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How has D&D changed over the decades?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8612122" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I don't think this particular variable has much explanatory relevance in the current conversation.</p><p></p><p>I'll explain why.</p><p></p><p>I ran my first game set in the WoG in the mid-80s. (I think 1984 or 1985.) I used the same setting from the late 80s until the late 90s. I've used it again, for FRPGing, for the last 5+ years.</p><p></p><p>The systems I've used have been AD&D, Rolemaster, Burning Wheel and Torchbearer. Compared to your (Hussar's) desiderata, it's always looked fairly traditional: Dwarves with axes, Elven rangers and spell-users, no Dwarven MUs, Dwarven pagan cleric types focus on earth and not trees, etc.</p><p></p><p>That hasn't been any sort of barrier to player participation in establishing background/setting stuff relevant to their PCs.</p><p></p><p>Just a few examples:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">* When I started a campaign in 1990 I wanted to set it around the City of GH, using the boxed set for that. One of the players wanted an apprentice, bumpkin-ish, goat-herding mage PC (influenced a bit by Ged in Wizard of Earthsea). I read out the description of the Village of Five Oaks from the setting book, and the player elaborated on that, on his PC's backstory, on his mentor who lived in a great hollow tree and was in hiding from his rivals elsewhere (which ended up being Nyrond, but I don't know if we established that at the time), etc.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">* Playing Burning Wheel around 2016 or so, the PCs were stuck in the Bright Desert. One of the players said "Everyone knows that ancient Suel nomads are as thick as thieves in the Bright Desert; I want to Circles some up!" The check failed, and so the nomads who arrived on the scene were no friends of the PC! As GM, I tied the enmity back into the player-authored PC backstory, which involved the PC having trained with his brother in an isolated tower in the hills just north of the desert.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">* Starting a Torchbearer campaign a month or two ago, I had specified that we would be starting in the Bandit Kingdoms, and pulled out my map. One of the players looked down the option of home settlements and decided his PC was from a Forgotten Temple Complex. We plonked said temple complex down in the Theocracy of the Pale, near the borders with Tenh and the Bandit Kingdoms. The player established a few NPCs there, as part of the relationships aspect of PC building, linking them into the backstory another player was establishing for a Wizard's Tower PC hometown which was also easily placed on the map.</p><p></p><p>I've never found traditional D&D, or established settings, to be any sort of barrier to collaborative development of the fiction. If Gygax (or Ed Greenwood, or Salvatore, or REH, or Leiber, or whomever) needs a new NPC or settlement or hitherto-neglected god to make their story work, they just write it in! Nothing stops players of FRPGs doing the same.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8612122, member: 42582"] I don't think this particular variable has much explanatory relevance in the current conversation. I'll explain why. I ran my first game set in the WoG in the mid-80s. (I think 1984 or 1985.) I used the same setting from the late 80s until the late 90s. I've used it again, for FRPGing, for the last 5+ years. The systems I've used have been AD&D, Rolemaster, Burning Wheel and Torchbearer. Compared to your (Hussar's) desiderata, it's always looked fairly traditional: Dwarves with axes, Elven rangers and spell-users, no Dwarven MUs, Dwarven pagan cleric types focus on earth and not trees, etc. That hasn't been any sort of barrier to player participation in establishing background/setting stuff relevant to their PCs. Just a few examples: [INDENT]* When I started a campaign in 1990 I wanted to set it around the City of GH, using the boxed set for that. One of the players wanted an apprentice, bumpkin-ish, goat-herding mage PC (influenced a bit by Ged in Wizard of Earthsea). I read out the description of the Village of Five Oaks from the setting book, and the player elaborated on that, on his PC's backstory, on his mentor who lived in a great hollow tree and was in hiding from his rivals elsewhere (which ended up being Nyrond, but I don't know if we established that at the time), etc.[/INDENT] [INDENT][/INDENT] [INDENT]* Playing Burning Wheel around 2016 or so, the PCs were stuck in the Bright Desert. One of the players said "Everyone knows that ancient Suel nomads are as thick as thieves in the Bright Desert; I want to Circles some up!" The check failed, and so the nomads who arrived on the scene were no friends of the PC! As GM, I tied the enmity back into the player-authored PC backstory, which involved the PC having trained with his brother in an isolated tower in the hills just north of the desert.[/INDENT] [INDENT][/INDENT] [INDENT]* Starting a Torchbearer campaign a month or two ago, I had specified that we would be starting in the Bandit Kingdoms, and pulled out my map. One of the players looked down the option of home settlements and decided his PC was from a Forgotten Temple Complex. We plonked said temple complex down in the Theocracy of the Pale, near the borders with Tenh and the Bandit Kingdoms. The player established a few NPCs there, as part of the relationships aspect of PC building, linking them into the backstory another player was establishing for a Wizard's Tower PC hometown which was also easily placed on the map.[/INDENT] I've never found traditional D&D, or established settings, to be any sort of barrier to collaborative development of the fiction. If Gygax (or Ed Greenwood, or Salvatore, or REH, or Leiber, or whomever) needs a new NPC or settlement or hitherto-neglected god to make their story work, they just write it in! Nothing stops players of FRPGs doing the same. [/QUOTE]
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