No rule before its time?

[Bullgrit]

What D&D concepts (rules, flavor, etc.), of any edition, could not have been accepted (successfully introduced) sooner than they were? This is not just about rules "technology" but also our culture.

What D&D concepts, of any edition, just wouldn't be acceptable to today's gamers? What rules and flavor would just fall flat for today's tastes?

What RPG concepts (genres, presentations, etc.) could not have been accepted (successfully introduced) sooner than they were?


For examples:

How would tieflings as PC races been taken in the 70s and 80s?

Could Eberron (as it has been presented) have been a successful setting in the 80s?

Could the Vampire games have been successful if introduced in the 70s?

How would today's new gamers take random rolling for ability scores?

Bullgrit

 

[Aus_Snow]

I seem to remember some old geezer talking about a vampire character (PC), could have been around '74 or even earlier (that he was referring to, not that I heard about it!) so uh, yeah. Who knows, might be true. . .

Random rolling, people are fine with if that's how it is. Otherwise, if they've been told or shown that point buy is the way, well, they might feel funny about it I suppose. Or not.

Eberron is nothing new, but rather a particular mixture of classic stuff thrown into one world. Hardly weird, even for (gasp!) 30-35 years ago, I imagine.

That should cover all that. Anything else?

 

[Ahnehnois]

I always thought it strange (as someone who started essentially with 3.0e) that you would have a bunch of classes which were 'balanced', races which were 'balanced' and so one, but that you would then roll random ability scores, which could (and usually did) result in unbalaced characters. I think 4e has taken the 'balance' focus to new heights, and I don't think we'll see rolled ability scores as the default option any more. That said, I do like to roll for other rpgs (CoC for instance) which are less combat and balance focused, and I might even do it for my next D&D game.

I think a lot of 3e's concepts were introduced as soon as they could have been. The whole monsters as characters approach just doesn't feel right in 2e for instance. For that matter, the OGL and SRD wouldn't have made much sense before widespread internet access.

Oddly enough, I understand that psionics were present as 'wild talents' in very early versions of D&D. They still haven't really been 100% accepted by the game or the community (I say this as a psionics fan), so I guess that original rule was really ahead of iits time!

 

[billd91]

How would today's new gamers take random rolling for ability scores?

If these boards are any indication, they'd complain about it being "unbalanced" even though it sets characters up for min-maxed imbalances that I think are worse than the lucky imbalances of rolling. Needless to say, I have my players roll their character stats.

 

[AllisterH]

re: Random Rolling

Again, I always like to point out that the1e PHB EXPLICITLY mentions that a character should have a minimum of two 15+ stats.

I never understood how on the one hand, you were to randomly roll but the game itself assumed you would have a minimum score.

 

[Cadfan]

I'm not sure its a timeframe issue. I think its context. The problem with randomly rolling your stats in a game like D&D is that it creates a highly erratic difference in power in characters that you are likely to play for a relatively long period of time. If D&D were more like Paranoia in a dungeon, and your character Thag was a disposable, short term concern that would soon be killed and replaced with Son of Thag and Son of Son of Thag, rolling randomly wouldn't be bad. It'd just be funny if Son of Son of Nephew of Thag turned out to have really weird stats. He'd die soon enough and be replaced.

As for the others, yeah. There's been an evolution in conservative religious thought that we probably can't discuss here, and its less commonly upset about vampires and demons in fiction. That attitude hasn't vanished, but its less popular. So I do think that there's a difference in how a game like Vampire would have been accepted a few decades ago.

I think Eberron would have been fine no matter the timeframe. It borrows stylistically from pulp fantasy of the Indiana Jones variety, and that's been around for quite a while. It would have been different from the shirtless mighty-thewed barbarian fantasy genres, but I don't think that would have been a problem. I think people's attachment to shirtless might-thewed barbarians has always been much over-estimated.

 

[Squizzle]

I seem to remember some old geezer talking about a vampire character (PC), could have been around '74 or even earlier (that he was referring to, not that I heard about it!) so uh, yeah. Who knows, might be true. . .

Probably the Old Geezer, on rpg.net, talking about Why the Cleric Exists:
RPGnet Forums - View Single Post - [Historical] Where did the Cleric/Mage split come from?

 

[ggroy]

re: Random Rolling

Again, I always like to point out that the1e PHB EXPLICITLY mentions that a character should have a minimum of two 15+ stats.

I never understood how on the one hand, you were to randomly roll but the game itself assumed you would have a minimum score.

I once rolled double snake eyes for a constitution of 3, using the method of roll four d6's and dropping the lowest.

 

[AllisterH]

I once rolled double snake eyes for a constitution of 3, using the method of roll four d6's and dropping the lowest.

THIS

I honestly don't understand how "random rolling" can coexist even in 1e when the PHB mentions "you need at least two scores of at least 15"

Indeed, even the roll 4d6 drop 1 method wouldn't give you this since std dev is under 2.5 and the avg is 12.5

Something doesn't add up in the advice there...

 

[The Shaman]

How would tieflings as PC races been taken in the 70s and 80s?

I knew quite a few gamers who used Arduin Grimoire as a supplement in their 1e AD&D games, and it was possible to have a demon-sired character randomly generated. We also had player characters who suffered from lycanthropy and vampirism.

Could Eberron (as it has been presented) have been a successful setting in the 80s?

Why not? It was successful in the Seventies, when it was known as the Wilderlands.

How would today's new gamers take random rolling for ability scores?

"Waaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!"

That's a direct quote, by the way.

Again, I always like to point out that the1e PHB EXPLICITLY mentions that a character should have a minimum of two 15+ stats.

That would be 1e AD&D PHB, "Character Abilities," first paragraph on page 9, for the curious.

I never understood how on the one hand, you were to randomly roll but the game itself assumed you would have a minimum score.

Because you didn't read the rest of the paragraph, perhaps?

EGG goes on to write the following:

The referee has several methods of how this random number generation should be accomplished suggested to him or her in the DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE. The Dungeon Master will inform you as to which method you may use to determine your character's abilities. (Emphasis in the orignal - TS)

And of course the DMG gives you an array of options to generate the above average scores the PHB recommends.