D&D General Has the meaning of "roleplaying" changed since 1e?

[Oofta]

Oh, no, I would definitely say improved.

My games are much, much better now than they were when I look back at what I did in my teens. My cringeworthy attempts back then are what they are - very basic attempts to emulate all sorts of ideas and failing spectacularly. DMPC's, railroading with the heaviest of hands, forcing outcomes, resolving adventures with NPC's, you name it, I'm very much guilty of it. I was definitely not a good DM back then. I might not be a great DM now, but, I'm certainly a hell of a lot better at running games now than I was back then. And a much better player as well.

The idea that roleplaying today, after years of indie games, examination by the likes of the Forge and multitude of others, and a bajillion hours of actual play is the same as it was in 1981 is, IMO, absurd. Of course it's different. The language we use is entirely different. The way in which we reflect on gaming is completely different, informed by years of experience it has to be.

To me, and I know this is going to get me in hot water, but, games like AD&D and certainly OD&D were barely role playing games. Hell, they were barely playable as games without a huge amount of effort on the part of the participants. So, of course role playing has changed over the years. I remember an Up on the Soapbox from an earlier Dragon magazine - I'll try to dig it out later - where Gygax was shocked by a polling done in the magazine where respondents actually felt playing in character was important to role play. And this was a post-3e Dragon magazine. So, yeah, it has changed.

What rules do you think you need to role play? It's not like we ever paid much attention to what Gygax said about how to play - we mostly just figured out what we needed to run our PCs, figured out how to determine treasure and looked up monsters. We never played D&D as an adversarial DM vs PC.

I realize many other people may have soaked up every word Gygax wrote, we never did.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I run a homebrew campaign so it is different than, say the kitchen sink campaign of FR, there is a significant percentage of the MM I've never used other than as inspiration for custom monsters that are often represented as variations of a more common monster. If a monster has never before appeared in a campaign world, how could the PC know about them?

You're saying that you don't use MM monsters, and that the monsters have never, ever been seen before in the game world prior to being met by the characters. Goodness, then what's the complaint about reading the MM aloud? This seems like you don't even have to worry about metagaming at all. Congrats!

If, though, it's just you making lots of custom monsters for a homebrew, but they aren't first seen by players but are actually part of the world, then my answer to your question is that the PCs are not aliens. They grew up here, and the fact you have different bestiary than normal doesn't mean that the tales told and experiences of others in the world cannot be passed on to the PCs.

I don't want to blindly categorize, but a lot of the time I see arguments about preventing metagaming, they're usually accompanied by knowledge checks as a gate to allow PCs to know things. Thing is, this really treats the PCs like they are aliens in this world, with an incomplete lexicon of knowledge that is randomly distributed. It certainly doesn't center the PCs in the world, and this seems to contradict the imperative that metagaming must be prevented to allow roleplaying.

It's not ironic to say that the PC doesn't know what a behir is if one has never existed any more than that a PC doesn't know what a cell phone is.

Wait, so you are using MM monsters, you just have a slightly more elaborate reasoning for why the players have to pretend they've never seen a behir before than the usual "this exact PC has never seen one?" Okay, cool. I dig it. But this is your fault, again -- you've used a common monster and created a reason that players have to pretend they don't know anything. You don't have to do this -- it's pretty trivial. Just change the description and don't give the MM name and you can use the stats to your heart's content. Trivial to do. This is a situation you, as the GM, have created, but are now blaming the players if they engage in what you deem as poor play. And, to be clear, I do not think you're lying when you tell me this is a preferred way to play for you.

 

[Ovinomancer]

What rules do you think you need to role play? It's not like we ever paid much attention to what Gygax said about how to play - we mostly just figured out what we needed to run our PCs, figured out how to determine treasure and looked up monsters. We never played D&D as an adversarial DM vs PC.

I realize many other people may have soaked up every word Gygax wrote, we never did.

Here's my problem with this "adversarial GM" business -- it's a farce both ways. Part of the GM's job is to be adversarial. It's a requirement. They have to create challenges and occasionally kill PCs and certainly hurt them all the time. It's very much GM vs PC. What it shouldn't be is GM vs players. This is a different thing, where everyone should be on the same page about what the game is and how roles will work and what the goal of play is. But, yeah, the GM should be bringing the pain. In my opinion, the best games are when the GM is a rat bastard about PC adversity and pours it on like a firehose.

 

[Hussar]

Not for a lot of the players who started with 3rd Edition and its very "DM vs Players" mindset. Those of us who started before 3rd edition generally do not think that way. Never played 4th Edition, so no idea if the Versus mindset was continued. And 5th Edition is back to the more cooperative mindset of the older editions.

Wait, what?

AD&D wasn't "DM vs players"?

You have read the 1e DMG right?

 

[Hussar]

There's a difference in improving technique and in changing the goals of your play. You could have improved but not changed goals and just have been better at running the same kinds of games. Instead, you've chosen a different goal, one that you find to be better. But this isn't improvement so much as alignment. Improvement is getting better at the process of play, which is somewhat orthogonal to the goals of play.

But, what you're missing here is that these goals didn't exist as a concept when I started playing. Many of the things we take for granted now - say narrative style play for example - wasn't even an idea back then. The idea that you would play an RPG with the goal of the system itself promoting a story wasn't supported at all.

There's a reason that something like Blades in the Dark didn't come about until it did. It took a lot of years for these concepts to coalesce and solidify into solid ideas that could be explained and worked with.

So, no, I disagree. Improvement means that I can do something today that I couldn't do yesterday. If I wanted a narrativist style game in 1982, I was free forming. That was my choice. Play D&D or free form. There was nothing else.

 

[Hussar]

What rules do you think you need to role play? It's not like we ever paid much attention to what Gygax said about how to play - we mostly just figured out what we needed to run our PCs, figured out how to determine treasure and looked up monsters. We never played D&D as an adversarial DM vs PC.

I realize many other people may have soaked up every word Gygax wrote, we never did.

So, you figured out how to role play entirely on your own without any help from anyone and did it so well from day 1 that today you would not be able to see any improvement?

Ok.

I was not so gifted. Having mechanics in the game that promote role play, like, for example, 5e's backgrounds, bonds etc. is a major improvement in how role-play is engaged in D&D. I was not able to make that jump without help. I ran absolutely horrible games back then and I was a bad player. I run okay games now and I'm a much better player now. So many of the things that we just take for granted - having a character background for example, wasn't part of role playing at all back in the day. Apparently some people figured it out on their own, like you, but, us less gifted players never did. It is not a strength of the hobby that such things are left to the player to figure out on their own.

 

[Oofta]

You're saying that you don't use MM monsters, and that the monsters have never, ever been seen before in the game world prior to being met by the characters. Goodness, then what's the complaint about reading the MM aloud? This seems like you don't even have to worry about metagaming at all. Congrats!

If, though, it's just you making lots of custom monsters for a homebrew, but they aren't first seen by players but are actually part of the world, then my answer to your question is that the PCs are not aliens. They grew up here, and the fact you have different bestiary than normal doesn't mean that the tales told and experiences of others in the world cannot be passed on to the PCs.

I don't want to blindly categorize, but a lot of the time I see arguments about preventing metagaming, they're usually accompanied by knowledge checks as a gate to allow PCs to know things. Thing is, this really treats the PCs like they are aliens in this world, with an incomplete lexicon of knowledge that is randomly distributed. It certainly doesn't center the PCs in the world, and this seems to contradict the imperative that metagaming must be prevented to allow roleplaying.

Wait, so you are using MM monsters, you just have a slightly more elaborate reasoning for why the players have to pretend they've never seen a behir before than the usual "this exact PC has never seen one?" Okay, cool. I dig it. But this is your fault, again -- you've used a common monster and created a reason that players have to pretend they don't know anything. You don't have to do this -- it's pretty trivial. Just change the description and don't give the MM name and you can use the stats to your heart's content. Trivial to do. This is a situation you, as the GM, have created, but are now blaming the players if they engage in what you deem as poor play. And, to be clear, I do not think you're lying when you tell me this is a preferred way to play for you.

No, I'm saying that I may decide to use a monster that I've never used before so therefore there is no way a PC could know about that monster.

Even if I have used a monster before, yes I ... gasp ... occasionally point out that the PC has likely never heard of the creature. PC knowledge, background and skills matter. I won't let a PC "invent" gunpowder because they're a chemist either. People know about many monsters. They know you need to use fire on trolls, that you need silver to harm lycanthropes. There is no reason for the average adventurer to know the details about an Arcanoloth because even if they have been encountered in-universe they are extremely rare and little studied (DC 25). Knowledge of a troll is automatic, knowledge of a Rot Troll may be moderate DC 15. On the other hand if it's the first time I've used a Venom Troll they will have no clue because I've never used one before. For that matter they would have no clue what a norker was because I've never seen a reason to use them.

How common or rare any particular monster is, and the likelihood the PC will have knowledge of the monster is up to the DM and the lore of the world. If they care, of course.

 

[Oofta]

Here's my problem with this "adversarial GM" business -- it's a farce both ways. Part of the GM's job is to be adversarial. It's a requirement. They have to create challenges and occasionally kill PCs and certainly hurt them all the time. It's very much GM vs PC. What it shouldn't be is GM vs players. This is a different thing, where everyone should be on the same page about what the game is and how roles will work and what the goal of play is. But, yeah, the GM should be bringing the pain. In my opinion, the best games are when the GM is a rat bastard about PC adversity and pours it on like a firehose.

The role of the DM is to create a world with interesting goals and obstacles. I don't view running obstacles fairly as being adversarial. If the PCs lose, fine. If the PCs stomp on my encounter, I celebrate with them. But I do not think it is my job to be a "rat bastard".

 

[Ovinomancer]

But, what you're missing here is that these goals didn't exist as a concept when I started playing. Many of the things we take for granted now - say narrative style play for example - wasn't even an idea back then. The idea that you would play an RPG with the goal of the system itself promoting a story wasn't supported at all.

There's a reason that something like Blades in the Dark didn't come about until it did. It took a lot of years for these concepts to coalesce and solidify into solid ideas that could be explained and worked with.

So, no, I disagree. Improvement means that I can do something today that I couldn't do yesterday. If I wanted a narrativist style game in 1982, I was free forming. That was my choice. Play D&D or free form. There was nothing else.

I disagree those goals didn't exist. There's evidence others were playing that way even at the start. Now, no doubt, the application of those goals has improved, but narrativism didn't spring fully formed from the heads of Luke and Ron. It was evolved from things that were already there.

There was a concerted effort to establish how to talk about and manage these things, yes, but it wasn't invented there, just refined. And, there's nothing about narrativism that's an improvement over Moldvay Basic, for instance. It's different, but not better. That's an independent judgement over what appeals to you.

 

[Oofta]

Wait, what?

AD&D wasn't "DM vs players"?

You have read the 1e DMG right?

We didn't play that way. I know, SHOCKING! Not everyone played the game in the same fashion. I remember getting a mod (Tomb of Horrors maybe?) and thinking ... blech. Not for me.