Geriatric Grumbling

[Stormfalcon]

Rules have very little to do with maturity.

The people playing and running the game determine maturity.

This puts it perfectly. It's your game. You're the DM. Want to make the game more mature? Go ahead and do so. There's no RPG Police out there to bust down your door to enforce a predetermined maturity level in your game. The only limits are those you and your players put on yourselves.

 

[aurance]

Well put!

If you wish to have a more "mature" game, add consequence.

If a character kills a humanoid, odds are the humanoid had humanoid relatives, or the humanoid's society has rules. Killing becomes more than an activity when consequences are applied.

If a character steals and gets caught, he could be reviled by the whole village, not just the victim. A mob of peasants can be hard to stop, and this may lead to murder. Thievery becomes more than a skill check when consequences are applied.

Sexual daliance eventually leads to illegitimate children, disease, angry husbands and scorned women with thuggish connections. Whoring is not all giggles when consequences are applied.

Are far as boozing; addiction, poverty, hurt feelings, and hangovers aren't the best when consequences are applied.

Interesting...

On the flip side to the consequences, I would think that if you want to make things more "mature," you would also have to deal with that sometimes bad guys win, and good guys lose. Evil people become powerful and rich, while you get run over by a cart while trying to feed the poor. Sometimes there are no rewards to good actions, and rewards aplenty for bad actions. No cosmic balancing act.

 

[Ourph]

It's your game. You're the DM. Want to make the game more mature? Go ahead and do so.

Fortunately, I don't have to. Tom Moldvay already did all the work for me back in 1980.

 

[elmuthalleth]

D&D is very customizable . In my campaign , we have many mature issues .

 

[Oni]

I think one of the specific ways DnD is dumbed down and made Disney-esque if you will, is in the interpretation of alignment. Players and NPC's often seem either cartoonishly good or cartoonishly evil, or they take a chaotic neutral alignment as a license to behave in whatever manner strikes their whim at the moment, i.e. totally random.

Now is this the fault of the players or the alignment system? Picking an alignment is stating you intent to play your character with certain moral characteristics. It's not that your character has to be played that way. Alignment is respondent to actions taken not the other way around.

I think a lot of the problem with the dnd alignment system comes not from the system itself which is actually pretty flexible, but rather from the fact that people seem to be bring to much baggage with them to it. A lot of people don't want to be flexible, they see one way to play an alignment and that's it. Folks seem to forget they're guidelines.

 

[ForceUser]

(snip)...with some preferring the high powered, balanced mechanics, and others perferring role playing, realism, and more mature themes. [sic]

These need not be mutually exclusive.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

Now is this the fault of the players or the alignment system? Picking an alignment is stating you intent to play your character with certain moral characteristics. It's not that your character has to be played that way. Alignment is respondent to actions taken not the other way around.

I think a lot of the problem with the dnd alignment system comes not from the system itself which is actually pretty flexible, but rather from the fact that people seem to be bring to much baggage with them to it. A lot of people don't want to be flexible, they see one way to play an alignment and that's it. Folks seem to forget they're guidelines.

I definitely agree. When I create a character, I create the personality/world view first, and find an alignment that best fits the personality according to my interpretation. I don't expect a perfect fit, just something along the lines of best three out of four, etc. I could just as handily chuck it out, and say that alignment based spells and effects work upon intent...

Heh, that just got me thinking how the players would take it if some PCs ambushed an "evil" villain to slay him, and try to use some holy smiting spell only to find that it's not working because, because the villain was just taking a leak and thinking "Maaaan...greaaaaat leeeaaaak!" and not "Neeeeyyaaaaah ha ha haaaaa! I will kill all of Eternia and especially YOU He-Man!"

 

[Prince of Happiness]

These need not be mutually exclusive.

Hm, sometimes I've felt that if your characters were indeed pretty powerful, the logistics of rote survival would be out of the way (i.e. check door for traps, listen at door, pick door lock, make sure fighters are in place, eeeeaaaase the door open, blah, blah, blah), and that you could focus more on the role-playing aspects of the game.

 

[Drifter Bob]

I have to agree with DB. I'm in the same general age group and for me the big difference is not the rules per se, though the rules are much more consistent now, as much as it's the way D&D is played.

(snip_

I guess that would be a good place to start, more guidelines for experience and advancement without killing and grave-robbing.

I think this is definately an area where the rules can be improved.

DB

 

[Drifter Bob]

This area is the concrete existence the rules assume of good and evil. Spells like Detect Evil, Holy Smite, and other alignment-based spells assume that all creatures in D&D lie on the same moral compass, and that their beliefs and

I have often felt that the detect alignment spells in particular, especialy since they are so low level, are quite a stumbling block on creating more mature adventures. If you want to adapt any number of murder mysteries to a DnD game, for example, you have to invent all kinds of plot devices to work around this, which I frankly find a pain in the ass. Another good example of where the rules effect the maturity of the game IMO

DB