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

[Panzeh]

Right. Players are generally wicked smart and will be devious as sin to get what they want. They want XP...if that XP is behind looted gold...they will focus being smart on getting that gold. Things like flooding dungeons by diverting rivers comes to mind. Smoking out monsters from their lairs. Playing monster factions against each other, then mopping up whoever remains. Coming up with wild heist plans to secure the gold with a minimum of fighting. That's infinitely more entertaining than "kick in the door, kill the monsters..."

Of course. But you don't let them.

What an odd juxtaposition. The DM's job is to keep the game from "devolving" into a video game. Letting the PCs have infinite, consequence free time to loot every scrap of tin or iron from a massive underground structure, and somehow haul an infinite load of stuff back to town, only to sell it all to the unquestioning merchants at retail...sounds like it's a video game.

Well, of course. That's why you don't treat it like that. Your job as the DM is to play the world as realistically (in a verisimilitude sense, not a simulation sense) as possible. Do you live anywhere near where meth is a problem? Addicts will break into places and steal every scrap of metal they can and sell it. Businesses have to put safeguards in place to prevent it and merchants have to prevent the addicts from selling the stolen metal. Same with regulations about pawn shops. Port that stuff into your XP for gold game and you'll see a dramatic drop off of nonsense.

Sure, I could make it difficult to make money off of all this trash, but if i'm being realistic and i'm populating these dungeons full of stuff, and the only thing to be doing in the world is making money, I should be expecting this kind of behavior. They should be maximizing their income. That's one way to play D&D, but i find it rather tedious.

I'm well aware that scrappers IRL will not just take random metal that looks like it was taken out of a vacant house. The larger point i'm making is that i find little interest in DMing the kind of fantasy that entirely consists of people looking for the next buck. If I was being realistic, the thing for players to do, being a bunch of well armed, trained people, would be to do a lot of crimes. I could of course make life difficult for criminals in response, but I prefer to be heavy-handed and just say that i'm not interested in running or playing that kind of game.
I do think counting money is an interesting way to put some pressure on a party- in a game where I have money and time really matter, I like to have PCs have a cost of living to maintain and expenses while they do their ultimate goals. Money is in this context a way to solve problems rather than the point- a minimum is needed, and much of their questing probably won't make very much. The random trinkets you could find spelunking aren't worth much monetarily, and i spell it out in session 0 so i don't have to play pawn stars with stuff like that. I have enemies, factions, etc working for their goals, and generally I give the players leeway in how they want to accomplish their goals, and try to reward intelligent solutions to problems.

I guess it's me, the evil railroady GM- my solution to players robbing apothecaries isn't to have them have some absurd security system or for them to be totally nonexistent- it's to just tell them what kind of campaign i'm running and to say no if their first reaction is to rob the hell out of the potion seller, and if they insist, to find a DM that's interested in DMing Grand Theft Fantasy.

 

[overgeeked]

Sure, I could make it difficult to make money off of all this trash, but if i'm being realistic and i'm populating these dungeons full of stuff, and the only thing to be doing in the world is making money, I should be expecting this kind of behavior. They should be maximizing their income. That's one way to play D&D, but i find it rather tedious.

That's a wild assumption to make. No one said that.

I'm well aware that scrappers IRL will not just take random metal that looks like it was taken out of a vacant house. The larger point i'm making is that i find little interest in DMing the kind of fantasy that entirely consists of people looking for the next buck.

No one said that, either.

If I was being realistic, the thing for players to do, being a bunch of well armed, trained people, would be to do a lot of crimes.

That's exactly what most PCs do. Commit crimes. They just don't "count" because they're home invading and murdering orcs and drow instead of humans.

I could of course make life difficult for criminals in response, but I prefer to be heavy-handed and just say that i'm not interested in running or playing that kind of game.

So you don't want any D&D in your D&D game? Why play D&D then?

I do think counting money is an interesting way to put some pressure on a party- in a game where I have money and time really matter, I like to have PCs have a cost of living to maintain and expenses while they do their ultimate goals. Money is in this context a way to solve problems rather than the point- a minimum is needed, and much of their questing probably won't make very much. The random trinkets you could find spelunking aren't worth much monetarily, and i spell it out in session 0 so i don't have to play pawn stars with stuff like that. I have enemies, factions, etc working for their goals, and generally I give the players leeway in how they want to accomplish their goals, and try to reward intelligent solutions to problems.

They're not mutually exclusive. It's rather odd to me that you assume they are.

I guess it's me, the evil railroady GM- my solution to players robbing apothecaries isn't to have them have some absurd security system or for them to be totally nonexistent-

Again, no one ever said that. You've built a strawman and are attacking it.

it's to just tell them what kind of campaign i'm running and to say no if their first reaction is to rob the hell out of the potion seller, and if they insist, to find a DM that's interested in DMing Grand Theft Fantasy.

I run open world sandbox games. Generally West Marches or open table games. The world exists to be destructible. If that's what the players want to do. They have perfect freedom to make any choices they want. But they also know that the world will react in realistic ways. You start robbing and murdering and the town guard will put a stop to it. Or I'll bust out the angry villager rule from OD&D. I run 5E and reward XP for gold. This doesn't cause players to start robbing everyone they meet. None of the players are murder hoboing their way around. They're all following the quests and hooks that interest them. The things you're arguing against are phantoms and strawman arguments. Not how things actually play out at the table. Unless you're playing with kids. The best response to that is, they're kids. Let them have their fun. They'll grow out of it.

 

[Fifth Element]

So you don't want any D&D in your D&D game? Why play D&D then?

They don't want any of someone else's preferred kind of D&D in their D&D. Which does not, of course, make it "not D&D." This should be pretty clear by now.

 

[Fifth Element]

The things you're arguing against are phantoms and strawman arguments. Not how things actually play out at the table.

. . .

 

[Hussar]

Update - I checked my Moldvay Basic and Expert and I couldn't find the part about how you were supposed to let real time pass between sessions. I KNOW I've read that. Is it in the 1e DMG? I know it's there somewhere. And, if you assume that that's the intent of play, so many things make so much sense. But, since virtually no one ever played this way, it is one of those things that gets really buried deep. But, since it's such a fundamental design point, it does affect everything.

 

[Minigiant]

Update - I checked my Moldvay Basic and Expert and I couldn't find the part about how you were supposed to let real time pass between sessions. I KNOW I've read that. Is it in the 1e DMG? I know it's there somewhere. And, if you assume that that's the intent of play, so many things make so much sense. But, since virtually no one ever played this way, it is one of those things that gets really buried deep. But, since it's such a fundamental design point, it does affect everything.

AD&D in the DMG

Gygax displays how 3 PCs get nothing from a dungoen because an earlier party cleared the dungeon and the second party did their session a few REAL TIME DAYS too late.

I think it was a party of 4 was healing 50 something days to get their HP back. One player from the party healed up to full before the rest and took 2 newbies and a henchman for a session earlier in the real world week with the Same DM than the other players and cleared the dungeon before the other players could heal to full.

 

[Fifth Element]

Update - I checked my Moldvay Basic and Expert and I couldn't find the part about how you were supposed to let real time pass between sessions. I KNOW I've read that. Is it in the 1e DMG? I know it's there somewhere. And, if you assume that that's the intent of play, so many things make so much sense. But, since virtually no one ever played this way, it is one of those things that gets really buried deep. But, since it's such a fundamental design point, it does affect everything.

Is this what you're referring to? 1E DMG, page 37 under TIME IN THE CAMPAIGN, discussing an example of how timekeeping should work in the campaign (with the earlier proviso that "YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT." (caps in original).

"...The latter pair spend the better part of the day surviving, but do well enough to rest a couple of game days and return for another try on Day 54 - where they stumble upon the worst monster on the first level, surprise it, and manage to slay it and come out with a handsome treasure. You pack it in for the night. Four actual days later (and it is best to use 1 actual day = 1 game day when no play is happening), on Day 55, player characters B, C, and D enter the dungeon..."

It's noteworthy that at the beginning of the example, it states that a group of characters have had adventures "which last a total of 50 days - 6 days of actual adventuring and 44 days of resting and other activity." So this suggests specific characters might expect to rest 88% of their days, and only adventure in 12% of them. And since you're supposed to use 1 real day = 1 game day between sessions, clearly the intent is for players to use other characters while their primaries are resting.

 

[Hussar]

Ahh, thanks gents. I KNEW I'd read that somewhere.

How's this for a big change in the game?

In the early days of the game, D&D was written for how Gygax and co. ran their games at their tables. Then the game went off into the wild and so many people simply didn't play that way. After all, the reference to real time days equaling in game days vanishes, even by the time of Moldvay Basic - which is only a couple of years after the release of the 1e DMG.

The game has really shifted from "Play the way we, the game writers play" to "Play however you like and we'll do our best to facilitate that."

 

[Minigiant]

Is this what you're referring to? 1E DMG, page 37 under TIME IN THE CAMPAIGN, discussing an example of how timekeeping should work in the campaign (with the earlier proviso that "YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT." (caps in original).

"...The latter pair spend the better part of the day surviving, but do well enough to rest a couple of game days and return for another try on Day 54 - where they stumble upon the worst monster on the first level, surprise it, and manage to slay it and come out with a handsome treasure. You pack it in for the night. Four actual days later (and it is best to use 1 actual day = 1 game day when no play is happening), on Day 55, player characters B, C, and D enter the dungeon..."

It's noteworthy that at the beginning of the example, it states that a group of characters have had adventures "which last a total of 50 days - 6 days of actual adventuring and 44 days of resting and other activity." So this suggests specific characters might expect to rest 88% of their days, and only adventure in 12 of them. And since you're supposed to use 1 real day = 1 game day between sessions, clearly the intent is for players to use other characters while their primaries are resting.

Yes, this.

Basically your PCs only were supposed to heal 7 HP a real week. So unless you had a NPC cleric or the PC cleric was nice, you usually couldn't use your PCs every week.

 

[Hussar]

Yes, this.

Basically your PCs only were supposed to heal 7 HP a real week. So unless you had a NPC cleric or the PC cleric was nice, you usually couldn't use your PCs every week.

Which, of course, meant that in virtually every group, someone had to fall on the cleric grenade when the characters were made. Or you had an NPC Healbot cleric in the party. Which then evolved into faster natural healing (in 3e, the absolute longest you could take to heal was about 3 days of full rest. Most often it was 1 or 2) and healing wands, then into 4e's reaction by making healing an actual player resource and making the cleric completely optional, then into 5e where you heal overnight, and about half the classes have some level of healing. We've gone from groups where you generally had one character who could essentially heal one other PC fully per day (give or take) to a party where it's not unusual to have two or three healers, each of whom can heal a PC fully every day and all damage recovered on a long rest.

Again, I'd say that this rolls back around to the way the game was actually being played, rather than some sort of pandering to make the game "easier".

Heck, I noticed when I read my Moldvay Basic that you healed 1-3 HP/day, not 1. So, even by very early days, healing was getting faster.