Is D&D/D20 Childish and Immature?

[Desdichado]

Good point Joshua! Indeed, if in fact it is immature players, rather than the system itself, then couldn't it be argued that you can have immature players--regardless of what system they are using? Conversely, regardless of what system you are using--you can find very intelliegent, mature players?

Thank you! Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying. As many gamers start with D&D, when they are young and immature, I think the painting of D&D with the "immature" brush is probably quite common. But not necessarily justified. In my case, it had a lot more to do with the gamers I knew at the time, not the game itself. Right now, I play in a group of four couples -- I think the very youngest of us is 27, and we all have at least two kids -- we're not immature! And I think our tastes in gaming have perhaps become a bit "rarified" as well -- we like intrigue, suspense, fear and all that, not just the "I attack it with my sword" syndrome. And --believe it or not-- we're finding that D&D suits this style of play admirably.

I've always thought of my group as being very mature, as well as intelliegent. As far as class-systems, it seems to only be a problem to some. My players, for example, could care less. They understand the archetypes, and they understand how they can customise and individualise the character-types to the kind of characters they desire to play. Magic items, same thing. The players that I have like them, of course, but they are more interested with the stories being told, than with what special items that they may have or not, you know?

I think classes --to use an example-- are considered immature, because it takes all thought process out of the design of a character (or at least it did "back in the day.") If the character is nothing more than a disposable fitted role in the "party," then I can see how that might come across as a more "immature" way to play, for those who really like to get into the roleplaying aspect of their game. Of course, saying that roleplaying is a more mature way to play is a subjective and not absolute statement to make, for one thing, but the fact of the matter is, classes aren't the straight-jackets they used to be anyway. You can create any type of character with classes these days, and it's really easy to borrow or create all new classes if you don't like them anyway. So the argument on classes as being immature fails on two fronts -- one subjective and one objective.

 

[Thorntangle]

I can be mature and adult playing D&D/d20. Actually here's a pic of me playing at last Sunday's session: Dragon!?

 

[takyris]

1) I've never played Harn.

2) I've played a bunch of D&D. I play every Monday. It's a cool game. I like it a bunch.

That said, is it possible that gaming elements in D&D are more childish than in Harn? Can a gaming element even be childish?

Hit Points, for example. Definitely more abstract, and there's the old problem of a 6th level fighter who laughs in the face of ten guards with crossbows, because even if they're all pointed right at him, he knows that they need an 18 or higher to hit, and he can take the damage easily. Or a 10th level fighter who considers jumping off a 100' cliff a viable and efficient way to get to the enemy wizard at the bottom (average of 35 points damage, and even if it's higher than 50, his Fort save is high enough to make Massive Damage Death unlikely).

Proponents say, "You're missing the point. The cool thing about D&D is being ABLE to play someone who can dodge eight crossbow bolts, like Trinity in the Matrix (who one could say was hit for trifling amounts of damage by bullets that grazed or barely missed her)."

But there's the issue of the Power-Fantasy Wish-Fulfillment factor. I'd argue that the more powerful your characters can easily become, the more prone your game is to power fantasy play -- that awkward and cringeworthy event wherein gangly unpopular teenagers become melee gods or fireball-flingers and general munchkinism ensues. From what all the Harnites have said, their system makes it harder to go all power-fantasy happy -- since a powerful guy can be maimed or scarred or lose a couple of fingers real easily, even on a good day.

I open myself to flames with the following:

Argument 1: D&D is more abstract, and therefore less realistic, than other games, like Harn

Argument 2: D&D enables greater power scaling (as in, a character gets a lot more power, to the point where they can shrug off things that would have killed them early-on) than other games, like Harn

Argument 3: Games with greater power scaling are more prone to idiot munchkins who like to talk about what level their character is, how many things he has killed, and how many weapons he has -- which gives a bad name to the system they use, regardless of other people who use it responsibly...

Argument 4: Games that are less realistic benefit from generally being easier to manage, but have the potential for enabling a less mature gaming style

1: Don't know Harn -- tell me.

2: Don't know Harn, but this seems to be what they complain about.

3: This makes sense to me, but maybe there are Harn munchkins too. It does seem, though, like games where you get powerful create power fantasy games -- which are arguably less mature. Although Paranoia didn't promote hugely mature play, and you were always two steps from death there, anyway...

4: In some games, they describe the blow glancing off the bone and cutting along the leg with a jarring shock of pain. In D&D, we can have people blown across the room by a fireball who then fall off the wall, leaving a little them-shaped spot in the charred pattern, and continue fighting. Not everyone does it that way -- some people elaborately describe blows that just miss, or that graze you, or fireballs that you take on the shield and therefore only lose an eyebrow from -- but the potential for silly play is there.

At the moment, my conclusion is that while a given D&D game can be mature or immature, the game itself enables immature play in ways that other systems do not. However, my OTHER conclusion at the moment is that "childish" is an inherently loaded term. Anything you play on your GameCube is childish. Roleplaying itself is a GAME, and as a game, it is inherently childish. But when you say it as a loaded term, it gets ugly.

In my game, sometimes I describe the combat in detail, and sometimes I just wanna do hit point damage because I want to get to the next fight. Sometimes people duck past the fireball to take only a bit of damage relative to their maximum hit points, while other times they take it full in the face and say, "Ah-ha, thank goodness I wore my fireball-repellant today!" after taking weenie damage. It's a game I play with my friends. We have fun. Calling us childish is the pot calling the kettle black.

-Tacky

Edit: Me types good.

 

[Rel]

First of all, Shark, I respect you a great deal from what I’ve read of your posts. But, for future reference, I think it is generally a bad idea to take derogatory comments from a message board and post them on another. I’ve seen some ugly stuff happen when the two camps collide.

But I can confirm that there is at least one other instance of another gaming board where I posted having a generally “anti-D&D” flavor to it because they perceived the game as “simplistic”. I argued until I was blue in the face and actually, most of the folks there ultimately agreed with me that while D&D wasn’t their cup of tea, it was just as valid a roleplaying system as any other. A few diehards insisted that D&D and d20 “SUCK!” (The irony of those individuals calling D&D simplistic was lost on them.)

I have had a similar experience to Joshua Dyal. I was introduced to RPG’s through AD&D and played it for years. I was young and immature and so were most of the guys I played with and so were most of the games that I played in. When I started to mature, I was introduced to another system that was more skill intensive and started to feel that an utter lack of skills was a failing of the AD&D system (I sort of still do.). So I moved to this other system and played it almost exclusively for about a dozen years. Along the way, I even co-authored one of the companion books for that system. But ultimately I started to feel that the system had become bloated and encumbered by too many confusing rules and excessive minutiae.

When I was looking for other possible systems as alternates, it took some time for me to get past the memories of the “immature” (but often very fun) D&D games that we played in our teens. Eventually I made the leap to 3E and I loved it. We’ve been playing it exclusively since then and I think it has an almost perfect level of flexibility for my tastes.

 

[2WS-Steve]

I certainly hope that D&D is childish and immature. I'd be appalled to discover that I’ve been playing a post-modern deconstruction of myth as metaphor for collective psychology, or a brutal economic analysis of the late medieval marketplace and the role of the peasant therein.

I devote all my energy to producing immature, childish, over-the-top, horrendously unrealistic fighting maneuvers and supernatural powers. And then I *play* with them (and get angry and throw tantrums when my dice roll ones).

 

[barsoomcore]

Great summation of the problem, takyris.

I have trouble accepting objective comparisions between entertainment media like games. It's fine to say, "I don't like that game," but to suggest that one game or another is objectively superior -- I've never seen somebody make a good argument for that.

Another thing that I find difficult to accept is the notion that realism == maturity. Maturity, to my mind, has to do with the way people (in RPGs, both players and characters) interact with each other. Whether they're surviving 100' foot falls in the process has nothing to do with that.

My campaign involves dinosaurs, undead tyrants, 300'-long desert cats and flying steamships. I consider it immensely mature and emotionally sophisticated. Yeah, sometimes a T-Rex gets loose in the town and the party have to fight it in a blaze of sorcery and death-defying hand-to-claw combat. And if a character dies, or if a plan goes wrong and a hundred innocent civilians get caught in the crossfire -- things get handled in a mature fashion.

Maturity cannot be determined by the number of dice you're rolling.

 

[Zenon]

Conversely, regardless of what system you are using--you can find very intelliegent, mature players?

The crux of the problem is when someone believes the system they play makes them better than others.

Common examples I hear:

"I play in White Wolf games, that makes me a real roleplayer!"
"D&D is for munchkins!"
"Harn is soo-oo-oo realistic, grim & gritty, it's a real game!"
"3E makes it too easy! Why, in 2nd edition, I played for 15 years just to get to 2nd level! Now that's a real game!"

Etc.


This is back to the old "I'm better than you" schtick that appears whenever people talk about anything from automobile models & manufacturers, alcoholic beverages, or sports teams.

The people define the game, the game does not define the people, it's as simple as that.

 

[Zappo]

I haven't commented much in any of the Harn vs. d20 threads because I've noticed fairly quickly that the most vocal debaters attacking d20 were not offering any quote, example or proof (or, when they did, they were biased). See mr. "High fantasy in inherently inferior, because I say so" above. I've long learned that you cannot debate against hot air.

I can only repeat myself: instead of wasting time converting gamers from a system to another, try converting non-gamers to gamers. It's more useful and probably easier.

 

[Buttercup]

To answer the question posed in the title of the thread: D&D is no more childish & immature than any other hobby, such as football, restoring antique cars, model railroading, stamp collecting, canasta, or needlepoint.

Some folks just cannot be happy unless they find a group to denigrate. The appropriate response to this sort of arrogant BS is pity.

 

[kenjib]

That picture cracks me up each and every time Thorntangle!

One angle with which to look at this is the type of game that different systems support out-of-the-box. I think that D&D supports a style of play more in-line with modern high fantasy than older, more literary works of the past. It also retains influences from earlier pulps thanks to Gary Gygax's continued legacy but I think that 3e has moved away from the older pulp feel and more toward the modern fantasy feel.

By "more literary" I am not making a measure of quality. I am simply referring to the fact that they are more widely accepted in literary circles and canonized. Tolkein is perhaps the only modern fantasy author whose work can be considered literary canon, although I think H.P. Lovecraft is also approaching this status. Beyond that you have works like Morte D'Arthur, Beowulf, the Faerie Queen, and older works of myth and folklore like the Eddas and Grimm's Fairy Tales.

The feel of most of these stories are not easy to run with D&D straight out of the box. Because the system is generic, you must tweak the system to attain the flavor you want. D&D is a hodge-podge of different styles and as such has no real style of it's own. It is a massive pastiche of fantasy. So, if you want to run a more literary or historical campaign you likely need to either heavily tweak D&D or run another niche system already designed for one of these literary or historical styles, such as Harn's emphasis on a gritty medieval historicism infused with traditional fantastic elements.

So, I think that D&D's lack of being built around a specific setting is both a benefit and a curse.

As a slight tangent, while I prefer 3e for it's superior ruleset, I do think that 1e had a stronger connection to older literature, history, and myth than 3e does. I think the perspective of Gygax versus WotC has something to do with this, although it is true that the game must follow modern demographics and customer preference to be successful. Perhaps some people associate such things with sophistication or lack thereof.