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

[Thomas Shey]

Thank you for sharing this. It will give cause to ponder my own experience which is similar and very different at the same time.

Maybe the sudden maasive influx of new players make it appears as worse than it is, but each edition had brought its share of new blood and never were thw complaints so ... numerous? Maybe the fact that 5ed is way over the others in popularity just gave the impression that it is a rather new problem in scope but somehow, I do not feel it is so. Still, the amount of new players is not to be ignore.

Thanks again for sharing your experience.

It did, but--much as I'm not a particular fan of D&D, or even the whole D&D related sphere--its hard to argue that the surge of players for 5e is not significantly greater than any past edition, probably going all the way back. And don't write off the distinction I made with the OD&D era surge and the 3e era ones; they aren't trivial. D&D 5e's, in terms of surge from the general populace appears to me to simply be different than the others. And that may be why, combined with a bit of focus on it, why you're seeing what you're seeing.

 

[Helldritch]

It did, but--much as I'm not a particular fan of D&D, or even the whole D&D related sphere--its hard to argue that the surge of players for 5e is not significantly greater than any past edition, probably going all the way back. And don't write off the distinction I made with the OD&D era surge and the 3e era ones; they aren't trivial. D&D 5e's, in terms of surge from the general populace appears to me to simply be different than the others. And that may be why, combined with a bit of focus on it, why you're seeing what you're seeing.

As much as I ordered myself in avoiding echo chambers, I may have a case of tunnel vision in the case at hand. But I do exchange and discuss with a lot of DMs and the problem is real. Is it worse of comparatively concurrent with other editions, having more cases only because 5ed has more new blood than any other editions or is there something fishier than it might appear to be at first sight?

A few things are certain.
1) There are more cases.

2) 5ed did remove a lot of the control DMs had over the power level of the players. The impact of this is relatively hard to determine, but it is still undeniable.

3) It might change from area to area, which make it harder to pinpoint and make consensus. Which might explain why some area are seeing it and others don't. Also, being in area predominantly French speaking, the translations are just becoming more accessible to more people.

At this point, I am still convinced that the problem exist, but not as prevalent as I believed it to be at first.

 

[Remathilis]

Thank you for sharing this. It will give cause to ponder my own experience which is similar and very different at the same time.

Maybe the sudden maasive influx of new players make it appears as worse than it is, but each edition had brought its share of new blood and never were thw complaints so ... numerous? Maybe the fact that 5ed is way over the others in popularity just gave the impression that it is a rather new problem in scope but somehow, I do not feel it is so. Still, the amount of new players is not to be ignore.

Thanks again for sharing your experience.

I feel the missing ingredient isn't just how many new players, but what kind of new players.

D&D spent large periods of its history fairly secluded. Sure, there was the 80's era with the cartoon and toys, but BADD put a big crimp its spread beyond the "nerd" crowd. Similarly, the 3e Renaissance/d20 market was huge, but the pond was still made up of the same general type of players. I wager that the 5e boom has brought in a lot of people who wouldn't have been in the "nerd" booms of the past; the kind of people who wouldn't set foot in a FLGS or browsed a gaming forum a decade earlier. People whose intro into the genre was CRPGS like Skyrim or WoW. Those games bring with them very different expectations.

This is not to say those players are inherently worse, but it does change expectation. Personally, I came into D&D by way of JRPGs like Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger, where a tight focused narrative about a static group of heroes was the expectation. To me D&D was about making my own JRPG like stories and characters, and it was a fight to get AD&D to do that without extensive house rules. The current AP model of a long storyline mostly played by the same characters from inception to end is almost exactly what I wanted 20 years ago. I wager some, though not all, of the problems with "entitled" or "Mary Sue" PCs come from similar types of expectations: the Creepypasta kid who writes 20 page backstories for their OC, the Skyrim player who is used to the narrative calling them the chosen one, the WoW player who is here for the epic loots and endgame play. They are all playing D&D with the assumptions of the fantasy that brought them.

And some are just jerks. Nothing has changed under the sun.

 

[Helldritch]

I feel the missing ingredient isn't just how many new players, but what kind of new players.

D&D spent large periods of its history fairly secluded. Sure, there was the 80's era with the cartoon and toys, but BADD put a big crimp its spread beyond the "nerd" crowd. Similarly, the 3e Renaissance/d20 market was huge, but the pond was still made up of the same general type of players. I wager that the 5e boom has brought in a lot of people who wouldn't have been in the "nerd" booms of the past; the kind of people who wouldn't set foot in a FLGS or browsed a gaming forum a decade earlier. People whose intro into the genre was CRPGS like Skyrim or WoW. Those games bring with them very different expectations.

This is not to say those players are inherently worse, but it does change expectation. Personally, I came into D&D by way of JRPGs like Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger, where a tight focused narrative about a static group of heroes was the expectation. To me D&D was about making my own JRPG like stories and characters, and it was a fight to get AD&D to do that without extensive house rules. The current AP model of a long storyline mostly played by the same characters from inception to end is almost exactly what I wanted 20 years ago. I wager some, though not all, of the problems with "entitled" or "Mary Sue" PCs come from similar types of expectations: the Creepypasta kid who writes 20 page backstories for their OC, the Skyrim player who is used to the narrative calling them the chosen one, the WoW player who is here for the epic loots and endgame play. They are all playing D&D with the assumptions of the fantasy that brought them.

And some are just jerks. Nothing has changed under the sun.

So in essence, it is the type of players that have changed. They are more numerous because most of them have different expectations than players had 20-40 years ago...

It might be just that too. But I do feel a lot of the tool that enable the DMs to adjust the power level were dropped in 5ed and it helped exactly the behavior we do not like. When you do not need something from someone, it is easier to confront or ignore that person. The more rules are on the players' side, the less the DM is needed. At some point, a computer might be better suited...

 

[Hussar]

But at least, I have quite a few dozens (note the plural on dozen) questions which go the same way others are describing. Which make my personal experience not limited to a few but quite a lot of people. But since you are so eager to dismiss my claim, then the discussion leads nowhere. I have been approached by many asking how to manage these. You haven't. So if my experience means nothing. The dozens of young DMs asking me how to manage seems to be irrelevant to you. So what is left to discuss? Nothing.

So for others who find that indeed, there are more self entitled players out there than there were before; what made them appear in such numbers in 5ed? Of this I am really curious.

Honest answer? Players now are far less likely to come to the hobby the way you did which makes them seem entitled because they are asking for things for consideration that wouldn’t have even been thought of a few years back.

No one wanted to play warforged before Eberron was a thing after all. To a newer player, elves and dwarves are just not part of their fantasy landscape the way it would be for you.

 

[CleverNickName]

Honest answer? Players now are far less likely to come to the hobby the way you did which makes them seem entitled because they are asking for things for consideration that wouldn’t have even been thought of a few years back.

No one wanted to play warforged before Eberron was a thing after all. To a newer player, elves and dwarves are just not part of their fantasy landscape the way it would be for you.

This is an interesting point.

 

[Helldritch]

Honest answer? Players now are far less likely to come to the hobby the way you did which makes them seem entitled because they are asking for things for consideration that wouldn’t have even been thought of a few years back.

No one wanted to play warforged before Eberron was a thing after all. To a newer player, elves and dwarves are just not part of their fantasy landscape the way it would be for you.

Strange, I am very close to the younger generation and it goes against everything you said in the first paragraph. They want their elves, dwarves and classical fantasy tropes. But they also want the fancier stuff too. So in fact, they come with the Lord of the Ring images in their heads and all the other movies. They dream of Merlin and King Arthur all the same. Again, they have a broader pool to choose from.

As for the second paragraph...
See my first for the elves, dwarves and others classical fantasy tropes. For the Warforged, I never felt like they were not love at first sight. In fact, I had to restrict them as everyone wanted to play one. Eberron was a great campaign setting.

The entitlement does come, but a bit older. Usually in late teens and up. And again, this is not a problem that I encountered personally, at least not in the last two decades, but something a lot of younger DMs are having and ask me about how to manage them.

 

[Vaalingrade]

If the older generation all want Tolkien species, and the younger generation all want them too, who are all the people who want awesome species people keep complaining about on this board that aren't me?

 

[Thomas Shey]

As much as I ordered myself in avoiding echo chambers, I may have a case of tunnel vision in the case at hand. But I do exchange and discuss with a lot of DMs and the problem is real. Is it worse of comparatively concurrent with other editions, having more cases only because 5ed has more new blood than any other editions or is there something fishier than it might appear to be at first sight?

A few things are certain.
1) There are more cases.

I'll accept it for the sake of argument, but I will note I'm still not sold.

2) 5ed did remove a lot of the control DMs had over the power level of the players. The impact of this is relatively hard to determine, but it is still undeniable.

I'm really not sold on this, though. The important methods of control haven't changed in the least.

3) It might change from area to area, which make it harder to pinpoint and make consensus. Which might explain why some area are seeing it and others don't. Also, being in area predominantly French speaking, the translations are just becoming more accessible to more people.

At this point, I am still convinced that the problem exist, but not as prevalent as I believed it to be at first.

And to be clear I can't authoritatively say this is not true--but I don't think from what I've seen the people arguing it have made their case on it. To be clear, I'm not quite sure what could make that case (what sort of data gathering would be possible here, after all). But the whole "there aren't the tools any more" would work better for me if I wasn't familiar with a large number of other games with different tools and incentives, and most of the trad ones work out much the same way, so why should the changes in 5e make much difference?

 

[Helldritch]

If the older generation all want Tolkien species, and the younger generation all want them too, who are all the people who want awesome species people keep complaining about on this board that aren't me?

Everyone else in the middle?