D&D General On Grognardism...

[Ifurita'sFan]

I was mostly being facetious with my original post. When WotC makes content for D&D, I just don't want them to cut me out. That was how I felt during the 4E era - I felt the game was being designed to discard not only everything that came before, but everyone as well. I am very glad that 5E swung the completely opposite direction and feels like it was designed to be inclusive, even though a lot of the 4E "under the hood" design was carried over. I would like them to continue down the path that brought us 5E in the first place and not discount any particular group who plays now because we don't carry the economic weight of others.

I mean, original D&D writing was college level, but it still attracted the young crowd (I was 10 when I first got into the game). As long as they write the game for those who are actually playing (now) and those who will continue to play, and not for some mythical group of those they could never appease, they should do fine.

I was likewise 10 I think. And likewise I'm glad that they swung hard back toward the a more classic style with 5e. They just need to lose feats, the long rest full heal, the 3 death saves and such and I'll be much happier.

 

[Azzy]

They just need to lose feats, the long rest full heal, the 3 death saves and such and I'll be much happier.

Nah, I'm cool with those.

 

[Lanefan]

I think that concept is a valid one, and can't argue with it. I would add, however, that despite 5e having a skill system, I think it has many less rules governing the system than 1e does. Do you feel that 5e takes up more of the blank canvas with it's ruleset than 1e does?

5e's unified design means that a lot more "blank canvas" can be covered with a lot fewer actual rules; and yes, I think it does cover quite a bit more than 1e.

For example, look how many different rules etc. were replaced with simple advantage-disadvantage. One rule covers at least the same amount of blank canvas* as a boatload of different rules in 1e.

* - whether it covers it as well or with a more/less attractive painting is a very open question; what not debatable is that the canvas is in fact covered.

 

[Ifurita'sFan]

It doesn't help that they actually included a 'you and yours rollplay, me and mine roleplay' line, which I thought was considered a hackneyed self-congratulatory canard back in the early 90s. There are a few valid points buried in the dross, but it is not a good look.

eye quirk In my experience the only sort of people that unironically use the comment "it is not a good look" would also use the word "optics" with a straight face.

But To address that "you and yours rollplay, me and mine roleplay line". Please... quote me where I said that precisely or retract the statement. I never made a me and mine vs thee and thine and claiming so is dishonest.

In fact let's give it a read.

"In new editions you have to roll for intimidate, or investigate, or any of a number of things that in 1e or 2e you just DID. That you role played, not Roll played. In those older editions the rules were silent about how you'd intimidate that guard, or how you searched for treasure, so instead you sat at the table with your friends and you spun stories of how you did those things. You had to talk to the guard and the DM, being a fair minded adjudicator, asked himself, did their friend do enough to pull it off. You didn't have a roll tell you if some NPC lied to them, you relied on the DM's acting skills to carry it off and you became canny to it. You ROLE PLAYED. Sure AC might have been a little bass ackwards... but who gave a flip?"

Hmmm, looks like it's all "you" and no "me" and I'm talking about where the current incarnation of the game puts emphasis.
I'll be clear on this.

In older editions you were encouraged to role play because in many cases there wa no mechanic otherwise, no call to roll dice, so you just either invented your own mechanic, or you roleplayed it. And yes there always have been people that "roll played" instead, because they derived pleasure from that , and more power to them, maybe one day they realized there was more to it all but if that was their joy, far be it from me to take that from them. But in newer editions it's encouraged to "roll" dice to decide things, and it's not done in a healthy or imagination stimulating way. It's done in a These are the rules, this is how you should do this way.

I can point to real world examples if you like.

1. In the Visual Media: Critical Role is one of the single biggest draws for new players today, and seen by many new players as "the way to play" . Their method is extremely heavy on dice rolls to decide everything. Even when the character's have extremely good reasons and describe their actions where you or I might not call for a dice roll due to outstanding rp, there are inordinate numbers of rolls for intimidate, deception, perception, investigation, and similar. This show is a big draw bringing in tons of new players and old ones as well, and with the full blessings of WotC to the point that they published the DM's own home brew world as an official setting. The message in the media is clear, "This is the ideal method of play, use this as a template for your play" There's even a term for it, the Matt Mercer effect. If they are presenting this as the ideal, players pick up on that and pattern their expectations on that. And many DM's are obliged to follow this expectation to ensure players have a positive table experience.

2. The official rules now put a heavy emphasis on use of stats, feats, skills and similar as a pure decision making instrument in game and place heavy emphasis on dice rolling to the point that people are encountering this sort of player regularly now. WotC - So, when do the announce the July book? Guesses on what it'll be? I know I am, and others are as well. Mind you I am full aware there have always been people that refuse to look outside the box, I've played with them for decades from 1e on, and those people will cycle themselves out of the hobby eventually as they always do, but the number of them is increasing and it's becoming an issue considering WotC is exploiting this trend to drive sales and that encourages the rules to continue to emphasize roll over role. Corporations gotta corp I guess.

3. Official events and Adventurer's league type things are being instructed to push the rules and game mechanics.
From the Adventures league DM Guide. p3

THE RULES OF THE GAME
Adventurers League play uses fifth edition Dungeons and
Dragons. You can issue rulings to your table when the rules of
the game are ambiguous or vague, but you must otherwise
adhere to the rules as they are provided in the core rulebooks,
and can’t change them or make up your own; “house-rules”
aren’t permitted for use. You must always use the most
current incarnation of a rule.​

I'd suggest you think about that. This is how the WotC is running things. That you must follow THEIR rules, and only theirs with the implication that doing otherwise makes you "other", and you must keep your game using the most current incarnation of those rules. What the hell happened to our hobby?

4. OSR groups are even publishing documents that compare and contrast modern play styles vs OSR play styles, with Modern being characterized as driven by dice rolling over player and character agency. If you want examples I'll be happy to send them to you. The common thread being that modern play emphasizes roll over role.

I'm not trying to draw some sort of one-upsmanship analogy here. I'm pointing out that WotC is not being a good custodian of our Hobby. They're pushing the game in a disturbing direction and in doing so they are trying to standardize and dictate terms to the community. In turn this authoritarian push is embedded in the rules, and will drive out the creativity and diversity of play that has been the hallmark of the genre.

Good stuff. I wish more of us had consistently seen that side of him.

I had the pleasure of working with Gary on the Legendary Adventures game. He was actually a joy to work with.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Precisely. It's meant in a more metaphorical way.

In part, yes.

I was trying to emphasize that it's not what is executed in the rules, but where the design of the game chooses NOT to lay down rules. Rules are frequently the death of imagination imo, and when there are gaps, you are encouraged to fill them in with imagination

If you deliberately avoid creating rules for something, that is a design decision just like creating a rule is. (Some might argue that failing to include a rule is an accidental gap, I tend to point to the fact that in 1e they had optional rules for all sorts of things, from detecting invisibility to aerial manuverabilty, that could be taken to ridiculous levels of scrutiny, and ask "If they went this far, do you really think they simply forgot?)

To me, the genius and the feel of the older edition is about what they consciously chose to stay silent on, and that silence is what makes it better. They could have created rules like "If you want to tell if an npc is lying to you, roll a d20 and roll below your wisdom stat and use such and such a modifier, or consult table 51p and roll percentile dice and modify as listed in subsection c. " endlessly, but they did not. They knew that by staying silent, they made it ambiguous and forced you to tread those grounds yourself. How do you tell if the DM's npc is lying to you? Maybe by investigating them? Maybe by charisma? Wisdom? Intelligence? A combination of all or none of these things? Who knows. That right there makes you speculate and invent, and use your imagination. And to me that's the name of the game here.

It's hard to respond to a giant wall of text, but I wanted to point out this part. As a fan of 1e, and as my preferred edition I played from 1981 to as recently as 2012, I am pretty familiar with the actual rulebooks. I suggest you open them back up. I'm guessing you started playing before me, but it appears you haven't actually looked at the 1e rulebooks in a long while.

1e had more rules than 5e does. Sorry, that's a fact. Do a word count. And what you quote as being optional aren't. Well, they weren't called out as such. They were the actual rules. I mean, sure they were optional in so far as any rule is optional, but to say they were optional while inferring that modern rules for skill checks aren't is disingenuous. Not only did 1e have rules for flanking, and attacks of opportunity that most old schoolers seem to keep forgetting, but it had a bunch of wonky rules newer editions got rid of, like weapon vs armor tables.

So when you keep making this argument about how great AD&D was because of what it didn't make a rule for, it tells me you have no idea how AD&D was actually written, because when you look at the actual rulebooks, that white space is filled with archaic rule after archaic rule.

This is coming from a guy who loves AD&D--me. I'm not hating on the system, but we have to be honest here. It may seem more rules lite with more white space because we (and everyone I knew at the time) just ignored most of those rules. But that doesn't change the fact they existed. And we are to be fair, we have to apply the same standard to every edition. It's dishonest of us to ignore half the rules in AD&D while complaining about and judging modern editions by all of their rules. AD&D was notorious for NOT choosing to stay silent, but to create a rule for everything. Gary was a pretty big stickler on that, just open up any editorial on the topic from Dragon, or his own passages from the DMG.

3. Official events and Adventurer's league type things are being instructed to push the rules and game mechanics.
From the Adventures league DM Guide. p3
THE RULES OF THE GAME
Adventurers League play uses fifth edition Dungeons and
Dragons. You can issue rulings to your table when the rules of
the game are ambiguous or vague, but you must otherwise
adhere to the rules as they are provided in the core rulebooks,
and can’t change them or make up your own; “house-rules”
aren’t permitted for use. You must always use the most
current incarnation of a rule.
I'd suggest you think about that. This is how the WotC is running things. That you must follow THEIR rules, and only theirs with the implication that doing otherwise makes you "other", and you must keep your game using the most current incarnation of those rules. What the hell happened to our hobby?

That's AL. It was very much the same in tourney modules back in the day. Why did you think the RPGA started? This isn't Wotc changing how things are run. They have always been that way at convention or organized play.

Edit Heck, go read the PREFACE in the 1 DMG. Gary is pretty explicit saying how the rules must be followed if you are to play AD&D, and variation to the rules is "dangerous". I'm sorry, but your arguments hold no water and are factually inaccurate.

 

[billd91]

In older editions you were encouraged to role play because in many cases there wa no mechanic otherwise, no call to roll dice, so you just either invented your own mechanic, or you roleplayed it. And yes there always have been people that "roll played" instead, because they derived pleasure from that , and more power to them, maybe one day they realized there was more to it all but if that was their joy, far be it from me to take that from them. But in newer editions it's encouraged to "roll" dice to decide things, and it's not done in a healthy or imagination stimulating way. It's done in a These are the rules, this is how you should do this way.

Yeah, that's because there's been a bit of a change in design philosophy in the player's favor. They now give you more tools to have a challenge apply to a PC and their defined abilities and not just the player. You can still play out the interaction - that's never changed. But now, there's a more systematic method of determining how well the PC performed rather than having the DM simply determine how well the player played him. Moreover, these systematic methods were designed to enable the player to have a better estimate of how good at a challenge their PC is likely to be so they can make more meaningful decisions.
Of course, with 5e, the DM can and is encouraged to just adjudicate it if they think the outcome is clear. So the game is coming full circle despite corporations having to corp (or whatever)...

3. Official events and Adventurer's league type things are being instructed to push the rules and game mechanics.
From the Adventures league DM Guide. p3

THE RULES OF THE GAME
Adventurers League play uses fifth edition Dungeons and
Dragons. You can issue rulings to your table when the rules of
the game are ambiguous or vague, but you must otherwise
adhere to the rules as they are provided in the core rulebooks,
and can’t change them or make up your own; “house-rules”
aren’t permitted for use. You must always use the most
current incarnation of a rule.​

I'd suggest you think about that. This is how the WotC is running things. That you must follow THEIR rules, and only theirs with the implication that doing otherwise makes you "other", and you must keep your game using the most current incarnation of those rules. What the hell happened to our hobby?

I submit you really don't understand the point of Adventurer's League and other forms of public shared campaign or society play (which, at various point, extended to other games and companies other than WotC games). The rules lay out a common standard as a measure of quality control so that players taking their PCs from event to event have some element of a uniform experience with a variety of DMs.
But as far as home games go, the D&D rules are also quite clear - the rules aren't in charge. The DM is. That also applies to any other public event like a convention game that isn't specifically Adventurer's League.

 

[Rob Kuntz]

What the hell happened to our hobby?

Well, it all got standardized; and, unfortunately, as @Sacrosanct points out, Gary lead the charge with that, even though he personally never DMed that way. WotC has continued with the standardization started with AD&D and perfected it.

 

[RealAlHazred]

3. Official events and Adventurer's league type things are being instructed to push the rules and game mechanics.
From the Adventures league DM Guide. p3

THE RULES OF THE GAME
Adventurers League play uses fifth edition Dungeons and
Dragons. You can issue rulings to your table when the rules of
the game are ambiguous or vague, but you must otherwise
adhere to the rules as they are provided in the core rulebooks,
and can’t change them or make up your own; “house-rules”
aren’t permitted for use. You must always use the most
current incarnation of a rule.​

I'd suggest you think about that. This is how the WotC is running things. That you must follow THEIR rules, and only theirs with the implication that doing otherwise makes you "other", and you must keep your game using the most current incarnation of those rules. What the hell happened to our hobby?

I have a little experience with this facet, having run Adventurers League games for conventions and hobby shops for several years. In League play, there is a heavy emphasis on the Rules As Written, precisely because people otherwise unknown to one another must play together at these events. Few people can bring their whole regular group to a convention, and even when they do why would they pay money to play an adventure with the same people they play with for free? In order to level the playing field for convention play, an emphasis has been put on running the most recent incarnation of the RAW, and de-emphasizing DM creativity in rules creation. DMs are still encouraged to make up encounters to fill areas where the module authors or playtesters didn't think to push the boundaries and an edge case crops up, with a table doing something unexpected. That's fine and a joy to see happen. However, as with any system, once you have a system in place someone will try to game it. Some people feel that they "win" when they have ruined someone else's experience, either with their own skill at character creation or with some item or benefit they have derived from another scenario. So, a lot of effort is put in to smooth out wrinkles and make it possible to accommodate as many people of differing playstyles as possible.

However, if you check out Dragon+ articles, Wizards goes out of their way to encourage new and different things in people's home games. They love it when somebody Twitch streams their home game where everybody is a member of a Victorian England occult society adventuring on a Sword & Planet version of Mars, or whatever. Because that drives D&D into people's headspace, and that's just good advertising. People complain that "D&D" is synonymous with "RPGs" in the minds of many non-gamers, and it is -- they've spent a lot of advertising dollars to make it so, because that's just good marketing. They've put a lot of "OSR-adjacent" optional rules in the DMG to try to cater to a more OSR-style of play. They are also big on emphasizing inclusiveness, and representation, and a lot of other things; they may be a little more hit-and-miss on those. But the signs seem encouraging to me. And I don't even do D&D as my main RPG.

 

[Rob Kuntz]

I have a little experience with this facet, having run Adventurers League games for conventions and hobby shops for several years. In League play, there is a heavy emphasis on the Rules As Written, precisely because people otherwise unknown to one another must play together at these events. Few people can bring their whole regular group to a convention, and even when they do why would they pay money to play an adventure with the same people they play with for free? In order to level the playing field for convention play, an emphasis has been put on running the most recent incarnation of the RAW, and de-emphasizing DM creativity in rules creation. DMs are still encouraged to make up encounters to fill areas where the module authors or playtesters didn't think to push the boundaries and an edge case crops up, with a table doing something unexpected. That's fine and a joy to see happen. However, as with any system, once you have a system in place someone will try to game it. Some people feel that they "win" when they have ruined someone else's experience, either with their own skill at character creation or with some item or benefit they have derived from another scenario. So, a lot of effort is put in to smooth out wrinkles and make it possible to accommodate as many people of differing playstyles as possible.

However, if you check out Dragon+ articles, Wizards goes out of their way to encourage new and different things in people's home games. They love it when somebody Twitch streams their home game where everybody is a member of a Victorian England occult society adventuring on a Sword & Planet version of Mars, or whatever. Because that drives D&D into people's headspace, and that's just good advertising. People complain that "D&D" is synonymous with "RPGs" in the minds of many non-gamers, and it is -- they've spent a lot of advertising dollars to make it so, because that's just good marketing. They've put a lot of "OSR-adjacent" optional rules in the DMG to try to cater to a more OSR-style of play. They are also big on emphasizing inclusiveness, and representation, and a lot of other things; they may be a little more hit-and-miss on those. But the signs seem encouraging to me. And I don't even do D&D as my main RPG.

Essentially Adventurers League is the 5E incarnation of the old RPGA, then. So standard rules would be the norm and expected.

 

[Sacrosanct]

WoTC embraces Critical Role, and Matt is very loose with the rules. Any argument that WoTC forces rules only while AD&D was all about houserules isn't all that up to speed with AD&D rulebooks or with Critical Role and it's relationship with WotC.