounter or two anyway. For a combat, anyway, if I know the NPC's hit points, AC, BAB, initiative modifier, number of attacks, and damage dice, it's generally enough to get by.