D&D General Matt Colville: "50 years later we're still arguing about what D&D even is!"
- Thread starter el-remmen
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overgeeked
B/X Known World
It’s a good video and well worth the watch if you enjoy Matt’s stuff. I don’t agree with some of his conclusions. But that’s to be expected.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
I thought this was a very good video.
@Snarf Zagyg has been evangelizing The Elusive Shift for a while. (What a terrible title that is.)
And this was a great summary and yeah, Matt's right: We aren't all playing the same game (although there's less variance than previously), which I suspect is the root of a lot of dumb arguments.
@Snarf Zagyg has been evangelizing The Elusive Shift for a while. (What a terrible title that is.)
And this was a great summary and yeah, Matt's right: We aren't all playing the same game (although there's less variance than previously), which I suspect is the root of a lot of dumb arguments.
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EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
I mean, it would really help if we didn't have to spend 20+ years having a knock-down, drag-out, vicious barroom brawl every time a new concept or archetype gets put into the game and half the folks who played before that archetype was added can't stand it and work to drive it out as much as they possibly can.
And for those of you who think you know which single specific thing I'm talking about, you may be surprised to know that I'm thinking about at least two additional things you probably don't expect--and that weren't added by my favorite edition.
And for those of you who think you know which single specific thing I'm talking about, you may be surprised to know that I'm thinking about at least two additional things you probably don't expect--and that weren't added by my favorite edition.
M.L. Martin
Hero
The 3E sorcerer, the Greyhawk thief ... possibly the UA cavalier, although that wound up removed from the game. I don't recall the 3.5 warlock catching quite so much flack.
(And the 4E warlord is obviously the one you think people are thinking of.
)
ezo
Get off my lawn!
Interesting video. I started in the late 70's but was so young I honestly don't recall much about how we played--I feel mostly like it was just me listening to a story and reacting telling what my character did.
Since the early 80's however, as a teen I recall the games fairly well. AD&D was our game and we actually used most of the rules in the books--when they came up. As DM much of the time from 12 or 13 on, I never had a lot of house rules so I find it interesting how Matt talks about AD&D having more house-rules. I have tons for 5E, usually a dozen pages well into the 30's or 40's of pages, unless I am playing "strictly" RAW--in which case I have a single page of house-rules.
Anyway, by the time I was playing, even in the late 70's, players rolled dice for their characters. We talked in 3rd-person about what our characters did well into the 80's. As a player I still rarely use 1st-person, but when I talk to players I address them in 2nd-person and accept them responding in either 1st- or 3rd-person about what they do.
DM's I've played with, and how I run my own game, still very much want players who are particular about what they do; however a lot of that depends on how immersive the experience is according to the DM's descriptions, etc. So, I will "warn" players about things I might not have emphasized, or overlooked completely (!), if it is something their character would know of or see in the scene--and I allow players to ammend their actions given that additional information.
For me the game IS about the adventure. Not the character, or characters. Even when I play, my character is not my driving motivation for playing--it is taking my character through the adventure! The adventure is the most important thing in the game (as DM and player) for me, which is probably a big reason why the move towards giving PCs more and more power and features and stuff they can do is frustrating. I don't care what your character can do, I care what your character actually does.
In that respect, when a player stops asking "When do you think we'll level up?" I feel I have done my job as DM. If all a player cares about is "getting good" for their PC, I feel they are missing the better part of D&D--and that is probably my failure.
Since the early 80's however, as a teen I recall the games fairly well. AD&D was our game and we actually used most of the rules in the books--when they came up. As DM much of the time from 12 or 13 on, I never had a lot of house rules so I find it interesting how Matt talks about AD&D having more house-rules. I have tons for 5E, usually a dozen pages well into the 30's or 40's of pages, unless I am playing "strictly" RAW--in which case I have a single page of house-rules.
Anyway, by the time I was playing, even in the late 70's, players rolled dice for their characters. We talked in 3rd-person about what our characters did well into the 80's. As a player I still rarely use 1st-person, but when I talk to players I address them in 2nd-person and accept them responding in either 1st- or 3rd-person about what they do.
DM's I've played with, and how I run my own game, still very much want players who are particular about what they do; however a lot of that depends on how immersive the experience is according to the DM's descriptions, etc. So, I will "warn" players about things I might not have emphasized, or overlooked completely (!), if it is something their character would know of or see in the scene--and I allow players to ammend their actions given that additional information.
For me the game IS about the adventure. Not the character, or characters. Even when I play, my character is not my driving motivation for playing--it is taking my character through the adventure! The adventure is the most important thing in the game (as DM and player) for me, which is probably a big reason why the move towards giving PCs more and more power and features and stuff they can do is frustrating. I don't care what your character can do, I care what your character actually does.
In that respect, when a player stops asking "When do you think we'll level up?" I feel I have done my job as DM. If all a player cares about is "getting good" for their PC, I feel they are missing the better part of D&D--and that is probably my failure.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Actually, the primary one I was thinking of was dragonborn. But yes, the warlord was up there as well.The 3E sorcerer, the Greyhawk thief ... possibly the UA cavalier, although that wound up removed from the game. I don't recall the 3.5 warlock catching quite so much flack.
(And the 4E warlord is obviously the one you think people are thinking of.
The Sorcerer also fits into this space, as some of its seeds go back to 2e, it was controversial among some groups across 3e's run, and only really gained full acceptance in mid-to-late 4e, about 20 years after the initial impetus. Warlock managed to ease, but not eliminate, this stuff because it was initially from a secondary late book and then flew under the radar when the Warlord wars sucked all the air out of that particular discussion.
You can even go back further and find stuff like this about things like specialty priests (which evolved into the Domains we now know and which are seen as Absolutely Mandatory in many cases), or the constant back and forth about whether the Monk "belongs" in D&D or not. (Consensus seems to have fallen on begrudging acceptance--"I don't like it, I wish it weren't there, but I guess it isn't harming me by being there.")
But that general pattern of things taking like 15-20 years to go from "torches and pitchforks" to "eh, fine, whatever, I guess it's in the club" is a big part of what fuels the fire here. D&D rose from roots that explicitly broke molds constantly, that invented whole new ideas out of nothing more than "we need a class that suppresses undead because Jim and his vampire are being large keisters" or that threw rayguns and power armor into an adventure because it Sounded Cool. But within even a decade of it starting, you already had traditionalists actively trying to gatekeep what was and wasn't allowed in to the D&D Thematics Club.
The irony of course is not lost on me, bitter though it may be. The hobby that champions how open it is, how it contains the one thing a CRPG can't, namely the endless well of human creativity, is full of folks not only ready, but fervently determined to eliminate anything which does not conform to the Right Way Of Understanding this game we play. It's not even about badwrongfun; it's about badwrongstyle. You can't play D&D with badwrongstyle--you might corrupt it somehow, might in some unexplained (and probably inexplicable) way take away what others enjoy just because you got a new thing you enjoy.
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