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

[Remathilis]

I have no problems in my games. You do not know me and it shows in you way off the mark assumptions. I am talking about very real young DMs that comes to me. In previous editions, I rarely had these advice to give because it was not so prevalent as with 5ed. We are talking in general and not specific here.

"/I/ always assume that they know as much or even more than /I/. This is why that to all new players /I/ say that some monsters are tweaked, that bought adventures might have been modified."

I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were using the Queen's "I" here.

 

[tetrasodium]

That's some very weak ground to stand on. If the GM is starving XP, there's serious issues with play.

Here are a few reasonable ways that power could be used that are only an "issue" if the GM's role is life support for The Main Character's story.

• "I have this kinda stuff prepared & will let the players do random kill quests or whatever here, but they don't pay well compared to stuff that points in the direction I have prepared because I have it prepared"
• "wow... I don't know much about that part of the world I won't stop the players from going there but everything is super expensive & the players are not going to get much as incentive to go anywhere else I do know"
• "Holy crap, why do they want to stay here? it's perfect & there is nothing that needs doing, everyone says they want to keep playing but I have nothing I can think of here"
• "OMGOMG I made these guys to be the bad guys to such an obvious degree that I wouldn't need more than vague allusions to how bad they are why the heck do the players want to work for them?!... evil henchmen pay is laughably close to almost nothing... problem solved!"
• "There is a ton of really cool poltstuff coming to a hilt here, I want to space things out so the players can enjoy it & can just give a fraction of the needed gold so they will have a desire to keep on with the steady paycheck from the boss"
• so on & so forth.

 

[BookTenTiger]

One thing I've noticed is that in past editions, the miniatures were small, usually around 25 or 28 mm. Now in modern edition, the miniatures are huge! How am I supposed to be pushing around this 25-foot Dragonborn sorcerer, WotC??? Why can't we use small miniatures anymore?

 

[Helldritch]

"/I/ always assume that they know as much or even more than /I/. This is why that to all new players /I/ say that some monsters are tweaked, that bought adventures might have been modified."

I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were using the Queen's "I" here.

No problems. The thread is now several pages long and the shift occurred without me realizing. I was a bit harsh now that I re-read myself. Please forgive me. (I am also at work, so it is far from perfect conditions....).

Edit:" I simply forgot to add I always recommend to new DMs to ...." This is what I get to answer while working.... My bad.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Hand wave....
When I bring play expectations I am wrong, but when it is you it is OK?

For the las part
One word.
Artificer.
Bang! No more limits.

What's a hand wave? My argument that you're waving aside points while being pretty clear what those are and why they matter is a hand wave? You're hand waving my argument that you hand waved? Very odd.

And Artificers are your ace in the hole? The class that requires the GM to tell them how magic items are created? The rules for creating magic items are 1) optional and 2) if taken a downtime activity where the GM has total control over how much downtime is available AND the income of PCs to be able to engage with it! The same kinds of controls you're touting for 3.x!

 

[DND_Reborn]

It's easy to give power to the PCs. Less easy to take it away.

Oh, I haven't had any issue taking power away...

They either want to play in the game I am running or don't. I have no issue if they want to stay or move on.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Here are a few reasonable ways that power could be used that are only an "issue" if the GM's role is life support for The Main Character's story.

• "I have this kinda stuff prepared & will let the players do random kill quests or whatever here, but they don't pay well compared to stuff that points in the direction I have prepared because I have it prepared"
• "wow... I don't know much about that part of the world I won't stop the players from going there but everything is super expensive & the players are not going to get much as incentive to go anywhere else I do know"
• "Holy crap, why do they want to stay here? it's perfect & there is nothing that needs doing, everyone says they want to keep playing but I have nothing I can think of here"
• "OMGOMG I made these guys to be the bad guys to such an obvious degree that I wouldn't need more than vague allusions to how bad they are why the heck do the players want to work for them?!... evil henchmen pay is laughably close to almost nothing... problem solved!"
• "There is a ton of really cool poltstuff coming to a hilt here, I want to space things out so the players can enjoy it & can just give a fraction of the needed gold so they will have a desire to keep on with the steady paycheck from the boss"
• so on & so forth.

Um, most of these don't engage the arguments made at all, or ignore that 5e has as many tools to address them. Also, I'm a bit concerned that most of this list is basically passive aggressively trying to direct the players instead of honest engagement with them. Is that the argument? Prior editions enabled more passive aggressive control features?

 

[Vaalingrade]

basically passive aggressively trying to direct the players instead of honest engagement with them.

That's what DM empowerment actually is.

 

[nevin]

Been thinking about this for awhile. I think the fundamental change has been that it's gone from players wanting to "overcome" the consequences they create to more and more players thinking that consequences are bad game design and they should be free snowflakes and do whatever they want. the biggest sign of that I think are the number of GM shouldn't rule on anything it should all be in the rules threads. It's odd how many players seem to want to control the game they asked a GM to run.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Been thinking about this for awhile. I think the fundamental change has been that it's gone from players wanting to "overcome" the consequences they create to more and more players thinking that consequences are bad game design and they should be free snowflakes and do whatever they want. the biggest sign of that I think are the number of GM shouldn't rule on anything it should all be in the rules threads. It's odd how many players seem to want to control the game they asked a GM to run.

This isn't new. Some desire for more comprehensive rules has been around since the beginning, with competing RPGs arising very quickly that went into more detailed rulesets.

As for me, I very much like games where the GM is much more constrained than in D&D. Those games often revolve around horrible consequences for the PCs, and often feature the PCs getting raked and mauled by fortune and their own bad decisions. The desire to avoid consequences is not well correlated with a more constrained GM. A more constrained GM has less ability to mitigate, for instance. Even in my D&D I prefer play where the GM is constrained, at least at the social contract level, from trying to mitigate the outcomes of play -- for or against my PC.