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

[AnotherGuy]

Things can be "quite popular" without being a majority. If a quarter of the people in the D&D sphere want a harder core experience or a more GM-centric one, that's a sign of something that's pretty popular; its also still a minority of D&D users.

That's the gig: "A lot of GMs and players want things different" and "Current D&D serves the majority of its market properly" are entirely compatible statements.

That is all fair. I'm also not arguing for a majority. That is a goal post shift.

 

[tetrasodium]

Then this discussion is actually pointless because no discernable trend can be determined. You say modern D&D has changed the nature of the game, I say the rules have caught up to how I've played since the 2e. Ergo since this is highly specific, I argue there has been no real change to the game culture since I'm running my game the same way I always have, except a lot of things I used house rules to do are now part of the core rules.

So now it's nothing but dueling anecdotes. You say "nu-uh" and I say "ya-ha" infinitely.

No, that is a symptom of my point. Much of my point lies on facts,

• modern d&d is less lethal than prior editions*. That reduced lethality has a lot of side effects, one of them is the fact that the GM can no longer incentivize cooperative character creation & such by providing mitigating factors like higher stats a free feat a magic item or whatever other common thing.
  • doing those things in modern d&d will overpower the now very powerful characters with little risk of death because the system is designed so that the lethality is so low.
• Magic items were once required to varying degrees in past editions & are now no longer required at all as wotc loves to say "magic items are optional"
  • with magic items being optional & not needed in modern d&d the gm has extremely limited leeway in how much they can give with magic items before it disrupts the game with overpowered characters who require encounters of say...."hordes of foes or CR foes 8+" in order to be challenged at all due to the power those magic items add to already very powerful characters in a system with minimal chance of death. That puts the players in a position where any influence upon them including simply challenging their characters can be viewed as hostile abusive killer GM'ing.
• The GM could use filling that need in various ways to incentivize players & shift balance. Lacking those tools the gm is unable to do those things in modern d&d

.

Yeah, but for the purpose of discussing the game on a message board, general trumps specific or else we'd never be able to discuss things. I could go into the Dragonlance UA thread and comment how in my game, kender are 7 foot tall anthropomorphic squirrels and thus the stats are all wrong and WotC should redo them, but that doesn't really help discuss if they fit the classic idea of the lore.

Which is why on a message board, I stick to the default assumptions when discussing ideas or examples. You could have answered my question "bold of you to assume I have dwarves (or dragons, or mountains) in my world" but short of being a mind-reader or requesting and reading whatever campaign guide you use for your game just to ask a hypothetical question, I had to assume the default just to ask my question.

In a discussion about how the GM is no longer able to use tools they once could to incentivize player interest & choices during play or resolve points of conflict in backstories that need resolving it is important to illustrate reasonable examples of things those tools could resolve in a hypothetical example like your Thorin one. The fact that over the years I've had to regularly make those same kinds of corrections to resistant players who came in knowing that it was an eberron game before pitching thorin makes it even more reasonable to point out. If there were no issues that needed correction with the thorin example it would have made a bad example on my part to pointlessly say words like "this is great it fits my AiME inspired game perfect & GM's obviously don't need those tools because of this one example" rather than shifting worlds or something in order to give a hypothetical reaction that might provide some amount of clarity to your question in the context of the tools discussion.

As to that bolded bit, no that would have been like vowing to play a murder hobo who cares nothing for the world as someone did. Instead I said reasonable things like "I tend to use dragons more like eberron's dragons & this conflicts". I used statements like that because they are reasonable ones that allow a player who is interested in resolving the conflict to do so and provides important information that the player could ask about if they don't know how eberron's dragons differ. "

* 4e excluded simply because I didn't play it enough to speak confidently on it & all of the usual 4e quagmire reasons

 

[AnotherGuy]

Then this discussion is actually pointless because no discernable trend can be determined. You say modern D&D has changed the nature of the game, I say the rules have caught up to how I've played since the 2e. Ergo since this is highly specific, I argue there has been no real change to the game culture since I'm running my game the same way I always have, except a lot of things I used house rules to do are now part of the core rules.

Bold Emphasis mine. I guess it all depends what you intended to mean by this.
I'd like to think that the new techniques whether they're D&D or otherwise have improved and perhaps even modified our playstyles. That our experience as well as the designers have helped evolve the hobby.
I hope I don't play the same way I played 30 years ago or even 10 years ago.

 

[Remathilis]

[QUOTE="tetrasodium, post: 8576898, member: 93670]
[*]with magic items being optional & not needed in modern d&d the gm has extremely limited leeway in how much they can give with magic items before it disrupts the game with overpowered characters who require encounters of say...."hordes of foes or CR foes 8+" in order to be challenged at all due to the power those magic items add to already very powerful characters in a system with minimal chance of death. That puts the players in a position where any influence upon them including simply challenging their characters can be viewed as hostile abusive killer GM'ing.[/QUOTE]

Do you ever grow tired of misquoting me? I answered Micah's question about Killer DMs who are abusive to the spirit of the game. I cited examples of DMs who are gunning for PCs and seek not a fair challenge, but to dominate and show superiority over their players. The more these back and forths go, the more I'm inclined to believe your issue is that D&D no longer allows you to be that kind of DM.

Keep it up, and I'll remove your temptation to keep quoting me out of context.

 

[tetrasodium]

QUOTE="tetrasodium, post: 8576898, member: 93670]
[*]with magic items being optional & not needed in modern d&d the gm has extremely limited leeway in how much they can give with magic items before it disrupts the game with overpowered characters who require encounters of say...."hordes of foes or CR foes 8+" in order to be challenged at all due to the power those magic items add to already very powerful characters in a system with minimal chance of death. That puts the players in a position where any influence upon them including simply challenging their characters can be viewed as hostile abusive killer GM'ing.

Do you ever grow tired of misquoting me? I answered Micah's question about Killer DMs who are abusive to the spirit of the game. I cited examples of DMs who are gunning for PCs and seek not a fair challenge, but to dominate and show superiority over their players. The more these back and forths go, the more I'm inclined to believe your issue is that D&D no longer allows you to be that kind of DM.

Keep it up, and I'll remove your temptation to keep quoting me out of context.

You miss the reason why it's relevant, it's emphasis not a misquote. Adding magic items to already powerful characters creates a power level where that sort of threat is required to challenge players and the GM winds up coming off looking like a killer GM if anything goes wrong. Because lethality is so low players don't feel they need to strategize & really bring their A game as in past editions. modern d&d has attached so many of the GM's tools to the characters by default that the gm needs to start with a bunch of nerfs deny magic items or unload on players with stilted encounters that many would consider indications of abusive killer GM'ing

edit: That starts veering into a slightly different change than the tools that are no longer available for the GM to use

 

[Remathilis]

You miss the reason why it's relevant, it's emphasis not a misquote. Adding magic items to already powerful characters creates a power level where that sort of threat is required to challenge players and the GM winds up coming off looking like a killer GM if anything goes wrong. Because lethality is so low players don't feel they need to strategize & really bring their A game as in past editions. modern d&d has attached so many of the GM's tools to the characters by default that the gm needs to start with a bunch of nerfs deny magic items or unload on players with stilted encounters that many would consider indications of abusive killer GM'ing

edit: That starts veering into a slightly different change than the tools that are no longer available for the GM to use

In my experience with 5e, I haven't found this to be true. I guess you can say I haven't had a TPK since 5e, but I've dropped plenty of PCs to death saves even with moderate treasure drops into high-middle levels (5-9). Again, your experience is not universal and we're back to dueling anecdotes.

 

[LongTimeLurker]

Yeah, writing for better usability isn’t dumbing things down. While I enjoy some more complex or obscure vocabulary, it’s terrible for usability.

The AD&D 1E DMG is the greatest right book ever written. It is about 10,000 times more interesting and informative than the 5E version. Is the 5E version better organized? Yes. Is it more usable? Ppppppffffftttttt, no, it is NOT.

 

[tetrasodium]

In my experience with 5e, I haven't found this to be true. I guess you can say I haven't had a TPK since 5e, but I've dropped plenty of PCs to death saves even with moderate treasure drops into high-middle levels (5-9). Again, your experience is not universal and we're back to dueling anecdotes.

I don't know what you are saying you don't find to be true... lethality? players able to trounce encounters well above their weight class?

It would be difficult to deny that modern d&d is less lethal than older editions, I believe it was even one of the design goals & even wotc has brought it up as a good thing. quite a bit of the thread was about how players are more survivable and more readily able to recover from injury with ease in modern d&d with almost no voices to the contrary.

The game has 11-15 more levels beyond the low level of 5to almost but not quite mid-level 9th level, players keep accumulating power on their sheet from their class without needing magic items by design & bounded accuracy ensures that power growth combined with magic items characters will be able to absolutely trounce challenges far above what should be "level appropriate" with trivial ease.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In my experience with 5e, I haven't found this to be true. I guess you can say I haven't had a TPK since 5e, but I've dropped plenty of PCs to death saves even with moderate treasure drops into high-middle levels (5-9). Again, your experience is not universal and we're back to dueling anecdotes.

Just out of curiosity, did any of those PCs actually die? If so, were they brought back?

 

[Micah Sweet]

The AD&D 1E DMG is the greatest right book ever written. It is about 10,000 times more interesting and informative than the 5E version. Is the 5E version better organized? Yes. Is it more usable? Ppppppffffftttttt, no, it is NOT.

I wouldn't necessarily say that, but I am quite fond of the 1e DMG, and consider it required reading for understanding D&D.