D&D General What *is* D&D? (mild movie spoilers)

[Mort]

Greyhawk, ....

Have you looked at the early Greyhawk modules and supplements? Or the 2e Greyhawk modules/supplements.

They are absolutely PACKED with magic items and mid/ high level NPCs.

Plus quasi Dietes, demigods and even greater gods are on the table for the PCs to encounter.

I love Greyhawk, but I would never characterize it as a low or even mid magic setting!

 

[Micah Sweet]

Have you looked at the early Greyhawk modules and supplements? Or the 2e Greyhawk modules/supplements.

They are absolutely PACKED with magic items and mid/ high level NPCs.

Plus quasi Dietes, demigods and even greater gods are on the table for the PCs to encounter.

I love Greyhawk, but I would never characterize it as a low or even mid magic setting!

Visible magic. I'm talking about what the world looks like when you're walking through it, not what you can find if you dig around and look. villages in TSR's D&D, despite those clerics, looked much more like something out of history than what you're seeing now.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Is this a joke? You really think the financials around artwork make up the difference?

Yes. I was playing back then, remember. D&D wasn't low magic, it wasn't pseudo-historical.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Visible magic. I'm talking about what the world looks like when you're walking through it, not what you can find if you dig around and look. villages in TSR's D&D, despite those clerics, looked much more like something out of history than what you're seeing now.

Really, no they didn't, they where drawn by Americans who had never seen a real castle.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes. I was playing back then, remember. D&D wasn't low magic, it wasn't pseudo-historical.

I was there too, and in many ways I think it was.

 

[Mort]

I was there too, and in many ways I think it was.

One thing to remember. Back then, influences were much more local. You had Dragon magazine, possibly your local gaming shop (RIP Napoleons) and your local game(s). Sure there were novels and the like, but not everyone considered then anything but fluff. Very easy for different people to get completely different impressions of how the world "was." For me and my influences? It was never remotely low magic.

 

[LordEntrails]

But they reorganisation only happened in 2019-21 and there has certainly been exponential growth since then - as I said Hasbro is much better at marketing

Because Hasbro has an actual committed marketing department. Not to dis the folks at WotC over the years who have had marketing titles, but they we're not a corporate-esque marketing department, they were more about community building and maintaining. I can only guess that they were treated by management as a overhead cost, a "we have to do this but we really don't believe in it". To what Hasbro is now doing, where marketing is viewed as a profit center and core to the growth of the product.

There is a night and day difference between the strategies, effectiveness, and budgets of the two approaches.

 

[Micah Sweet]

One thing to remember. Back then, influences were much more local. You had Dragon magazine, possibly your local gaming shop (RIP Napoleons) and your local game(s). Sure there were novels and the like, but not everyone considered then anything but fluff. Very easy for different people to get completely different impressions of how the world "was." For me and my influences? It was never remotely low magic.

See, that's a big part of my problem. I can accept that different people have different perspectives, and naturally I like mine the most (otherwise I'd have a different one). But you can't just say, "D&D was never like what you're saying" as if that was a fact and people who believe otherwise are delusional.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Because Hasbro has an actual committed marketing department. Not to dis the folks at WotC over the years who have had marketing titles, but they we're not a corporate-esque marketing department, they were more about community building and maintaining. I can only guess that they were treated by management as a overhead cost, a "we have to do this but we really don't believe in it". To what Hasbro is now doing, where marketing is viewed as a profit center and core to the growth of the product.

There is a night and day difference between the strategies, effectiveness, and budgets of the two approaches.

Personally, I prefer the community building and maintaining approach, but you certainly make more money the other way.

 

[Mort]

See, that's a big part of my problem. I can accept that different people have different perspectives, and naturally I like mine the most (otherwise I'd have a different one). But you can't just say, "D&D was never like what you're saying" as if that was a fact and people who believe otherwise are delusional.

I think there was also a disconnect between the old-school rulebooks and the old-school modules.

Reading the rulebooks, you could easily get the impression that magic was rare and wondrous. They tried to convey that big magic and "high level" were not something encountered everyday.

But then you get the modules, where the amount of treasure presented could charitably be called excessive (and not just in the dungeons). And where mid high level NPCs popped up all the time.