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

Yes, if you look at the tables for NPC creation, CR is linked softly to the Proficiency bonus. But you are supposed to average the offensive and defensive averages of CR to calculate the final CR.

BUT, where you error is thinking that an NPC skill must be equal to the prof plus ability modifier. No where are their rules for NPCs that say that. There is no reason that an NPC with an strength ability modifier of -1 and a prof of +2 can't have an Athletics skill of +20. If you are detail oriented and feel a need to justify it, just give them a trait "Superior Athlete".

Besides, CR only matters for NPCs that you might want to worry about the PCs fighting. and then intend to award XP for defeating.
where I agree... and I have as I said house ruled it as such, the argument 'it doesn't say you can't' doesn't work real well... cause it doesn't say I can't make an NPC CR 1/4 and give him a 132 AC but it doesn't say i CAN...

that is what I am driving at I think it should say "Go ahead give non combatants X Y and Z to make them social encounters.

in a perfect world maybe even have a CR system for skill/social stuff... but since I don't like/believe in the combat CR system I guess that would not work much better when they have had 50 years of practice with combat stuff..
 

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Unfortunately the only solution there is to just patiently wait them out, no matter how long it takes. Sooner or later at least one of them will get bored enough to have their PC try something - even if it's just picking a fight with another PC or doing something potentially suicidal - which can start things moving again. And if they really have hit a dead end (it happens) but can't think outside the box enough to consider a different approach or even abandoning that activity/mission and trying another, that's a pretty un-creative group of players. :)

If you don't wait them out it'll just encourage them to use this stalling tactic again whenever the next move isn't obvious.
1st... I don't beleive in 'teaching' or 'forceing' experienced players anything (I have for years run newbie campaigns at cons at 2 different stores and for my niece and her friends... so that is different)

2nd... I have always found talking it out is best. "Hey, you know game would be more fun if some or all of you had personal goals" "Hey, the plot hook you picked up and threw away took me 5 hours of prep, and the second one you jumped over and ran from was my back up so if you don't do something I don't have much more preped" have BOTH been things I have more or less said (although both in 3e)
 

I didn't read the whole thread, so I apologize if it has already been mentioned... internet, social media, and online availability of rules and alternate rules.

1e - We had Dragon Magazine and Tournaments. This resulted in very little cross-pollination of ideas and when it happened it was a slow process. This is also a reason why it is difficult to quantify the feel of playing 1e D&D.

2e - Dragon Magazine, Tournaments, and later in the life we had newsgroups rec.games.frp.dnd at the very tail end there was an official D&D website (remember the Beholder on the front page). Still very little cross-pollination of ideas and it was slow.

3/3.5e - Internet blows up. Eric Noah's site (pre-cursor to this site) and discussion forums. Ruleset is put online (OGL) and any individual could easily post their rules variations online. The result is cross-pollination of ideas proliferates very quickly. Combined with the granular and detailed nature of the rule sets this results in a meta-game of optimized character creation.

I have not yet moved on from 3.5e, so I cannot comment on the later additions.
 

One of the hidden assumptions of the game setting since 2nd edition at least has been that there are professional adventurers who go around professionally adventuring. IIRC the Forgotten Realms grey box (1e) even had the idea that adventuring companies would register their names and members and I think a symbol as part of the setting.
I don't mind this sort of thing as a setting conceit. I've always kinda seen it that there's something of an adventuring fraternity out there which may or may not have formed into discrete and identified Companies over time.
In all honesty though if you start picking at the equipment lists you'll find all sorts of examples beyond just healing potions. I mean, why should full plate ever be available? Or chain mail in various sizes from halflings through goliaths? Seems like the kind of thing that wouldn't be in stock and you'd need to have hand crafted - but of course that would either slow the game down or create weeks of "downtime" that would need to be glossed over as "well you wait two weeks until Dorfin's new full plate has been finished and the time passes without incident" or do other forms of handwaving so lots of folks just don't tend to bother. (Also just glancing through the equipment list if you assume it's all available it assumes that merchants will have 1000gp spyglasses lying around to sell and frankly that seems even less likely without an adventuring economy than the potions of healing to me).
I've always had it that full (or field) plate is bespoke to the wearer and thus is pretty much never available "off the rack". Other fancy things like spyglasses (which are immensely overpriced in 5e IMO; I suspect a typo stuck an extra '0' on the price and for some reason it stuck) I randomly roll to see if there's any to be had if someone's looking, with the odds not great anywhere other than a big city.

That said, I've no objection to anything that creates more downtime, as level advancement is (or very much can be) otherwise insanely fast in setting-time. I think someone posited on here once that in 5e a character - using RAW-ish encounter rates and taking no downtime - can get from 1st to 20th in less than an in-setting month, which is ridiculous. And, back on topic, this is another change that's happened over time: level advancement has become much faster both at the table and in the setting.
 

1st... I don't beleive in 'teaching' or 'forceing' experienced players anything (I have for years run newbie campaigns at cons at 2 different stores and for my niece and her friends... so that is different)
If the extent of their attempts to solve problems in game is to stare at the buttons in their character sheet or do nothing and wait to be fed the next plot token, they’re not “experienced” players. No matter how many years they’ve played.
2nd... I have always found talking it out is best. "Hey, you know game would be more fun if some or all of you had personal goals" "Hey, the plot hook you picked up and threw away took me 5 hours of prep, and the second one you jumped over and ran from was my back up so if you don't do something I don't have much more preped" have BOTH been things I have more or less said (although both in 3e)
I don’t pull back the curtain or complain about how much prep I do. If they’re not interested, they’re not interested. I run player-driven games. Not prepped plots. I just want players to be more active than “press buttons” or “do nothing until given the next plot token.”
 
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If the extent of their attempts to solve problems in game is to stare at the buttons in their character sheet or do nothing and wait to be fed the next plot token, they’re not “experienced” players. No matter how many years they’ve played.
i disagree... now if they are REALLY as bad as you make them out to be I may not be the right DM for them... but I doubt they are and I am pretty sure that EVERYONE even us old TSR players have 'looked at buttons' (I normally call them options) a few times

edit: there is nothing wrong with wanting 100% character sheet only... it just isn't my way (I don't mind 75% sheet 25% player though and I could most likely run 90/10)
 

i disagree... now if they are REALLY as bad as you make them out to be I may not be the right DM for them... but I doubt they are and I am pretty sure that EVERYONE even us old TSR players have 'looked at buttons' (I normally call them options) a few times
Yeah, I’m being as literal as I can be. They went to a spot, “looked around” with a perception and investigation check…then camped there for a week in-game…just waiting for something to happen. Literally refused to do anything more.
edit: there is nothing wrong with wanting 100% character sheet only... it just isn't my way (I don't mind 75% sheet 25% player though and I could most likely run 90/10)
There’s nothing wrong with any style, but not every style fits at every table. Some preferences are simply incompatible.
 

I think, in many ways, D&D is a reflection of the larger/broader culture from which it spawned and has been continually reiterated by/within.

At its dawning, the Saturday afternoon kung-fu movies of the day gave us a Monk class. A resurrgent interest in Tolkien's work -thanks to a few different animated films or tv specials- put Aragorn front and center, leading to a player who wanted to play an "Aragorn," bringing us the Ranger class. The Tolkien species/race options are apparent.

Lovecraft and Moorcock, Vance and Anderson, et al. Gygax & Arneson's literary influences are well documented and shaped their conceptions of how the game would be formed.

Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) and subsequent work coming into the common discourse with The Hero's Journey and Power of Myth ('87 and '88 respectively) clearly influenced both designers, writers, and players of BECMI, AD&D 1e, and probably 2e.

Disney released The Sword in the Stone in '63. The Rankin-Bass Hobbit in '77 and Return of the King in '80. With the Bakshi psychedelic masterpiece "Lord of the Rings" sandwiched in '78. The Last Unicorn came in '82. The Black Cauldron was '85 (arguably during 1e's hay day, and the Satanic Panic) but may have influenced development for 2e.

The D&D Saturday morning cartoon, of course, influenced and/or was influenced by the release of Unearthed Arcana, adding Barbarian, Cavalier, and Acrobat (as well as numerous additional rules options, spells and magic items) to the game.

The '80s success of the Schwarzenager Conan films can not be ignored. Excalibur! Legend. Time Bandits. The Neverending Story. The Dark Crystal. Fantasy -specifically heroic adventure fantasy- was having a clear and GLORIOUS moment.

The Dragonlance original trilogy, a proud derivative, cemented AD&D's early successes and set a tone and mood for 2e, with their publications in '84, spring and fall of '85. Their second trilogy -throughout '86- enjoyed continuing success.

With the '80s coming to their end, a new edition (following over a decade of D&D and AD&D) must have made some sense. It was the changing of an era. Society -or so we thought- was beginning to make some (slow and long overdue) changes. With 2e's release in '89, and BECM being compiled into the Rules Cyclopedia in '91, D&D was ahead of the game, as it were.

There was some...organizing...and reorganizing. An attempt to codify certain things further than AD&D had done. A good deal of streamlining. Organizing the multiple different Monster books into a single binder where you could access everything. Simplifying the class list (to not include Unearthed Arcanaa bit of restructuring - we lose the Monk in the PHB. Bard becomes a "Rogue" category class with the Thief. Mages get specialists (including the original, Illusionist) but widely open wizard-type options. The introduction of Clerical "spheres" for deities and spells begins a long, and ongoing, broadening of Clerical archetype from the healers to the battle-priests (but NOT the same as a Paladin. No no ;) to the nature guardian Druid types.

D&D changes hands from TSR to WotC and 3e is born at another moment of pivotal societal change, the new millenium. Computers have become ubiquitous. There is, particularly among the "nerd-/geek-dom" to which most D&D gamers were prescribed, are generally video gamers as well. Computer programming is becoming something of a "hobby" even for those that don't take it on as a profession.

The...."exacting" nature of coding begins to become a societal "view" or expectation. So we get a game that is VERY detailed. A system for all contingencies...just like a computer program. If you don't put it in there, the program won't be able to "understand" your commands or do what you want it to.

So 3e gets granular...and then microscopic... in its exacting completeness. Everything -combat, saves, spell casting, skills- gets broken up into component parts, +1s that add and add and add to make you more powerful. Class archetpyes are split off and split off and split off again into ever-narrowing slices of fantasy-adventurer flavors...and/or directly ripped out of other media -films, comic books ('90s Psylocke is lookin' at you, Soulknife), tv- to be turned into versions for a D&D character.

We also see, I feel, we begin to see the creeping growth of an expectation of "winning." Of D&D being a game that you can "beat." That the monsters and challenges MUST by conquerable by the players.

Coming toward the end of that decade, technology is taking leaps and bounds in availability...AND, notably, getting smaller and smaller and thinner and flatter and (allegedly) easier and easier to access. Makes sense then, that 2008's 4e is an attempt to do all of that with what had become 3.x's MASSIVE sprawling system of options upon options upon options upon options...you get the idea.

4e is going to be as easy to play and accessible to -not just RPGers, not just D&D's loyal fandom- but ALL of geek-dom and young people as a video game. Streamlined, streamlined,and streamlined some more...to literally play, at the table, like an MMO. Characters have set powers and suites of selectable options that are very carefully pruned and shaped to create a particular flavor of character. The "winnable D&D, PCs just fight-and can automatically defeat- and move on to the next reward" attitudes begun in 3e have become ubiquitous as a culture of immediate gratification (internet) and pure lack of consequences (everyone gets a trophy for showing up) has seeped, quite pervasively, into the societal zeitgeist... so, not surprisingly, found among D&D gamers (who are almsot certainly also video gamers and/or playing their RPG games online).

Thankfully, from my perspective, that version of D&D does not succeed/last for a full decade and 5e releases in 2014.

Much has been written about 5e's desired design aesthetic of "returning" to some of D&D's origins, while maintaining a robust -but not persnickety or overly granular as the 3.x's- rules set. What would people suppose were the pervading cultural elements -aside from 4e's apparent monetary failures- that might have contributed to this change of direction and tone and preferences for 5e?
 
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I’m not talking rules or mechanics. I mean in terms of theme, tone, and aesthetic.
In my groups, the themes and tone of play (aesthetics to a much lesser extent) always depended greatly on the current campaign. Right from when I started playing 35 years ago some campaigns were more epic in style, others were more 'grounded', while others still had a definite comedic bent. For some campaigns, the theme and tone of play would shift from adventure to adventure.

The only overall shift I think I can point to over the past few decades, from 1e to 5e, would be that campaigns that have an overarching intent or storyline have become more common and prevalent. Part and parcel of that is the "expectation" that the characters are created for that campaign and are on a journey to the end; once it's over that may be the end of their story.

For example, when I first played through the Desert of Desolation series, for us it was more like a longer module than a campaign in of itself. Later, I was in two separate campaigns that started right from session 0 with our characters seeking to discover what happened to magic in the world. Most recently have been the campaigns that used either a book-sized adventure (such as many current WotC releases) or adventure path as their basis.

That said, I'm also still in 'wandering adventurer'-style campaigns that engage with independent and unrelated modules. So perhaps it boils down to simply that the landscape and possibilities for styles of play has gotten richer and more diverse, and that's really darn cool. :)
 

I'm going to disagree with the idea that long backstories for characters is some new development. When I ran 1e back in the 80s, my players would create genealogies connecting their characters, their ancestry. I have zines from the 80s and 90s that have whole sections dedicated to character backgrounds. Somewhere I have the two-page backstory a player handed to me for their first level halfling in 2e.

I am not saying anime backstores are in D&D but anime aesthetic and combat.

Many new fans don't see their fighters like a former baker in off the rack plate armor anymore..
 

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