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

[overgeeked]

Ok. We get it. You have had a string of bad players. Totally understandable.

By the same token I just left a group of 40+ year old gamers who have not behaved a whole lot differently, including the tirade. So blaming this on “new players” is possibly confirmation bias.

I was referring to experience with the game, not age. I’ve had teenagers with years of experience play amazingly and 40-year-olds who were new freak out. I’ve run the game for years and only started having these issues with 5E.

 

[Helldritch]

I was referring to experience with the game, not age. I’ve had teenagers with years of experience play amazingly and 40-year-olds who were new freak out. I’ve run the game for years and only started having these issues with 5E.

Though I have encountered these types of players sparingly over the years, I have never gave so much advice on how to manage these to younger (or less experienced should we say) DM than in 5ed.

The complaints started about two years in the 5ed and never stopped since. We started our Friday night Dungeon again last week and guess what? Two teenage DM asking me how to manage players acting as if they were entitled to get everything they wanted.

Maybe it is because I am involved in my gaming community that I have so many comments about self entitled players. Afterall, no one seeks advice when everything is going fine. Thus I hear more about what isn't good than what is. But one thing is sure, in no other editions have I had so many questions about player management....

 

[Thomas Shey]

Maybe it is because I am involved in my gaming community that I have so many comments about self entitled players. Afterall, no one seeks advice when everything is going fine. Thus I hear more about what isn't good than what is. But one thing is sure, in no other editions have I had so many questions about player management....

It was probably the single most common question I saw back even in the OD&D days. Player/GM conflicts have been an issue since day one.

 

[pemerton]

I’ve had players insist I change every aspect of a 30-year-old+ homebrew world to suit their tens-of-thousands of word backstory.

I'm guessing the "every" is exaggeration for rhetorical effect?

Anyway, my personal preference is for GM-player collaboration in establishing setting. And that's not new. I was doing it that way in the 80s.

 

[Remathilis]

People play the game differently. Clearly some of them feel the statement is not a misrepresentation based on their experience.

My experience is that old school DMs are sadists. Does my experience make that a valid observation?

 

[Remathilis]

The complaints started about two years in the 5ed and never stopped since.

I’ve run the game for years and only started having these issues with 5E.

D&D starting in 2016 got a massive jolt in popularity thanks to streaming games and a number of prominent celebrities coming out and admitting they played. The PHB was sold at Target. Starter Sets and merch were in every big box store. D&D sales are higher now than in any other time in the game's history and the game is full of new players. Did it ever occur to you that the fact that there are more people playing would account for more crappy people playing too? That not every new player was going to be Grade A USDA choice? That if they had joined in 3.5 or 2e, they'd be the same entitled jerks? That the fact they joined during 5e is correlation, not causation?

I think the issue a lot of people are having with this is the implication that if these players had played a different edition of D&D, they somehow wouldn't be this way. That it is 5e that is making them like this. There is no evidence that this is the case, and more than likely, if they had been exposed to D&D prior to 5e, they would either have exhibited the same behaviors or simply not played.

So yeah, there are more bad players out there; there are more players in general out there. Until you can prove there is something in the 5e rules that is causing this behavior, I'm still convinced this is more of a coincidence being masqueraded as conspiracy.

 

[Umbran]

My experience is that old school DMs are sadists. Does my experience make that a valid observation?

Mod Note:
And, it is my experience that statements tuned to shock or insult do not usually improve conversations much.

How about everyone dial it back several notches, before someone gets so annoyed as to say something that they'll end up regretting?

 

[Micah Sweet]

My experience is that old school DMs are sadists. Does my experience make that a valid observation?

Exactly as valid as anyone else's experience.

 

[Remathilis]

Exactly as valid as anyone else's experience.

Which is equally as useless when making generalizations.

If I go to Disney World and it rains the whole time I'm there, and then tell everyone I know not to go there because you'll have a miserable time standing in the rain all day, that's not a valid observation of what Disney World is like. It's valid for my specific visit and I can't use that to extrapolate what it's like for everyone every time. Even if I have the incredibly terrible luck to go again in a few years and it rains again, I still can't say everyone who goes to Disney World is going to have a rain soaked experience. Nor should I be advocating that Disney put the whole of the park under a giant dome so that I can visit without fear of rain ever again. And I shouldn't call those who went to Disney World and had a wonderful time liars.

 

[pemerton]

The complaints started about two years in the 5ed and never stopped since. We started our Friday night Dungeon again last week and guess what? Two teenage DM asking me how to manage players acting as if they were entitled to get everything they wanted.

Really? This sort of player-management stuff has been around for ever. I encountered the issue first hand in the mid-80s. I read about it in the pages of Dragon Magazine. Gygax worries and rants about it in the pages of his DMG.