D&D General When did you leave D&D? Why? For what game? And what brought you back?

[Desdichado]

D&D in the 70’s and early
80s actually did resemble a lot of popular fantasy literature of the time, particularly the sword and sorcery genre. Appendix N in the back of the first DMG lists all of the literary influences on the game,some of the more well known ones being Michael Moorcock’s Elric series, Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories and Fritz Liebers’s Lankhmar stuff. And early D&D and Greyhawk is full of the flavor of appendix N, and Gary wanted fans to know that. Many of the authors listed were actually writing fantasy that was purposefully counter to Tolkiens horrid fantasy, and that’s what Gary liked about it.

No, that's not true. By the end of the 80s, I'd read almost everything on the appendix N and D&D only resembles anything there in extremely narrow and specific ways. And literally nothing in sword & sorcery, or any other literary subgenre resembles the core activity of older D&D, namely dungeon crawling. The only thing that comes close, and it postdates D&D by many years, is the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

 

[Parmandur]

Bounced off of 4E, stopped playing TTRPGs e timely. Tuned into the upcoming 5E when I saw a D&D Kreo ad before the Lego Mive in theaters.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

When did you leave D&D?​

I left D&D during 4E. I was part of a playtest for 4E here in NYC. Didnt care for it but still picked up the finished product and ran a few games on my own and found that I REALLY did not like the direction or feel of the game. Eventually I traded in all of my 4e stuff at that point (which was only the 3 core books) to Noble Knight Games and never looked back. I'd been playing and supporting with my dollars some form of D&D since I started playing in 1982.

Why?​

Didnt like the marketing for the transition from 3.5 to 4E. Did not like how 4E played as a TTRPG. Ironically I enjoyed (and still own) three of the 4E based boardgames that were released during that time. SO for. boardgames? YES. For TTRPG? NO.

For what game?
Pathfinder 1E. I was a supporter of Paizo during the Dungeon and Dragon Magazine era so they were already doing the thing that I like. I've since moved over to Pathfinder 2E.

And what brought you back?​

Nothing. The game (and the community) is not for me anymore. The new generation is more than welcome to it. ME? I've moved on.

 

[Reynard]

No, that's not true. By the end of the 80s, I'd read almost everything on the appendix N and D&D only resembles anything there in extremely narrow and specific ways. And literally nothing in sword & sorcery, or any other literary subgenre resembles the core activity of older D&D, namely dungeon crawling. The only thing that comes close, and it postdates D&D by many years, is the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Conan alone spends a bunch of time in dungeons of one sort or another. I have to wonder what you were reading.

 

[nyvinter]

Didn't really play DnD before 4e — I had played rpgs for a long time before that, DnD has never been me default game. Moved on to 5e and played some OSR* and have to say that I will play in campaigns with friends but if I want to GM fantasy I will go to other games.

*) If an OSR game is based on a foundation of older DnD, then to me it's still DnD. Just as Pathfinder is.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

I went from AD&D to Runequest because I liked the no class and gain skill when you use it system. I also liked the base setting much more. Eventually I moved to Champions because you could play just about any super hero you imagined.

After a long break (2e through 4e when I was moving constantly for my job and mainly played computer games), I came back tro 5e because VTT (Fantasy Grounds) let me play with my old play group.

Today I play some 5e, other flavors of D&D (Hyperborea, DCC and S&W mainly), and recently Cyberpunk Red.

 

[Aldarc]

I started D&D with the launch of 3.0, but I found it not quite to my liking in terms of doing the sort of fantasy that I wanted. With not much experience in TTRPGs, I basically stayed within the OGL sphere: e.g., Arcana Unearthed/Evolved, Blue Rose, and True20.

I came back for 4e D&D, which I found solved a number of my issues with 3e. However, the Edition Wars made it difficult to find a group, and all the toxic vitriole directed towards 4e D&D left me pretty sore about the D&D Community, so I kinda walked away for a time. I did come back (sorta) to PF1 as this is what my group of friends in California wanted to play, but I wasn't too thrilled since it didn't really solve my issues with 3e.

5e D&D dropped. It was interesting and exciting. I played a bit in California and then Vienna when I moved. However, it quickly grew stale. It was around this time that I started venturing further out of the d20 sphere, looking at indie games like Cypher System, Fate, Dungeon World, etc. and eventually OSR games. But D&D 5e? It just doesn't really scratch my itches in a satisfying way. Now that One D&D is promising more of the same, it's less likely that I will continue forward with Official D&D.

 

[MGibster]

I feel like it is fairly common for folks to decide they are "done with D&D" at some point (or multiple points!) and to leave for other games. It is also fairly common IMO for those same people to eventually come back to D&D.

I left three times. The first time was in the late 1990s, around 1997-1998, where I simply got so tired of AD&D I decided I would no longer play it. I ended up selling almost the entirety of my RPG collection to a friend of mine who still owns the books. And, man, I owned a lot of 2nd edition AD&D products including multiple settings, monster manuals, those brown books, some green books, and a bunch of other stuff I've forgotten about.

I came back a few short years later with third edition. I had a pretty good time but I dropped out with 3.5. I had been looking forward to 3.5, but the changes were so minor I was a little peeved and didn't upgrade. But there was some other stuff going on as well. I was running a lot of Living Greyhawk as it was popular in my neck of the woods and it burned me out. As a DM, I felt like I was little more than a rubber stamp for players getting experience and treasure and I got tired of it. When I announced my retirement several players offered to buy me the 3.5 core books but I declined.

I came back for 4th edition but beat a hasty retreat because I didn't like the game. And I'll just leave it at that as 4th edition seems to be a sore spot for a lot of people.

And again, I came back to D&D for 5th edition. Overall I've been pretty happy with it, but I've found that after 10 years I don't own a lot of D&D books. They're just not producing anything I'm interested in.

 

[Burnside]

I left D&D when I left for college in 1994, not because I didn't like it but simply because my priorities and commitments changed. If online play was more of a thing during my college years (mid-late 90s) then I might have kept playing to an extent, but I'm not sure. In my post-college years my career was very demanding/unpredictable with the need for constant hustling and long/irregular hours, such that I couldn't have been part of a regular group. I also wasn't in a great financial position until my early 30s (even though D&D can be a very inexpensive hobby) and couldn't have afforded to keep up much with the physical products.

After not playing at all for 23 years, barring 2-3 abortive attempts to play 3E in the early 2000s, I got back into it in 2017 (when I was 41) due to a few factors:

• Friends got interested in it & asked me if I could DM
• Many younger actors in my theater company were playing it
• My life and financial situation had stabilized such that it was much easier to both make time to play and to buy the stuff
• Actual play shows reminded me how fun the game is (I believe Force Grey, WotC's collaboration with Geek & Sundry & Nerdist, was the first one I watched - my wife got me to watch it because she was into a lot of G&S/Nerdist content at that time)

 

[Burnside]

No, that's not true. By the end of the 80s, I'd read almost everything on the appendix N and D&D only resembles anything there in extremely narrow and specific ways. And literally nothing in sword & sorcery, or any other literary subgenre resembles the core activity of older D&D, namely dungeon crawling. The only thing that comes close, and it postdates D&D by many years, is the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The Mines of Moria sequence in Fellowship of the Ring was a huge inspiration for dungeon crawling in D&D.

Gary's insistence that "only a minute" trace of Tolkein is in D&D is laughable on the face of it, and clearly one of many things he said along those lines not because they were true, but to discourage lawsuits from the Tolkein estate.