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

[Raven Crowking]

Better someone pick up a D&D book and put it down because of Garys yarns, instead of becoming a gamer? I understand that the elite needs to be exclusive to stay the elite, but I consider the health of the hobby more important than basking in my own superiority. YMMV.

I understand that the lowest common denominator needs to be catered to in order to stay the lowest common denominator. After all, higher expectations tend to lead to higher results. But, then, I consider that the quality of the game is more important than the health of the hobby, or you basking in your own superiority. Better the hobby stay worth being healthy, than be healthy but dull. YMMV.


RC

 

[Thurbane]

No.

The rules are only inform you that rough balance is maintained if the PCs have approximately that amount of loot.

This is only information. It is not a rule, per se.

What you do with that information is up to you.

Which is all fine and well, until some snotty player starts banging his fists on the table calling you a bad DM because he is 5SP behind the table in the DMG. Oh but I forgot, this only happens on the internet, and never in real life...

 

[Thurbane]

QFT. Save evocative descriptions and fanciful writing for fluff and adventure text. Mechanical issues absolutely need to be laid out in the clearest, most direct language possible. Its bad game design otherwise, and promotes inconsistency, rule disputes and a host of other problems.

Oh yes, because when you write rulebooks in "legalese", there's never any rules disputes, is there? *cough* Rules Forum *cough*

 

[Numion]

But, then, I consider that the quality of the game is more important than the health of the hobby, or you basking in your own superiority. Better the hobby stay worth being healthy, than be healthy but dull. YMMV.

That is, of course, if the yarns had a positive effect on anything besides your vocabulary.

 

[Raven Crowking]

That is, of course, if the yarns had a positive effect on anything besides your vocabulary.

Which, if by "yarns" you mean the text of the 1e books, I believe to be true.

 

[The Shaman]

True, but the requirements certainly don't have to be "read Tolkein and Leiber."

Strawman argument - there's never been a "required reading list," only a list of sources and influences used by the original authors in developing the game.

At the time the game was created in the mid-Seventies, and for some years later...

"...a Drizzit novel"...

...didn't exist...

"...the LotR movie"...

...didn't exist...

..."an older brother who played D&D"...

...was possible...

"...a Weird Al song"...

...didn't exist...

"...Neverwinter Nights"...

...didn't exist...

"...Harry Potter"...

...didn't exist, and ..

"...BLEACH"...

...didn't exist. And as far as a player...

"(i)nterested in being a legendary hero like Arthur or Achilles or Goku?"

...that was supported by the game fairly early on in its development.

Fantasy was a much smaller pool in the days when D&D appeared - IMHO Gary Gugax and Dave Arneson and the rest were not attempting to create a generic game, but rather one based on the authors and stories that they enjoyed. In this they succeeded masterfully. One cannot reasonably criticize earlier editions of the game for not embracing fiction tropes that would not become popular for another twenty years.

Please forgive me if I'm misunderstanding you, but in this post and others past you have suggested that (1) D&D should be able to support a wide variety of fantasy influences and sources and (2) gamers clinging to the idea that D&D is intended to emulate or best represents classic or golden age (as opposed to contemporary or more recent) fantasy need to accept that both fantasy and the game have moved on.

With respect to (1), while D&D can be (and some might argue is) a generic fantasy RPG, it's important to remember that it does have strong roots going a long way back into the works and ideas of a range of specific authors, and that these roots still feed the game today. In an earlier post I touched on core races, the magic system, and alignment as examples of this. While some of the more recent Wizzos supplements, like Bo9S, have indeed attempted to embrace more contemporary fantasy and expand the scope of the fantasy genre that can be played using D&D, there is no reason to expect that D&D or gamers in general should or would embrace other sources like anime/manga or J.K. Rowling or steampunk. Is it advantageous to the copyright holders for it to do so? Perhaps, if that means that the number of gamers who buy into the system significantly exceed those who leave off and play something else instead.

With respect to (2), I agree that fantasy has changed, as have many gamers' expectations about what a tabletop RPG should provide. Should D&D change and/or expand to meet those needs? I think perhaps it should, but I don't necessarily think that it's a given - following trends isn't a guarantee of "relevance," and there's a good argument to be made against trying to be the flavor-of-the-week. In any case I don't accept that change is automatically desireable or necessary by any means.

 

[Thurbane]

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.



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.

So, if the DM let's players take a 1 level dip in PrCs it's "his fault", but if he disallows a character from picking up a 1 level dip in base classes, he's stomping on the players rights?

Without trying to be insulting, I see a lot of your views simply as "3.X says so, so it must be right". My point (or a large part thereof) is that I have felt, and still free, to houserule any aspect of a D&D game I am running, regardless of edition. The reason I have houserules in effect regarding 1 level dips is for flavour reasons, not mechanical ones. Are the games you are involved in strictly "by the book", or is the DM trying to inject some flavour inot the games? Either style of play is fine, just different.

I think a lot of your criticisms of 1E seem to be based on some flawed assumptions. You assume that the game should (must?) be played as is, out of the box, and houseruling is fundmentally bad. You also seem to be assuming that a DM is not free to ignore or adjust the flavour of the game to suit his own style, and that of his group. For instance, there is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from running a 1E game that includes Dwarven Wizards - the only time that would conceivably be a problem would be if you tried to port that character over from one game to another, and the second DM didn't allow Dwarven Wizards in his campaign...

 

[Thurbane]

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.

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.

He most certainly IS making that argument, if not in that particular post, certainly in numerous earlier ones.

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.

Welcome to the wonderful world of personal taste.

Speaking for myself, I am flabbergasted anyone could consider chess a "boring" game. But that's what personal taste is all about - people liking different things, that others might not enjoy. What a boring, sad old world it would be if everyone had exactly the tastes and hobbies.

Which brings me back to the point I keep thumping again and again - there is no right or wrong edition of D&D, and there is none AFAIC that is scientifically better than the others, only the one that YOU enjoy the most.

 

[BroccoliRage]

I agree with that, and I should revise what I said. You need one reasonably articulate and literate person as DM, and the others don't have to be - although a decent education will enhance their enjoyment of the game.



Dyslexia doesn't stop you making sense of the 1e AD&D books either, though. I have dyslexic friends who play that edition from choice.

Although they usually can't spell "dweomer".



Yes, I accept that: AD&D wasn't published in Swedish. I have a fair bit of sympathy for you there, because I have a German copy of Das Schwarze Auge and I do struggle to understand some of the passages.

But I don't expect the writers of Das Schwarze Auge to dumb down their German so that I'll understand it.

(As an aside, I must say that every Swedish person I've ever met in my life has spoken impeccable English. Language skills in Sweden are one of your national strengths.)

Same experience here. Every Swede and Finn I have ever met (and there have been many) has spoken English with precision, many of them were able to speak with both American and British accents and dialects flawlessly. I would be surprised to encounter a Swede or Finn who had trouble reading English, given that so many I've met speak the language better than I do.

 

[Thurbane]

I don't think it's a very well-designed adventure anyway. I've got the module, I ran it a couple of times many years ago, and it's just chock full of "save or die" moments that pop out of nowhere. The risk of unpredictable and immediate death in that module far outweighs any rewards gained within the Tomb.

Just for the record, everyone I know who played the 1E version of ToH agrees that it is basically the worst module ever written (Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is a not-so-close second). We often used to play it as a joke, rather than a serious adventure. It is really a poor example of 1E modules though, give me Against the Giants or Temple of Elemental Evil any day...