D&D General How has D&D changed over the decades?

[MichaelSomething]

I really miss Dragon magazine too. And Dungeon.
That’s a market change for the worse.

Could EN5ider fill that hole in your heart??

 

[tetrasodium]

Is new damage types one?

acid, bludgeoning, cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, piercing, poison, psychic, radiant, slashing, and thunder

Could we get new damage types in 6e?
bleed damage?
time/temporal (aging spells, haste and slow deal damage, elves and dwarves resist to time damage)
a proper holy damage?
EMOTIONAL DAMAGE? (I cast Cringe on the orc)

Damage type is almost vestigial in 5e. I think the shift from holy & sonic to radiant & thunder where hitting it hard once was an all or nothing attack that took one deduction vrs hitting it reliablyogs took lots was less impactful than the shift from dr/x $ resizt/x to "is it a magic weapon" & the massive overuse of energy resist where it doesn't matter how many times or how hard because half is half

 

[Minigiant]

Damage type is almost vestigial in 5e. I think the shift from holy & sonic to radiant & thunder where hitting it hard once was an all or nothing attack that took one deduction vrs hitting it reliablyogs took lots was less impactful than the shift from dr/x $ resizt/x to "is it a magic weapon" & the massive overuse of energy resist where it doesn't matter how many times or how hard because half is half

I think a big hit to damage types is how status effects were reduced and less likely to be standardized in 4e and then more in 5e.

If cold what more associated with slowed and acid and fire with burning, then damage types would be more important.

Video games have gone the other way. Mostly because they can train you association faster and handle math behind the scenes.

 

[Remathilis]

It depends on what part of hashing things out we are at. Sometimes I'll say "I'm running a game in x (eberron/raveloft/etc) and the session zero for characters is going to be about characters that must fit the setting along with the rest of the group. Other times I have a group who I feel is better able to handle a more collaborative session zero that includes deciding the world. Even in that second group I've seen players try to force a background while we are deciding the world (often by describing their family keep and such then getting upset with the gm or group saying hell no when they want to declare moria their family thing because that was the time to be inserting high level* world elements) in the first type I frequently run into authors who declare they are being denied and having their creativity shut down when I explain how a backstory conflicts with the setting & ways that can be fixed.. Ironically communication is easier than ever with discord Facebook & everything else but the level of resistance is just as if not higher.

*10,000ft broad strokes overview type not cr/character level.

So I think I'm seeing the disconnect.

When I proposed Thorin, my proposal is pretty much so that I wrote: a one or two sentence outline. Now, I was not aware you run a specific setting or AP (if I was, I would adjust to fit that, but in lack of knowledge, I assume a standard general setting).

Further, I'm not married to the Thorin concept even at proposal, it's generally my first choice and my preferred one in this hypothetical example, but I can be convinced to move on IF my next option is equally cool. (If my idea is an exiled noble who seeks glory and a return of his homeland, I might be convinced to shift it to a priest who is interested in reclaiming a lost temple of his faith beset by demons, but I'm not interested in "you're a farmer who discovered goblins carry gold and opted to try his luck in the local dungeon").

Additionally, just because Thorin has this long term goal, it isn't at the exclusion of all other goals: he can be seeking allies, experience and items of power and then at some point in the future, decide to assault the "dragon" in the keep and complete his goal.

Lastly, my goal is that, a goal. The DM is free to design around and flesh out the idea. Perhaps the dragon was killed by adventurers in the meantime and a different worse baddie moved in. Perhaps Thorin's memories painted events different than what they were (although, I'd still like something resembling my goal: to spend sessions building up to a major event in my PCs life only to have another group of dwarves kill the dragon and establish a peaceful kingdom off camera that we just walk into is anticlimactic to the point of trolling).

This, of course, is all permeated on the idea I get a choice in this at all. When people responded to this, only saw one poster say, "your idea is cool, but what if we adjusted this..." And two responses that said, "hmmm... Probably not. And if so, you're going to jump through a lot of hoops before I consider it. But mostly no." Which isn't a great negotiating point.

Then again, I prefer "yes, and" or rarely "no, but" as styles of gaming. So hard a "no" really disconnects me. If Thorin doesn't work, propose a counter offer. Which brings me back to random generation. Random chargen is a hard no. It says "you weren't lucky enough to play what you wanted" and worse, it allows the DM to block things without the negotiation (I'd have let you play your paladin, but the dice didn't. Not MY fault...)

I know there are terrible players who demand primadonna attention. There are terrible DMs too that use their authority to power-trip on their players. No set of rules, be them empowering to DMs or PCs, can fix bad players.

 

[Fifth Element]

It is the fact that this behaviour is now defended and even expected to be considered normal expectation. In older editions, doing this would bring you the fury of a table, now, not that much. Especially on the forums. It is the acceptance of such behaviour that is entirely new.

There is no acceptance of the exaggerated, strawman types of behaviour being raised here, of course. That's simply untrue.

And as for the "fury of the table", that sounds like a terrible way to resolve disagreement among players. How about you say "hey dude, the way you're playing is getting in the way of the rest of us having fun"? There are no "DM tools" needed to resolve this kind of conflict. If you have a player who behaves like this, talk to them about it like an adult.

 

[Fifth Element]

I do not think that a DM has problems to find players. Usually, it is the reverse.

Great! So it's even easier for a DM to find players with similar preferences than it is for a player to find a DM with similar preferences. I believe that's true.

I just hope everyone bears that in mind the next time they want to advise someone "if you don't like the DM's style, just find another DM to play with."

 

[Fifth Element]

No player will impose his/her will on the other players with background that will not fit the consensus that will have been reached at session zero.

This is the very type of behaviour that is widely accepted now. Working together on backgrounds.

Your claims that players now are expected to create extensive backgrounds without consideration of any other player, and impose it on everyone at the table, are false. That is not acceptable to the vast majority of players, old and young. You keep claiming that every player being a Mary Sue is now normative. That is false.

 

[Fifth Element]

I agree that it doesn't encourage spotlight-hogging by any one particular player at the table. When I refer to selfish players I'm talking about "players" as a massed general group, meanign that of course there's individual exceptions in all directions.

The "caving" part lies in the give-the-players-what-they-want design philosophy that, while pleasing to players for whom the game has been made less demanding/challenging to play, doesn't make the overall game any better in the long run.

The idea that a game is "less demanding" because your character is less likely to die at first level comes from a narrow point of view. It suggests that the the "challenge" of the game rests in having your character survive. That's certainly one perspective, and one that fits certain rulesets quite well.

But please don't make the mistake of thinking that this is the only way in which an RPG, or D&D specifically, can be challenging. It isn't. When you have the expectation that your character will likely perish quickly, you don't put nearly as much effort into developing a personality for that character, for instance. That's a great way to challenge yourself in D&D. Play a character with a very different personality than your own. It's challenging, and only makes sense if you have an expectation that you will be playing that character for a significant amount of time. Otherwise the effort you put into the character's personality will feel wasted.

Plus, the idea that a game publisher would not take into account what the players of its games prefer when designing a game is...baffling.

 

[Fifth Element]

BLACK INK on white pages To Black ink on brown pages. font changes to font changes

I definitely prefer black ink on plain white pages. But I sure as heck don't miss the tiny font sizes in 1E. My eyes are too old for that now.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The idea that a game is "less demanding" because your character is less likely to die at first level comes from a narrow point of view. It suggests that the the "challenge" of the game rests in having your character survive. That's certainly one perspective, and one that fits certain rulesets quite well.

But please don't make the mistake of thinking that this is the only way in which an RPG, or D&D specifically, can be challenging. It isn't. When you have the expectation that your character will likely perish quickly, you don't put nearly as much effort into developing a personality for that character, for instance. That's a great way to challenge yourself in D&D. Play a character with a very different personality than your own. It's challenging, and only makes sense if you have an expectation that you will be playing that character for a significant amount of time. Otherwise the effort you put into the character's personality will feel wasted.

Plus, the idea that a game publisher would not take into account what the players of its games prefer when designing a game is...baffling.

No one said it was the only way to challenge someone, but it is the way with the longest history and feels very D&D to a lot of people. And the changes listed above compromise that way significantly. This thread is about how D&D has changed, and people should be allowed to dislike those changes without being made to feel bad about their feelings.