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

[Hussar]

Some remakes are better than others, true. Generally I don't like remakes, but there are exceptions, so I'll step back from painting with such a broad brush.

(Incidentally, the new Ghostbusters is not a remake, it's a distant sequel. No rewriting of the past).

Everything i said is my opinion. I thought that was clear.

I'm glad you don't care what WotC does. Plenty of people do. The majority of talk on this site is about what WotC has done, is doing, and might do in the future. Should we just discuss things we're happy about?

There's a fairly large excluded middle there.

No, you don't have to discuss things you're happy about. That's true. But, at the point where I start doing nothing but bitch and complain about every single thing WotC does, I tend to simply take a break for a while. The world is full of unrelenting negativity parading as objective observation and I don't feel the personal need to add to that.

You want to talk about the changes WotC has made? Fantastic. No problems. There's certainly a conversation to be had there. OTOH, if that conversation is just someone flinging poo because they feel their personal preferences aren't being serviced sufficiently, I don't feel a particular need to be charitable. The pendulum swings. You got 100% everything you wanted for almost a decade. WotC catered to a very specific slice of the fandom for quite a few years while the rest of us got to wait patiently for our turn.

Well, it's our turn now. Instead of being all full of vinegar that you're not the target market anymore, why not be happy that you are still getting everything you want, just not from WotC?

Then again, people who hate watch movies they know they aren't going to like just so they can shout at the world about how much they don't like it completely baffle me.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

And just in case anyone thinks I'm a free-thinking hippy . . .

My personal preference in RPGing is that establishing the NPC (who is no more a "quantum" contact then every other part of the fiction which is authored when it becomes relevant, which is most of the fiction in RPGing) the players have to engage with the system in some fashion, spending a resource (eg a Plot Point in MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, or paying for a Relationship out of starting build points in Burning Wheel, or having to write a relationship into your starting 100 word description in HeroWars/Quest) or making a check, which brings with it the risk of the adverse consequences of failure (eg Circle in Burning Wheel and Torchbearer, or Streetwise in 4e D&D or Classic Traveller).

The reason for that is it gives the whole social/relationship dynamic of the game a bit more "teeth".

That said, and to stick my hippy wig back on: if the system we're playing doesn't have that sort of thing in it, and so we have to resort to negotiation and consensus in order to resolve these questions about "Do I know someone who works at . . .", well so be it. I can't see any reason why the answer should default to, or even typically be, No. Let's just frame a scene where the PC calls in their favour from the person whom they know, and see what happens next!

This is why Quest For Chevar has Contacts, Favors, Assets, and optional traits like a Patron or a Crew. They all work a little different, but basically they are relationships you can call upon, and if you call in a favor or call upon a contact and put someone at risk, you take the risk of burning that potential future ally or contact, or even making an enemy or rival.

You are assumed to be maintaining relationships during extended rests, and when you strain a relationship, you might have to spend extra time repairing that relationship as a result, or risk losing it.

 

[Lanefan]

My PC in Burning Wheel is operating in his "home territory" ie on the Ulek-Pomarj borderlands.

The idea that PCs will predominantly be adventuring in areas where they have few or no connections is another manifestation of the "thin setting"/"man with no name" phenomenon. One way to increase player buy-in/engagement, in my view, is to let them play their PCs at home.

Perhaps; but when the party consists of three Elves, a Dwarf, a Part-Orc, and a half-Hobbit crossbreed the other half of which you wouldn't believe if I told you; all currently operating in a Human land, safe to say none of 'em are anywhere near their homes.

That's the party I'm currently running.

In the very long-running game I play in, we have accumulated a large company of characters from - quite literally - not just all over the world, but from multiple versions and times of the same world!

One of these - my faux-Roman MU - would right now be operating very close to her home. Our current adventure involves directly defending faux-Rome from invasion...except it's the wrong version of faux-Rome, the whole realm having recently been punted 250 years back in time from what she's used to and in the process having gone from being an Empire back to being a Republic. She could, if she wanted, go to her family's farm or village and meet her great-x-several-grandparents who wouldn't have a clue who she is; but otherwise she and a few lucky relatives (it's a very long story) are now on their own.

For most of us the company is kind of our family now. Kind of like The Avengers in that respect.

 

[Lanefan]

I've never quite understood this push for campaigns to cover these vast distances.

It's not necessarily that the campaigns cover great distances, it's that - unless the home-base town is the melting pot to end all melting pots - many of the PCs travel great distances from their homes in order to get to the campaign.

No matter where the adventure is taking place, odds are very high that at most one of your Norse Human Fighter or your Greek Human Wizard or your Elf Thief or your Dwarf Cleric is going to be close to home.

 

[Hussar]

It's not necessarily that the campaigns cover great distances, it's that - unless the home-base town is the melting pot to end all melting pots - many of the PCs travel great distances from their homes in order to get to the campaign.

No matter where the adventure is taking place, odds are very high that at most one of your Norse Human Fighter or your Greek Human Wizard or your Elf Thief or your Dwarf Cleric is going to be close to home.

Yeah this is where we start to run into the wall of different expectations.

And, it really shows in players as well. This style of play is exactly why I get players who play characters that are completely disconnected from the setting. If everyone is basically from "somewhere else", then, well, why bother having a setting at all? Just go with sort of generic D&D Land and off we go.

See, here's my experience in the past little while. Current Campaign - yup everyone is from somewhere else. Except fo the one player that actually tied his character to the setting. Guess what? Everything that happens in the campaign focuses on that character because I can't actually do anything with the other PC's. They have no ties to anything that's going on in the game world, so, nothing is directed at them.

I want pro-active players who will actually give me a reason for playing THESE characters. If the character is so disconnected from the campaign that I could replace the character with another character and nothing in the campaign changes, then, I have no interest in playing in that campaign. I've been there and done that. It bores me to absolute tears now.

Or, to put it another way. If I can pick up my character from Campaign X and plunk him down in Campaign Y without actually changing anything about that character, I am simply not interested in playing. And I'm so discouraged as a DM with those sorts of players. For me, all that does is suck all the air out of the room. Hey, and I put my money where my mouth is, eventually. I left my last group for exactly this reason. Players that created characters that were just basically place markers - no ties, no links to the setting. Yeah, no thanks.

See, the Avengers is fine. I like the Avengers. But, a steady diet of Avengers for the past couple of decades means that I absolutely LOATHE that style of campaign anymore. I would rather not play than sit at an Avengers style table again.

 

[pemerton]

It's not necessarily that the campaigns cover great distances, it's that - unless the home-base town is the melting pot to end all melting pots - many of the PCs travel great distances from their homes in order to get to the campaign.

No matter where the adventure is taking place, odds are very high that at most one of your Norse Human Fighter or your Greek Human Wizard or your Elf Thief or your Dwarf Cleric is going to be close to home.

Yeah this is where we start to run into the wall of different expectations.

<snip>

I want pro-active players who will actually give me a reason for playing THESE characters. If the character is so disconnected from the campaign that I could replace the character with another character and nothing in the campaign changes, then, I have no interest in playing in that campaign.

A thought on this: in LotR the principal characters are from different places - Mirkwood, the Iron Hills, the Shire, Gondor, etc - but most of the time are in situations that are grounded or connected to them in some fashion: the Hobbits were friends before they started journeying together, and they meet Bilbo at Rivendell; Gimli re-enters Khazad-Dum; Legolas meets Elves in Lorien; Aragorn is on a quest to his ancestral homeland, through lands that he has travelled before (and he see the Argonath, the statues of his ancestors, for the first time); when Gandalf arrives at Edoras, and at Minas Tirith, he is not a stranger to his hosts. Etc.

So it seems to me that the idea that @Hussar and I are trying to convey isn't just about geography - although that may sometimes be an aspect of it. It's about all the different ways in which PCs can be connected to a setting: location, kin, history and legacy, etc.

Elrond knows that the Ring Bearer is travelling to Rivendell, and sends out Glorfindel to assist. But Glordindel comes too late to offer any aid but a horse. How would we resolve that in D&D? Galadriel and Celeborn are expecting the Fellowship, and host them, and give them boats. How would we resolve that in D&D?

One way is to keep all the setting on the GM side, under GM control, with the GM deciding everything about connections, friendship, pacing etc. But it could be done differently. Missing Glorfindel, and finding only the elfstone, can be envisaged as the narration of a failed check (CHA, or WIS, or Circles, or whatever suits the system and the table) to have help arrive. The hosting at Lorien can be imagined as the result of a successful reaction check that is buffed by player-established history/backstory.

Rather than looking at this sort of thing as circumventing, we can look at it as playing and as engaging.

 

[Thomas Shey]

But it wasn't super-crucial to the feel of psionics that it used some other mechanical subsystem.

But that gets back to "Its been that way for decades now" (barring 4e, which the traditionalists ignore anyway).

 

[Thomas Shey]

There's a fairly large excluded middle there.

No, you don't have to discuss things you're happy about. That's true. But, at the point where I start doing nothing but bitch and complain about every single thing WotC does, I tend to simply take a break for a while. The world is full of unrelenting negativity parading as objective observation and I don't feel the personal need to add to that.

You want to talk about the changes WotC has made? Fantastic. No problems. There's certainly a conversation to be had there. OTOH, if that conversation is just someone flinging poo because they feel their personal preferences aren't being serviced sufficiently, I don't feel a particular need to be charitable. The pendulum swings. You got 100% everything you wanted for almost a decade. WotC catered to a very specific slice of the fandom for quite a few years while the rest of us got to wait patiently for our turn.

Well, it's our turn now. Instead of being all full of vinegar that you're not the target market anymore, why not be happy that you are still getting everything you want, just not from WotC?

Then again, people who hate watch movies they know they aren't going to like just so they can shout at the world about how much they don't like it completely baffle me.

Well, the great truth is that, especially when it comes to fora, people mostly tend to talk about problems they have with something. It doesn't take a huge sample size to notice the trend over time there. It applies to nearly everything.

 

[Eric V]

See, the Avengers is fine. I like the Avengers. But, a steady diet of Avengers for the past couple of decades means that I absolutely LOATHE that style of campaign anymore. I would rather not play than sit at an Avengers style table again.

I am curious about what this means...the Avengers (at least in the MCU) had a fairly stable lineup, no?

 

[Baron Opal II]

One way is to keep all the setting on the GM side, under GM control, with the GM deciding everything about connections, friendship, pacing etc. But it could be done differently.

And often times it is, players can have plenty of control.

Rather than looking at this sort of thing as circumventing, we can look at it as playing and as engaging.

And I look at it that way, too. That you don't see when and in what manner players taking narrative control is sometimes circumventing and sometimes playing I think is the main obstacle. That's where we are talking past one another.