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

[Hussar]

In our campaign, one of the characters that died recently was a Mystaran native, but he perished on Toril. He found himself before Kelemvor in the City of the Dead who sought the floor for any petitioners for his soul. If there were no petitioners his soul would be sent to the Wall of the Faithless. Now as it happens there was a newly made Mystaran Immortal (also a previous colleague of the Mystaran adventuring party - incredibly long story to get into here) who was present and petitioned for his soul. The PC was given a choice, return with the Mystaran Immortal back to their own reality, but dead. Or be reconstituted in the Forgotten Realms and have is soul connection cut off from Mystara forever.
We roleplayed a conversation between himself and his old friend, now a Mystaran Immortal.

Two rules would kick into place if he chose the latter:
(1) His memories of Mystara would begin to fade. The player could not create further backstory/content on our Obsidian Portal page about his character's life in Mystara which was pretty significant to this player.
(2) Risking loss of pet Familiar summoning. Every time he summoned his familiar which was based on his family pet, he'd have to roll a percentile die. 10% or less he'd summon another animal instead and the 10% would increase by 1% for every time he didn't successfully summon his family pet. The familiar is a pivotal creature in his backstory.

In this instance character death allowed me to to unveil the weirdness of the City of Dead, with time gaps and confusion as only memories remained. I showcased the Wall of the Faithless, Kelemvor and the soul petitioners but most importantly an interesting closure moment between an ex-adventuring colleague (the Immortal) as well as to espouse more details on the character's family's backstory and family relic.

Final death can be just as interesting by allowing surviving characters to amend or pick up further ideals, bonds, flaws, personality traits.

Now, unless you do this level of play for every single pc death, how is this related to the idea of higher or lower character mortality?

Thinking about this a bit more.

Say we have a high lethality game. Say one pc death every three sessions. How often do you do scenes like this? Every time? Not too special after the third time. Only for high level characters? So not much point for the majority of pcs.

This scene only works if death in the game is fairly rare. Otherwise it’s got tons of problems.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Let me ask you something: is any campaign in which a character dies for any reason other than their own player-generated decision run by a "killer GM"?

No, and that has literally negative amounts to do with what I was talking about, thanks!

 

[Micah Sweet]

The alternative is to assume WOTC doesn't know their own market and just change things for the hell of it.

One could argue that making changes because the designers cared more about what they wanted to try as opposed to what the players might want is what led to 4e's less than stellar reception.

 

[Vaalingrade]

One could argue that making changes because the designers cared more about what they wanted to try as opposed to what the players might want is what led to 4e's less than stellar reception.

One could argue that if one enjoys being wrong.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That’s certainly not true.

From 2e at least, onwards, the whole “don’t name your character until 3rd level” hasn’t been true.

Longest history in the sense that it came first but hardly longest in terms of how the game is designed.

2e was marketed and presented quite differently from 1e, but it was still designed pretty much the same.

 

[Hussar]

One could argue that making changes because the designers cared more about what they wanted to try as opposed to what the players might want is what led to 4e's less than stellar reception.

Again not what happened. But sure?

 

[Hussar]

2e was marketed and presented quite differently from 1e, but it was still designed pretty much the same.

Except that 2e characters were significantly more powerful and the whole “don’t bother naming your character “ approach was rejected.

But designed the same I guess?

 

[jasper]

Except that 2e characters were significantly more powerful and the whole “don’t bother naming your character “ approach was rejected.

But designed the same I guess?

2E changed JUST enough rules and spells, you had to look up stuff you thought you knew. I still occasionally say save vs death at the table.

 

[Fifth Element]

Why do you assume the problem must lie with the DM? Neither side is perfect.

Please note the multiple uses of the word 'maybe' in my post.

And then note that this discussion has been about how players now "hide behind creativity" in order to justify bad behaviour. If you think both players and DMs can be bad in ths way, then you agree with me. The narrative is that the modern game allows players, and only players, to act this way.

 

[jasper]

1E Modules Maps are blue to protect against photocopiers. 5E. Maps are FULL COLOUR but good luck reading the grid lines.
1E 10 foot squares. 5E 5 foot squares.
1E battlemap could be a hex or square you adjusted or did not worry about half squares. 5E USE SQUARES or will call you a square. I trolled one by players by using a hex battle map.
1E. Plastic dice. 5E Plastic, plastic, different plastic, Metal dice, different metal dice, $300 + dice sets.
1E this lead mini was $5 and nearly looks like my PC. And this Frost giant is 1 square by 2 squares.
5E Minis will EXACTLY match the monster get a freaking microscope and find out. We have $5 plastic minis. We have random mini box pulls. For $40 you design the mini. Hey he has $300 do we have dragon mini for you.,