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

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..
Not sure if any of my players ever thought of themselves as bakers. Fighters either were trained in every weapon and armor, or were weapon masters. Clerics belonged to churches and were members of a heirarchy, thieves were members of guilds that had learned the skills of the trade. Most human characters were 16-20 years old- certainly not old enough to have learned 2 professions.
 

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proficiency is tied to CR... CR is tied to combat ability... I house rule around it but it is a flaw that needs a house rule around
when I read the DMG I can just notice how they encourage DM the create things that fit their needs. The section on creating monster is presented as guidelines and help.
it’s true that they don’t specify explicitly that you can untie PB and CR, but it’s not a flaw to forget to name all the permission a DM have to build up his world.
 

Interesting reads.

I think there's two points I where I see the biggest changes.

D&D as a genre has moved through time similar to how music genres work. If you take 80's hair metal as a genre - the Poison, Def Leppard, sort of thing - you have a pretty small, very popular, but narrow music genre. But, it got really popular. So, it expanded. You then get groups like Guns and Roses adding in new sounds. Then it grows into Alternative with Nirvana. Now, it's such a huge genre that it's subdivided into a bajillion little niche genres, each with it's own fans and lots of crossover. Once upon a time, adding rap and RunDMC to Aerosmith was innovative and new. Now, you have groups like Linkin' Park where rap/rock/alternative is the norm.

D&D evolved in kind of the same way. Way back in the early days, say, pre-1981(ish), most games were pretty similar - the game was new and we simply hadn't explored out that far. Then you have the fad days and the burn out of the 80's where you see all sorts of experimentation - the birth of the adventure path/scripted campaign with Dragonlance, for example.

Forward into the 90's and you see all sorts of non-D&D games all over the place. And, IMO, these games were getting a fair bit of play. FASA (of Battletech fame) was a pretty damn large RPG company. White Wolf was also. You had all these mid-sized (for RPG companies) companies pumping out all sorts of stuff that was then circling back into D&D. The notion of stronger emphasis on (sorry, not sure what the right word for this is) more theatrical style play. More improv acting style focusing on character and personality building. Which in turn meant making the game a lot less instantly lethal since that would get in the way of character development.

Then you get into 2000's and the explosion of the game and the Internet. Both have HUGE impacts on the game. For one, you have all this 3rd party stuff coming out for D&D, which leads to all sorts of discussion about the game that was virtually impossible before. The notion of the "professional game developer" rises. Massive increases in production values. And, because of all of this, a huge fracturing of fans into niche's. Some niches, like the OSR for example, are quite large, but, everyone has their own little niche and approaches to the game.

4e then makes the mistake of strongly catering to a specific niche - the public gamer - the gamer that plays with strangers. And it brings in all sorts of imagery and concepts tied to that. The characters are Big Damn Heroes because, when you play with strangers for 2 or 3 hours on a Wednesday evening, or for 1 hour at lunch break, you don't have all this time to develop characters the way you would when playing for 9 hours on a Saturday night with friends. So, WotC had to try to step in and not only create a system for play but a system where strangers could play what they wanted to play without everything having to be vetted by the DM all the time.

Then 5e comes along and rolls some of that back. They soften the Big Damn Hero thing somewhat - but, a lot of the aesthetics are still there. The Tolkienesque races are fading and the newer ones are getting more and more popular. Magic is far closer to Harry Potter than earlier fantasy - it's entirely plausible that your group includes all casters (of varying levels of casting ability) and quite probably that every single round of every single combat encounter (and probably most non-combat encounters as well) will feature spells and quite probably multiple spells.

To me, the shift from Tolkien to Harry Potter style fantasy is probably the biggest change yet. Back in the early days, you might have a single spell cast in an entire encounter and many encounters wouldn't have any. Now, the first thing players look at is for what spell they are going to cast this time. Watch your next session. Count how many spells are cast in a single session. It's astonishing. The dominance of the spell system in D&D is, to me, the single biggest change in the game from early days to now.
 

Not sure if any of my players ever thought of themselves as bakers. Fighters either were trained in every weapon and armor, or were weapon masters. Clerics belonged to churches and were members of a heirarchy, thieves were members of guilds that had learned the skills of the trade. Most human characters were 16-20 years old- certainly not old enough to have learned 2 professions.

I mean a common mentality in old school gaming was that fighters and rogues didn't need to train long to be member of their class. They were everymen that trained under another fighter for a few months. This was extremely common for peasant heroes. The butcher, baker, candlestick maker, and farmhand would be lvl 1 fighters or thieves.

In modern D&D, fans don't usually accept anything less than full on squiring, long term combat tutors, years in the pits, or long military service to be a fighter.

AKA in modern D&D, the idea that any character who survives a death funnel can be a PC and take a class is ridiculous,
 


In modern D&D, fans don't usually accept anything less than full on squiring, long term combat tutors, years in the pits, or long military service to be a fighter.

AKA in modern D&D, the idea that any character who survives a death funnel can be a PC and take a class is ridiculous,
I've never encountered that attitude in real life D&D players. I've only seen some people express that prejudice on internet forums. It seems to be based on a simulationist idea, which was in D&D from the start, if widely ignored by those who took a narrative approach to the game.
 

I've never encountered that attitude in real life D&D players. I've only seen some people express that prejudice on internet forums. It seems to be based on a simulationist idea, which was in D&D from the start, if widely ignored by those who took a narrative approach to the game.

I get it though.

A lot of people had very humancentric very medieval campaign worlds back in the day. Therefore the ONLY human fighters would be full on knights, lords, higher tier man-at-arms and a few bastards of nobles.

Such people would not be delving in monster infested caves and dungeons. Not at the number required. Most would be rich or bound to a lord. So commoners had to be rationalized as capable fighters by lowering the narrative standard.

As D&D became less medieval, more narrative options for fighters opened up and the "rando commoner in plate" option closed.
 

A lot of people had very humancentric very medieval campaign worlds back in the day. Therefore the ONLY human fighters would be full on knights, lords, higher tier man-at-arms and a few bastards of nobles.
Did they? Playing D&D in the 1980s we drew on fictional sources like LotR and Moorcock, not medieval history.
Not at the number required.
What number is required? So far I I can seen, the number required is equal to the number of players.
As D&D became less medieval, more narrative options for fighters opened up and the "rando commoner in plate" option closed.
"Narrative" is farm boy picks up a sword to defend his village and becomes a hero. That's always been a common trope in fantasy fiction, and hence in D&D. I haven't seen any change.
 

Did they? Playing D&D in the 1980s we drew on fictional sources like LotR and Moorcock, not medieval history.
They drew on that. But the settings were just Medieval Europe and Asia with the names changed.

What number is required? So far I I can seen, the number required is equal to the number of players.
It wasn't required. But I've never seen a pre3e game without fighter-type PC or NPC hirelling being less than 20% of the party.

"Narrative" is farm boy picks up a sword to defend his village and becomes a hero. That's always been a common trope in fantasy fiction, and hence in D&D. I haven't seen any change.
The difference is the farm boy isn't a fighter until they get training.

In the old days, this could be a very short time. You can even replace a dead party member with a random farmhand from the village.

In 5e, it's pretty much suggested that it takes a long while for an instructor to turn a farmboy into a fighter. The 5e fighter is an advanced specialty occupational route. A farmboy can bash 30 raiders with a makeshift but he 300% isn't a fighter in 5e until someone trains him or he reads a bunch of training manuals.
 

They drew on that.
Who? I'm talking about myself and the people I played D&D with.
But the settings were just Medieval Europe and Asia with the names changed.
Which settings? I played in homebrew settings (although I used the Third Imperium for Traveller).
It wasn't required. But I've never seen a pre3e game without fighter-type PC or NPC hirelling being less than 20% of the party.
Fighters are common heroes. I don't see what that has to do with the price of fish.
The difference is the farm boy isn't a fighter until they get training.

In the old days, this could be a very short time. You can even replace a dead party member with a random farmhand from the village.

In 5e, it's pretty much suggested that it takes a long while for an instructor to turn a farmboy into a fighter.
Err, where is that written?
The 5e fighter is an advanced specialty occupational route. A farmboy can bash 30 raiders with a makeshift but he 300% isn't a fighter in 5e until someone trains him or he reads a bunch of training manuals.
There is absolutely nothing in any of the rulebooks to suggest that.
 

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