payn
He'll flip ya...Flip ya for real...
Guess you hate us cause you aint us.
D&D General On Grognardism...
Back in the mid-80s (I believe), the game show Wheel of Fortune added a final game to the program that the winner of the day got to participate in. There was a short puzzle put up on the board that the winner had to solve, and they were allowed to select 5 consonants and 1 vowel with which to do it.
For the first several years all was good. People would select all manner of letters and oftentimes any of the five vowels (although not usually U). And the final puzzle worked-- it was a lot of fun to play and watch. But then... as players began to see how the game worked and then started to "game" the game... astute players realized what was happening and began to look up the standard "letter appearance" tables for English words... and discovered that the most frequent letters used were R, S, T, L, N, and E. And thus... for quite a while, those became the letters that got selected by the really smart players most of the time (with occasionally someone going off-script and substituting a C or a D instead of like L for example). But eventually... everyone else also began realizing this, and soon every player began selecting these same exact six letters each and every game.
Years go on and the producers of the game realized that their final puzzle had issues and it became more boring to watch because everyone was making the same intelligent selections. So they changed the game up. They straight out gave the players the R, S, T, L, N, and E, and then asked them to select three other consonants and a vowel (just to give the game more variance.) And after a while, it seemed to work okay... but like each time before, a set of "best practices" came into play and thus the game once more lost any sense of originality or surprise. ALL players had seen this game for so long that they knew all the basic stuff that had to be done to win. At that point producers had nothing left but to intentionally start selecting puzzle solutions that barely used like ANY of the most popular twelve letters in the alphabet, and coming up with all these weird puzzle categories just to be able to throw words up on the board in random formats in any attempt to make something seem surprising or difficult for the players.
But watching the game now... seeing how far off the reservation producers of Wheel of Fortune have had to go just to produce any semblance of a useful or "interesting" final puzzle game... makes me just shake my head and think "This is ridiculous. I don't see how anyone could actually enjoy watching or playing this. Or at least I know I can't. This is essentially a "solved" game at this point-- player experience have rendered the base game practically moot. And if you now have to change things so dramatically in order to create ANY sense of surprise anymore... at some point I just have to ask whether or not it's worth it? Maybe it's just time to move on from this and come up with a different type of game."
This is how I feel about Basic and AD&D dungeon-crawling.
For the first several years all was good. People would select all manner of letters and oftentimes any of the five vowels (although not usually U). And the final puzzle worked-- it was a lot of fun to play and watch. But then... as players began to see how the game worked and then started to "game" the game... astute players realized what was happening and began to look up the standard "letter appearance" tables for English words... and discovered that the most frequent letters used were R, S, T, L, N, and E. And thus... for quite a while, those became the letters that got selected by the really smart players most of the time (with occasionally someone going off-script and substituting a C or a D instead of like L for example). But eventually... everyone else also began realizing this, and soon every player began selecting these same exact six letters each and every game.
Years go on and the producers of the game realized that their final puzzle had issues and it became more boring to watch because everyone was making the same intelligent selections. So they changed the game up. They straight out gave the players the R, S, T, L, N, and E, and then asked them to select three other consonants and a vowel (just to give the game more variance.) And after a while, it seemed to work okay... but like each time before, a set of "best practices" came into play and thus the game once more lost any sense of originality or surprise. ALL players had seen this game for so long that they knew all the basic stuff that had to be done to win. At that point producers had nothing left but to intentionally start selecting puzzle solutions that barely used like ANY of the most popular twelve letters in the alphabet, and coming up with all these weird puzzle categories just to be able to throw words up on the board in random formats in any attempt to make something seem surprising or difficult for the players.
But watching the game now... seeing how far off the reservation producers of Wheel of Fortune have had to go just to produce any semblance of a useful or "interesting" final puzzle game... makes me just shake my head and think "This is ridiculous. I don't see how anyone could actually enjoy watching or playing this. Or at least I know I can't. This is essentially a "solved" game at this point-- player experience have rendered the base game practically moot. And if you now have to change things so dramatically in order to create ANY sense of surprise anymore... at some point I just have to ask whether or not it's worth it? Maybe it's just time to move on from this and come up with a different type of game."
This is how I feel about Basic and AD&D dungeon-crawling.
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JiffyPopTart
Bree-Yark
This happened in our games. Over the 7 million times we checked for traps, listened at, looked under, and otherwise dissected any door we went through we now just have an established "door routine" and only refer to it as such. The GM just applies the results of the door routine to the original description.
Similarly we always follow the right hand rule in every dungeon.
The 5e DMG has the equivalent - the only process difference is that the GM chooses the initial attitude of the monster, rather than determines it by a roll on a table. From there, the DCs for changing the attitude of encountered creatures are clearly stated.
el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
I have to wonder however, like a couple of people, if while for GMs like me or you or many of the people on these boards, just choosing is what makes sense and is easiest, but for a new or inexperienced GM having a roll to fall back on if you are not sure or just not used to "thinking like a xvart" (or whatever) would be a great thing.
This thread has made me really think about game assumptions. I think one of those assumptions (it is one I made for a long time) is that all DMs learn to do it by watching other people do it - which is both a fantastic tradition and potentially a very limiting factor.
Edit to Add: I confused this with the "Lost Art of Dungeon-Crawling" thread!
But my comment still applies.
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Sacrosanct
Legend
I will admit my first reaction to this post wasn't all that...constructive. Sadly I had a good idea that a thread like this would inevitably result in someone making a post similar to this one. But after giving it a few minutes, I'm actually not defensive or angry, but sad that you feel this way. That you have a need to insult others, make up things that aren't true about them, and make poor assumptions about the design team all because they have a different idea of what makes a fun game than you do. I am legitimately sad that a person has this much bitterness over a game.
When WoTC took over and 3e came out, I was not all that happy with it. When 4e came out I admit I had similar feelings at the time (except I just stopped posting on D&D forums altogether--look at my join date, then look at my post frequency, you'll see a huge gap in posts from 2008 to 2012 because I didn't believe in hanging out in forums talking about a game I didn't like*). So I get it when people aren't happy with 5e. But trust me here, don't let that negativity soak into you to the point where you're bitter, angry, and hostile towards other gamers for liking something different than you. If you find yourself making up assumptions, accusations, and pejoratives about another group of gamers, then it's a pretty clear sign you've gone too far. Everyone should be happy and enjoy themselves when playing a game, and if you're angry every time you talk about it, well, that's probably not a great position to be in. Speaking from my own experiences.
*for three reasons. 1. No one else wanted to listen to me complain over and over about a game I didn't like, 2. Why would I subject myself to that negativity over and over? Do you keep watching a movie you don't like over and over? And 3. If a bunch of people are enjoying a game, why would I insist on coming in and threadcap over and over about how much I don't like it? Life's too short.
Classic D&D has determining reaction as part of the encounter procedure. Even if the creatures are hostile, you do not start off assuming there will be a fight. 5e allows for the possibility that an encounter won’t result in combat (see “Encountering Creatures” in Chapter 8), but there’s no procedure outlining how that sequences happens. It’s left purely to fiat. That’s not equivalent at all.
Having reaction rolls be the assumed default allows the players to trust that all options are on the table. Apocalypse World refers to this as disclaiming decision-making, and it’s necessary part of playing to find out what happens. One of the properties of old-school play is emergent narrative, which won’t happen when the DM decides all the time. The players will key into the DM’s tendencies, and those will become foregone conclusions.
Azzy
ᚳᚣᚾᛖᚹᚢᛚᚠ
I agree, there are some good things that got lost.
There are some really basic morale rules in the 5e DMG, but I find them less than satisfactory.
I would love for these sorts of things to return via the DM sections of subsequent supplements. Tasha's DM section was kind of lacklustre to me, and would have benfitted (IMO) from this kind of content.
You are darned if you do, and darned if you don't. If you don't give a table, the new DM must figure out how to make a choice. I question how hard that really is, but I'll accept it, for argument. Maybe a table will be better. But, that table may then serve as a cognitive speedbump later to the not-completely-new DM doing their own thing. Neither is clearly intrinsically better for all people, or even a majority of users.
Rulebooks have this goshawful dual task of being both a reference text, and being a teaching text, which are frequently not aligned goals.
transmission89
Hero
I guess I’m a neo grognard? I enjoy old school and new school games (Currently playing pf2, AD&D2e and OSE)
Never had d&d growing up as a kid in the 90’s (too poor to buy myself and no one else interested in my immediate family to buy it). But the occasional curious glances at my cousin’s books, images from fantasy games at the time (beefcake art, warrior women with impossibly feathered hair) left an impression of what d&d was to me.
When I grew older, and went to university, I thought I’d check out this d&d stuff. Ended up buying a couple of 4e books, I found them a little dry and puzzled, was this what d&d is? Lurked in this very site during the height of the edition wars and saw a name, Pathfinder, crop up over and over. I checked it out. Yes, to me, this was it, a sense of wonder and mystery and magic, it’s here.
I ran some games for friends, joined PFS to play, but struggled with the idea of all these complex moving parts and rules checks. I felt suffocated, unsure of the “correct“ decisions to make (especially as the crb as published kinda expected you to move from 3.5 where things were perhaps explained more). Things also felt off.
I looked into 1e when the reprints came and bounced off. How the hell do you play this? How do I balance an encounter? What’s the right level of treasure to give without wbl? Fool that I was...
It mattered not, for 5e was just around the corner, a return to an older style of play, a promised modular system. I played it, I enjoyed it, but something was still missing, a yearning from my childhood fantasies, for me, a lack of sense of peril, excitement, adventure.
The growing Community also brought growing pains. Calls for changes and tweaks that has begun to distort it from “not my” d&d. Changes to AL as suddenly xp has become difficult, instead there are milestones, treasure points and it’s all about the character arc etc. Calls to change this that and the other to morph it to our preferences. All power to them, just not the game I enjoy. If it’s not to your tastes, why pick up a game and change it to those? why not just play a game that already supports that?
Incidentally, I find calls against reactions to this as “gate keeping“ dismissive. Both sides seem to talk past one another and resort to insults. Gate keeping is not allowing people to play, because they don’t meet your criteria. It’s not expressing valid concern that new entrants want to change everything to be a different game, changing what the base game is. Again, if you want to customise it at the table, go for it, fill your boots, I’m a live and let live guy. I have no real stake in it, this paragraph beyond the first sentence is more a musing rather than declaration of opinion or call to arms and I don’t wish to de rail the thread.
So I tried again. i read the mentzer basic pdf, everything started slotting into place.
Reading the 2e reprints proved more accessible, they provided a lens to better understand 1e for me.
Suddenly, I felt free. I had structure to run my games without being over burdened. Monsters were manageable, my mental processing could be devoted to adventure rather than mechanics.
For me, the older games give a sense of wonder, liberation, mystery and adventure at the table in a way the newer games don’t. Not that one is better than the other, just they give me different feels....
Never had d&d growing up as a kid in the 90’s (too poor to buy myself and no one else interested in my immediate family to buy it). But the occasional curious glances at my cousin’s books, images from fantasy games at the time (beefcake art, warrior women with impossibly feathered hair) left an impression of what d&d was to me.
When I grew older, and went to university, I thought I’d check out this d&d stuff. Ended up buying a couple of 4e books, I found them a little dry and puzzled, was this what d&d is? Lurked in this very site during the height of the edition wars and saw a name, Pathfinder, crop up over and over. I checked it out. Yes, to me, this was it, a sense of wonder and mystery and magic, it’s here.
I ran some games for friends, joined PFS to play, but struggled with the idea of all these complex moving parts and rules checks. I felt suffocated, unsure of the “correct“ decisions to make (especially as the crb as published kinda expected you to move from 3.5 where things were perhaps explained more). Things also felt off.
I looked into 1e when the reprints came and bounced off. How the hell do you play this? How do I balance an encounter? What’s the right level of treasure to give without wbl? Fool that I was...
It mattered not, for 5e was just around the corner, a return to an older style of play, a promised modular system. I played it, I enjoyed it, but something was still missing, a yearning from my childhood fantasies, for me, a lack of sense of peril, excitement, adventure.
The growing Community also brought growing pains. Calls for changes and tweaks that has begun to distort it from “not my” d&d. Changes to AL as suddenly xp has become difficult, instead there are milestones, treasure points and it’s all about the character arc etc. Calls to change this that and the other to morph it to our preferences. All power to them, just not the game I enjoy. If it’s not to your tastes, why pick up a game and change it to those? why not just play a game that already supports that?
Incidentally, I find calls against reactions to this as “gate keeping“ dismissive. Both sides seem to talk past one another and resort to insults. Gate keeping is not allowing people to play, because they don’t meet your criteria. It’s not expressing valid concern that new entrants want to change everything to be a different game, changing what the base game is. Again, if you want to customise it at the table, go for it, fill your boots, I’m a live and let live guy. I have no real stake in it, this paragraph beyond the first sentence is more a musing rather than declaration of opinion or call to arms and I don’t wish to de rail the thread.
So I tried again. i read the mentzer basic pdf, everything started slotting into place.
Reading the 2e reprints proved more accessible, they provided a lens to better understand 1e for me.
Suddenly, I felt free. I had structure to run my games without being over burdened. Monsters were manageable, my mental processing could be devoted to adventure rather than mechanics.
For me, the older games give a sense of wonder, liberation, mystery and adventure at the table in a way the newer games don’t. Not that one is better than the other, just they give me different feels....
