Theories regaurding the change in rules of D&D.

[fuindordm]

I think the biggest change in 3rd edition was the idea that your character's role in the party could evolve. Suddenly your PCs future became as important as its past, and you get people constructing elaborate advancement schemes.

 

[Jack99]

It's the "roll your loot up into a big ball" thing.

Seriously, I'll buy D&D is videogamish when my characters get extra lives, and when dungeons have save points in case of a TPK.

I agree, except that we are already halfway there if we use action points. At least thats how they feel on paper, I have managed to steer clear of them so far (players have no clue they exist)

 

[Jack99]

Greetings!

Well, indeed, overall I would say that the more thorough rules of 3E have made the game easier to run, smoother, and more consistent. The game requires less "on the fly" rulings now than in previous editions.

That's all well and good.


Really.

.....................[cut]

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Great points, mate.

And I agree with you. Although I never got to play much 1e (started when 2e came out), I feel much the same way. And so do my players. This is why we play 3.5 as 2e. Meaning that If the player can roleplay it (see your example of the rogue), I let them do it, no matter how many ranks or lack thereoff, they have. Likewise, even if they have lots of ranks, in say diplomacy, they always try to roleplay it first, the roll is a last ditch effort, in case the NPC is not responding as they want.

Works for us, but YMMV ofc.

Cheers,

 

[Hussar]

www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/gaming/WotCMarketResearchSummary.html

You want paragraphs 3 and 4 in section 1.....

If memory serves, however, your campaigns haven't had the chance to go longer because you keep moving.

Lanefan

Interesting. Although, limiting things to 35 is hardly "making the game for kids". I mean, come on, the average age of Dragon readership is in its 20's. Does that mean Dragon is only for young gamers?

Actually, in 1e days, I didn't at all. It wasn't until 2e that I started being a gypsy. The change wasn't all that large though. We never ran these huge multiyear epics that some people talk about. And, somehow, I doubt I'm alone in that.

 

[Hussar]

Greetings!

Well, indeed, overall I would say that the more thorough rules of 3E have made the game easier to run, smoother, and more consistent. The game requires less "on the fly" rulings now than in previous editions.

That's all well and good.



Really.


However. As some members have alluded to, it's kinda hard to pin down exactly, but it's there none the less. The more rules in many ways act now to *inhibit* creativity and character options. It comes through the very process of defining everything.

Gain some followers for your journey? Sorry, Fighter. You don't have the Leadership Feat.

1e - You're not name level and you don't have a castle, you don't have followers. Full stop.

Your Rogue snarling at the jailer, and making efforts to seem tough and menacing? Sorry. Your character either doesn't have the Intimidate skill, or has only low ranks in it. Fat chance of you intimidating a snot-nosed kid, let alone the rough, beer-swilling jailer with a hard attitude.

Because, you know, actually playing the character you have rather than whatever you feel you should have at the time is bad. Never mind of course, that there are a rather large number of DM's for whom all the role play in the world would not change that jailer's mind.

Your Ranger character is chasing a brigand through the woods, and the brigand leaps into the river, and swims to the other side to make his escape. Sorry, your Ranger didn't put enough points into his Swim skill. You roll, try and negotiate the rapids, and you suck.

Your Ranger blubbers and thrashes in the water, and drowns.

Oh, you don't have any background in swimming? You can't swim. Too bad.

Your Fighter is the son of a local nobleman, and he goes to a masquerade ball. While there, he attempts to flirt with several ladies-in-waiting, and gets into several discussions with a foreign ambassador from the northern elves, as well as a scholar discussing the empire's history.

Your "noble" Fighter either doesn't have Seduction/Diplomacy, Politics/Nobility, or History skills--or enough ranks to really make an effing difference, because Fighter's skill points suck bad.

Again, how is actually playing the character you have a bad thing? Instead of magically suddenly becoming knowledgeable in history, because, Y'know, spending all your time whacking orcs in a dungeon is so conducive to study, you are actually forced to play your character.

In 1E, your character could do all of these things. There were no skills, per se. Below, I have pasted the above snippet examples, and depicted a 1E response, that shows some of the differences from having so many of the details...actually done out, and *specified* rather than purposely left *vague*

Gain some followers for your journey? Sorry, Fighter. You don't have the Leadership Feat.

1E--"Hmmm...right, right...your character does have a pretty good Charisma. Yeah, he should be able to recruit a good number of followers, or persuade some characters to be his henchmen. No problem."

Again, sorry, no amount of charisma is going to get me followers. Henchmen, sure. But, then, I can hire troopies in 3e as well.

Your Rogue snarling at the jailer, and making efforts to seem tough and menacing? Sorry. Your character either doesn't have the Intimidate skill, or has only low ranks in it. Fat chance of you intimidating a snot-nosed kid, let alone the rough, beer-swilling jailer with a hard attitude.

1E--"Hmmm...yeah, I remember your Rogue character (Thief!!!)--being from the streets, growing up on the docks, and spending lots of time hanging out with the rough crowd. Your character is usually played by you as a tough, ruthless bastard. You say all that to the Jailer? Ok, cool...yeah, the Jailer blanches at your snarling, whispered threats...he lets you through to have a chat with the prisoner..."

What 1e did you play? Bob the thief was the brother of Bob the other thief who got killed by a gelantinous cube last week. More often than not, you tried to do any roleplay and the DM simply ignored you.

Your Ranger character is chasing a brigand through the woods, and the brigand leaps into the river, and swims to the other side to make his escape. Sorry, your Ranger didn't put enough points into his Swim skill. You roll, try and negotiate the rapids, and you suck.

Your Ranger blubbers and thrashes in the water, and drowns.

1E--"Right, right...yeah, I hear you. Your Ranger character has grown up in the Black Woods, and is an expert at wilderness survival, and living off the land, and all that. Of course he's an expert swimmer! Your Ranger leaps into the cold waters, and you catch the fleeing brigand in midstream...roll your attack...the brigand struggles to bring his dagger out to ram it into you desperately..."

Again, sorry. Maybe with the fantastic DM's you had. With the ones I played with and was at the time it was - oh, sorry, you rolled candlemaker on your background roll and so you can't swim.

Your Fighter is the son of a local nobleman, and he goes to a masquerade ball. While there, he attempts to flirt with several ladies-in-waiting, and gets into several discussions with a foreign ambassador from the northern elves, as well as a scholar discussing the empire's history.

Your "noble" Fighter either doesn't have Seduction/Diplomacy, Politics/Nobility, or History skills--or enough ranks to really make an effing difference, because Fighter's skill points suck bad.

1E--"Oh yes...the ladies...you have a 15 Charisma...yeah, they giggle, and respond well to you...what do you ask them again? You should be able to get at least some good information about the rival noble from them..."

How is that remotely different from 3e? 15 Cha, +2 Diplomacy right off. Ladies are likely at least neutral, if not friendly. Diplomacy DC's aren't that tricky.

"True...your Fighter character is well-versed in the politics of the Northern Elves. Your father took you on several trips there when you were a teenager. Yes, you impress the ambassador with your skill, and your knowledge of his homeland, and the political difficulties he faces with the new trade agreement."

"Hmmm...quite right. Yes, your Fighter character was trained at the university...he's very knowledgable about the history of the empire...what do you say to the scholar? yeah, you should do pretty well, all things considered."

Again, this was entirely DM dependent. I agree with a great DM, it would be a fantastic game. But, most of us were not lucky enough to be or play with great DM's. Most of the time it was adversarial DM's who were out to screw you at every opportunity because that's the advice we frequently received in Dragon or in modules.

As can be seen, all of the situations in 1E did not require a dice roll, or even a rule. Your character largely just *did it*--with perhaps an occasional roll for something especially challenging or demanding. In 3E, if something isn't very easy--DC 10--a low-level character, especially fighters, for example...have a high chance of absolute failure.

Ok, my math isn't the strongest, but, if I have a DC 10, I have a 50 percent chance of failure. That's not high and most of the time I can try something again. Heck, I can simply Take 10 and succeed EVERY time. That gives me a 100% chance of success.

In 1E, there was more room, *creatively* wise, that you could improvise such, without reference to a required, specified skill/feat/ability/roll, and just *do* or have a good chance anyways of doing, simply by background, roleplaying skill, or assumed knowledge. In 3E, of course you can handwave such, or add some kind of bonus to justify it, but there's a certain mechanicalness involved, and a higher basis for failure of reasonably challenging topics for beginning characters, or even higher level characters, if they don't have the required skills even then, by the mechanical rules subsets, to necessarily accomplish the same things that a character was assumed to be able to do or know in a 1E game, for example.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Again, this is entirely based on your experience. My experience was that if it wasn't specifically spelled out in the rules beforehand, you couldn't do it. However, from your entire post, the strengths you are attributing to system are DM strengths. They can and do exist in any edition. Being able to use or even go beyond the rules is not a strength of the system.

 

[MerricB]

1e - You're not name level and you don't have a castle, you don't have followers. Full stop.

Not strictly true. Followers, yeah - none of those. But there was nothing stopping you hiring men-at-arms and henchmen. In fact, you almost had to do it! Several pages in the DMG on this. Conversely, there's nothing stopping you gaining the same in 3e without Leadership... they just aren't as loyal.

Cheers!

 

[RFisher]

3e tended to replace limitations with consequences. I think it did a very admirable job in this respect.

I also liked how 3e changed some things to fit the way I actually played better. e.g. In 1e, when we tried to follow the rules for when multiple attacks by the same character should be resolved, we invariably forgot the second & third attacks. So, we just had the player resolve all his character's attacks for that round at the same time. 3e made that the rule.

3e also continued to ramp up the mechanical details. For me, that doesn't tend to make the game more enjoyable. Even 1e has too many fiddly mechanical details for me these days.

3e feels very combat focused to me. I used to think 1e was overly combat focused, but 3e feels even moreso to me. That doesn't mean that playing 3e is necessarily too combat focused, but with all those combat-oriented details, it takes more effort for me to not focus on combat more than with most other games I play.

The only explanation I've heard is that, in previous editions, the rules were so poorly balanced that you basically didn't notice if your new house rules weren't balanced, either.

You know, I think that is it. Or at least part of it.

Although, I did actually notice how unbalanced my 1e house rules often turned out to be. The bigger difference, I think, is that I care about balance a lot less these days. Or perhaps my ideas of balance have changed.

The more rules in many ways act now to *inhibit* creativity and character options. It comes through the very process of defining everything.

Right there with you.

The problem, however, was that earlier editions didn't do a good enough job explaining things to me.

Now, after a lot of time & effort understanding the earlier editions, so much of 3e that used to look like badly needed fixes to me now looks like fixing things that weren't broken.

And I'm not so sure that they inhibit creativity. And I think you can work within the framework to get the effect you want. (e.g. Set low DCs & use Take 10.) But I do think that they can bog the game down in details that don't really add much to the experience. For me.

And, when players have spent time allocating skill points, as DM I feel I owe it to them to provide situations in which those skill points make a difference.

Again, this was entirely DM dependent. I agree with a great DM, it would be a fantastic game. But, most of us were not lucky enough to be or play with great DM's. Most of the time it was adversarial DM's who were out to screw you at every opportunity because that's the advice we frequently received in Dragon or in modules.

The game is always DM dependent. A system can't solve the problem of an overly adversarial DM. The best a system can do is play into his hands. Rather than letting him turn the game into an adversial one, I'd rather encourage him to change and/or take on the DM responsibilities myself.

 

[interwyrm]

Slight derail. I've been playing an Exalted campaign, and while it's not D&D, to me at least it feels like the next step in role playing. The system actively rewards vivid descriptions and heroics. It seems to me like what the OP was saying about feeling heroic rather than wargamey is better served by a system like that.

For those not familiar with the system, you get 'stunt dice' added to what you roll if you give a cool description of what you are doing.

As far as D&D goes though, the only really big change I see is in the speed of leveling and that characters are exposed to less annoying danger. (Save or die instant poisons, etc.)

 

[painandgreed]

(b) That each level-appropriate encounter will expend exactly 20% of th party's strength

are simply false.

"An encounter with an Encounter Level (EL) equal to the PCs' level is one that should expend about 20% of their resources... This means on average, that after four encounters of the party's level the PCs need to rest, heal, and regain spells. A fifth enounter would probably wipe them out." --3.5 DMG, p. 49

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

The game is always DM dependent. A system can't solve the problem of an overly adversarial DM. The best a system can do is play into his hands. Rather than letting him turn the game into an adversial one, I'd rather encourage him to change and/or take on the DM responsibilities myself.

Hussar was not making it up when he suggested there seemed to be a lot more advice floating around on how to be a stern adversarial DM than one who encouraged a lot of creativity and boundary pushing based on PC background. That is certainly my recollection as well.

I do not find it illuminating to compare the best habits of earlier edition gaming with the worst habits of more recent fare, or vice versa.

The 3e skill system works so-so in the hands of a mediocre & inflexible DM, and works great in the hands of a flexible & creative DM. The earlier skill system does not work at all in the hands of a mediocre & inflexible DM, and works great in the hands of a flexible & creative DM.

If you as a player want skills, I would suggest Human with 12+ Int, and push the skill points into areas based on your background. Even a Fighter can Take 10 to hit DC 15 skill checks at low level in a cross class skill or two. If background is actually important to you, this is not a sacrifice.