D&D (2024) Its till just me or is the 2024 MM heavily infused by more 4e influences?

"Core D&D used to be low magic" is simply not true. It's always been readily available, at least so far at the PCs are concerned.
just look at the races we have now vs what we had then, no Goliaths magically hulking up, no Dragonborn breathing fire and with magical wings, etc. No doubt the game has become higher magic.

That Superman is not beating up shoplifters is the nature of the game. Of course you need villains that can be a challenge
 

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just look at the races we have now vs what we had then, no Goliaths magically hulking up, no Dragonborn breathing fire and with magical wings, etc. No doubt the game has become higher magic
D&D always had monsters that could do that stuff, so it was part of the world, it just took a couple of years to add it to PCs, but by 1991 we had half giant PCs (goliaths are half giants with the special ability to use the same doors as the rest of the party) not to mention playable giant bugs, and by 1994 we had playable dragons.
 



Yes, but they and I are discussing my design aesthetic preference for all monsters to be identifiable with minimal to no description.
“No description” seems to be more a feature of chess than D&D. I know it’s a Bishop because it can only move diagonally.

How do you tell an orc from a human? D&D is all about the description.
 


“No description” seems to be more a feature of chess than D&D. I know it’s a Bishop because it can only move diagonally.
But you only know bishops move diagonally because you’ve memorized how the pieces move. There’s nothing about the gameplay of chess that meaningfully communicates the fiction it’s representing, unlike D&D where the gameplay patterns can actually create the feeling of, for example, fighting a specific creature.
How do you tell an orc from a human? D&D is all about the description.
As I’ve said a few times throughout this conversation, perfect identification through mechanics isn’t realistically possible, but it’s a worthwhile design goal. I might not be able to differentiate orcs enough through stats alone to specifically express orc-ness. But, I can at least express humanoid that is tougher and more aggressive than a human, with traits like the the typical orc’s relentless endurance and aggressive. And of course, players with a lot of experience might memorize that orcs have those traits, just as they might memorize that bishops move diagonally in chess.
 

Maybe there is a simple explanation. 50 years ago, expectations were different.

Back then, in the real world, communicating on the internet from everywhere was impossible. Medicine can do things that were impossible back then and so on. So compared to 50 years ago we live in a world full of magic.

This probably has an effect on the Fantasy World.

Don't kniw something? Look up in the internet. Just cast a spell...
That is an excellent point, and one I hadn't considered (even though my own expectations in the real world have certainly changed over the years too). I guess my background as a student of history obscured that point. Thanks!
 


FR was popular from the outset. and was high magic from the outset (look at the old gold box video games). Krynn leaned heavily into player character exceptionalism. Magic is rare - apart from the PCs, and the baddies. There were some people trying to play Greyhawk as a low magic setting, but that depended on player character exceptionalism too. A ton of high level wizards came from Gygax's own campaign.

"Core D&D used to be low magic" is simply not true. It's always been readily available, at least so far at the PCs are concerned. What Eberron did is try to remove player character exceptionalism, by saying "what if the whole world had access to the same magic that the PCs do".

Runequest was kind of the low magic fantasy RPG in the 80s, although that did have PC ducks. And it explains why other RPGs took the high magic route. Pretty much all PCs in Runequest were Conan clones (even the ducks). All they could do was hit each other with swords. They didn't have many choices as to what they could do with a fight (you could target specific body parts), and one PC was pretty much the same as another.
I think you're generally right, but I also note that the magic available to the Heroes of the Lance was quite a bit less than a similar party would likely have now. Half of them didn't even have magic items, and only one was a full caster (they had a half-caster for a little while).
 

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