D&D General If D&D were created today, what would it look like?

[pemerton]

I think the issues is degree of success and argeement of who has better odds in certian occassions.

For example, you can say all the warriors could be 2 dice characters.

But who has the advatange vs a mob of mook goblins? The strong warrior with heavy armor and a great-weapon OR the fast warror with light armor and 2 light weapons OR the sorta strong sorta agile warrior with the big shield and a long spear?

What about when they are fighting a single big ogre?
What about a pair of orcs?
How do they compare to the unarmored unarmed warrior using martial arts?

Such simplistic rulesets or low class number RPGs tend to sit around gameplay that doesn't get deep into specific areas nor allow for changing variable to be part of the challenge. They rely on everyone quickly agreeing on the logic behind the game. If total agreeming on the logic and how the tropes interact isn't quick or clean, they don't work. And D&D runs on a lot of tropes.

There are existing RPG rulebooks that address these sorts of questions to various degrees and in the context of their various resolution frameworks - for instance, Apocalypse World and Dungeon World; HeroQuest revised; Cthulhu Dark; Marvel Heroic RP; 13th Age.

Just as early versions of D&D gave the GM a lot of advice on how to introduce traps and tricks into the dungeon, and how to adjudicate them fairly, so may this imaginary version would give the GM a lot of advice on how to work with the group to adopt appropriate descriptors, how to manage the relationship between fiction and action declaration, etc.

5e D&D already has aspects of this as part of the game - for instance, when does it make sense to call for an INT rather than a WIS check, or a STR rather than DEX or CON check, etc - so it's not as if it's completely foreign to the spirit of D&D as it actually exists.

 

[Minigiant]

There are existing RPG rulebooks that address these sorts of questions to various degrees and in the context of their various resolution frameworks - for instance, Apocalypse World and Dungeon World; HeroQuest revised; Cthulhu Dark; Marvel Heroic RP; 13th Age.

Just as early versions of D&D gave the GM a lot of advice on how to introduce traps and tricks into the dungeon, and how to adjudicate them fairly, so may this imaginary version would give the GM a lot of advice on how to work with the group to adopt appropriate descriptors, how to manage the relationship between fiction and action declaration, etc.

5e D&D already has aspects of this as part of the game - for instance, when does it make sense to call for an INT rather than a WIS check, or a STR rather than DEX or CON check, etc - so it's not as if it's completely foreign to the spirit of D&D as it actually exists.

My point was that players could not agree on how the tropes worked or interacted without a hard framework.

That's the source of most classes and the calls for new ones.

We couldn't agree on what die to do ranger stuff is. Or monk stuff. Or druid stuff. Then we couldn't argee on the stuff itself. So someone had to make the classes for each tableto have a skeleton to work from. And 2021's audience is even more diverse than 1974's.

 

[pemerton]

My point was that players could not agree on how the tropes worked or interacted without a hard framework.

That's the source of most classes and the calls for new ones.

We couldn't agree on what die to do ranger stuff is. Or monk stuff. Or druid stuff. Then we couldn't argee on the stuff itself. So someone had to make the classes for each tableto have a skeleton to work from. And 2021's audience is even more diverse than 1974's.

Well my feeling is that if D&D was being invented today it probably wouldn't be coming off a wargame chassis. And so would probably begin from the premise that cooperative play with a degree of self-restraint is a thing.

A free-descriptor system takes as given that different tables, and even the same table in different moods, might reach different views about what is within the capability of a forester and archer or a temple monk or a druid of the ancient order. What matters is that, on any given occasion of resolution, the table is able to reach broad consensus with non-obvious cases. HeroQuest revised tackles the issue of balancing wider and narrower descriptors, by way of ad hoc modifiers; so does Over the Edge (another descriptor-based game that I'd forgotten about upthread), by way of bonus dice for narrow descriptors. The version of D&D I'm imagining could include something similar, or alternatively it might have a rule that everyone has to choose a descriptor at what is an agreed and appropriate level of generality.

I realise that what I'm suggesting is a bit of a departure from the tradition of PC build based on ever-lengthening lists, but I thought that was part of the purpose of the thought experiment!

 

[Minigiant]

Well my feeling is that if D&D was being invented today it probably wouldn't be coming off a wargame chassis. And so would probably begin from the premise that cooperative play with a degree of self-restraint is a thing.

Well that begs the question.

If D&D isn't built off a wargame chassis, what would it be coming off of?

Action video games?
Euro boardgame?
Trading card game?
Computer RTS
Hidden role party game?
LARP?

Each would determine the base class lists and the game's focus in mechanics.

 

[Lanefan]

• Legolas is just a Swashbuckler with a bow for a primary weapon. Literally every single trick he pulls in LotR is classic Swashbuckler stuff.

OK, I can get behind that; though I still think there's room for a missile-primary sniper or archer class separate from the melee-primary Swashbuckler/Pirate.

• We're talking book 1 and Gladiator is not a book 1 class, no matter how good Spartacus was (it was very good, outrageously so for a show that verged on porn/splatterfest at times). Later though yes.

Agreed about Spartacus the series; but also look at all the other swords-and-sandals examples down the years - Ben Hur, Spartacus the movie, Gladiator, I Claudius, various biblical epics - it's not like the genre's never been heard of. In fact, it's not unthinkable that this AUDnD gets its start in this genre.

• Nobody who "just wants to hit things" is going to be looking for a specific "extre-generic!!!" class to do it. That's not how people think. They'll just pick the Barbarian-equivalent or whoever has the most simple rules.
• And I'm sorry guys but Fighter will never, ever, ever, ever be a class without the 1974 D&D's Fighting-Man. Not in a million years. And you can't have "Generic-ass Fighter" AND a bunch hyper-specific fighting-men.

Then what class is the third guard on the left in the king's throne room, or the experienced town militiaman at the gate? These are nothing more than "generic fighting people", and there's boatloads of them in any typical setting. Some of them are going to get rather good at what they do (which is generically fight); and some of those will likely end up adventuring. Might as well give 'em their own class, eh?

 

[Lanefan]

Well my feeling is that if D&D was being invented today it probably wouldn't be coming off a wargame chassis.

Quite likely.

And so would probably begin from the premise that cooperative play with a degree of self-restraint is a thing.

Nowhere near as likely. It's every bit as possible that the founding premise is as a competitive game between the PCs (similar in that respect to a boardgame): yes everyone wins if the party wins, but your real goal is still to be the best in the party.

Some of the chassis - that being the inspirations - would be similar to what we already have, with LotR at or near the top of the list*. It's not a big leap from some sort of LARP experience to thinking "how could we game-mechanize the LotR-style adventuring group such that we don't have to live-act it all out and thus can verge into the fantastic?".

Another big influence would be, I think, the SCA (or a similar group) and I believe there's a fair degree of overlap in people between the SCA and the LARP crew.

* - and a bunch of other good fantasy written since; as I don't think D&D's absence would have curtailed the expansion in fantasy writing that's been underway since about the late '60s/early '70s.

 

[Lanefan]

LARP?

Each would determine the base class lists and the game's focus in mechanics.

I think it'd originate within some combination of the LARP community and the SCA.

 

[JEB]

Well that begs the question.

If D&D isn't built off a wargame chassis, what would it be coming off of?

Action video games?
Euro boardgame?
Trading card game?
Computer RTS
Hidden role party game?
LARP?

Each would determine the base class lists and the game's focus in mechanics.

You forgot Choose Your Own Adventure and adventure computer games (a la Zork), and likely previous SF RPGs based around that approach to interactive fiction/gaming.

Doesn't mean 2021 D&D wouldn't base itself on one of those others, of course.

 

[Lanefan]

You forgot Choose Your Own Adventure and adventure computer games (a la Zork),

Advent, Zork, et al. all post-date the release of D&D which means there's now no way of knowing how much influence D&D had on their design.

CYOA might have been around earlier in some form.

 

[Minigiant]

I think it'd originate within some combination of the LARP community and the SCA.

Actually I thing it would be a combined effort of LARPs, RTSs, and licensed action video games.

In D&D absence:

• Wargames would get more digitized into TBS and RTS games. Warcraft will likely not be a thing but the AU will have its own Warcraft from another dev. Possible a major LOTR or Historic RTS in the 90s. If RTSes survive to 2021, I see a major ASOIAF RTS with hero units based of major characters.
• LARP would continue and be more mythical with no D&D influence. It too might hit computers and online and develop classes based on whatever is popular in the 80s and 90s.
• Then the $$$. Vidya gaems would be the main uniting codifier of archetypes as developer create character after character from book, TV, and movie series to sell play in their game for money. $10 to be Legolas means the Swashbuckler class gets good melee and ranged attack, light armor, and an ammo mechanic. $30 to play Cleganebowl mean the Fighter class can wear Extra Thick Heavy Plate for 20 AC and swing great weapons for a bajillion damage.