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

[Micah Sweet]

Also all of your physical features including age (I see you, 3e inexplicable race tables). Why leave anything to player choice? RPGs should just be gambling without money.

You get to pick your job, and your actions in game. Just like real life.

 

[Micah Sweet]

At least its not like the old Traveller game where you could die during character gen.

I always thought that was hilarious, and was bummed the dice didn't roll that way for me at least once.

 

[overgeeked]

At least its not like the old Traveller game where you could die during character gen.

I always thought that was hilarious, and was bummed the dice didn't roll that way for me at least once.

Sometimes that was more fun than the game as played. But again. Risk and reward. You keep pushing the years of service for the reward of more skills and stuff…and face the risk of death or permanent injury.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You are mischaracterizing things & misrepresenting the history of d&d.

No, I don't believe I am.

Those people aren't simply saying that things need to be added, the truth is more nuanced. The support for games with power scales on par with those they prefer is not some whole new mode of play cobbled on top of a system not designed for it like E7, that support was removed entirely. Instead of both options modern d&d* has declared that style is such badwrongfun

I have every faith if there was the sort of support for it that early editions had for the styles they dislike, they'd still be complaining.

The truth is, prior to 3e, D&D had crap support for higher power play; it needed a lot more work than TSR was willing to do to do so. D&D is not a game structure that easily supports multiple power levels, because there's too many moving parts, and those will always be built with some default power level in mind; they always have been. So doing the additional design work to seriously support multiple power levels has always been something that was at best done in a half-way sort of fashion (if you think in most older versions of D&D just starting with better attributes was going to make the bottom end seem significantly less drudgy, I have a bridge to sell you).

The proof is you can trivially sub in lower attributes as arrays or a point distribution in modern D&D versions, but would that satisfy the complaints? No, I'm betting it wouldn't in most cases, because those aren't the only design elements that influence this.

So, in practice, its back to the same thing: who's ox is being gored.

that it shall not even be mentioned, dmg271 has speed factor rules & there is an expansion on that with the greyhawk initiative UA yet gone are all but the most powerful starting options. It's an objective fact that d&d has changed in this way over time & no amount of minced words will change that.

I haven't suggested it hasn't. What I've suggested is the complaints about the changes add up to "It now serves a different set of needs than mine." Well, duh. The fact they aren't someone's needs doesn't mean the change was a mistake; it just means that its at least perceived that there's more people wanting what it serves now than what it served in the AD&D1e days.

(I'm still not even convinced in the early days that it was serving a lot of people that well, but for the first couple years most of the alternatives weren't much different, and after that the networking advantage the system had was pretty well set in).

 

[overgeeked]

You get to pick your job, and your actions in game. Just like real life.

It’s what you do in game that matters. It’s not the cards you’re dealt, it’s how you play them, that counts.

“The cool thing about your character was what you did in the game.”

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

It’s not incongruous. You’re assuming. You shouldn’t pick race. Roll it. Same with occupation/background. But sure, pick your class. If you want to play a weak fighter or a dumb wizard, go for it.

While we're at it, we should roll once to determine the dice you use for attack and saves. Some people get stuck rolling a d8 to hit, others get to roll 3d10 and add em up.

These namby pamby players expect to roll a d20 to hit? If they're lucky!

 

[LordEntrails]

We are supposed to accept it graciously and not be sarcastic about how it bothers us.

Sarcasm is really difficult to convey in this medium. I suggest that you actually tell people you are using sarcasm when you do. Otherwise people are prone to think, and respond, negatively of and to you.

 

[Thomas Shey]

While we're at it, we should roll once to determine the dice you use for attack and saves. Some people get stuck rolling a d8 to hit, others get to roll 3d10 and add em up.

These namby pamby players expect to roll a d20 to hit? If they're lucky!

Rolling hit points was effectively this in reverse in the old days. If your hit dice sat up and begged or alternatively crapped out, that was going to have a strong impact on your combat capabilities for your whole career with that character.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Also all of your physical features including age (I see you, 3e inexplicable race tables). Why leave anything to player choice? RPGs should just be gambling without money.

Forget money, its using the most important currency - leisure time.

 

[overgeeked]

While we're at it, we should roll once to determine the dice you use for attack and saves. Some people get stuck rolling a d8 to hit, others get to roll 3d10 and add em up.

These namby pamby players expect to roll a d20 to hit? If they're lucky!

You’re all but doing that already when you roll stats. Got a STR3, that -5 hurts about as bad as rolling a d12 to attack. Except you still get the 5% chance to crit with the -5. And of course there’s rolled hit points.