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

[pemerton]

What's a "BIFT"?

A Bond, Ideal, Flaw or Trait.

 

[Vaalingrade]

What's a "BIFT"?

The sound Batman makes when he punches a dude.

 

[pemerton]

So for me, the biggest problem would be if part of the adventure requires the PCs finding something or meeting someone, and the PCs try to use their contact to bypass that part of the plot. For example, if part of a quest requires them to find someone who can read Ancient Draconic (an obscure and rarely studied language) so the PCs have to find a certain sage who is familiar with it, I would be against a PC saying "you know, my brother worked in a library. He can read Ancient Draconic." Whereas I would not be against them saying "you know, my brother worked in a library, maybe he knows a guy who can read it." The latter is a way to advance the plot, the former just tries to circumvent it.

What you are describing here seems the same as what I posted upthread, except your language is broadly sympathetic and mine is less so:

To me, it smacks of a GM determined to stick to their preconception of how play should unfold. Which takes me, again, back to @Hussar's point: under those circumstances, what reason do players have to take the setting seriously as anything other than a complicated puzzle-box? And if it's a complicated puzzle-box, why would they bother thinking about family, friends etc for their PCs?

 

[Thomas Shey]

So for me, the biggest problem would be if part of the adventure requires the PCs finding something or meeting someone, and the PCs try to use their contact to bypass that part of the plot. For example, if part of a quest requires them to find someone who can read Ancient Draconic (an obscure and rarely studied language) so the PCs have to find a certain sage who is familiar with it, I would be against a PC saying "you know, my brother worked in a library. He can read Ancient Draconic." Whereas I would not be against them saying "you know, my brother worked in a library, maybe he knows a guy who can read it." The latter is a way to advance the plot, the former just tries to circumvent it.

This isn't a smack directed at you but--this is an example of why not to bake in single-points-of-failure.

 

[tetrasodium]

I take it by this that you mean there are no Fate-style compels.

I'm not averse to other mechanics if they existed instead but pretty much yea. BIFTs are an abomination

Burning Wheel doesn't have compels. That doesn't stop Beliefs and Relationships being held to the fire. An example from actual play:

Now Burning Wheel has social resolution mechanics, and so my GM was getting ready for a Duel of Wits; but I circumvented it instead by praying for a Minor Miracle, which resulted in the years falling away from Xanthippe and her agreeing to join Thurgon in the liberation of Auxol.

My impression is that most D&D players dislike social mechanics of the DoW sort, and so would play out the conversation between Thurgon and Xanthippe as free roleplay. But that doesn't change the fact that the player's Beliefs and Relationships - or, in 5e terminology, BIFTs - are being held to the fire.

I've never had the chance to read the rules of or play burning wheel but feel like I've seen the DoW described enough times to be vaguely aware that I don't object to it even if I don't quite remember enough to vaguely grasp them. I'm a big fan of meaningful social mechanics found in a lot of modern ttrpgs & probably have more than a few posts trying to explain them in relevant threads

This is where you lose me.

The reason I, as a player, risked the divine retribution of calling down a Minor Miracle wasn't because the GM was tempting me with gold or magic items or other power-ups. It's because I was (and am) invested in the fiction of my PC. That's why I built the PC, that's why I play him, that's why I play the game!

If the only way to get a group of RPG players to care about friends or families or acquaintances is because their material interests - gold, magic items, etc - are at stake, you are already so far down the path of sacrificing value for expedience that I don't understand why you are even worrying about whether or not the PCs have connections to the fiction or are, instead, "men with no name".

Speaking in the language of solution rather than diagnosis: the way to get the players to play something other than "murderhobos" is not to persuade them that they can become more materially and mechanically powerful by being decent. It's to create a fiction that they are actually invested in and care about.

Lets get away from the awful sister example & use some (maybe bad) examples that might fall under mere coincidence

Spoiler: Like these

I'm not pulling from actual gameplay & just trying to give examples that don't need too much beyond "most of my games are set in eberron or similar"

• Players want to do something in a low to medium nonhostile situation without a nearby guard noticing. Alice has soldier background & asks if he could try swapping war stories with the guard for a bit as a distraction> Yea that seems reasonable roll $whatever
• Players are traveling through a border checkpoint that might cause some complications due to whatever reasons (ie plot, contraband, etc), Bob has criminal or spy background & asks if he can use his experience with that to help him decide if it would be better to do X over Y. Alternately it could be something like "before we set out to cross the border, which of these plans seems best based on my experience as a spy/criminal"/"do "I feel that we've overlooked anything in our plan based on my background?" >cool roll Y
  • Same sutuation, Bob wants to pull rank & try to get the checkpoint guards to excuse the contraband on account of it being part of a promise he made to an old squadmate> roll X...
  • Same situation Dave the guild artisan wants to say he's working a contract for one of the dsagonmarked houses to make sure nobody gets embarrassed by the contraband while slipping the officials a bribe.>Roll X
• Cindy is a noble & the players want to infiltrate lord whocares's manor for whatever reason. Cindy asks if it's reasonable that she's been to his manor in the past at some kind of noble social interaction that would give her a general idea of the layout when the players are deciding which route they want to take a stab at.
• airship is doing bad things with gravity, bob says "as a spy would It be reasonable to say I'd heard the proper steps to take for survival when faced with a broken flight ring like this?" Alice says similar as a soldier who might have been trained or interacted with soldiers who served on one enough to have a clue.
• Some might give partial information/good enough success, others might change the problems at the other end entirely. the border checkpoint might for example be fine with letting them store their "family heirloom" in the customs lockup for a few days because the party got voluntold to go do this other thing the customs folks want done. Lord whocares might be a little too into Cindy or realize she was involved & want to make things difficult for her family. Alice might have a lot of buddies from the war who want to catchup or involve her in problems when it might be complicated too. Bob might have actual criminal/spy problems find him at exciting times because of things his character did that he's not personally aware of as a player.

None of those are really much more than an excuse to justify using one skill over another or possibly changing the situation in ways that let someone get involved. It works out great & players will feel awesome being linked to the world once they start doing things like this. With my regular group it works great, but with other groups & newbies I need to be more careful about allowing it because of a one two combo of not being able to complicate things for the PC combined with the flat "nope... no it 's not, we never talked about that" followed by "zomg my backstory is MINE you controlling monster of a GM inserting things in MY backstory" type impulses that are so prevalent in 5e.

I wind up looking like I'm playing favorites/bearing a grudge against the newbies I don't know if Alice Bob Cindy or Dave is at my table with a bunch of newbies or unknowns or worse they feel entitled to thrust a long & ill fitting work of fanfiction they call a backstory like those others must have. The effort might be appreciated but collaborating with the DM on a backstory that uses semiquantum elements to create excitement & drama is just not often welcomed all that much in the era of "players own their [nearly unkillable] characters that need nothing" of 5e.

 

[Hussar]

I should note that campaigns localized enough that the mayor of the town being a potential issue throughout the whole campaign are hardly unknown.

But, probably pretty unlikely. It's unlikely that you're going to need to get into the mayor's house more than once, if even that. And you certainly can't know that when you make your character. So, there's the Mayor's house, the Sheriff's House, the Guildmaster's house and the Color Animal Inn - pick one for where your sister works and hope that the party stays in this one town, the town they start in at 1st level, for the entire campaign so that maybe, maybe, one time in the entire campaign, you get lucky and happen to have picked right.

And people wonder why players don't bother.

 

[Hussar]

type impulses that are so prevalent in 5e.

See, I would take you a LOT more seriously if you would stop trying to pin this on "kids these days". Good grief, this sort of discussion is OLD. As in VERY OLD. The golden box description of player backgrounds where DM's should keep their fingers out of the pie is at least as old as these boards.

It is in no way a new thing.

 

[pemerton]

this sort of discussion is OLD. As in VERY OLD. The golden box description of player backgrounds where DM's should keep their fingers out of the pie is at least as old as these boards.

It is in no way a new thing.

My first exposure to the idea of PC backgrounds was the original OA, which encouraged PCs with families, martial arts mentors, etc, and presented a coherent social and metaphysical situation in which the PCs and both their human and non-human antagonists have a place.

It changed my play dramatically. And I remember in the early 90s - using Rolemaster, not a system with any bells-or-whistles to support background NPCs - that one PC had a family and a mentor, one had a house with a servant (and rent problems), one lived in his manor outside of town which was sometimes a base for the others, etc.

Over the decades I'd like to think I've got more sophisticated about this stuff as a GM. I've never followed your "keep their fingers out" philosophy, but nor have I ever been tempted to scorch the players' earth. And I don't regard any of it as rocket science.

 

[Remathilis]

This isn't a smack directed at you but--this is an example of why not to bake in single-points-of-failure.

The goal of the scene is to find the sage. The text is the reason. There are multiple paths to find the sage (asking, divination, your brother) but they all eventually meet the sage.

Of course, my example isn't based on a total sandbox style game either, but a more structured AP style one, which is a play style choice and opinions differ. My goal would be that if the adventure funnels all choices to B, adding a family member that gets to B is fine, but adding one that avoids B is not. Ymmv.

 

[Remathilis]

See, I would take you a LOT more seriously if you would stop trying to pin this on "kids these days". Good grief, this sort of discussion is OLD. As in VERY OLD. The golden box description of player backgrounds where DM's should keep their fingers out of the pie is at least as old as these boards.

It is in no way a new thing.

It keeps reminding me of this meme. I'm willing to believe Tetra has seen an uptick in bad players. He loses me when he blames the rule system for this uptick and discusses it like the vast majority of new players fall into that category of monster players there only to torment the DM. It feels like arguing with hyperbole, with a side dish of "won't someone please think of the children?"

Bad players are bad. Depriving them of gold, dangling out magic items, murdering their families, or killing their PCs with the efficacy of a slasher movie doesn't fix them.