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

[Vaalingrade]

I don't know what sesquipedalian means. Is it your fault, the word's fault, or my fault communication failed ?

It means loquacious.

 

[overgeeked]

I don't know what sesquipedalian means. Is it your fault, the word's fault, or my fault communication failed ?

Hey, look at that. A chance to learn a new word. That's awesome.

Bizarrely, if you follow that poster's line of reasoning, the word itself, an abstract idea, is...somehow...personally at fault. We're anthropomorphizing words now? Cool. At least that's what the poster communicated with the words they chose to use.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Not true. There was coherent design in a number of wargames of the time. Its just that for whatever reason (I suspect, again, being used to doing ad-hoc rules in refereed miniatures games) that rigor was not applied as well to D&D.

I think this is a pretty good analogy of a group trying to play AD&D 100% RAW. But just like in your example, I think the problem comes from not understanding the instruments (rules) and confusion on which ones go best together in the first place.

Taking each rule in AD&D on their own, I think they're well thought out and mathematically sound. The issue is trying to put them all into play at once, especially if you don't have a solid grasp on them.

If you start with OD&D and/or Basic as a base, AD&D really is a kind of toolkit you can pull in just what you need and can get the exact "dungeon crawling" game you want.

If you look at oD&D (and here you are going to have to give a lot of leeway to accepting how it was actually supposedly played by EGG and crew and was communicated to people who learned from them, etc., because yeah, the printed product has issues), it is a fairly reasonable, relatively coherent little game that works very well within the expected ranges and for the expected purposes. It uses a lot of charts and arbitrary number (xp to level-up, for instance) that exist because playtest* suggested those would work well, but that was pretty similar to lots of wargames. oD&D worked. It's really the impulse to push and expand and add to the thing without being able to- 1) do the same level of exhaustive testing, and 2) go back and rethink base principles and whether they were still appropriate- that I think is where the game started to feel a lot more disconnected and incoherent in design than the wargames of the time.
*and oD&D did have plenty of playtest

Same. Also managed to learn vocab that my English teachers didn’t know and had to look up. Thanks Old High Gygaxian.

"Mere" communication, lol.

There's no one right to this. An expanded vocabulary is beneficial -- provided it is used and developed-upon and eventually translates into becoming a better oral or written communicator. Just being a kid in class that knew a word the teacher didn't... well, what did one then do with it? In too many cases, I've found, it just made D&D kids over the years be 'that guy's (you know the ones) and perhaps more time learning to navigate through life instead would have been a better lesson. Much like the question of does Little Johnny (/Jane) the nerdy kid have too high or too low self-esteem (possibly both), it's going to be dependent on all the other factors of childhood development and socialization.

It means loquacious.

What a sagacious response.

 

[Jahydin]

Um, no, language is only about communication. It's not just about passing facts, but also communicating emotion and the like, but it's all communication.

From Britannica:

In most accounts, the primary purpose of language is to facilitate communication, in the sense of transmission of information from one person to another. However, sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic studies have drawn attention to a range of other functions for language. Among these is the use of language to express a national or local identity (a common source of conflict in situations of multiethnicity around the world, such as in Belgium, India, and Quebec). Also important are the “ludic” (playful) function of language—encountered in such phenomena as puns, riddles, and crossword puzzles—and the range of functions seen in imaginative or symbolic contexts, such as poetry, drama, and religious expression.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Dumb words are all of our fault.

Looking at you, 'blog', which sounds like 50's British slang for a sex act.

 

[Jahydin]

If you look at oD&D (and here you are going to have to give a lot of leeway to accepting how it was actually supposedly played by EGG and crew and was communicated to people who learned from them, etc., because yeah, the printed product has issues), it is a fairly reasonable, relatively coherent little game that works very well within the expected ranges and for the expected purposes. It uses a lot of charts and arbitrary number (xp to level-up, for instance) that exist because playtest* suggested those would work well, but that was pretty similar to lots of wargames. oD&D worked. It's really the impulse to push and expand and add to the thing without being able to- 1) do the same level of exhaustive testing, and 2) go back and rethink base principles and whether they were still appropriate- that I think is where the game started to feel a lot more disconnected and incoherent in design than the wargames of the time.

Perfectly said. I get that impression too.

The Identify spell comes to mind...:

When an identify spell is cost, one item may be touched and handled by the magic-user in order that he or she may possibly find what dweomer it possesses. The item in question must be held or worn as would be normal for any such object, i.e. a bracelet must be placed on the spell caster's wrist, a helm on his or her head, boots on the feet, a cloak worn, a dagger held, and so on. Note that any consequences of this use of the item fall fully upon the magic-user, although any saving throw normally allowed is still the privilege of the magic-user. For each segment the spell is in force, it is 15% + 5% per level of the magic-user probable that 1 property of the object touched can become known - possibly that the item has no properties and is merely a ruse (the presence of Nystul's Magic Aura or a magic mouth being detected). Each time a property can be known, the referee will secretly roll to see if the magic-user made his or her saving throw versus magic. If the save was successful, the property is known; if it is 1 point short, a false power will be revealed; and if it is lower than 1 under the required score no information will be gained. The item will never reveal its exact plusses to hit or its damage bonuses, although the fact that it has few or many such plusses can be discovered. If it has charges, the object will never reveal the exact number, but it will give information which is +/-25% of actual, i.e. a wand with 40 charges could feel as if it had 30, or 50, or any number in between. The item to be identified must be examined by the magic-user within 1 hour per level of experience of the examiner after it has been discovered, or all readable impressions will have been blended into those of the characters who have possessed it since. After casting the spell and determining what can be learned from it, the magic-user loses 8 points of constitution. He or she must rest for 6 turns per 1 point in order to regain them. If the 8 point loss drops the spell caster below a constitution of 3, he or she will fall unconscious, and consciousness will not be regained until full constitution is restored 24 hours later. The material components of this spell are a pearl (of at least 100 g.p. value) and an owl feather steeped in wine, with the infusion drunk and a live miniature carp swallowed whole prior to spell casting. If a luckstone is powdered and added to the infusion, probability increases 25% and all saving throws are made at +4." PH pg 67, the awful points bolded by me

The amount of detail is staggering, lol.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If you look at oD&D (and here you are going to have to give a lot of leeway to accepting how it was actually supposedly played by EGG and crew and was communicated to people who learned from them, etc., because yeah, the printed product has issues), it is a fairly reasonable, relatively coherent little game that works very well within the expected ranges and for the expected purposes. It uses a lot of charts and arbitrary number (xp to level-up, for instance) that exist because playtest* suggested those would work well, but that was pretty similar to lots of wargames. oD&D worked. It's really the impulse to push and expand and add to the thing without being able to- 1) do the same level of exhaustive testing, and 2) go back and rethink base principles and whether they were still appropriate- that I think is where the game started to feel a lot more disconnected and incoherent in design than the wargames of the time.
*and oD&D did have plenty of playtest

Maybe so, but when the problems started to show up as early as Greyhawk, I have to question whether it was more that OD&D was so schematic that any inconsistencies just weren't that visible. After all, the basic system was a minimalist character generation system, a set of ad-hoc spells, a very minimalist combat system and some random odds and ends of GM-facing situation-generating tools, plus a few theoretically player facing estate managing tools that many people never even saw in use.

Basically, when you don't have much system to your system, its easy for it not to be contradictory.

There's no one right to this. An expanded vocabulary is beneficial -- provided it is used and developed-upon and eventually translates into becoming a better oral or written communicator. Just being a kid in class that knew a word the teacher didn't... well, what did one then do with it? In too many cases, I've found, it just made D&D kids over the years be 'that guy's (you know the ones) and perhaps more time learning to navigate through life instead would have been a better lesson. Much like the question of does Little Johnny (/Jane) the nerdy kid have too high or too low self-esteem (possibly both), it's going to be dependent on all the other factors of childhood development and socialization.

Almost all vocabulary is useful contextually--but its just that, contextual. Knowing a lot of words most people don't just means that outside of special context its kind of useless at best, and at worst an opportunity to feel superior (not that that's ever something nerds resist an opportunity to do...)

 

[Ovinomancer]

From Britannica:

And all of that is communicating something to someone. Is this really a point people contest?

 

[Vaalingrade]

If middle school has taught me anything, slinging $10 words all over the place for no reason is how you communicate that you really want to have your trapper keeper stolen and your gym locker filled with wet towels.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Maybe so, but when the problems started to show up as early as Greyhawk, I have to question whether it was more that OD&D was so schematic that any inconsistencies just weren't that visible. After all, the basic system was a minimalist character generation system, a set of ad-hoc spells, a very minimalist combat system and some random odds and ends of GM-facing situation-generating tools, plus a few theoretically player facing estate managing tools that many people never even saw in use.

Basically, when you don't have much system to your system, its easy for it not to be contradictory.

That's an pretty harsh take on oD&D. There's a lot there, and what is there speaks to the point of it being very systematic towards a very narrow set of play (to which the accessory point was that it was expanding beyond that range without playtest or reexamination of fundamental principles was the downfall, and yes we agree things started getting problematic by supplement I). It has movement and time rules, monster reaction, morale, encounter rules (including sighting, surprise, wandering monsters, chases and when monsters break off, both for in-dungeon and in-wilderness), dungeon design, generating treasure, generating monster encounters (dungeon, wilderness, and castle), advancement (using examples in places where we might now use hard and fast rules, but they exist), procedures for DM to player information transfer (such as the expectation of DM describing and players electing a mapper), and player to DM communication (the 'caller'), stronghold creation rules, perfectly serviceable unit (character) creation rules, and yes a perfunctory-at-best combat engine. There's an incredible density of rules there, however, most of them are procedural rules about the play of the game or the exploration of the dungeons (with differentiation of characters a distant priority and combat rules only making sense under the assumption that it was marketed to people who already had 6-60 combat rules sitting on their shelves).

It's undoubtedly unlawful (being effectively piracy), but a guy named Greyharp took just the words in the LBBs and rearranged them to increase clarity, and the game (minus a combat system) is relatively indistinguishable from a BX-inspired OSR game.

Almost all vocabulary is useful contextually--but its just that, contextual. Knowing a lot of words most people don't just means that outside of special context its kind of useless at best, and at worst an opportunity to feel superior (not that that's ever something nerds resist an opportunity to do...)

That's kinda what I was getting at. For every nerd kid that was maltreated and shoved into lockers, there was one who was superior and condescending and self-congratulatory. Most grow out of it, others don't. Maturity is maturity and intellect is intellect, and there are no shortcuts to either -- be they knowing words the teacher doesn't or taking HS stats a few years early or a really high standardized test score or whatever.