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

[Azzy]

I've found the same. If you say something is banned, you'll inevitably get push back and arguments.

Really? Be envious of my player pool, then. Be envious! Bwa hah hah!

If you have things gated behind rolls, the problem self-corrects. The compromise I've found is for players to pitch a few concepts and I pick what comes into play. The player gets to play something they want and I can simply not pick the stuff I don't want in the game. Everyone wins and no hurt feelings or arguments.

I typicaly tell my players that they can ask for something beyond the PHB (and any setting-specific races for the setting), but I get to veto options that don't fit IMO.

 

[Azzy]

That's a major wayD&D changed.

In the beginning the 70sand 80s, the world and the storywas humanocentric. Elves and Dwarfs were on decline.

Around the 90s, fantasy was still humanocentric in setting but the parties and heroic/villainous groups were full of demihumans.

Heh, since the late 80s in the groups I played, humans were always the least picked option. A group I played with in the 90s actively referred to humans as "ho-hums".

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, the whole "humanocentric" thing depends a lot on group. I know that even way, way back in the 80's when we first started playing, I was about the only player who routinely picked human. Elves were extremely common IME. But, after a couple of years, we started seeing a lot more variety too. Minotaurs, Half-ogres, and various other things. Looking back at it, my groups were rarely, if ever, majority human.

But, the game that was published, particularly the settings, went the other way. Every town was 99% human (assuming it wasn't "elf town" or "dwarf town".) It was always really weird for me.

I think one of the biggest changes in D&D was the shift from AD&D to 3e where the developers actually started talking to players to find out how people were playing instead of sort of dictating from the mountain on how the game should be played. TSR, AFAIK, never did any market research at all. From what Ryan Dancey and others have said, TSR had pretty much zero idea of how the game was actually being played in the wild.

WotC changed all that. They might not get it right. But, no one can say that they aren't trying to look at how the game is being played in order to guide what they develop.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I don't need "rules" to make a race rare! I have DM judgement power! It can do anything!

 

[Hussar]

I don't need "rules" to make a race rare! I have DM judgement power! It can do anything!

Yes, but, apparently, there are a significant number of gamers out there that want to be able to justify forcing their preferences on others by pointing to how they are "just playing the game as it was written".

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, I actually did mean "get good at cheating." The attitude of people who got sick of being forced to deal with random die rolls who dropped into cheating often was "If you think its your right to enforce that sort of crap on me, then you can just try and catch me addressing it." After all, the worst they're going to have to deal with is their preferred alternative to dealing with that nonsense anyway, and they're unlikely to have any respect for your insistence on forcing it on them so the fact you're going to be soggy about it when you boot them out is unlikely to bother them much.

So let me make sure I've got this right: if a system doesn't give you what you want the solution is to outright cheat until it does?

How can that possibly end well in any way?

I mean that's the sort of thinking that gets people ostracized not just from individual tables but from entire gaming communities, once they get caught - which is inevitable provided the DM and-or other players are the least bit observant.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, at some point you'll have to make up your mind and choose to allow them, not allow them, or limit 1 per party (or something similar).

Gating them behind die rolls serves the purpose well enough for me.

I was assuming all moderately mature players, but that isn't always an option I guess.

Mature people can and do still argue about stuff.

Myself, I would just go with the short list (and possibly quotas) if I were interested in limiting things to such a degree. The hard roll option just seems like it's ripe for either or both players and the DM to find themselves "dissatified" with RNJ.

Such dissatisfaction hasn't really arisen yet - and by "yet" I mean lo these many years...

 

[Minigiant]

Yeah, the whole "humanocentric" thing depends a lot on group. I know that even way, way back in the 80's when we first started playing, I was about the only player who routinely picked human. Elves were extremely common IME. But, after a couple of years, we started seeing a lot more variety too. Minotaurs, Half-ogres, and various other things. Looking back at it, my groups were rarely, if ever, majority human.

But, the game that was published, particularly the settings, went the other way. Every town was 99% human (assuming it wasn't "elf town" or "dwarf town".) It was always really weird for me.

I think one of the biggest changes in D&D was the shift from AD&D to 3e where the developers actually started talking to players to find out how people were playing instead of sort of dictating from the mountain on how the game should be played. TSR, AFAIK, never did any market research at all. From what Ryan Dancey and others have said, TSR had pretty much zero idea of how the game was actually being played in the wild.

WotC changed all that. They might not get it right. But, no one can say that they aren't trying to look at how the game is being played in order to guide what they develop.

I think TSR' slack of market research is why part of the reason WOTC is usually ~10 years behind. They are always working from behind and notable TTRPG game designers are decades away from the youth in age to drive a speed up.

Avatar the Last Airbender is a top fantsy cartoon in 2005 during the time of 3rd edition.. WotC doesn't make a bender subclass until 5th edition's 2014 PHB realease and it is poorly designed and misses many of the archetype's aspects.

 

[Yaarel]

I think TSR' slack of market research is why part of the reason WOTC is usually ~10 years behind. They are always working from behind and notable TTRPG game designers are decades away from the youth in age to drive a speed up.

Avatar the Last Airbender is a top fantsy cartoon in 2005 during the time of 3rd edition.. WotC doesn't make a bender subclass until 5th edition's 2014 PHB realease and it is poorly designed and misses many of the archetype's aspects.

Look how long it took for Strixhaven to do Harry Potter.

 

[tetrasodium]

I've found the same. If you say something is banned, you'll inevitably get push back and arguments. If you have things gated behind rolls, the problem self-corrects. The compromise I've found is for players to pitch a few concepts and I pick what comes into play. The player gets to play something they want and I can simply not pick the stuff I don't want in the game. Everyone wins and no hurt feelings or arguments.

I too have found the same with "I'm banning[or nerfing] x". As a GM. I can say "you guys need to use x option on page y for character creation" & such with maybe an "aww can we have ice cream for breakfast?" type protest with no expectation of success but if I need to create the new limit or even pull it from a 3rd party source I can expect some degree of hard pushback that draws in weak support from the players who were ok with it or some possibly blatant "get good at cheating" style protest from a subset of players.