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

[Vaalingrade]

Am I wrong?

Yes.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't even think the default of old edition D&D was even Sword and Sorcery. To me it felt more like Dark Fantasy was the norm.

Honestly, it wasn't like much of any written fantasy of the time. The closest thing you might get is the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories, and even that's reaching. Cugel the Clever maybe?

 

[Remathilis]

I’m coming around on this for modern D&D. Instead of fighting it, lean into it. 4E and 5E are fantasy superhero soap opera games. So embrace it. The DM still has infinite dragons to throw at the PCs. The players stop dead to rest. Great. Pile up the in-world dramatic consequences and beef up the next encounters. Instead of fighting how the players want to play, work with it. They only want a five-minute workday? Cool. Give them an entire adventuring day in that five minutes. There’s this weird assumption that the players can game the system but the DM somehow cannot react accordingly. That’s nonsense.

I gotta agree with that. Not every adventure is on a tight clock, but the consequences of waiting 24 hours between fights should pile on. The vast majority of my games have only 3-5 combat encounters, but I try to set up things so that resting isn't easy without a full retreat or risking random encounters.

It does help that most of my PCs don't subscribe to 15 minute workdays to begin with, so discouraging it is rather easy with gentle time management concerns, but I fully acknowledge results but typical.

 

[Remathilis]

I don't even think the default of old edition D&D was even Sword and Sorcery. To me it felt more like Dark Fantasy was the norm.

As the editions ran by, the darkness over the whole setting rolled back and concentrated onto certain oppressively hopeless and unfair spots. I predict 1/4 of DMs in 5e do "You were doomed the second you accepted", "You've accidentally made it worse" and "You've been working for the bad guy all along" twists in their campaigns.

How old is "old edition?" Because I played D&D in the 90s (BECMI and 2e) and it never felt like dark fantasy or S&S unless you were playing Ravenloft or Dark Sun. High fantasy or epic fantasy was the norm. Mystara, Faerun, FtA Oerth and Krynn all felt high adventure. Maybe if you go back before 1984, the game has a darker or S&S feel, but we're talking maybe 1/5th of the game's existence was that.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There's always how 13th age handles it -- the day ends when the requisite number of encounters have occurred, and doesn't care what the big flaming ball (or flaming chariot, or whatever) in the sky is doing.

That seems even worse to me than the monsters going to the players if the players won't go to the monsters.

Unless you are willing to deal with the five minure workday, that's always going to be an issue with rechargeable resources. Its just worse in D&D derivatives because the top end powers are built with it as an assumption.

13th Age is at least honest about the necessities of it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Except the part where there's no superheroism at all in the core of either and people are just using superhero as a dumb buzzword.

And to ridiculously overstate it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

How old is "old edition?" Because I played D&D in the 90s (BECMI and 2e) and it never felt like dark fantasy or S&S unless you were playing Ravenloft or Dark Sun. High fantasy or epic fantasy was the norm. Mystara, Faerun, FtA Oerth and Krynn all felt high adventure. Maybe if you go back before 1984, the game has a darker or S&S feel, but we're talking maybe 1/5th of the game's existence was that.

Can't speak for BECMI, but by the time AD&D2 had rolled around, TSR was accepting the way the game was routinely played rather than trying to force people into FFV or fantasy whatever else the early game was seen as being.

 

[Minigiant]

Honestly, it wasn't like much of any written fantasy of the time. The closest thing you might get is the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories, and even that's reaching. Cugel the Clever maybe?

That's why I didn't match any written works and just stated the genres that were closest to it in genre.

The earliest editions of D&D didn't promote actual "heroic" play unless you played one of the "overpowered" classes that forced you to "fight on fair terms".

How old is "old edition?" Because I played D&D in the 90s (BECMI and 2e) and it never felt like dark fantasy or S&S unless you were playing Ravenloft or Dark Sun. High fantasy or epic fantasy was the norm. Mystara, Faerun, FtA Oerth and Krynn all felt high adventure. Maybe if you go back before 1984, the game has a darker or S&S feel, but we're talking maybe 1/5th of the game's existence was that.

When it depends if you go by years or editions.

I would say Msytara, Faerun, and Krynn were created and pushed to contrast with the Darkness of Base 0e and 1e or Grimness of Greyhawk.

Then Ravenloft and Dark Sun were to bring it back.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I’m coming around on this for modern D&D. Instead of fighting it, lean into it. 4E and 5E are fantasy superhero soap opera games. So embrace it. The DM still has infinite dragons to throw at the PCs. The players stop dead to rest. Great. Pile up the in-world dramatic consequences and beef up the next encounters. Instead of fighting how the players want to play, work with it. They only want a five-minute workday? Cool. Give them an entire adventuring day in that five minutes. There’s this weird assumption that the players can game the system but the DM somehow cannot react accordingly. That’s nonsense.

The DM can react, but many DMs are tired of being vilified by their players if there's a playstyle mismatch. You need to hash this stuff out in an extensive session 0, particularly if the group has not gamed together before. If that means it's going to a long discussion, so be it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Except the part where there's no superheroism at all in the core of either and people are just using superhero as a dumb buzzword.

Except the part where you deny an assertion drive-by style without logical back-up. You can have the opinion that people are just using "superhero" as a dumb buzzword, but that's all it is. Superheroism means different things to different people, and there's no way you can know those using it are not sincere.