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

[Lanefan]

I don't think that I've seen roleplaying as a refereed sport since... well, since the 90s. My view on RPGs is that they're a collaborative not a competitive enterprise. A referee is needed when players are competing against each other - a neutral party is there to make sure that things are fair for each player/team and all of them are following the rules.

In an RPG the players are cooperating with each other, not competing. So where does the need for an impartial judge come in? If you're looking at it as a players vs. GM situation then the players have already lost - the GM in any game can crush the players mercilessly if it's a player vs. GM situation because there is no referee between the GM and the players.

The players may or may not be co-operative among themselves, that's up to them; but in any case those players are always collectively competing against the game and its associated in-setting challenges. The DM is the referee over that competition; and that competition IMO should be much more war than sport.

If it arises that the players start competing in-character among themselves the DM also has to referee that.

I see the role of the GM as a fellow player, not a referee or a competitor. The GM presents the world in the moment and the players play out their reactions to it and the GM then reacts to that. That cycle produces a collaborative game. Everyone has bought into the idea that we're going to play a game of pretend where our dice rolls have meanings, so the need to enforce rules or look for cheaters should be at a minimum - anyone who "rejects the premise" of the game and starts to find ways to "cheat" tends to IME get called out by their fellow players before the GM even needs to get involved (cheating in an RPG is like cheating in solitaire - you can do it but why?)

The tricky bit is that the DM both presents/assigns the challenges and then has to referee the game of players-vs.-those-challenges. This is why I'm very much in favour of challenges, adventures, etc. being set well ahead of time without knowledge* of which specific PCs will interact with them, such that when those interactions occur the DM can act as a neutral referee.

* - beyond only the most general info such as average level of the party, that sort of thing.

 

[Lanefan]

Same. And I've never managed to roll a paladin in AD&D. Ever. Been playing AD&D since '84. Never once. I still want it so bad I can taste it. So when it finally happens...and it will...I'll enjoy it that much more.

Heh - I rolled a Paladin once, as a backup character to bring in if-when my current one died.

Between the time I rolled it up and the time it would have come in the DM banned Paladin as a class. So much for that....

 

[Lanefan]

I think there might be two interpretations of "to (gently) push against the rules and boundaries in order to gain what advantage they can" that @Lanefan mentioned. Your they shouldn't lines up right if you take it as "creative" interpretations of rules, but I think he was going for (or could go for) a different spin where players make efforts to work with the setting outside the rules in some degree of collaboration with the GM.

I was more going for the loopholes and exploits piece - it's the players' job to find these and the DM's job to shut them down once found, if not find them first and shut 'em down then.

In that second case you have things like "how much would it improve my view of the approaching $whatever if I spent a bit climbing one of these trees to get a good look?(or would it matter?)" leading into things like "can I climb a tree to get a better view of the approaching $whatever". Without that you just have "I roll perception"

To me that's just good creative play and doesn't push the boundaries of anything rules-wise.

 

[Minigiant]

Here's the thing.

If a person prefers to play a warrior but random rolls gives them a mage, there could be a problem.

That's why D&D likely moved from that.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Um... ok? This isn't about kung pao chicken or mushrooms. Using your very flawed food analogy... if I'm driving to a chinese place that has both of those things on the menu & paying. You can go or not go but ordering pizza from grubhub & having them deliver it to the table at the chinese restaurant with the expectation that I still pay/gm is very much not.

If I can roll randomly and get a dumb barbarian why is it "pizza at a Chinese restaurant" to want to play a dumb barbarian instead of the weak rogue the dice gave me? Your counter food analogy makes no sense.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Ever Ed I’ve played (1E up) we’ve always done 4D6 drop the lowest when rolling for stats

 

[Vaalingrade]

Most Chinese buffest I've been to do have pizza and nuggets on the bar, actually.

 

[billd91]

Ever Ed I’ve played (1E up) we’ve always done 4D6 drop the lowest when rolling for stats

Yeah, it’s pretty pervasive. I believe it’s the only method common to 1e, 2e, 3e, 4e, and 5e.

 

[Thomas Shey]

See, my wife despises point buy (and hates its cousin array even more). Unfortunately, she's also the only person i know that I can trust to roll fairly, which has forced all my games into roll for stats. Nothing I can do.

That's a hard row, though I'd at least have talked to her to find out what the issue is (I can kind of see reasons to have issues with one or the other but not both). I mean, if she just wants to break up the pattern there's always "roll within a point budget."

 

[Thomas Shey]

Here's the thing.

If a person prefers to play a warrior but random rolls gives them a mage, there could be a problem.

That's why D&D likely moved from that.

Even early on there was some wiggle away from that--you could trade at a loss points from one attribute to another to a limited degree. The whole "you'll be forced to get what and only what the rolls made possible" thing hasn't been a thing for literally decades anyway.