3.5 did have tools baked in for the GM to adjust stuff like Bonus types & dm's best friend. By comparison 5e leans heavily on expecting the GM to cast the player resentment spell.
D&D (2024) What could One D&D do to bring the game back to the dungeon?
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
Manbearcat
Legend
So I'm not @Campbell but looking at your response here reveals some of the differences that we're trying to navigate in this conversation. What I'm seeing above from you is an improvised action by a player (being resolved using the very straight-forward, proto-Ability Check, action resolution mechanics of Moldvay) being contrasted with the procedures for Wandering Monsters. These are very, very different kettles of fish that imbue play with very different properties.
The collective of (a) Wandering Monsters + (b) having to Rest 1 every 6 Turns (or face penalties) + (c) the attrition of your light/supplies/spells/HPs + (d) the demands of skillfully navigating the dungeon-scape and its regime of obstacles/puzzles creates an "engine of pressurized exploration action economy." You are on the clock and the game you are playing is navigating a suite of individual decision-points (centered around how to spend your turns, where to go, how to ration your resources, what treasure to pack-out and what to leave behind, what obstacles/puzzles/conflicts to face and what to evade, when to press on and when to turn back) that is informed by many converging parameters that must be considered. And that entire suite of decision-points faced and resolved make up the through line of the entire delve, which is a speculative risk profile that is yet another overriding parameter to consider in each of these micro-decisions.
A GM improvising Wandering Monsters (something that deeply governs, via an intense and known parameter of pressure) fundamentally changes the delve experience because one of the key components of that "engine of pressurized exploration action economy" suddenly goes from a table-facing, known value that informs players' decision-matrix to "qualitative mush" that can't be acted upon in the same way or to the same degree. Now players have to spend table time trying to assess that qualitative mush:
* Is this just color, aesthetic, mood, tone (my 2 category of dungeon play)? Or is the actual gameplay machinery?
* Ok, if it is gameplay machinery, how is the GM operationalizing this equivalent of Wandering Monsters so that we (the players) can turn that qualitative mush into something we feel is sufficiently actionable to inform our individual decisions and our collective through line of decisions as we move through the delve?
* Alternatively, they just passively accept this important lack of game information/understanding and heed forth headlong into the relative (or complete) unknown. If this becomes the rote dungeoneering approach, play has definitely changed and not by a little. Play has firmly toward the direction of my (2) category.
This goes equally for my (b) through (d) above. As key delve parameters become increasingly opaque, inscrutable, unreliable, inconsistent, disconnected, absent, devoid...the nature of delve play changes dramatically. I'll call back to my most recent Lasers & Feelings vs Apocalypse World post just upthread as a robust example of this. Same thing for Mouse Guard (proto-Torchbearer) vs Torchbearer. If you just add onto Mouse Guard two of the great many mechanical layers of game tech that Luke and Thor added onto Mouse Guard to create Torchbearer then you have a profoundly different play experience when running Mouse Guard Missions. Just the low-hanging fruit of adding The Grind, which is a brutal attrition clock like Wandering Monsters, and making Gear/Inventory as intense as it is in Torchbearer will deeply change play in terms of the cognitive orientation and demanding qualities of play...and that is just scratching the surface.
If a GM freeform operationalizes Wandering Monsters + doesn't enforce Rest 1 in 6 turns + handwaves Inventory/Encumbrance + doesn't actually track light sources with meticulous scrutiny? Again, the cognitive orientation and demanding qualities of play for Moldvay Basic change significantly. Play moves from my (1) upthread to my (2) upthread.
James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
No, it's friction damage, completely different (going by 3e logic).
Frozen_Heart
Hero
This is one of my main gripes with modern DnD. No one wants the 'zero to hero' trope anymore. It's more 'hero to god' now. Even with discussions about point buy, people want yet more points to put in by default. Everyone wants a 16 or even an 18 on their starting score. With a 14 being considered completely useless.
James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
Honestly, it's been heading that way ever since the very beginning, as each new supplement or edition offers bigger and better options. There's always been players and DM's as well who want to "get to the good part" (as they see it) by starting at levels higher than 1, or using more benevolent methods of generating ability scores.
And sure, there's also players and DM's who want the game to never get beyond level 5, and will happily fight over a bent copper coin for loot, but it seems fairly obvious how the game has trended.
So it's nothing new. A lot of players have this idea of a character they want to portray in their heads and want to start as that, not be told "one day, around level 6 or so, you'll feel like you're that guy".
I mean, it is a fantasy game, so it takes all kinds.
What I think WotC really should do, is, instead of buffing the low levels, just come out and say "if this is the kind of game you want to play, start at level X and stop at level Y", instead of pointing everyone to start at level 1.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
And then make level 1 actually level 1. Stretch things out a bit at tier 1, and point people to tier 2 if they want to start more powerful.
James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
Exactly, yes. If you want your game to start off with the characters as untrained adolescents going off on an adventure into a cave, then the game should say "START HERE". If you want the game start off with characters who are established Knights, being sent on a deadly mission by their King, the game should say "START HERE INSTEAD".
If you want the game to start off with everyone as Noble Drow Elven Hexblades who receive visions from a God of Chaos and are equipped with Demon Swords, the game should say "ok, you probably want to start at level X".
I think that by default the characters should be competent at the basics of what they do. I have no issue if that is level 3
James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
That's the level I was starting at anyways, so people have their subclass and feel like the character they were wanting to play. Heck, by the end of 2e, I was always starting at level 2 just because I was tired of watching Fighters go down in two hits and losing Thieves and Wizards to single arrow shots, forcing me to keep running the same low level adventure over and over again until they managed to survive!
MichaelSomething
Legend
Sadly all the new players will ignore text that advises starting at higher levels, start at 1 because they think that's the required default, and then complain low levels are no fun and demand they be powered up.
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