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

[Minigiant]

It sure feels superheroic to me.

An archer will inevitably run out of arrows. A pew-pew wizard will never run out of pew-pew.

Nah.
Generic baddies and mooks in Saturday morning cartoons can get unlimted pew pew.
Hank and Presto had unlimited pew pew.
Harry Potter year 1 has unlimited pew pew.
Doesn't make them superheroic.

Again a generational, cultural, or genre preference thing. I grew up with stories of weak newbies with unlimited powers but still being weak newbies.

That's another way D&D changed. Simple access to "supernature" isn't seen as special or superheroic. It's what you can do with it.
Evil cultists with eldritch blasts instead of crossbows doesn't feel any more superheoric to incoming fans.

The difference is that where such backstories were once seen as laughable, we're now expected to take them seriously.

Those backstories were and still are wrong.
The problem is no one corrects them.
It's not accepted at my table at all.

 

[RuinousPowers]

I love people talking about the backstories of their AD&D characters. I don't think the players at my tables even bothered to name their characters until they got to second level.

 

[Cruentus]

Here are my two characters for two campaigns I'm in:

Basic with my long playing group: Lv 1 Fighter S: 12 D: 10 C: 10 I: 9 W: 9 Ch: 11 Hp: 5 To hit: 0 (Thaco 19). Damage Bonus: 0. Ac: 4 (16 in 5e) Stats: 3d6 seven times, drop one number, put where you want. Longsword d8, Crossbow d6

5e with my son who is DMing: Lv 1 Fighter S: 16: D: 14 C: 15 I: 9 W: 13 Ch: 11 Hp: 12 To hit: +5 (Thaco 14). Damage Bonus: +3 Ac: 17 (3 in Basic). Oh, and Second Wind and a Fighting Style. (Stats: points buy + human). Longsword d8/d10, Longbow d8

That's a pretty big difference in basic fighters in terms of ability and durability. I'm having to play the first very very carefully, and the second I'm playing as a Noble, using his wits more than bashing everything, trying to be a mounted "knight", but still able to fight off several creatures at once and survive.

Over the 4 decades I've been playing, more and more has been added to both the game, as well as to PCs. I'm putting that down to catering to folks who want "moar power" and "moar options and choice", even though the choice anymore is more illusion than anything (table differences excepted). We played 5e through Tiamat and Storm King's Thunder, and by 8-10th level the DM had to go waaay outside the written adventure to even cause half the party to break a sweat. It was anticlimactic and unsatisfying overall.

I'm having way more fun DMing Beyond the Wall, playing in Wolves of God (Historical Britain), and playing a fighter (the only PC in my "party") in my son's game, where my son is doing a bang up job with places, names, NPCs, interconnected plots, etc.

Though I am concerned that my son will be overwhelmed if I select Battlemaster at 3rd level, since it will up the relative power of my character, and may be too complicated for him to be able to manage. We'll see. That third level for every class in 5e adds unnecessary levels of complexity, IME.

 

[Yora]

My partner and I joke that every DM wants their campaign to be Lodoss War but every player acts like they’re in Slayers.

I could comfortably settle on Rune Soldier. Give me your Str 18, Int 10, Wis 6, Cha 14 wizards.

"It's not totally against my will."

 

[LordEntrails]

@Crentus Yea, but how does a Basic Kobold or Orc compare t a 5E kobold or orc? I haven't actually looked (because I'm not going to dig out my old books), but I suspect they scale about the same. i.e. same number of rounds to kill each or be killed by one.

 

[Yora]

In my experience, players tend to prefer the former and DMs the latter. Naturally, players want their characters to be special and important within a grand narrative, whereas DMs tend to have a strong desire for cohesive-feeling worlds, which PCs-as-ordinary-folk appeals to. This, I think, is the reality the Lodoss War vs. Slayers joke hints at.

I believe the core of the issue is that most GMs don't understand the fundamental assumptions and reasonings of the basic structural elements of D&D. And nobody at WotC ever did either.

When you strip D&D down to its barest essentials, six attributes from 3 to 18, character classes, levels, XP, Hit Dice, hit points, spell slots, you have a number of basic mechanical elements that exist for quite specific design purposes. All these things were developed and meant for a game in which characters go into dungeons to collect treasures and try not to die.
Most people don't want to play a game like this, but they still want to use the mechanics. Because of expectations that that's how it's supposed to be, and that it's supposed to be great.
I believe a lot more people could greatly enjoy a classic dungeon crawling campaign, that has vastly more to (potentially) offer than a board game or Roguelikes and Diablo-type videogames, but most just don't know anything about it. And it's never been actually mentioned in D&D books from the last 30 years. 5th edition is a version of D&D in which about half of the game is missing, but barely anyone is aware of.
To have a great D&D campaign, the adventures should be build and structured around the mechanical framework. Not in contradiction to it.

Starting to think of a sentence like "If people want to play asventures like D&D is presented they should actually play..." had me ralize one thing: Contemporary D&D feels like what I always expected Exalted to be meant to be.

 

[Lanefan]

This, I think, is the reality the Lodoss War vs. Slayers joke hints at.

I clicked "Like" then realized I have no idea what either "Lodoss War" or "Slayers" is referring to.

The closest I can get to either is the metal band Slayer, but they never had that trailing 's'.

 

[Lanefan]

I love people talking about the backstories of their AD&D characters. I don't think the players at my tables even bothered to name their characters until they got to second level.

We name them right away, mostly because it's the norm around here that the DM speaks to the character rather than the player, as in "Falstaff, what's your initiative?" rather than "Mary, what's Falstaff's initiative?".

Full backstory etc., however, usually waits until the character has got through its first adventure or two and looks like it might be in for the long haul.

 

[Lanefan]

Nah.
Generic baddies and mooks in Saturday morning cartoons can get unlimted pew pew.
Hank and Presto had unlimited pew pew.
Harry Potter year 1 has unlimited pew pew.
Doesn't make them superheroic.

In the case of Harry Potter the entire wizarding culture is completely removed from normal "muggle" culture - and that cultural removal is exactly what I'm getting at.

We get to see Harry's adjustment from muggle culture to wizarding culture; but one of the things that makes him (and Hermione) unique is that even after that adjustment they can still relate to and function in muggle society, as opposed to most wizards to whom muggle society is at best a curiosity and at worst a threat.

I very much don't want that sort of split between adventurers (especially at low level!) and general society in my D&D settings, and am annoyed that the modern game seems to want to bake such a separation in right from the get-go.

Those backstories were and still are wrong.
The problem is no one corrects them.
It's not accepted at my table at all.

Agreed 100%.

 

[BookTenTiger]

This thread could use a big ol' dollop of "In my experience..." and "at my table I have noticed..."

There have been a lot of declarative statements about all players and all games that just don't match my own experience playing over the last 20+ years!