Is D&D/D20 Childish and Immature?

[jgbrowning]

well

everyone has the right to make himself feel better by "putting down" other people.

Attempting to treat a person who's doing that as an adult is the only childish thing i see going on here.


joe b.

(yep, logically self-referencive post.. )

 

[SHARK]

Greetings!

Thankyou Rel! By the way--was the companion you contributed to a companion for Rolemaster?

Thanks for the advice on posting from other boards. Perhaps I shouldn't have done so. I had thought I was merely quoting stuff from people who had already posted here, in a more inflammatory thread, so I didn't think the views expressed were revelations or new. I did want to make sure I quoted accurately, so people wouldn't think I just pulled such ideas from thin air. I'm accustomed to citation of sources--it comes from all of my college professors! It's their fault!

Furthermore, I am glad that so many of you are demonstrating all along what I knew--that EN-Worlders can discuss problems with D&D in a civil manner, and we can all learn things to boot! I am also grateful that so many of you readily give me the benefit of the doubt, and have worked to embrace my meaning and intention with the thread.

Thankyou very much my friends!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[Buttercup]

Another thing that I find difficult to accept is the notion that realism == maturity.

Ah, yes. That belief is akin to the one that proclaims books that are not filled with bleak dispair to be low-brow.

 

[Rel]

Greetings!

Thankyou Rel! By the way--was the companion you contributed to a companion for Rolemaster?

Yup.

 

[Drawmack]

I am a hard core D&D fan and I have been for a good number of years. When I do play another game it's usually specifically for the immaturity (my used copy of TOON should be here any day now). With this disclaimer states I will now reply.

Firstly any game has things about it that can be considered immature, unrealistic, lacking in versimilitude or whatever buzword you choose to use on any particular occasion.

I play D&D for two reasons. First and formost I like playing fantasy games for the break from reality that they offer me. Second I like the customizability of D&D (which is much more prevelent in 3e then in previous editions).

I just wrapped a 3e game that lasted 9 months and played 100% by the core rules, I didn't even allow any suppliments at the table. None of us had played 3e before and the idea was to become familiar with the system, a personal playtest if you will. From this playtest I have discovered the aspects of the system that I liked and those that I didn't like. There are aspects that I found jouvenile (rather then immature they mean slightly different things) and aspects that I found I liked. Here I will explain what I feel the jouvenile aspects of 3e are and how I've attempted to fix them to the standards of my group.

The gods, as described in the PHB, are thin and trite. In the next game we are going to use Lore of the Gods II: The Asguardians by Bastion Press.

The magic system is a bit over the top. I have developed some rules for kicking back the magic system a couple of notches which can be found in another thread on these boards.

The hit points system is ludicris. It's insane that it is impossible for a high level rogue to even really hurt a high level fighter using a dagger on a sneak attack. So I'm using the grim -n- gritty battle rules.

I personally find those three aspects of the core rules to be jouvenile, so I changed them and made them fit my tastes a bit better. However, I know a lot of gamers who find other things jouvenile about the system but leave those three things alone. It's all just personal opinion and opinions are like a**holes, everybody's got one and they all stink.

just my 2 coppers.

 

[SHARK]

Greetings!

Posted By Rel:
____________________________________________________
Quote:

"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."
____________________________________________________
End Quote.

Heh, Rel, it seems that our experiences are almost identicle! I played Rolemaster for ten or twelve years--and I switched to D&D3E because it incorporated so many cool things from Rolemaster, without the problems, you know? My players were getting to the point where it took eight or more hours to make up a Rolemaster character, and it became problematic to ever kill any player characters, or party-NPC's, because of the dread of spending so much time making up new characters! Plus, combat with more than a few characters quite literally took far too much time! Rolemaster is a great game in many ways, but after awhile, the problems can become larger and larger, to the point of derailing the game, and making it "too much like work" as one of my players expressed it!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[Heap Thaumaturgist]

Some of it could be the popularity and ease-of-play you get with D20 ...

It brings in alot of new players. In my experience, new players tend to be largely ... mmm ... new. I just introduced a friend of mine to NWN (as a step toward getting a Pen-n-Paper group together) ... he's played computer RPGs and Final Fantasy and whatnot for eons and eons.

The first thing he did when he got done reading the mini-PHB included in NWN was to say: "Holy crap that's cool. I'm going to be a monk ... an EVIL monk!!" Because monks get alot of nifty-o abilities and it's usually hard to play "Evil" characters in, say, Final Fantasy games. Games that are scripted out for you, in which the player has very little say in the outcome of the story, but merely follows along as the story "unfolds", killing monsters and getting loot as they go.

I really wouldn't want to run a game for him or my other non-gamer room mates because they'll be new, and they'll be excited about all the powerful things they can do and that they can "be" evil. Because those options aren't usually available outside of RPGs. Casting Meteor Swarm on a local church isn't an option in Harn. Just because it's there doesn't mean that D&D is immature. Just that you can do it.

Is it the D&D that makes for immature style? I don't think so. I know these guys, and I'm sure later one they'll be more interested in any storylines I want to run than in killing and looting and being evil.

Harn is more complex, more difficult, and (frankly) more "boring" to newbie players. I'm sure there are people who were introduced to Harn off the street and thought it was the greatest thing since the discovery of fire, but y'know, I doubt they're the majority of people. From the responses, it seems like some of Harn's player-base is made up of "Burn Outs" from D&D ... people who get tired of immature players, of power-ramping, of looking for loot when they could be exploring the depth of whatever it is that Harn people do.

Why? Harn is more constraining. D&D you can run low-fantasy, D&D you can run low-level, high story, whatever. It's produced for power-ramping and pretzel eating and "Dude I DEMOLISHED that orc!" because that's what the grand majority of humanity likes in their RPG game on the weekend. We here ARE the minority, and we're all (by definition) more deeply involved in our RPGs than Joe Average Gamer.

I see Harn as sort of a sub-culture of RPGs. Harn is a signifier tag that says: "I play RPGs in a certain way." Harn lets Harn-People recognize other Harn-People. It's still the same sort of thing (Playing a role in a game) just a different flavor of milk. Music is Music. Some people like punk. Green hair and a punk band T-Shirt is a great way of saying: "I like punk." ... doesn't mean punk is any more or less mature than, say, Verdi. Just different.

--HT

--ht

 

[Henry]

I'll make one observation, and then I'll leave.

Superiority is relative - but Nothing succeeds like success. Any time someone starts talking about superiority (see the "are gamers tolerant?" Thread recently on these boards) - that's when I get suspicious.

Harn is as superior to Dungeons and Dragons as Apples are to Oranges - and vice versa.

 

[Rel]

Heh, Rel, it seems that our experiences are almost identicle! I played Rolemaster for ten or twelve years--and I switched to D&D3E because it incorporated so many cool things from Rolemaster, without the problems, you know? My players were getting to the point where it took eight or more hours to make up a Rolemaster character, and it became problematic to ever kill any player characters, or party-NPC's, because of the dread of spending so much time making up new characters! Plus, combat with more than a few characters quite literally took far too much time! Rolemaster is a great game in many ways, but after awhile, the problems can become larger and larger, to the point of derailing the game, and making it "too much like work" as one of my players expressed it!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

That summarizes our position quite well.

We tried out 3E on a beach trip as a one-off game including some of my players wives (who don't normally play). GMing it for the first time, I screwed up some of the rules pretty badly (especially AoO's). And with only one copy of the PHB available and a couple of the players never having gamed before, things went a little rough. And it STILL ran faster than our RM combats tended to!

Once we got back home and resumed our RM game the next week, we started talking about how to make the combat more streamlined. Of course, most of our suggestions were stuff we pulled from 3E. The more we talked about it, the more we realized that we needed to take a break from RM and try out 3E.

We did so with the understanding that we probably wouldn't like the "fire and forget" magic system from D&D and would likely want to use a house rule modified version of the RM magic system (which I still think is a great system). But the more we played D&D, the more we found that it just "worked" for our group. We decided to just keep the D&D magic system and forget trying to change it.

Almost 2 years later, we have never looked back. A couple of my friends have even sold off their RM stuff.

Our online friends in the RM community were shocked and appalled that we would go back to such a "remedial" game as D&D after tasting the sweet ambrosia of RM. I say, if I'm having more fun, it was the right decision.

Oh, and just so you know, I was co-author of The Essence Companion, which these days typically sells on e-bay for around $120 and up. I need to sell off my last few copies (other than the one in my collection).

 

[Desdichado]

Our online friends in the RM community were shocked and appalled that we would go back to such a "remedial" game as D&D after tasting the sweet ambrosia of RM.

Yuck, yuck! I love it!