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

[jasper]

In my experience, a lot of newer players don’t want to be challenged at all and do think of and treat the DM as their personal entertainment for an evening. I’ve had players insist on a long rest after taking one damage. Singular. As in one point of damage. I’ve had players rage quit in a vulgarity-laden tirade when their character was knocked to zero hp. Didn’t die. Just knocked out. 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. Players try to shoe-horn in all kinds of wild artifacts to the backstory of their 1st-level character with zero XP. The best so far is one player wanted a fragment of a Staff of the Magi…that had most of the powers intact. Players that simply decided they should get magic items and a heap of gold at the start of a game. And rage quit when called on it. Players honestly seem to want to start at 10-20 and only face 1st-level obstacles. If that.

Dave, dwayne ? is that you. I swear Overgeeked we gamed together in the early 80s due you your statement.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The notion that characters cannot die (or even be harmed) for a story to be engaging is ridiculously wrong. It’s literally the opposite.

Like, my post literally noted that doing it in game is different from doing it in a game where that character is a person's connection to the medium.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Also, there are very notable genres in which combat is commonplace but protagonists are expected to survive in general. So in addition to being very judgmental, your comment is incorrect on its face, due to how broadly it's posited.

I think Superheroes is the genre that best encapsulates that. Lots of combat, very little permanent death.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I think Superheroes is the genre that best encapsulates that. Lots of combat, very little permanent death.

Unless your book is less than a year old.

But soooo much pointless random death they swear up and down is permanent because they've trained their readers to think death is the only means of stakes (because they're lazy). I was just watching Linkara's review of Civil War 2 and they offed War Machine and the Hulk in that thing and acted like it was permanent -- despite at the same time teasing Rhodey was going to get his own movie at the time!

 

[overgeeked]

Like, my post literally noted that doing it in game is different from doing it in a game where that character is a person's connection to the medium.

You seem to think that’s a distinction that makes a difference. And an important one, apparently. If you want me to understand what you mean by this, you’ll have to explain it.

 

[overgeeked]

I think Superheroes is the genre that best encapsulates that. Lots of combat, very little permanent death.

Which is likely why people seem to think of 5E as a fantasy superheroes game.

 

[pemerton]

And again you forget that we are not talking about you, or I. We are talking about young and/or inexperienced players and DMs that are discovering the game. What is old and lame for you and I is fun and exciting for them. But only if there is something to do with the rewards.

I recall using the PCs accompany the caravan as guards trope once, in my second year of GMing. The PCs were 5th or 6th level. And the reward had nothing to do with it - the players had their PCs accept the task because it was obviously the adventure that I had prepared. I don't remember what the promised reward was. But I'm pretty confident that the promise of an extra 100 gp, or even 1,000 gp, each wouldn't have made any difference!

A god giving a quest is a classic trope used in legends, literatures and mythos. You may not have gods or have downgraded their importance in your campaign world. But it is not so in every other campaign run by other DMs. In many campaign worlds, the gods are very much important and pleasing your patron deity (or the one of your cleric) is a good thing to do.

Last time I checked, the 5e D&D rulebooks had gods mentioned in them, a whole appendix worth!

Whether or not clerics need to worship gods is neither here nor there: I played AD&D games where there was no cleric PC, and was able to frame situations and generate interesting play without needing to boss the players around with threats from patron gods. As I posted, that was considered bad play back in 1990, at least among me and my friends.

Old DMs like you and I do not need the tools to do our job, we are way past these artifices. But beginners, especially the DMs do need them but they got removed.

To me, what you seem to be lamenting is the lack of techniques like gp-as-reward-system or gods-as-quest-givers-that-players-can't-refuse, which in some circumstances might help paper over the fact that the players don't care about the GM's fiction. I choose the words "paper over" deliberately - because if players, for whatever reason, think the situation the GM is serving up is uninteresting, then there will be issues and dangling gold or gods in front of the PCs won't change that! If the campaign is boring at level N, it will probably still be boring at level N+1, or at level N but having spent 100 gp on a healing potion, etc.

Hence why my advice to new GMs, first and foremost, is always use your best material and present interesting situations.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Which is likely why people seem to think of 5E as a fantasy superheroes game.

Part of why I love it so much.

 

[Vaalingrade]

You seem to think that’s a distinction that makes a difference. And an important one, apparently. If you want me to understand what you mean by this, you’ll have to explain it.

So in a book, you may be invested in a character, but they aren't your only connection to the story.

In a game, the character is your direct connection to the story. Severing that connection weakens the player's investment in the story as a whole. They have to start over at 1 trying to reconnect and they WILL do their best to prevent losing that connection again. They cycle of drawing and discarding characters over and over eventually leaves you with character that are min-maxed against being constantly gibbed, or players who just don't care and just feed more corpses into the fire.

 

[overgeeked]

Part of why I love it so much.

Part of why I house rule the hell out of it and homebrew the monsters.