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

[Remathilis]

And the players in the 5e example come off as a gang of whiny entitled punks. The truth may be somewhere in between.

To be honest, it all sounds like a bunch of strawmen.

 

[CleverNickName]

Yeah. Exactly. Man, I miss the old days. So glad there's an OSR and people still playing the old games.

I miss the good old days too, but there's plenty of good to be had here in the new.

Yes, I miss the days when creating a character or running a battle took minutes instead of hours. I miss being able to play through an entire adventure module in a single session, both because of the way that modules were written and because I had fewer obligations and time commitments. I miss being able to buy a brand-new D&D book with my $10/week spending allowance. Hell, I miss getting an allowance! I miss being young, and being able to stay up all night with my friends and still have the energy for a trip to the mall. I miss Aaron and Brian, two of my buddies who played that adventure with me that weekend, and who passed away in 2018 and 2019, respectively. I don't think the Old-School Renaissance is going to fix any of this.

The here-and-now can be frustrating for old grognards like me. I'm frustrated with the amount of prep time that I need (and how it's never enough no matter how much I set aside), how I have to upload .JPGs and scale them and rig them and juggle tokens around. And I am especially frustrated that I can't get by with just quickly reading 30 pages and handing out sheets of graph paper. No matter what we do, we always need an hour of tech support and troubleshooting before we can even begin, and we are already (and always) on a tight schedule.

But the here-and-now has little bits of gold, too, if you know where to look. You know what I do like? I like being able to schedule a gaming session electronically, and being able to play D&D with my buddies who live in different cities and different time zones. We can laugh and cuss and drink together like the last 30 years never happened. I love being at a place in my career where I can afford to collect those old books and adventure modules, or I can have them printed on demand. And I love, dearly love, that I can pour myself a bit of bourbon on a quiet summer evening and flip through the pages of Master of the Desert Nomads, and I can find my own handwriting in the margins. That's the best. That's when the memories come back so strongly, I swear I'm seeing ghosts.

 

[overgeeked]

I miss the good old days too, but there's plenty of good to be had here in the new.

Absolutely.

Yes, I miss the days when creating a character or running a battle took minutes instead of hours. I miss being able to play through an entire adventure module in a single session, both because of the way that modules were written and because I had fewer obligations and time commitments. I miss being able to buy a brand-new D&D book with my $10

You still can. As long as it’s a 3rd-party PDF or an old-school release. Or a Dungeon Crawl Classics module.

/week spending allowance.

Hell, I miss getting an allowance!

I just stopped paying an allowance. Not looking to start again.

miss being young, and being able to stay up all night with my friends and still have the energy for a trip to the mall. I miss Aaron and Brian, two of my buddies who played that adventure with me that weekend, and who passed away in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

Time has that effect. Sorry about the absent friends.

I don't think the Old-School Renaissance is going to fix any of this.

Getting old, no allowance, and absent friends? No. The mechanical things you mentioned? Absolutely.

The here-and-now can be frustrating for old grognards like me. I'm frustrated with the amount of prep time that I need (and how it's never enough no matter how much I set aside), how I have to upload .JPGs and scale them and rig them and juggle tokens around. And I am especially frustrated that I can't get by with just quickly reading 30 pages and handing out sheets of graph paper. No matter what we do, we always need an hour of tech support and troubleshooting before we can even begin, and we are already (and always) on a tight schedule.

Absolutely. Just because the bells and whistles are available doesn’t mean we have to use them.

But the here-and-now has little bits of gold, too, if you know where to look. You know what I do like? I like being able to schedule a gaming session electronically, and being able to play D&D with my buddies who live in different cities and different time zones. We can laugh and cuss and drink together like the last 30 years never happened. I love being at a place in my career where I can afford to collect those old books and adventure modules, or I can have them printed on demand. And I love, dearly love, that I can pour myself a bit of bourbon on a quiet summer evening and flip through the pages of Masters of the Desert Nomads, and I can find my own handwriting in the margins. That's the best. That's when the memories come back so strongly, I swear I'm seeing ghosts.

Ghosts are the best.

To absent friends.

 

[Baron Opal II]

To absent friends.

 

[Hussar]

It's going to come into play when they need a favor or any other interaction with the mayor. What do you mean "Only if the GM chooses to make the sister part of the puzzlebox of the setting."? She's there. If she's just the maid it's not like there is a tremendous influence. But, sure, she can ask for a favor, write their name in the appointment book, or clandestinly leave a door unlocked.

If there is never any interaction with the mayor... then I guess the angle is "wasted"? You can be sure that Sarah will be there for the harvest dinner, and Vaalingrade will be content.

The problem is, what are the odds that that sister that you chose to be a maid in that mayor's house, before the campaign started, just happens to be the maid in the mayor's house that you need to talk to ten levels and thirteen months of real time later?

That's what @pemerton meant. That background that you chose at chargen will only matter if the DM chooses to use that specific mayor in that specific town. Most campaigns don't focus on a single town. So, what's the point of detailing that my sister works for that mayor? It will never come up.

 

[Hussar]

1E DM. Do you want to play? Here’s what I have prepped.

5E Players. We do what we want and you have to do what we tell you.

Your players are weird man. My players are halfway down the road before I have a chance to complete the sentence. "Hey, there's a ... " ((Whoosh, as the party all starts moving in that direction)) "Hey, guys, I need to finish this so you know what you're supposed to do... guys.... guys?"

The "We do what we want and you have to do what we tell you" came from much, much older players who had been playing for years.

 

[tetrasodium]

The problem is, what are the odds that that sister that you chose to be a maid in that mayor's house, before the campaign started, just happens to be the maid in the mayor's house that you need to talk to ten levels and thirteen months of real time later?

That's what @pemerton meant. That background that you chose at chargen will only matter if the DM chooses to use that specific mayor in that specific town. Most campaigns don't focus on a single town. So, what's the point of detailing that my sister works for that mayor? It will never come up.

The one that they just now created or just now decided works there when they asked the gm to use that route? Those odds would be one hundred percent if the gm says OK.
It's a quantum contact that can be cut loose with no risk to the pc and no obligations expected at any point

 

[pemerton]

It's a quantum contact that can be cut loose with no risk to the pc and no obligations expected at any point

How is that going to hurt the play of the game?

 

[Aldarc]

How is that going to hurt the play of the game?

Players will get the crazy idea that they have any say, impact, or influence over the GM's pristinely crafted world!

 

[pemerton]

Players will get the crazy idea that they have any say, impact, or influence over the GM's pristinely crafted world!

And just in case anyone thinks I'm a free-thinking hippy . . .

My personal preference in RPGing is that establishing the NPC (who is no more a "quantum" contact then every other part of the fiction which is authored when it becomes relevant, which is most of the fiction in RPGing) the players have to engage with the system in some fashion, spending a resource (eg a Plot Point in MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, or paying for a Relationship out of starting build points in Burning Wheel, or having to write a relationship into your starting 100 word description in HeroWars/Quest) or making a check, which brings with it the risk of the adverse consequences of failure (eg Circle in Burning Wheel and Torchbearer, or Streetwise in 4e D&D or Classic Traveller).

The reason for that is it gives the whole social/relationship dynamic of the game a bit more "teeth".

That said, and to stick my hippy wig back on: if the system we're playing doesn't have that sort of thing in it, and so we have to resort to negotiation and consensus in order to resolve these questions about "Do I know someone who works at . . .", well so be it. I can't see any reason why the answer should default to, or even typically be, No. Let's just frame a scene where the PC calls in their favour from the person whom they know, and see what happens next!