Theories regaurding the change in rules of D&D.

[Mark]

Still, there has to be a middle ground. Your typical AD&D campaign had hundreds of magic items floating around... yet you needed an 11th level wizard to make them. Potions and scrolls were common as dirt (they had to be, for PCs to survive low levels), yet they needed a 7th level caster. Who can make poison? Only a name-level assassin. The monk and the druid had to fight it out for their levels, just when things started to get good for them.

There was a huge anti-PC bias in this respect--by the time the players learned to do the cool stuff, the campaign was pretty much over.

And for all that I'm now putting together an AD&D campaign, that's one aspect of 3e that I will never regret. They put the cool stuff where it should be, in the hands of the players, and they gave the magic its proper context. I would turn the dial down a little, but if cool stuff exists in abundance in the game world then the PCs should be able to do it themselves.

I feel that, no matter what edition, the focus of games/campaigns/rules should be on exploration moreso than collection of items/power/wealth, but that is just what I have always tried to run as a DM and play when running a PC. Exploration begins on day one and can continue through the highest of levels. It's the through line for which I strive but I understand that it is not everyone's cup of tea.

 

[Irda Ranger]

And for all that I'm now putting together an AD&D campaign, that's one aspect of 3e that I will never regret. They put the cool stuff where it should be, in the hands of the players, and they gave the magic its proper context. I would turn the dial down a little, but if cool stuff exists in abundance in the game world then the PCs should be able to do it themselves.

Ben

I'm not even sure why you're going back to AD&D then, since the only "weakness" of 3e (IMO) seems to be its greatest strength in your view. What exactly are you going back for? ThAC0?

 

[Slife]

But the problem with both of these is that the common myth that "we're all special" is just a myth. We can't all be special, or the word loses its meaning. For anyone to be special, the rest of us must be average. It's human nature to want to be special, but it's also a fact that we can't all be so. If we all can make 20th level in a year and half of gaming once a week, then being 20th level just means "I gamed for a year and a half, once a week." Honesty compels you to admit that this doesn't make you special.

Nowadays D&D faces the same problems that competitive cycling does. It's very easy to "dope up" by just changing the frequency and scale of XP awards, but that's a hamster wheel I object to. If all I wanted was a 20th level character, I could roll one up tomorrow. If all I wanted was to tour France, I'd rent a car. But we want more than that. We want to say "Look what I have done, not because it was easy, but because it was hard. I climbed this mountain because it was there, and perhaps one day you will join me, and we will see the far horizons as equals: men who have pushed the limits of what is possible (even if the limits are self-imposed)."

Meh, the XP rates are the same between editions. Assuming you played by the rules, at least.

 

[fuindordm]

I'm not even sure why you're going back to AD&D then, since the only "weakness" of 3e (IMO) seems to be its greatest strength in your view. What exactly are you going back for? ThAC0?

Stronger archetypes, simpler classes, faster combat, easier preparation, some of the fun wonky bits, nostalgia, and willing players. Also, I've been playing 3e for years now and I'm starting to get bored.

But the campaign will be heavily seasoned with 3e-inspired house rules--in effect, I'm giving each player two 'perks' which are something like feats, but can also be used to augment your class abilities at first level (for example, letting clerics use any spell for healing).

It has also been a fun intellectual exercise for me to imagine an AD&D setting where all the odd rules (psionics, bards, monks, intelligent weapons, monsters...) have a natural place.

 

[DungeonMaester]

I think that has an awful lot more to do with the player than the game. All I can say is that my games have gone from straight up monster bashing, to epic storytelling, back to hack and slash and are currently dead in the middle of pulp adventure.

System has an awful lot less to do with games than the players.

Which is my point. D&D changed with it's players taste, for better or worse.

---Rusty

 

[jasin]

I think most of Jasin's points can be addressed in the RAW, if the GM assumes different distributions of classes and levels within society. This is "the GM's problem", as much as the players'.

Indeed. As you say, the DM should lead by example.

I wasn't saying that this is a player issue or a rules issue (or even a GM issue); just making a general observation about the game's zeitgeist, as it were.

I love the examples in your post, BTW. Spot on for what I had in mind.

Actually, I don't like Eberron at all, but that's neither here nor there.

I didn't expect to like it, in good part because of the "world is as derived from the rules" philosophy you mention, but I do. IMO, Eberron managed to skirt many of the pitfalls of adventure design while avoiding most of them.

But the reason I mentioned it in the context of this discussion is that the NPC in Eberron are of decidedly lower level than in, say, Greyhawk or FR, which definitely helps foster the atmosphere I was talking about.

You're "problem" is that Ryan Dancey developed a game where almost anyone can achieve 20th level. That simply didn't happen in older editions unless you played for years and years. 20th level was rare and wonderful back then - because hardly anyone ever did it. But by bringing 20th level to the masses, it lost it's specialness.

I don't have a problem with 20th-level being relatively easily achievable, from a meta-game perspective. I want to occasionally play 20th-level characters, I want to be able to take a single character from 1st-20th without investing as much time as in a PhD, and I don't think D&D should by default be a vehicle for personal achievement like mountain climbing.

However, while I don't need to be truly impressed with a 20th-level character, I would like for the imaginary world to be.

Of course, in a game that's all about you the player playing the role of you the character, this kind of disconnect between the player's and the character's perspective isn't something to be simply dismissed. But I don't think it's an insurmountable problem.

The examples in your post are excellent. An additional way to create this sort of atmosphere would be to structure adventures so that, as a default, there's lots and lots of downtime, so that PCs don't shoot up from 1st-20th in a year of in-game time (even if they do so in a year of real time).

3e's XP progression has desensitized us to the Homeric epicness of 20th level, but that doesn't mean we can't have it back.

I'm not convinced it's just the XP progression.

Our highest level 2E game ended about 9th level or so, and as much fun as it was, it didn't really feel that epic either. Not because it was easy getting there, or because we weren't powerful; but because we, and the DM, pretty much acted the same way as at 1st, only... bigger. No commoners were really in awe of our ability to burn a village with a gesture or raise the dead back to life. Nor did we act as if we really expected them to be.

I also experienced this in a 3E Eberron game where levelling was painfully slow. But at 8th-level (in Eberron, where this is slightly below the level of generals, kings, House barons, and high priests) we were going around the city solving serial killings. Not that it wasn't fun, but if you think about it outside the context of D&D, it's not really the kind of thing people who can litterally scatter armies of normal people should be doing.

I think it has mostly to do with the world atmosphere the DM presents and forsters, and whether the players buy into it.

And also, how much the players are willing to change their mental image of their characters as they go up in level.

I've posted about this here, but I can't find it, so here's a link to Google Groups. In short, I think many people have trouble switching modes from Brother Ted, the young blessed initiate (Clr1) to Saint Theodore, the the man who conquered Hell in the name of Light (Clr21). If you start out as Brother Ted, at Clr13, you're likely to still be Brother Ted, only with cooler superpowers, both in your mind's eye, and the DM's (and therefore NPC's) mind's eyes.

 

[Numion]

I feel that, no matter what edition, the focus of games/campaigns/rules should be on exploration moreso than collection of items/power/wealth, but that is just what I have always tried to run as a DM and play when running a PC. Exploration begins on day one and can continue through the highest of levels. It's the through line for which I strive but I understand that it is not everyone's cup of tea.

There are probably better systems for exploration out there than D&D. D&D's schtick has always been kill, loot, level, rinse, repeat. The accumulation of power is one of the main draws that keeps players coming back for more.

I also suspect that to be one reason why 3E was designed to be played to 20th level. The real ultimate power, and the real ultimate reward for playing: 20th level. Too bad the Epic book was such a mess.

 

[Raven Crowking]

There are probably better systems for exploration out there than D&D. D&D's schtick has always been kill, loot, level, rinse, repeat.

I disagree. AD&D's schtick was explore, kill, loot, explore, kill, loot, explore, kill, loot, level, rinse, repeat. At least, IME.

 

[Irda Ranger]

I feel that, no matter what edition, the focus of games/campaigns/rules should be on exploration moreso than collection of items/power/wealth, but that is just what I have always tried to run as a DM and play when running a PC. Exploration begins on day one and can continue through the highest of levels. It's the through line for which I strive but I understand that it is not everyone's cup of tea.

There are probably better systems for exploration out there than D&D. D&D's schtick has always been kill, loot, level, rinse, repeat. The accumulation of power is one of the main draws that keeps players coming back for more.

I also suspect that to be one reason why 3E was designed to be played to 20th level. The real ultimate power, and the real ultimate reward for playing: 20th level. Too bad the Epic book was such a mess.

Better? I'm not sure. (A)D&D's perfectly capable of an exploration model. Particularly if you use an ad-hoc or story-based XP system. There may be some more niche games that really excel at an exploration-based game, but its much, much easier to find people who know how to play D&D. In that sense, D&D's the best - because you actually have players.

I disagree. AD&D's schtick was explore, kill, loot, explore, kill, loot, explore, kill, loot, level, rinse, repeat. At least, IME.

Agreed. We drew a whole lot of maps. Not just dungeons either - cities, islands, etc. We even "mapped out" the Thieve's Guild of our home base city once, with both a physical map of know safe-houses and also a political map, showing who was bribed by whom, etc. Lots of fun. And lots of exploration.

We collected wealth and power too, though. That Thieve's Guild for instance? Once we had them politically isolated, they had some phat loot.

 

[Numion]

I disagree. AD&D's schtick was explore, kill, loot, explore, kill, loot, explore, kill, loot, level, rinse, repeat. At least, IME.

Sorry, my brain froze momentarily. I thought exploration to mean only overland/water travel at first, like with those famous explorers Livingstone, Cook etc..

Of course people mean 'exploring' to include romps in the dungeons, catacombs, heck - you can even explore city sewers. (Heck - exploring can even include exploring heck. I'll be here all day. )

For that kind of exploration D&D is great. For modelling Livingstone, not so. Unless he was kicking ass and taking names on the way