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

[overgeeked]

Another thing that changed, at least for me, today people want to play their character with a personality and background. Sometimes emulating an actor or at least putting on an accent and playing to a certain predefined alignment or world view.

Weird. That was basically the first thing I was told roleplaying was. Something like, if you're not sure about a personality, pick a character from books, TV, or movies and play that. We never did accents though. Other than gravely voices on occasion.

Back in 1e days all my friends just played their character with their personality.

We never did. That was expressly forbidden. If someone played themselves we'd be weirded out by that.

The upside was that they CARED deeply about their character and they did everything in their power to make sure that character never died, and collected as much gold and magic items as possible.

Same end state for us but simply because we wanted to gather more stuff and get more and more power in the game. It had zero to do with the personality we played.

 

[overgeeked]

Base it on 'maturity' or not. Ageing certainly changed my emphasis away from combat.

It's a generally terrible assumption to make that maturity and age are connected.

 

[Minigiant]

Lord of the Ring was the reference for high-fantasy as a literary genre, but D&D (and other media, let’s be fair) have pushed the boundaries of fantasy to a point that LotR sound a rather tame-fantasy by modern standard.

But it does not mean that it is a bad reference. The witcher isn't as high fantasy as many other reference and yet, it works quite well. In fact, it works wonderfully great!

it's called Heroic Fantasy. Modern D&D defaults to Heroic Fantasy.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Hey, don't be. It is not that he is inflexible. In fact, it is quite the other way around, usually. These players specifically sought him up because of his reputation for being a nice fellow. These would have been his third group and he did not have the time or the will to build up a full world for them. He accepted to try them up to see what kind of players they were and how HE COULD ADJUST TO THEM! But they were blunt, impolite and frankly, he should have asked me about them. They had approached me first but with two groups of 6 people with my Friday Night D&D once or twice a month, my work and my family, I simply do not have the time for an additional group.

On that one, I must disagree. Sharing the expanse is as close to what I would accept. The campaign world is my creation, my adaptation, my vision. As players, people are invited to build on that, but with certain parameters that I control for the sake of continuity. I don't mind a few campaigns in outlandish settings created from scratch once in a while. But if players are invited to play with me (or seek me out), then they agree to abide by certain rules, guidelines and expectations. If it is not to their taste, I would simply do as my friend did.

The only thing going for a DM's fun is exactly what players forget. The fun in being the DM is to build a world and to share it with your players. It is not to see players destroy it or its basis for the fun of their own agencies. If as a player, someone does not agree with my style, I do not mind at all. But if that person seeks me out, and want me to change everything to suit him and ignore the other players and groups playing in my world, it is a sure way to see me offer that player a one way trip exlclusion from my games.

A player's agency should be within the parameters of the campaign world. The player has to adapt to world, not the other way around.

I GM in a number of systems, and have found far more fun in playing to find out what happens, and to be surprised by what happens, and to not spend so much time in prep and being disappointed players don't share the same love and respect for my lore that I have. I still run 5e, but I've found I tend to take quite a lot more from the players as to what the world and game are all about than I used to. It's hard to run 5e in any other mode than with GM prep, and that's limiting, but I've found tuning it to the players to be more rewarding than just having them play to discover my clever plots or setting details. I'm far less about setting tourism than I used to be.

Oh, and I seem to have more fun doing it as a GM! YMMV, of course, and I'm glad that it does -- diversity in thought is important even in the RPG hobby.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I seem to recall someone saying that this was just a temporary shift in focus, and we weren't going to see stuff like Witchlight and Strixhaven as the standard from now on. WotC wouldn't call something out as optional, then immediately turn it around and say they are going the "optional" way as standard moving forward. Would they?

They would be fools to do so. 5e became popular by being the 5e it was before those publications. That's more of the "branch out and offer something interesting and different from time to time" and not "this is the Way."

 

[Ovinomancer]

Over time the game has moved in expectation from adversarial GM to neutral GM to troupe GM play as an expectation of a normal table.

PCs are baseline more heroic.

OOC solved puzzles are almost nonexistent and traps are moving that direction.

The game is moving toward a much bigger variation of PCs. Someone playing a bad@$$ 1' pixie riding on the shoulders of a cuddly 9' neon blue wendigo would work in even some published adventures.

The game is getting more streamlined over time. While 3e had more volume of rules than 2e, they were technically written better so as to be more cohesive as a whole. 4e removed a lot of crunch but still had a fairly technical combat structure. 5e has removed even more rules exceptions and has been pretty adamant about avoiding adding in more complexity over time.

Oddly, I've become convinced it's my job as a GM to be adversarial! I play the adversaries, right, and they should have some heft and weight to them, so I need to make sure I'm bringing as much honest adversity to the PCs as I can! Of course, you might note a few things in that sentence -- adversity should be pointed at the PCs, and it should be honest. If I'm playing silly games to screw over players, I am doing both of those wrong. But, yeah, I absolutely need to be thinking in a very adversarial way when I GM.

 

[Micah Sweet]

They would be fools to do so. 5e became popular by being the 5e it was before those publications. That's more of the "branch out and offer something interesting and different from time to time" and not "this is the Way."

Tasha's was billed as optional for an eyeblink. I wouldn't put it past them.

 

[Helldritch]

I GM in a number of systems, and have found far more fun in playing to find out what happens, and to be surprised by what happens, and to not spend so much time in prep and being disappointed players don't share the same love and respect for my lore that I have. I still run 5e, but I've found I tend to take quite a lot more from the players as to what the world and game are all about than I used to. It's hard to run 5e in any other mode than with GM prep, and that's limiting, but I've found tuning it to the players to be more rewarding than just having them play to discover my clever plots or setting details. I'm far less about setting tourism than I used to be.

Oh, and I seem to have more fun doing it as a GM! YMMV, of course, and I'm glad that it does -- diversity in thought is important even in the RPG hobby.

It is far from being a tourists' ride in my games. I do let players build things and surprise me and believe me when I tell you that they surprise me more than my fair share. But they do it within parameters that we all agreed upon. You don't need to be a Pixie barbarian or a bunny rogue or whatever to be special. It is not your background that makes you a hero, it is your adventures and your choices.

I get a great sense of accomplishment when my players beat the adventures in a way I did not foresee. As much as I take great pleasure when I surprise them with a plot twist they did not expected. D&D is a dynamic game. But we can put guidelines so that we all enjoy ourselves.

 

[Older Beholder]

One thing I've found, which may just be the groups I've played with...

But when I started in 2E games, they were less campaign oriented. Not that it didn't happen, but it was more like an episodic TV show where you'd play a module, (or play through a dungeon crawl written by the DM) and then just move onto whatever came out (or was written) next. There was no real over-arcing plot.

These days the groups I've played with, there is an emphasis on the campaign from the start being more cohesive and planned.

Perhaps this is due to the modern trend of full campaign adventure paths vs shorter modules from the 2E era?
I can't really speak to how this evolved over time as I stopped playing pretty early on in 3E and didn't come back till 5E. It's more a direct comparison between now and then.

 

[BookTenTiger]

The dice used to be much bigger.