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

[Ovinomancer]

Ten rounds ago when Heliax the Enduring had 120, your blade has either slipped past his dodging, parrying, and/or armor to cut slightly, or maybe bruise him, or perhaps tire him a bit, or maybe spend some amount of fortune's smiles that he had acrued - the lens is cloudy who can say - but in any case death has moved a tiny bit closer.

Five rounds ago when he had been at 65, your stroke bruises, cuts, strains, or taxes him - the scene is obscured so which is hard to tell. In any case some would now remark he is "bloodied" (in the vernacular of the land), that is, half-way to death, even if no blood has necessarily been shed.

Three rounds ago your blade again did enough to task his endurance and brawn and resistance and body, in spite of armor and parrying and dodging - there is a fog of battle, it is hard to be sure which and how - so that he is now much closer to death at ten than the fifteen of a moment ago. He should have been frantically shouting for the cleric before now I think.

With your swing last round he fell to the ground, worn by want of endurance, bruises, loss of blood, lack of will, and/or being devoid of luck - who can say which combination in this maelstrom of flickering blades - and lies unconscious.

And now, with your last swing, he dies. Who can say in the aftermath if it was a cut, a stab, or a pommel strike. It matters little to what was once Heliax the mighty.



Your attack either missed in a way that spent no luck or tired him not at all, or struck his armor to no affect, or was parried - the lens is smudged, it's hard to tell on the screen - but no harm of any sort to note has occurred - even if one were hyper-attuned to noting such things, or even omniscient.



Lack of precision is not nothing. A full day weather forecast instead of an hourly one is still more information than no weather forecast.

And these are not distinct from each other outside a "bloodied" tag houserule (which is also vague) or hitting 0, which is the only time a required fictional result comes from the mechanics.

 

[Cadence]

And these are not distinct from each other outside a "bloodied" tag houserule (which is also vague) or hitting 0, which is the only time a required fictional result comes from the mechanics.

Not distinct to who? Heliax certainly finds 115 HP and 10 HP distinct. There's no time or need for him to focus on what combination of cuts, pokes, poundings, exhaustion, cramps, spending of good luck, and/or accrual of bad luck that has done it, but the one is certainly much closer to death than the other and he knows it. (And some may say he really, really should have yelled for the cleric earlier).

 

[Ovinomancer]

Not distinct to who? Heliax certainly finds 115 HP and 10 HP distinct. There's no time or need for him to focus on what combination of cuts, pokes, poundings, exhaustion, cramps, spending of good luck, and/or accrual of bad luck that has done it, but the one is certainly much closer to death than the other and he knows it. (And some may say he really, really should have yelled for the cleric earlier).

How does he know it? What cuts in the fiction represent this? There are no specific fictions cuts that let the character know this -- the PC is borrowing player awareness of an hp total without any translation to the fiction that is clear and distinct. When a given game state only ever has an ad hoc and arbitray description, it's a clear sign of a dissociated mechanic at play. If you prefer, a metagame mechanic.

I'm fine with these, but I also don't pretend that they represent something in fiction but are only ad hoc descriptions that differ given whatever the need are for the description and only last a long as the description. If a description is even ever called for, that is.

 

[Cadence]

How does he know it? What cuts in the fiction represent this? There are no specific fictions cuts that let the character know this -- the PC is borrowing player awareness of an hp total without any translation to the fiction that is clear and distinct.

He doesn't bother with the specifics. He assumes if he thought about it he could tally the cuts and bruisings and gaspings and muscle pains and feeling of drain, they are there, but not worth focussing on and elucidating, unless some ad-hoc need as you note below arises.

When a given game state only ever has an ad hoc and arbitray description, it's a clear sign of a dissociated mechanic at play. If you prefer, a metagame mechanic.

Like a to hit roll, or save, or ability score, or skill challenges, or in some games a die roll giving varying types of narrative control. Are some less dissociated or less metagame than others? I'm not sure why one would quibble in play.

I'm fine with these, but I also don't pretend that they represent something in fiction but are only ad hoc descriptions that differ given whatever the need are for the description and only last a long as the description. If a description is even ever called for, that is.

And that's enough, non-zero, information to make the game work, isn't it?

 

[tetrasodium]

I believe it was 3.x which added at will cantrips, but the damage was only a d3.

There might have been a feat or PrC but cantrips like acid splash & mage hand needed to be prepared just like all of the other vancian spells and had limited slots. I don't think the level zero slots or nimber of slots scaled at all either

 

[Thomas Shey]

I have seen maybe one or two people say that an RPG isn’t an RPG because it has social mechanics.

Then I'm back to repeating you've not seen a number of posts I have over time. At the very least I've absolutely seen people say having social (or, and note this is important, intellectual) mechanics interfered with roleplaying. And followed up when challenged on to flat out declare that mechanics in that area were not roleplaying related.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Wow, some people played some strange campaigns back in the old days. I started in 1981 and for the entire run of the 80's and 90's, in both 1st and 2nd Ed AD&D, the only PC I had die and stay dead was a pregen in a tournament adventure. Maybe I just got lucky and was always in groups where everyone enjoyed the story more than the same old boring hack and slash dungeon crawl. That is something about D&D that is very good that it changed over the decades. Real adventures and stories being the focus over that tired old crap.

I can't speak of the AD&D and on days, but losing characters regularly at the low end was pretty much business as usual in the OD&D days.

(Now you can get into some arguments about what "campaign" meant in a lot of those games in those days since they were often open world games that had people flow in and out of them, but that's a different discussion).

 

[Ovinomancer]

He doesn't bother with the specifics. He assumes if he thought about it he could tally the cuts and bruisings and gaspings and muscle pains, they are there, but not worth focussing on and elucidating, unless some ad-hoc need as you note below arises.




Like a to hit roll, or save, or ability score, or skill challenge (or in some games players spouting out what happens next off the back of a d10 and their imagination - oh mighty d10 in the sky granting us story powers). Are some less dissociated or less metagame than others? I'm not sure why one would quibble in play.


And that's enough, non-zero, information to make the game work, isn't it?

I'm not interested in justifying meta mechanics. I'm a proponent. I am interested in being able to discuss how games work, and that requires stripping a bit of the mysticism. HP have no required in game fiction. Any fiction created is entirely arbitrary. They exist only as a player- aside metric for making decisions on PC actions. As such, they are fine. I am against insisting that because you can make something up whenever and it doesn't really matter what you do make up because it has no weight. No description of hp loss invokes anything -- it's entirely arbitrary and meaningless outside of entertainment. The hp total means something to the player, but in the fictional universe it doesn't really have any meaning or weight.

 

[Thomas Shey]

pulp novels rarely told every minute of every day, it's not uncommon for days weeks or longer to pass between pages & chapters. the DM doesn't really have that sort of influence over time in modern d&d because by no longer being a slow process the players don't need to travel some period of time to get somewhere safe then rest for a long period to safely recover.

Sure he does. He still controls when events happen exterior to the PCs, and if the PCs get to a spot before a particular villain is there or event is going to happen, they can just take some downtime. And that's not even counting time that lands between anything happening at all. Healing and travel time are pacing mechinisms, but they're hardly the only ones.

Soft Power: "The use of a country's cultural and economic influence to persuade other countries to do something, rather than the use of military power" Control over needed magic items & the economic inputs that can generate desired magic items is the very definition. You could include control over the timeskip & if any interactions beyond "we lock the door & sleep" is inserted into that timeskip is another missing example

Except that doesn't influence, it virtually mandates. There's nothing softer than telling someone if they don't do something you'll bring eminent domain to bear.

 

[Cadence]

I'm not interested in justifying meta mechanics. I'm a proponent. I am interested in being able to discuss how games work, and that requires stripping a bit of the mysticism. HP have no required in game fiction. Any fiction created is entirely arbitrary. They exist only as a player- aside metric for making decisions on PC actions. As such, they are fine. I am against insisting that because you can make something up whenever and it doesn't really matter what you do make up because it has no weight. No description of hp loss invokes anything -- it's entirely arbitrary and meaningless outside of entertainment. The hp total means something to the player, but in the fictional universe it doesn't really have any meaning or weight.

So you don't have your characters think or act differently when at 120 hp vs. 60 hp vs. 10 hp? (Not 120 vs 110, or 60 vs. 58, or 10 vs. 9, but 120 vs. 60 vs. 10).

I find it kind of strange that one wouldn't.

And I find it odd that just because the game doesn't give specifics about why, that one couldn't have a generic "wow, I'm pretty beat up" without specifying.

---

Do ability scores have any meaning in the fictional universe to the characters? If so, what?