D&D General On Grognardism...

[Paul Farquhar]

but i have not found out yet, how to e.g. properly limit some maximum spell level achievable by a class (e.g. limit cleric spells to 5th level), without severely nerfing the class at higher char level and thus make it unattractive to my players.

Level 10 is the level cap. Tell your players at the start.

 

[S'mon]

Oh, talking of Traveller and punching Nazis, does anyone else remember the Traveller adventure published in White Dwarf based on The Heroes Telemark, but with the addition of crashed aliens (the PCs) who needed the heavy water to repair their spaceship, and for whom chlorophyll was a narcotic? They don't write them like that any more!

Green Horizon?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Green Horizon?

I really don't remember the name. It might have been.

 

[S'mon]

Level 10 is the level cap. Tell your players at the start.

5e is great for allowing a sub-20 level cap and still allowing for PC progression via Blessings, Boons, Training, and a bunch of other stuff in the DMG & XGTE. It would definitely work fine as E10; unlike in 3e or 4e you could run E10 and still use pretty much the entire Monster Manual!

 

[S'mon]

I really don't remember the name. It might have been.

Yup, Green Horizon - Top Five Issues of White Dwarf

 

[jasper]

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When someone says "back then we all played like this" it's rubbish. Back then we all played differently.

Holy frack some one has the key. Exterminate. Exterminate. Exterminate. Or give him an internet cookie.

 

[jgsugden]

...
When someone says "back then we all played like this" it's rubbish. Back then we all played differently.

In the early 80s: there were differences in style, and different house rules, and differences in our preferences - all of which changed the output when we played... 100% agreed on that.

However, we almost all shared the same inputs. We all used the same starting blocks. There wasn't a huge spectrum of different RPG games and editions to compare. Most of us learned under the same evolutions of rule sets. We didn't have a kajillion 3rd party resources. We didn't have the benefit of the internet off of which to bounce questions.

The tools of construction for all early 80s D&D players were primarily the basic set/expert sets, the original AD&D books and a bit of Dragon Magazine. They introduced a few monster books (MM II, FF), then expanded the rules with UA, Companion/Master/Immortal, OA, etc... but for the most part our experiences all began the same:

Get the book.
Read the book.
Be confused by the non-intuitive layout and poor explanations.
Fumble through a few games.
Try to 'fix' the problems we encountered (some of which were flaws in the game, some were misunderstandings of the rules) as we went.

That experience shaped how we approached the game. It has continued to evolve over the next 35 years, but it is the foundation upon which our houses are built. Those that learned in the 90s (2E), early 00s (3E), etc... have different foundations. What is built upon that myriad of foundations is different, even within a 'generation', but the foundations tend to be similar during an era.

It is like we all went to the same (remote) university and then went out and did different jobs in the same sector. There is a reason people think back on their university experiences as the greatest years of their lives, and some of that really applies to learning D&D in that era.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

In the early 80s: there were differences in style, and different house rules, and differences in our preferences - all of which changed the output when we played... 100% agreed on that.

However, we almost all shared the same inputs. We all used the same starting blocks.

Really. No. For some of us RPG resources where difficult to come by. Which meant that what we had to make do with what we could get. Which was very random.

There wasn't a huge spectrum of different RPG games and editions to compare./

Maybe in the 70s, but by the early 80s there where a gagillion D&D imitators and 3rd party stuff around, and some of them where easier to find than TSR stuff.

The tools of construction for all early 80s D&D players were primarily the basic set/expert sets, the original AD&D books and a bit of Dragon Magazine. They introduced a few monster books (MM II, FF), then expanded the rules with UA, Companion/Master/Immortal, OA, etc... but for the most part our experiences all began the same:/

I had the 1st edition AD&D core rulebooks and some modules, but no basic/expert etc stuff. I had a load of Traveller stuff, which had the advantage of not needing polyhedral dice, which where really difficult to get hold of. I played a little Runequest, Gamma World and Call of Cthulhu. Had White Dwarf, which was a lot easier to get hold of than Dragon in the UK, and at that time covered a much broader range of RPGs.

It is like we all went to the same (remote) university and then went out and did different jobs in the same sector. There is a reason people think back on their university experiences as the greatest years of their lives, and some of that really applies to learning D&D in that era.

I didn't really play RPGs with my university circle. Mostly people I knew through home and school. Didn't much care for university, too much pressure to socialise.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yup, Green Horizon - Top Five Issues of White Dwarf

Good find. I recognise the cover art. Awesome stuff.

 

[tetrasodium]

Nevertheless BA, advantage/disadvantage and concentration mechanics are some of the best innovations of 5e and one might ask why they did not invent these things earlyer.

Bounded accuracy creates as many problems as the dubiously credible "problems" it solved by removing magic item churn and ensuring that any magic item will never just not be enough to keep up like it once did against weaker foes. They doubled down on exacerbating that by making resist nonmagic b/p/s the only hurdle to overcome & removing flat dr/flat resist.

(dis)advantage is a good mechanic, but then they threw out every competing mechanic& decided to go whole hog on maslow's hammer with it to rob it of any praise deserved by making it create problems. Concentration as well is a good mechanic that was grossly overapplied to combat lfqw as if it were still a rampant problem even while spells themselves are also self checked in their effects so it combines into an inversion to lwqf as the math very much shows. I'm pretty sure that ToB or something had some proto-concentration type mechanics too.