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

[Campbell]

I think we should be careful when we talk about new gamers as a monolith. In my experience the sort of players who take to more callaborative world building tend not to be attracted to traditional gamer spaces. I have had tremendous success recruiting from LARPers, people I know from film school, the anime fan meetup group I am part of, writer's groups and the like.

 

[Helldritch]

I think we should be careful when we talk about new gamers as a monolith. In my experience the sort of players who take to more callaborative world building tend not to be attracted to traditional gamer spaces. I have had tremendous success recruiting from LARPers, people I know from film school, the anime fan meetup group I am part of, writer's groups and the like.

I agree. Most RPGamers are on the "roll" side when first introduced into RPGs. It takes a while for them to learn to "Role and Roll". For some reason, even if "Role" is first, it is usually the last thing to get integrated into the play habits of new players. I did see first timers being extremely good on the "Role" side. But they were in the minority. A very small minority.

 

[overgeeked]

I think we should be careful when we talk about new gamers as a monolith. In my experience the sort of players who take to more callaborative world building tend not to be attracted to traditional gamer spaces. I have had tremendous success recruiting from LARPers, people I know from film school, the anime fan meetup group I am part of, writer's groups and the like.

I agree. Most RPGamers are on the "roll" side when first introduced into RPGs. It takes a while for them to learn to "Role and Roll". For some reason, even if "Role" is first, it is usually the last thing to get integrated into the play habits of new players. I did see first timers being extremely good on the "Role" side. But they were in the minority. A very small minority.

Absolutely. If you want a story-heavy experience, pull from people who are interested in the story as the primary driver. If you want a game-heavy experience, pull from people who are interested in the game as the primary driver. Which is why when most gamers say they want "story" in their games, I'm basically at a loss to understand what they're talking about. Near as I can tell, they seem to mean the micro level of a quest. "Here's a thing, go do it, come back, and I'll give you a token." If they mean anything more involved than that, or more story-like, it starts running into trouble with what story means and what game means.

 

[Helldritch]

Absolutely. If you want a story-heavy experience, pull from people who are interested in the story as the primary driver. If you want a game-heavy experience, pull from people who are interested in the game as the primary driver. Which is why when most gamers say they want "story" in their games, I'm basically at a loss to understand what they're talking about. Near as I can tell, they seem to mean the micro level of a quest. "Here's a thing, go do it, come back, and I'll give you a token." If they mean anything more involved than that, or more story-like, it starts running into trouble with what story means and what game means.

I fully agree. The less experienced the player, the more die roll that player want. There are exceptions of course. When a player wants more story, I have to ask what he means by that. The best explanation I often give them is that Role playing is like cooking. You want a meal? You want a really good meal? Then give me ingredients. The ingredients you have to give me in a Role playing game are :
Feedback: I need to know what your character want. If you say nothing. You get nothing.

Interaction: If you stand there doing nothing, taking no risk. You get nothing. No pain, no gain.

The ability to listen: Even if it is not your turn, listen. Interaction with other players do not limit itself to tactical combat and planification. Carousing, arguing and telling that you are right (even if wrong) are great story movers.

Good reaction time: If you like something I did with a situation, npc or idea, tell me right now! If I learn that you like such and such 6 weeks after, the meat is cold. Your chance has passed.

When a player gives me all this, we have a good recipe that will be tailored to the character and the player's taste. When all players do this, we have an all you can eat buffet all the time!

Side note: I called my friend to know what the game was that we played. It was Fate in 2004. The first edition of it. It surely has evolved and better itself.

 

[overgeeked]

The less experienced the player, the more die roll that player want.

Well, I think that's where Campbell has it right. If the player has experience with games, they're likely going to push for more game mechanics to resolve things. But, if the player has more experience with writing, film, TV, etc, they're likely going to push for more story-based means to resolve things.

The best explanation I often give them is that Role playing is like cooking. You want a meal? You want a really good meal? Then give me ingredients. The ingredients you have to give me in a Role playing game are :

Feedback: I need to know what your character want. If you say nothing. You get nothing.

The flip side of that is not knowing what they can reasonably expect. But yeah, an unmotivated character is not a character for stories or RPGs.

Interaction: If you stand there doing nothing, taking no risk. You get nothing. No pain, no gain.

Yep. If you want to have a blacksmith who settles down and makes horse shoes, that's great. But this is a fantasy adventure game. Make an adventurer. A character who wants more than to be a blacksmith or shopkeeper. No risk, no reward.

The ability to listen: Even if it is not your turn, listen. Interaction with other players do not limit itself to tactical combat and planification. Carousing, arguing and telling that you are right (even if wrong) are great story movers.

I keep running into players who take their main character syndrome so seriously they can barely even acknowledge the other characters in the group. "No really, you actually have to talk to each other. And no, you don't have to do silly voices."

Good reaction time: If you like something I did with a situation, npc or idea, tell me right now! If I learn that you like such and such 6 weeks after, the meat is cold. Your chance has passed.

Well, I wouldn't go that extreme, but it's definitely harder to do if there's a huge delay. Other, similar things can be done in future.

When a player gives me all this, we have a good recipe that will be tailored to the character and the player's taste. When all players do this, we have an all you can eat buffet all the time!

Yeah. When it sings, it sings. Too bad it's so rare. It's weird how hard it is to talk about preferences and assumptions. It doesn't help that it's all but impossible to have those kinds of conversations in public spaces without them instantly devolving into shouting and arguments and accusations.

Side note: I called my friend to know what the game was that we played. It was Fate in 2004. The first edition of it. It surely has evolved and better itself.

Ah. I don't think I ever played that version of Fate. My first exposure to Fate was with Spirit of the Century in 2006.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Long for a group, 1 or 2 years. Long for a campaign? So far 35 years of Greyhawk, with many different groups. Dozens (note the plural here) of them.

You didn't answer the question asked.

Again, you said most. That is your experience. Players love to see their former incarnations being put to use. That the kingdom they built 20 years ago (real time) be a thing in the campaign world. To see that their character is still a major player in the world event and can be their patron. You mixed up high level with longevity of the campaign and campaign with campaign world. At some point, a campaign can be both a campaign in a campaign. @Lanefan's campaign, unlike mine has been uninterrupted for quite a long number of years. A free form game like the one you propose does not suit well for such long campaigns. Unless you record every single sessions and adjust the world accordingly, but then, the free form becomes a fixed form campaign. These "exploratory" campaigns are best suited for one shots, from a single game to a campaign lasting one or two years. And my guess is that two years of every week play is a bit stretchy.

It's fun that you start by chastising my about "[my] experience" and then go right into asserting your experience. And continuing to be incorrect about how games other than D&D work.

Familliarity for playing a little bit and understanding that it was not really my cup of tea. But still interested because the concept is nice. So far I have played a lot of game systems that are not D&D. You assumed that I played only D&D. You are dead wrong on that one.

No, I assumed that, since you listed a number, you've played many games that have the same authority structure are D&D -- basically where players only have action declaration authority and feelings authority for their PCs and the GM has everything else. I don't think you've had experience outside of that authority structure because you keep asserting things that would have been shown to be incorrect if you had. Unless, of course, your experience was with others that also didn't get it and tried really hard to play the game the same way they knew how.

And you know how I might know about this? Because, at one time, I also had no such experience, and said many of the same things you're saying here, and didn't understand what I was talking about. I grew up on D&D, played other games that had similar structures, and thought that was how RPGs worked. Took awhile, and really it took my getting totally hooked on the concept of Blades in the Dark to try and figure out how it might work by discarding everything I thought I knew about how it did. So, yeah, when I see people making the same kinds of arguments I did back when I was clueless, and which I know are actually wrong (not opinion wrong) now, it's fairly easy to guess what experience base they have.

Again, familiarity does not make me an expert in the play style you hold so high. The few examples I have lived through were not conclusive for me as I have seen the "I WIN" button too often. Be it free form or in the resource expenditure way of doing it. And again, I did say that the form had its merits but it requires a specific set of players that are not that common.

I run and play 5e, so please don't try to make this a me evangelizing a favored game over other games. When I run 5e, it's with the stock authority structure, I'm just well aware of what it is and how it works and can make some changes sometimes without trouble. I also play other games that don't work at all like D&D. Currently I'm in a Stonetop game that is a riff on Dungeon World. These games feature many of the same tropes as D&D -- fantasy, early iron age, frontier, scary monsters -- but do not play the same way at all. My GM right now has zero idea what's going to happen in the next session, but is literally drooling to find out, and won't be doing any prep because it wouldn't help. We know where the game is now -- my character and another PC are being attacked by some agitators and guards and are in big trouble -- but we don't know where it will go. I might just win the day with an impassioned plea for mercy right off the bat and then we go from there and see what happens next. I might botch that, and we go from there and see what happens next. Dunno. And the town we're in we all just learned a lot about it last session because I made a horrid string of bad rolls and that resulted in the town getting fleshed out in ways I didn't want because that was the dramatic need evinced in play there -- the desire to help this town and solve a few problems. So, since I failed, we found out that the town is more under the sway of dark powers of despair because my character's main thing is hope. Had I not had my string of failures, the town wouldn't be enthralled as it is and we wouldn't be facing what should be a friendly populace but instead is twisted with fear of the outsider. And before someone says "that could happen in D&D," sure, it could, but only if the GM decided so, on their own. In Stonetop, I had the opportunity to set things as I'd like them, failed, and the GM was required to pay off my PC dramatic needs in the consequences.

 

[Ovinomancer]

And I have seen the other way around. D&D is #1 for more than one reason. The easiness to learn isn't the least of them. Even basic and 1ed were not that hard to understand. Even on your own. I have seen players jump in the game with a handed character and start playing with a bit of explanation along the way. Not a lot of systems can do that. And now, in this age with You Tube, Twitch TV and others, looking at a game and learning to play is even more easier than ever. Your assumptions are simply tainted with what you like. Same as me. I do not claim to have an all encompassing knowledge of the way you play. But I have tried it a bit and didn't like it. The people I was playing with were new players in the hobby (save me and the GM) and it showed. A more structured approach would have served them better. We switched, I became the new DM again, and we played Beyond the Supernatural, a horror game genre with the Palladium system. It was much more better suited to their taste.

D&D isn't #1 for ease of entry. It's not an easy game to learn. I've taught D&D to new players, and I've taught other games that we're discussing here, and the latter we far easier for people with no experience. And far harder for people that have only D&D-alike experience. Learning to play D&D is at best an impediment to learning other games that operate differently.

Again, I like 5e. Played it a lot until recently, when the games came to an end due to group in-life pressures and haven't evened out to start again, which we will. Most recently I've run Aliens, which very much has the same authority structure as D&D - a bit tighter even. I really like that game. So, no, this isn't about me pushing games I like against games I don't like. It's about having actual experience with a broader range and reporting on actual experiences. I mean, before you made the claim that it's harder to learn a non-D&D game with a different authority structure, had you ever tried to do it? Nope. But you're claiming authority here, largely on some appeal to popularity with regards to D&D. It plays well to others that don't have experience and believe your assertions, but for people that do have experience it's just the same kinds of bad assumptions that get spit out any time the topic comes up and someone feels D&D is being attacked.

 

[Campbell]

I will say this if your game is primarily oriented around overcoming challenges / adventures / dungeons you do need to be somewhat careful about the parts of the setting players may have a say over. I don't think chamberlains, maids, clerks are good examples though because in most cases those moments feel like a set of hoops to jump through to get to the real adventure. I am somewhat alright with such challenges being obviated on either side of the screen.

 

[Hussar]

/edit to delete - unnecessarily hostile. My bad.

 

[Hussar]

It's fascinating to me how many new DMs there are!

I belong to the reddit DM Academy Discord, and they have a sample of 1,391 members who identify as DMs. Of these, over 80% identify as being "new" or "learning" DMs with 0-4 years experience.

I think this is really wonderful! And I've been thinking about what the needs of these "new" and "learning" DMs are compared to those of us who chipped our teeth using just books or word-of-mouth / play experience. I wonder how many of these DMs are learning from streamed shows, and if the soft skills and hidden game rules to D&D are conveyed through that medium.

Not only that, but, those new DM's have access to a language that has evolved over time to actually talk about these issues. It would be a REALLY different experience than in the past.