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

[Thomas Shey]

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

It was even a pretty common houserule late in the OD&D days.

 

[Remathilis]

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.

The Hardline method was 3d6, in order. You had to meet the classes minimum as well as the minimums and maximums for your race. In 1e, if you rolled low enough on a score, you were FORCED you be a different class (ie, if your strength was a 3, you could only be a magic-user!) Top off with rolling for HP, rolling starting gold for gear and rolling to see what M-U spells you knew. RNG controlled most of your character creation choices. (I believe in 1e you also randomly rolled for a secondary skill. At least you got to choose your proficiencies when that came along). Even your height, weight and age was determined randomly. The most choices you had was name and alignment.

Now, I honestly don't know too many people who played to this extreme, but that was technically the default method.

 

[tetrasodium]

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.

I've said repeatedly that in the case of a hypothetical game that I'm running with a particular set of rules for character creation nobody is forced to accept them if they don't like them, but the game I'm going to be running will be using those rules and they can find some other table with some other gm if they choose not to accept them. I even live in a high density area with multiple nearby FLGS with various games run regularly so it's not a rural situation where I'm the only gm in town. If I'm running my game at my preferred FLGS I'm usually not even the only GM & table in the room.

Exactly what obligation do I or any other GM have to act as life support for some Main Character Syndrome PC run by a player who refuses to use the chargen rules the GM has set for their table? If a player doesn't like the rules I set for a game they can find another table & I might even be able to point them in the direction of a GM with a table more suitable to their tastes.

 

[David Howery]

Now, I honestly don't know too many people who played to this extreme, but that was technically the default method.

I don't remember any DM ever in any of the groups I was around going that extreme either. The most common chargen method I saw was 'roll 3d6 6 times, rearrange to suit.' Of course, lots of players wanted to play a particular class, and rather than cheat, it was generally 'roll up lotsa PCs'. We generally did 'max hp at 1st level' to give them a fighting chance to live, and let PC mages pick the spells in their spellbook at the start (although after that, it was generally limited to 'whatever scrolls you find is what you can add'). Height and weight? I think we did the randomizer thing, although the DM might have redone it if the results didn't make sense (a 18 STR character who was way below average, for example). Randomizing age was NBD, we did that.

Heh. I remember one time, just for an experiment, we rolled up PCs using the '3d6 in order' method, and got mixed results. In a case of utterly horrible dice rolling Iwhich I was very glad didn't occur in game), I managed to roll 3, 5, 4, 5, 4, 17. Basically, a very good looking wimp with no brains, health, or common sense. IIRC, I was going through the books and realized that those abominable stats rendered him incapable of being any PC class, and he would have had to join the party as an NPC torchbearer...

 

[Thomas Shey]

The Hardline method was 3d6, in order.

I went back and looked (since its only been, oh, 40 years since I did anything with OD&D) and it turns out while I remembered something properly, I had misinterpreted it at the time and remembered what I misinterpreted it. It wasn't so much that you could swap attributes as trade them off for prime requisite purposes (which was to say, to effect your experience earned). I'm still not clear how that was supposed to work, but its clearly not what I thought at the time.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Exactly what obligation do I or any other GM have to act as life support for some Main Character Syndrome PC run by a player who refuses to use the chargen rules the GM has set for their table? If a player doesn't like the rules I set for a game they can find another table & I might even be able to point them in the direction of a GM with a table more suitable to their tastes.

You don't. But that doesn't mean your position is intrinsically reasonable, either (your characterization of the position of people who don't want to deal with random rolls doesn't do anything for this). And not everyone who does this is in the situation you're in.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Heh. I remember one time, just for an experiment, we rolled up PCs using the '3d6 in order' method, and got mixed results. In a case of utterly horrible dice rolling Iwhich I was very glad didn't occur in game), I managed to roll 3, 5, 4, 5, 4, 17. Basically, a very good looking wimp with no brains, health, or common sense. IIRC, I was going through the books and realized that those abominable stats rendered him incapable of being any PC class, and he would have had to join the party as an NPC torchbearer...

I think back in the day there was no minimum Strength to be a fighting-man in OD&D. Not that that was much consolation since your Encumbrance capacity was going to be in the tank (and that was before Greyhawk penalized hell out of you for those stats).

 

[Remathilis]

Exactly what obligation do I or any other GM have to act as life support for some Main Character Syndrome PC run by a player who refuses to use the chargen rules the GM has set for their table?

That right there. You (and several others in this thread) have been conflating "I want to play a certain character" with "I'm making unreasonable demands that the DM must cater to".

THEY. ARE. NOT. THE. SAME.

Wanting to play a paladin isn't an entitlement. It's a part of the rules. It's an option in the PHB. Having to gamble to play one isn't fun. That's not in the same park as "cater to my drow ranger clone with all 18s or I'm leaving!" Yet it's been stated several times that letting someone play a paladin who didn't legit roll a 17 Cha will only lead to them demanding to play half-dragon Balor necromancers with the wand of Orcus.

So let's be clear and reset all the goal posts. My position is as follows:

1. Not all character options need be allowed.
2. If you've allowed an option, I should be able to select it. Not gamble on the hope my next character might get the rolls needed to play it. If paladins are allowed by you and I want to play one, I should be able to. No questions asked.
3. The more choices about my character you pull out of my hands and put to fate, the less connection I have to them. It's one thing to randomly roll scores, it's another to roll them in order and have my class/race choices limited (or even forced) by them.
4. My options for weak or unfortunate characters shouldn't be suicide by kobold. That includes the fighter with 1 hp, the mage who only knows detect magic, affect normal fires and feather fall for spells, or the Thief whose high score is a 12.

Most of these concerns are about OS D&D, as 3e onward has mostly fixed them.

 

[tetrasodium]

That right there. You (and several others in this thread) have been conflating "I want to play a certain character" with "I'm making unreasonable demands that the DM must cater to".

THEY. ARE. NOT. THE. SAME.

Wanting to play a paladin isn't an entitlement. It's a part of the rules. It's an option in the PHB. Having to gamble to play one isn't fun. That's not in the same park as "cater to my drow ranger clone with all 18s or I'm leaving!" Yet it's been stated several times that letting someone play a paladin who didn't legit roll a 17 Cha will only lead to them demanding to play half-dragon Balor necromancers with the wand of Orcus.

So let's be clear and reset all the goal posts. My position is as follows:

1. Not all character options need be allowed.
2. If you've allowed an option, I should be able to select it. Not gamble on the hope my next character might get the rolls needed to play it. If paladins are allowed by you and I want to play one, I should be able to. No questions asked.
3. The more choices about my character you pull out of my hands and put to fate, the less connection I have to them. It's one thing to randomly roll scores, it's another to roll them in order and have my class/race choices limited (or even forced) by them.
4. My options for weak or unfortunate characters shouldn't be suicide by kobold. That includes the fighter with 1 hp, the mage who only knows detect magic, affect normal fires and feather fall for spells, or the Thief whose high score is a 12.

Most of these concerns are about OS D&D, as 3e onward has mostly fixed them.

You are welcome to play the character that you want to play somewhere, but that somewhere might not be at the table of myself or "seberal others" if we are running a game with specialized chargen rules that might make doing so difficult. You've got it backwards, look at how this started in #656. You can even go back further to 654&655. You can go back even further to 642 636 618 &580. The gm sets the rules for character creation for their table they are running & while GM's are describing the rules they use the reasons & how those rules impact the game people are coming along declaring those gm's are forcing people to do things or play things they don't want as if this is some negotiation between player & gm about a game they will be playing together.

None of the GM's have indicated that they are desperate for players or even looking for players but the sense of player entitlement is so high in modern d&d that they are being told that they are forcing players to play things they don't want to & worse. The fact that modern editions of d&d bind a GM's hands by removing options like the lower attribute generating methods & zero to hero levels is relevant to how d&d has changed over the decades, the pushback from simply bringing that up shows how damaging to both gm empowerment & civility between gm/players.

If the GM has decided upon rules that make it difficult for you to "play a paladin", you are unlikely in a position where you are forced into not playing a paladin because it's easier than ever to find another game with things like roll20 game listings & facebook groups run by many FLGS. Go find another game if the rules set by the gm are not somewhere they want to flex for you after not getting the results you hoped for. honest they will find another player.

As to suicide by kobold, in my last campaign I was one of five players standard 5e pointbuy & any wotc published book for race/class/background was allowed by the gm yet over the course of frostmaiden there were thirteen characters other than the one wizard I played start to finish... It was so disruptive that when I agreed to take back over & started this campaign I declared that magic to bring back the dead is easily obtainable so character development by suicide would be penalized by lower level or lower stats as a condition of doing so. Suicide by kobold is not limited to "unlucky" chargen results.

 

[Azzy]

I, as a DM, like for the players to choose their character rather than the dice choose their character for them (unless they're into that sort of thing). Then again, I don't just DM D&D, but also GM and play other RPGs that are also more open to story-play and/or don't have the option for chaos chargen, so that's probably a bit of it, too.