I disagree, because group dynamics are fairly constant IME, unless you have a very special group, and decide that Brian's fun to be around but he can't play at my table because he makes too many jokes about silly ways to use magic items. I'd suggest that it's a DM problem and a game culture problem and a game design problem.
It's been designed out of WOTC D&D. They explicitly told us that as of 3E as if it was axiomatically the way to go, and went further with 4E, by removing unfair monsters and items and anything that might be trivial and colorful for it's own sake.
It's been removed from the mainstream of D&D culture as this thread proves.
And it's not on the radar of most DMs as something to consider for their own game, as this thread also seems to prove. But that's culture for you, it's insidious and infects thinking without anyone realising it.
Abso-fracking-lutely, it happens all the time, from music to managerial styles, to the fashion industry. If what you were saying were true, then Top 40 would be all anyone would have to listen to, ever, and we would have found and stuck with the holy grail of managing people years ago etc.
Trends are often based on what is better theoretically, culturally or self-promotionally, whilst ignoring the details. Things are replaced just because someone wants to make a name for themselves, and "shake things up a bit", and make their own proud nails on the new project. And anything which is popular in it's time (e.g. AD&D, disco) will draw a crowd of pretentious types who try and turn it into high art which they think is unequivocably better for seemingly well-argued reasons, and we end up with Forge-style RPG design theory and progressive house.
This is not always a step forwards in reality, but it always is in theory, and often throws the baby out with the bathwater for reasons that make sense at the time.
These things have their place, but often they're not nearly as better as their pushers think they are. Often, they're just different, or arguably a lot worse, or created by someone who missed the point...or is making this because they are actually incapable of creating the thing they were originally a fan of, so this will have to do. Then they turn on the original creation as if it were no good in the first place, and that we know better now.
And they're better at marketing than the original marketers were, so a pale imitation takes it's place in the cultural ecosystem or marketplace. Happens all the time in electronic dance music, at least. And people like new bandwagons for many reasons which we all know, which may or may not have anything to do with progress, which by definition involves abandoning things, and sometimes arguably the wrong things get abandoned.
Plus, whimsy is often by definition low brow. It's not going to get respect for the same reasons that fantasy movies often get overlooked at the academy awards; there are cultural reasons why these things get sneered at, even if I really enjoyed The Scorpion King far more than I enjoyed that year's Best Movie. Or Pixar's animations, which are still overcoming the stigma of "cartoons are for kids" in the west, but are making headway.
I can't believe I'm having to point this stuff out, you do live in my world don't you?
It's full of people wrecking things which work because they think they can do better, and often get proven very wrong indeed (although they'll rarely admit that even to themselves for umpteen reasons of culture, status, ego and theory). We're humans, and we're flawed, and it's how we pass the time.I'm reading the all-pre-WOTC-editions Encyclopedia Magica and the Hackmaster books at the moment, and I keep thinking on the gaping chasm between these books and what passes for D&D at the moment, and all the game design reasons why Noonan and Mearls would object to even harmless stuff, let alone seriously gamebreaking things that might actually kill characters or inconvenience them.
Heck, Sean K Reynolds has a rant about how disintegrating drow magic items should be banned because this is taking away things that the players "earnt fair and square"...an attitude to the game which IMO is not just a world away from Hackmaster or AD&D 1E, it's in another dimension. This isn't about cheap shots, it's just the way things are, and the current culture surrounding the game compared to what it once was.
You can't make D&D fair and equitable and focused without ditching a metric tonne of stuff that is just in D&D for fun. Inequity and injustice, trivial details and color, farce and cakewalks are at the core of comedy, pathos, tragedy and triumph and the best stories, and if you don't build them into the rules and splat, a lot of the time they just won't end up in the game. And unfortunately for 4E, the latter is a lot more memorable at the end of the day than whether your barbarian was treated fairly, and potentially more fun too.
That's why I can dismiss the Rolemaster or Hackmaster critical hits and fumbles tables for reasons of game design theory, but reconsider their value for reasons of memorability, drama, humour and fun, and try to think on a way to somehow make them work without inevitably crippling everyone, or regularly grinding the game to a halt from missing limbs or similar.
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