D&D General The Eternal Braid: Why D&D Continuing Dialogue With RPGs is its Success

[Krachek]

Actual edition assume the existence of multiple player’s interest
Acting
Exploring
Instigating
Fighting
Optimizing
Problem solving
Story telling

They also state of continuum of play style ranging from hack and slash to immersive story telling.

They also consider a multitude of flavor to fantasy
Heroic, Sword and sorcery, Epic, dark, intrigue, ….

DnD is currently a game that allow a multitude of genre, style, intensity and flavor. not being very good, but enough to allow fun and continuity.

is there other games that allow such versatile play?

 

[overgeeked]

is there other games that allow such versatile play?

Literally every single universal or generic system ever published from Lord of the Dice to Fate Condensed offers far, far more versatility of play.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Mainstream popularity. When Gygax shafted Arneson and screwed him out of royalties by making AD&D, he turned his back on the free Kriegsspiel ideals and went from an open system that could do anything to a closed system that was meant to be played a specific way and do a specific thing and do it exhaustively. This pivot turned the game from something you needed to engage with imaginatively and customize into something that you could just pick up and play (after slogging through the Old High Gygaxian). I don't mean that this dumbed down the game, but it did remove the need for that extra level of tinkering and creativity, paving the way for mainstream success. Helped in no small part by the early adopters and the various moral outrages.

My own random thoughts:

While that's decidedly what AD&D does from a text-in-book level, I'm not sure how much that translated into the gamer experience (and thus how much it played into D&D's dominance). Anecdotal I know, but there seems to be a lot of people online, plus my own gaming experience, suggesting that plenty of people took AD&D and ignored massive parts of the closed system part of it. Ignore rules, add house rules, port rules one prefers over from oD&D or BX, people seemed to have not trouble doing so. That's why I'm not sure if AD&D's removing the need for tinkering was all that influential (nor exactly why it would pave the way for mainstream success).

 

[overgeeked]

My own random thoughts:

While that's decidedly what AD&D does from a text-in-book level, I'm not sure how much that translated into the gamer experience (and thus how much it played into D&D's dominance). Anecdotal I know, but there seems to be a lot of people online, plus my own gaming experience, suggesting that plenty of people took AD&D and ignored massive parts of the closed system part of it. Ignore rules, add house rules, port rules one prefers over from oD&D or BX, people seemed to have not trouble doing so. That's why I'm not sure if AD&D's removing the need for tinkering was all that influential (nor exactly why it would pave the way for mainstream success).

Right. That’s my experience as well. We hacked the living hell out of AD&D and mixed in OD&D and B/X into our AD&D on the regular.

The difference I’m talking about is the need to build your own game with house rules from OD&D vs being able to play out of the box, ignore bits, or pare down the game if you wanted to. You couldn’t play OD&D out of the box if you wanted to, you had to make up rules. You can play AD&D out of the box, you don’t have to make up new rules. Easier to destroy than build and all that.

Gygax saying you shouldn’t or couldn’t hack AD&D was largely irrelevant to most people. It was largely backed into the community by then. DIY is where the hobby started, D&D was a DIG game, and by the time AD&D came out DIG was here to stay.

 

[Mannahnin]

Right. That’s my experience as well. We hacked the living hell out of AD&D and mixed in OD&D and B/X into our AD&D on the regular.

The difference I’m talking about is the need to build your own game with house rules from OD&D vs being able to play out of the box, ignore bits, or pare down the game if you wanted to. You couldn’t play OD&D out of the box if you wanted to, you had to make up rules. You can play AD&D out of the box, you don’t have to make up new rules. Easier to destroy than build and all that.

Kind of. It's almost impossible to, for example, play the 1E initiative rules by the book. In practice everyone hacked them down and only used a fraction of them.

http://knights-n-knaves.com/dmprata/ADDICT.pdf

 

[overgeeked]

Kind of. It's almost impossible to, for example, play the 1E initiative rules by the book. In practice everyone hacked them down and only used a fraction of them.

http://knights-n-knaves.com/dmprata/ADDICT.pdf

It’s 1978. You only have the MM and PHB for AD&D as those are the only two books on the market. How do you handle initiative?

Initiative in the PHB is: “The initiative check is typically made with 2 six-sided dice, 1d6 for the party, and another of a different size or color for the creatures encountered.”

That link really is a silly document. Note how most of those other sources came later. That’s not “out of the box” that’s at the end of the edition’s life cycle. Besides, most players only ever had the books. Not every issue of every magazine, and every adventure, etc.

After a few years of running initiative from the PHB, most groups just kept on using that.

 

[Mannahnin]

It’s 1978. You only have the MM and PHB for AD&D as those are the only two books on the market. How do you handle initiative?

Initiative in the PHB is: “The initiative check is typically made with 2 six-sided dice, 1d6 for the party, and another of a different size or color for the creatures encountered.”

That link really is a silly document. Note how most of those other sources came later. That’s not “out of the box” that’s at the end of the edition’s life cycle. Besides, most players only ever had the books. Not every issue of every magazine, and every adventure, etc.

After a few years of running initiative from the PHB, most groups just kept on using that.

That's a reasonable argument. Even without going to the extent of ADDICT, though, I've never encountered anyone running initiative by the full rules in the DMG, or even close to them.

The killer part of that is, I LIKE the core of those DMG rules. For a while I've wanted to clean them up and simplify them a little for general use. I wish that's what TSR had done in 2nd ed.

 

[Jaeger]

t’s 1978. You only have the MM and PHB for AD&D as those are the only two books on the market. How do you handle initiative?

Initiative in the PHB is: “The initiative check is typically made with 2 six-sided dice, 1d6 for the party, and another of a different size or color for the creatures encountered.”

That link really is a silly document. Note how most of those other sources came later. That’s not “out of the box” that’s at the end of the edition’s life cycle. Besides, most players only ever had the books. Not every issue of every magazine, and every adventure, etc.

After a few years of running initiative from the PHB, most groups just kept on using that.

People do tend to forget that AD&D came out over a 3 year period.

By the time the DMG hit, most active groups were already playing a PHB/MM + OD&D/Holmes kit bash.

I have never heard of anyone from that era buying the DMG, and then revising what they did at the table to be pure AD&D RAW.

The killer part of that is, I LIKE the core of those DMG rules. For a while I've wanted to clean them up and simplify them a little for general use. I wish that's what TSR had done in 2nd ed.

To be honest I think that many of the people behind 2e fell into the PHB/MM + OD&D/Holmes kit bash camp. And like subsequent new editions, when given the green light; they made an "upgrade" of the game they played.

 

[Mannahnin]

To be honest I think that many of the people behind 2e fell into the PHB/MM + OD&D/Holmes kit bash camp. And like subsequent new editions, when given the green light; they made an "upgrade" of the game they played.

But that's not what 2E does, right? 2E introduces a whole new system using d10s for initiative and individual speed factors based on weapon or action. That's definitely not in any prior edition of D&D, and I don't even remember seeing it as a variant in Dragon Magazine.

 

[overgeeked]

But that's not what 2E does, right? 2E introduces a whole new system using d10s for initiative and individual speed factors based on weapon or action. That's definitely not in any prior edition of D&D, and I don't even remember seeing it as a variant in Dragon Magazine.

Weapon speed is in the AD&D PHB, it’s called speed factor. They just switched to d10s instead of d6s. Spells have casting times. That’s speed factor based on action.

 

[Mannahnin]

Weapon speed is in the AD&D PHB, it’s called speed factor. They just switched to d10s instead of d6s.

And added it to an individual initiative count (or two counts, if you're using two weapons with different speeds), and used it every round.

In 1E weapon speed factor only applies on ties. And doesn't come into play in the round when combatants close to striking range- in that round, longest reach strikes first.

 

[overgeeked]

And added it to an individual initiative count (or two counts, if you're using two weapons with different speeds), and used it every round.

In 1E weapon speed factor only applies on ties. And doesn't come into play in the round when combatants close to striking range- in that round, longest reach strikes first.

It was handled slightly differently, but it did actually exist in AD&D. That your group didn’t use it isn’t the same as didn’t exist. Which is something we run into a lot in these discussion. Not you personally, but all of us. We remember how we actually played, not the letter of RAW.

 

[Mannahnin]

It was handled slightly differently, but it did actually exist in AD&D. That your group didn’t use it isn’t the same as didn’t exist. Which is something we run into a lot in these discussion. Not you personally, but all of us. We remember how we actually played, not the letter of RAW.

I think you misread what I wrote. I didn't write that it didn't exist, or that my group didn't use it. I wrote that weapon speed factor in 1E only applies on ties. And only in subsequent rounds after the combatants have closed to melee range.

I appreciate the sentiment in all sincerity, though.

 

[overgeeked]

I think you misread what I wrote. I didn't write that it didn't exist, or that my group didn't use it. I wrote that weapon speed factor in 1E only applies on ties. And only in subsequent rounds after the combatants have closed to melee range.

I appreciate the sentiment in all sincerity, though.

I was responding to this...

But that's not what 2E does, right? 2E introduces a whole new system using d10s for initiative and individual speed factors based on weapon or action. That's definitely not in any prior edition of D&D, and I don't even remember seeing it as a variant in Dragon Magazine.

This is wrong. It existed in AD&D. It’s handled slightly differently. Also look at how Holmes Basic, B/X, and BECMI handled things. And OD&D and Chainmail. The turn sequence is fairly clear. Missile fire happens before melee. Extra attacks happen at the end of the round. Spells have casting times. Spells can be interrupted and lost.

 

[Willie the Duck]

What we have here is a disagreement as to whether 2e was a new system or handled things slightly differently. Neither position is more correct. D6 + speed factors adjudicating ties is different and distinct from D10 + speed factors all the time (especially also when one considers that 1E had 10 distinct segments and no more), but there is a lot of re-used terminology and the practical outcome is probably very similar.

 

[Mannahnin]

I appreciate that Willie. I don't think the practical outcome is very similar. At least the two seemed to play very differently, IME.

OD&D had no initiative system per-se. It was left to DM judgement, or potentially to importation of something like the Chainmail system.

Holmes Basic, of course, used descending Dex order, as he had to improvise a system and used the vague references to what Dexterity does in the 1974 set as his basis, because he wasn't referencing Chainmail or the article in The Strategic Review.

B/X gives the staged system Overgeeked describes, but gives conflicting info about whether to use it as the winning side runs through all the steps, then the losing side, or whether it's meant to be interspersed. The text seems to say winners do everything THEN losers do everything, but the example of combat seems to indicate an interspersed order. IIRC BECMI is clearer.

AD&D 1E has a baseline of d6 side-based, with numerous special cases. Weapon speed factors on ties, weapon length in the round when the combatants close to melee, combatants with two attacks automatically win initiative with their first attack, then go last with their second, spells have their segments in casting time added to the initiative roll, potions have delayed onset...

AD&D 2E has a baseline of d10 individual initiative, with each weapon or action having defined speed factor, and you count up from 0 or 1; lowest rolls go first. IIRC, for example, a dagger is speed factor 2, a shortsword 3, and a longsword 5. A two hander is something awkward like 8. So it's tough for a two-hander or polearm to win initiative over a dagger, for example. In 1E the two hander would always get to strike first as the combatants close to melee, and once they engaged, the dagger would win ties. Whereas in 2E each round it's a d10+2 vs. a d10+8 or so, lowest roll strikes first.

 

[jmartkdr2]

One distinct thing about ttrpgs with regards to market dominance: you need buy-in from multiple players to get a game going. This means once a game gets entrenched as the most popular one, it's very difficult to shift because of network effects. This is an added barrier to market entry that doesn't really apply to board games or video games.

This applies to wargames as well: if I want to get into wargaming in the US in the 2000's, I would have a much easier time if my game of choice was Warhammer 40k. Because most other wargamers were playing that it was much easier to find someone to play with. If I wanted to play Chronopia or even Warhammer fantasy, it was much harder to find other people to play with, which might mean I don't get to play and thus drop out. It somewhat applies to MMORPGs as well.

Now getting into DnD doesn't cost nearly as much in dollars as wargaming, but it does cost time to learn and you still want to be able to find people to play with. Which means you most likely will get more chances to play if you learn the most popular system. Sending time and money on Exalted might just get you books of lore to think about but no gaming.

It isn't a guarantee - DnD lost the clear top spot twice in its history already - but in each case it starts with a mistake by the makers of the game that created an opening and someone else diving in with another good game that capitalized on what people didn't like about the current edition.