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

[Lanefan]

I think this is a big part of it. I've been playing for 35 years or so (which is quite weird when I write it out like that, there's no way I'm that old, am I?), and at least 98% of that has been with my friends, for instance.

Agreed; and same here.

 

[mserabian]

Oddly enough, by one way of reading what you say here I think you're agreeing with me...underneath all the disagreement bits.

Your last sentence - the effort...will be wasted - ties it together. Yes that effort will be wasted, which means having it not be wasted only adds to the stakes in the challenge of keeping the character alive.

You're quite right that survival isn't the only way an RPG can be challenging. It's one of many ways which in total add up to the overall challenge, or demands, presented by the game. Removing or greatly nerfing the survival portion of that challenge therefore reduces the overall total challenge; hence my here-paraphrased statement lower lethality makes the game less demanding is and remains true.

And if it was only that one piece that had been reduced then, well, OK. However, side-along with this numerous other once-challenges have also been reduced or greatly mitigated - level loss, item destruction, rest-recovery-healing speed, spellcasting in combat, to name a few* - which makes the lower-lethality piece simply a part of an overall trend: the game is less demanding on its characters and therefore is less challenging to its players.

* - worth noting that none of the examples I listed cause the effort put into developing personality etc. to go to waste as (with the painful exception of losing more levels than it has to give) the character will very likely remain alive and playable after encountering any of them. Now, obviously that play might have to be approached a bit differently - if it takes a few days to recover one's hit points, for example, a modicum of caution around taking on more combats might be called for - but the personality etc. is still there.

A slightly-hyperbolic example, then: players in Monopoly would doubtless all prefer to start with loads of money and be unable to lose the game. Once this became apparent in the wild, should Parker Bros. have altered Monopoly's design to make it this way? Clearly, no; or the game becomes pointless.

The same principle holds true in D&D: make it too easy and remove most of the "loss conditions" and eventually much of the point goes away.

Obviously this is a discussion of D&D on a D&D board, but these ideas espoused by so many players of D&D are always so puzzling to me... As a person whose first deep immersion into the hobby came from Champions (where death is generally not very likely) and then Call of Cthulhu (where death is pretty certain), my enjoyment of the game comes from playing the game, not staying alive. So in Champions you want to defeat the villain of the week, and in Call of Cthulhu you want to figure out the mystery!

I think the changes in todays D&D (and in todays D&D players) is that they want to have these experiences and see these things as valuable (ie solve a mystery, thwart an evil doer's plan, etc) and in fact more fun than struggling to stay alive. and for clarity sake let me say clearly that I'm not saying you and others who hold your opinion don't value these things as well ...

 

[Helldritch]

This is the very type of behaviour that is widely accepted now. Working together on backgrounds.

Your claims that players now are expected to create extensive backgrounds without consideration of any other player, and impose it on everyone at the table, are false. That is not acceptable to the vast majority of players, old and young. You keep claiming that every player being a Mary Sue is now normative. That is false.

You are the one exagerating now. I claim that those that are doing their Mary Sue are better accepted as they now hide behind the : "The DM is constraining and preventing my creativity". There is a big difference.

 

[Helldritch]

I definitely prefer black ink on plain white pages. But I sure as heck don't miss the tiny font sizes in 1E. My eyes are too old for that now.

Welcome to my club. Glasses are now mandatory to read any books. I know what you are suffering.

 

[Fifth Element]

You are the one exagerating now. I claim that those that are doing their Mary Sue are better accepted as they now hide behind the : "The DM is constraining and preventing my creativity". There is a big difference.

I thought you said it was the norm now (not just better accepted), and that it is promoted by the game itself. Or was that someone else?

At any rate, I don't think anyone has presented any evidence that 'hiding behind' creativity is actually a thing that happens to a significant degree.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Already provided an example of this - developing new character personalities is discouraged when you have reason to believe your character is unlikely to survive more than a few sessions. Why spend time and effort on a new personality when it will likely last only a very short time? If you expect the character to survive a decent amount of time, you have more incentive to develop a personality for that character, so you can challenge yourself to develop new character personalities you've never played before.

I have players that have a host of characters in their heads they'd like to play.
Also the bold emphasis is hyperbolic for the sake of the debate.

Personally I believe the reduction in the consequence of character and items loss was not a good thing for the hobby as a whole.

I'm not talking about the extremes here. But at times, finality can and does exist. Sometimes its driven by the player, and other times not. I feel our (my table's) games are better for it. And we (my table) still have a host of other consequences that may occur.

 

[Vaalingrade]

How is reduction of character death and item loss bad for the hobby if the people who are engaging in this don't want it ins the first place?

Killer DMs are still killing and finding was to take away items they gave out without the slightest hint that they made a mistake giving out something they didn't want the party to have. No one has lost anything.

 

[AnotherGuy]

In my campaign the PCs are working at changing the world for the better by backing and helping various group in various struggles. Currently they are tasked with travelling to the Court of the Fey (In the feywild) as emissaries of an army building up for an invasion of a continent.

Theoretically they could get through the entire arc of allying with the Court (or alternately a Fey banished from the court) and gaining valuable allied help for their invading army without any sort of risk of death or dismemberment.

The stakes of success or failure of their mission is how much or little they contribute towards achieving the short term goal of gaining allies, the medium term goal of invading successfully, and the long term goal of unseating a corrupt theocracy of Tempus from it's grasp on the continent.

Dying in a battle isn't much more than a speed bump in the game....they have already been TPKed once before which resulted in a failed defense of a city by mind flayer seeded abberations.

They were raised and used as tools by one of the corrupted Tempsians (word?) which is why they now side firmly against them.

In our campaign, one of the characters that died recently was a Mystaran native, but he perished on Toril. He found himself before Kelemvor in the City of the Dead who sought the floor for any petitioners for his soul. If there were no petitioners his soul would be sent to the Wall of the Faithless. Now as it happens there was a newly made Mystaran Immortal (also a previous colleague of the Mystaran adventuring party - incredibly long story to get into here) who was present and petitioned for his soul. The PC was given a choice, return with the Mystaran Immortal back to their own reality, but dead. Or be reconstituted in the Forgotten Realms and have is soul connection cut off from Mystara forever.
We roleplayed a conversation between himself and his old friend, now a Mystaran Immortal.

Two rules would kick into place if he chose the latter:
(1) His memories of Mystara would begin to fade. The player could not create further backstory/content on our Obsidian Portal page about his character's life in Mystara which was pretty significant to this player.
(2) Risking loss of pet Familiar summoning. Every time he summoned his familiar which was based on his family pet, he'd have to roll a percentile die. 10% or less he'd summon another animal instead and the 10% would increase by 1% for every time he didn't successfully summon his family pet. The familiar is a pivotal creature in his backstory.

In this instance character death allowed me to to unveil the weirdness of the City of Dead, with time gaps and confusion as only memories remained. I showcased the Wall of the Faithless, Kelemvor and the soul petitioners but most importantly an interesting closure moment between an ex-adventuring colleague (the Immortal) as well as to espouse more details on the character's family's backstory and family relic.

Final death can be just as interesting by allowing surviving characters to amend or pick up further ideals, bonds, flaws, personality traits.

 

[AnotherGuy]

How is reduction of character death and item loss bad for the hobby if the people who are engaging in this don't want it ins the first place?

Thankfully we have the DMs Guild which is filled with house rules and options to make the game deadlier not easier AND we have Advanced/Expanded Monster Manuals designed by 3pp.
The loss occurs when the above options (which are highly sought out) are not included in the core books and one has to look further to get such options. The ones who don't want it have an entire edition which suits their playstyle, I'm not worried about them.

Killer DMs are still killing and finding was to take away items they gave out without the slightest hint that they made a mistake giving out something they didn't want the party to have. No one has lost anything.

Interesting your sentence implies that items are lost due to mistakes (of having them handed out). I can see this happening with inexperienced DMs (happened to me when I was younger) but now if something is OP we discuss it at the table and make the necessary changes for our game.

 

[Guest 7034872]

How is reduction of character death and item loss bad for the hobby if the people who are engaging in this don't want it ins the first place?

Killer DMs are still killing and finding was to take away items they gave out without the slightest hint that they made a mistake giving out something they didn't want the party to have. No one has lost anything.

Here I have to agree. I grew up with the much tougher, more adversarial version (1e in the 80s) and in my heart still tend to favor that style of D&D, but I just went with the flow of what everyone else seemed to want when I got back into the game, right? And in all that time, not once have I said to myself, "This sucks--we need more character deaths and sobbing players." No. No, we don't.

I like the dangerous, on-the-edge style of play and will never be sad to participate in it, but I also totally understand why so many other players prefer adventures in which survival is, at least, not unlikely. I even agree with them that it has numerous advantages and in no way reduces our fun. I never would've reached this conclusion, though, had I been unwilling to give others' play style a chance.