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

[Thomas Shey]

Were these GM the same that would have players unable to spend their hard earned gold? Maybe it is why some said gold was worthless in 1ed and 2ed....

In practice.

I mean, let's get real; technically there was some extremely broad examples even in OD&D about creating some magic items (besides the scroll-and-potion examples, there was, as I recall, a Ring of X-Ray Vision and maybe a +1 Magic Sword) listed somewhere in the books. Yet outside of scroll scribing you virtually never saw it happen in the wild, in part because once it was doable there would have been no reason not to do it as regularly as possible (and the rules passively discouraged it because of an additional time requirement). But one of the things that Old School GMs were obsessed about was magic item access control (which was simultaneously understandable and ridiculous; understandable because some higher order magic items could up the power level of characters significantly (consider the impact on the usual trap-and-treasure seeking process of that X-Ray Vision Ring, even with its limitations), and ridiculous because if you used the magic treasure tables as-was, you'd have more low to middle level magic items than you knew what to do with after a while (the number of magic swords you could have come across by mid levels was astounding (if people used followers they'd give the lower level spares to them, otherwise to their own or other's lower level characters because why not?)

There was always a real fear in some circles that if you could convert gold into magic items, it'd turn into a double-dip of benefit for gold. That's why the primary controller of magic item creation (rather than purchase, which could be controlled by the GM by simply not making a given item available) in 3e was experience, which people were generally far less interested in spending barring the trivial amount needed for some low end consumeables.

Would these DMs restrict the basic access to spells such as Enchant and Permanency? If so, How and why?

Remember in the early days that what spells a PC acquired was not entirely within their control. It was partly randomized, and nobody but the GM had to know whether he'd actually put anything on the table he didn't want. As to why, see above.

Would they allow wands, rod and staves (in addition to potions and scrolls)?

Not IME. Staves in particular were logically a cost-effective way to significantly up your firepower. Later on wands and staves tended to produce slightly substandard versions of most offensive spells relative to what a PC could do, but to the degree the gap existed at all early on, it was much smaller.

Did they read Homlet, one the first AD&D adventure in which you can buy potions and scrolls from the get go at the church of St-Cuthebert? Or even sell your magical items to the wizard at the tower (or even buy spells and commission for scrolls to him)?

Note, again, potions and scrolls (at least low end ones) tended to be the exception.

Also, if any player would be able to sell a magical item, it automatically means that there were some buyers for it. And where there are sellers and buyers... a market (and a black market too, thieves existed in 1-2ed) will spring into existence.

You'd think, wouldn't you? Yet in the wild it was often a one way (and thus, pointless, since there wasn't anything particularly useful to do with more gold) street. Assuming the GM even allowed sales of items; I quite frequently saw people trying to rationalize the lack of ability to buy items by saying they were so expensive there was no meaningful market, so you couldn't sell them, either.

Edit: And even restricting spell access would be futile. A wizard can and will research any spell he wants. It is built-in in class capacity in 1-2ed. It is called spell research, in the DMG and if a spell is known to exist, the wizard will almost automatically succeed in about half the time expected for a new spell. So creating basic items such as +1 to +3 weapons/armor was either the DM not knowing the rule, or the DM being too restrictive for nothing. Again, a setting might change this. But most would not.

Assuming you got to the level you could do so, and the GM permitted enough time to. (Note Enchant Item was a 6th Level spell in AD&D, and Permanent Spell/Permanancy were 8th level spells in both OD&D and AD&D. Plenty of people never saw characters get to those levels because of the progressive-cost slope of experience in those days (in fact I don't think I ever actually encountered a PC who could cast an eighth level spell).

(And this is ignoring the "magic item creation other than consumables is a lost art" crowd who'd simply not have those spells researchable at all).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Perhaps. I think there's good reason to think that the gap between how 4e was presented and how it was played may have been as wide as (what I believe) to be that same gap in the case of AD&D and B/X. (I don't have any evidence beyond hunch and conjecture to support my claims about what was going on in 1978 that you replied to - I'm just relying on my sense that the sale of AD&D books was extending well beyond a hobby-store wargaming-type crowd.)

Note I've been primarily talking about OD&D; AD&D was absolutely when it started to spread beyond the hobby stores.

On the other hand, I think there was probably much less of this sort of gap in the case of 2nd ed AD&D- the system as presented encouraged the GM to use the full suite of tools (XP awards, treasure, presentation of situations, adjudication of action declarations) to control player behaviour and the outcomes of play, and this was the norm I encountered for D&D play during the 90s and I still get the impression it is quite common. Personally I feel that that sort of play is probably more common than the boardgame/wargame style that the posters I've quoted at the top of this post describe; but I've got nothing but impressions (including my impression of who WotC targets 5e D&D at) to underpin that feeling.

There was certainly what I saw a lot of back in the day.

 

[Thomas Shey]

As an aside, did having a rule like that have any inspirational effect on the mook rules in later games (4e or 13th age), or did they just spring independently from an earlier idea?

It'd certainly occured outside the D&D-sphere well before that; I recall seeing them all the way back to Bushido.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think this is true, but I'm also going to place some "blame" on the emergence of other RPGs with rulesets that explicitly supported the kind of play that players were looking for. By the late 90s a lot of folks were playing D&D explicitly to have that kind combat heavy game - if they wanted to play a game of sneaking around and not getting into fights, they'd be playing Vampire or Shadowrun or some other system that had systems for sneaking around and not getting into fights that were more than the minimum that D&D provided.

Honestly, how much people avoided fights even early on is often overstated and/or parochial; I saw an awful lot of combats in games up and down the West Coast in '75 and '76 to buy that the game was ever played as combat avoidant as some people try to say.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That wasn't my experience with Vampire at all. The group I played with avoided combat at all costs - it was probably the most talky RPG experience I've ever played.

It was my experience with Shadowrun, but I always figured it was because of the group I played it with

At the end of the day, people want to do the things with their characters the characters are avowedly about. If you had an OD&D Fighting Man or a Shadowrun Street Samurai, you weren't there to wait around for the other types to end run the problem. You might want to get in fights on somewhat favorable terms, but you weren't there to avoid fights.

 

[Cruentus]

Yeah. I absolutely love that style of play.

I'd love to find some.

Ditto.

My experience over 40 years follows a path from early learning of how the game "works" (meaning, we didn't know squat), so it was mostly fighting with maxed ability scores, and much dying, to battling against the "adversarial" DM, but having a blast doing it (although I'm not sure he felt it was fun, but he still DMs), still with much dying and running away and trying to use every trick we could think of, to now, with everything one needs on the character sheet (no need for a DM to hand out items, or to quest for them), fairly resilient characters (3 campaigns, two WOTC and one homebrew - zero deaths, not even two failed death saves), and an "easy mode" IME, unless the DM (me last time around) ramps up the challenge, and then the TPK line is razor thin, no matter what the party does.

I'm finding much better experiences playing in a Basic game right now, where nothing is on your character sheet (and I'm running a fighter who has a 12 as his highest stat, never to increase), and having fun trying to figure out how to survive any fight we might get into, while our two Dwarves, with Con bonuses and near max rolled HP just want to wade in. I think they'll be first to go. To running an Ad&d game out of the PHB, which is naturally more complicated than Basic, but hits the right notes for us. One player has a Paladin (rolled an 18 on 4d6 drop low), but has 13 and less in everything else, and the 18 had to go into Cha. He certainly can't outmuscle everything... and has to think about his approach.

I've gone from cautious, to fight everything, to back to cautious and now want more story, more NPC interaction and world building, without having to worry I'm "wasting" all the stuff on my character sheet. I've also realized I don't want to try to "win" the game anymore, but experience it.

 

[Remathilis]

But this is where magical items for martial characters was an equalizer. The low hp of magic user made them highly susceptible to death by a fighter coming in with a potion of haste, flying or whatever. If you used "segments" then a magic user in hand to hand was effectively doomed! Need 18.00 strength? Gauntlets of ogres power, A long sword +5, double spec meant that you could mow down a magic user in just about 1 round. The average 20th level wizard without CN bonus had about 37 hp. If all three attacks of the fighter hit, just the bonuses to damage would kill the magic user. The quadratic power of martial characters were coming from the magical items they could muster.

High level thieves were far from useless. The back stab could kill the magic user in one stroke, and since the hide in shadow was not a magical ability, it meant that the damn thieves would not be stopped by magical means of detecting invisibility. This is why a magic user would have guards. Just to protect himself from the damn lurkers in the shadows. And the power curve did not stopped at 10th level, only the HD improvements. Saves were way better and the fighter gained a lot of these at high level. THACO (or attack matrices) kept improving.

This probably came back to DM experience, but I played a high level single class thief in 2e (16th level, namesake of this account) and I found that after a while, most of my class functions were severely outclassed by spells and magic items. Cloaks and boots of elvenkind, rings of invisibility, chimes of opening, knock, detect traps, spider climb etc all could make thief skills redundant. And backstab rarely did enough damage to harm a foe of suitable challenges, even if you could hit it at all! (No finesse weapons, and thieves weren't likely to have high strength).

I'm sure in a white room PvP scenario, a fighter or a thief could kill a magic user, but in practical adventuring the only thing a thief had going for them was they allowed a caster to not prep as many knock or invisibility spells. The best thing you could do with a thief was multi-class it with fighter (to get better backstabs and survival) or magic user (so that your magic came online at the time your thief skills become redundant. It's little surprise that thief is the class every race could multiclass combo with.

 

[tetrasodium]

Honestly, how much people avoided fights even early on is often overstated and/or parochial; I saw an awful lot of combats in games up and down the West Coast in '75 and '76 to buy that the game was ever played as combat avoidant as some people try to say.

I have to agree that the avoid combat side of the coin tends to get overstated, but that went with the other side being a much more common combat as war where steps were taken in planning & interparty strategy to stack the deck a bit in that combat.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I have to agree that the avoid combat side of the coin tends to get overstated, but that went with the other side being a much more common combat as war where steps were taken in planning & interparty strategy to stack the deck a bit in that combat.

Well, honestly, while that's true the issue is that even in OD&D there were a lot of fights that just weren't all that. Open an area with a bunch of normal orcs as fifth level characters and you'd take some damage but between the mages and the fighting types, there was rarely a question how it was going to come out.

That's one of the reasons the bottom end was so perilous; there just wasn't much that was weaker than you, and even mediocre damage rolls could be risky. Once even MUs expected to have 12-13 hit points, the numbers game there changed considerably.

 

[overgeeked]

Ditto.

My experience over 40 years follows a path from early learning of how the game "works" (meaning, we didn't know squat), so it was mostly fighting with maxed ability scores, and much dying, to battling against the "adversarial" DM, but having a blast doing it (although I'm not sure he felt it was fun, but he still DMs), still with much dying and running away and trying to use every trick we could think of, to now, with everything one needs on the character sheet (no need for a DM to hand out items, or to quest for them), fairly resilient characters (3 campaigns, two WOTC and one homebrew - zero deaths, not even two failed death saves), and an "easy mode" IME, unless the DM (me last time around) ramps up the challenge, and then the TPK line is razor thin, no matter what the party does.

I'm finding much better experiences playing in a Basic game right now, where nothing is on your character sheet (and I'm running a fighter who has a 12 as his highest stat, never to increase), and having fun trying to figure out how to survive any fight we might get into, while our two Dwarves, with Con bonuses and near max rolled HP just want to wade in. I think they'll be first to go. To running an Ad&d game out of the PHB, which is naturally more complicated than Basic, but hits the right notes for us. One player has a Paladin (rolled an 18 on 4d6 drop low), but has 13 and less in everything else, and the 18 had to go into Cha. He certainly can't outmuscle everything... and has to think about his approach.

I've gone from cautious, to fight everything, to back to cautious and now want more story, more NPC interaction and world building, without having to worry I'm "wasting" all the stuff on my character sheet. I've also realized I don't want to try to "win" the game anymore, but experience it.

I've found Old-School Essentials hits most of my sweet spots. It's built around B/X as the base game but they've added in the AD&D classes, though they're somewhat de-powered and the requirements to qualify are a bit lower. Ease of use from B/X but the variety of options from AD&D.