WotC WotC needs an Elon Musk

[Remathilis]

Just because the game isn't about those things anymore doesn't mean they weren't fun. If that were true, we'd all be playing the same thing. Present game design is not always better, and different preferences are good.

The game hasn't been played like that since the 80s. The rise of plot-based adventures rather than dungeon crasher play. You can argue Dragonlance started the trend, but it was fully in play in 2nd edition. There was just a terrible mishmash of the heroic adventure design and Gary's "11 foot pole because 10' is too short" rules. Since then, D&D rules have moved toward rules that accommodate the adventures they have been designing for 30 years.

I know that there is a large OSR movement, but I doubt that many people played the way Gary assumed (multiple simultaneous PCs, weeks of IRL downtime to heal, dozens of henchmen and hirelings, and judicious use of everything to avoid fights, since the main source of xp was gold) and instead played like modules assumed (1 PC at a time, small to medium groups of PCs with limited npc help, healing at the rate of plot, encounters designed to be fought, etc).

 

[Micah Sweet]

The game hasn't been played like that since the 80s. The rise of plot-based adventures rather than dungeon crasher play. You can argue Dragonlance started the trend, but it was fully in play in 2nd edition. There was just a terrible mishmash of the heroic adventure design and Gary's "11 foot pole because 10' is too short" rules. Since then, D&D rules have moved toward rules that accommodate the adventures they have been designing for 30 years.

I know that there is a large OSR movement, but I doubt that many people played the way Gary assumed (multiple simultaneous PCs, weeks of IRL downtime to heal, dozens of henchmen and hirelings, and judicious use of everything to avoid fights, since the main source of xp was gold) and instead played like modules assumed (1 PC at a time, small to medium groups of PCs with limited npc help, healing at the rate of plot, encounters designed to be fought, etc).

Most of that sounds great to me, coming from a 1e play background. I would leave the irl downtime to heal in the past, but I dearly wish more players kept multiple active PCs. My D&D in space game has three PCs per player, for example.

 

[Remathilis]

All of which are trends worthy of opposing at every opportunity.

Ditto.

The rules have morphed based on how players (in general whose main interest, remember, lies in making things easier on their characters) have through endless advocacy forced them to morph; mostly because the designers haven't had the spine to push back and keep the game challenging at the design level.

In a word: bullpoop.

There is this myth that D&D in the past was some grand test of grit, skill and luck. You sent dozens of PCs into the dungeon wood chipper and eventually you ended up with a group of hyper paranoid 2nd level PCs who would steal every item worth a gold piece, avoid almost any action with even a whiff of risk, and were the 2nd biggest source of henchmen paychecks aside from monarchy and evil overlords. They weren't adventurers, they were a bunch of middle managers with severe PTSD. And the game was better for it.

That's not how the game was played for the majority of its lifespan. It was played like Dragonlance. Adventures were fairly linear, highly narrative, and focused on the PCs doing epic things and fighting powerful monsters. That style of adventure won out decades ago, it just has taken the D&D rules much longer to actually support the style of play it was pushing.

 

[Remathilis]

Most of that sounds great to me, coming from a 1e play background. I would leave the irl downtime to heal in the past, but I dearly wish more players kept multiple active PCs. My D&D in space game has three PCs per player, for example.

I started in the early 90s with BECMI and 2e. That old style dungeon crasher play was so antithetical to the game style that TSR was producing in its settings, modulus and supplements it might as well be a different game. In fact, the style of play TSR encouraged wasn't even compatible with the legacy rules carried over from 1e to 2e, and it was so frustrating that the game wanted us to be bold but the rules wanted us to be paranoid. I ended up houseruling the game to fix the disconnect and was surprised to see 3e was fixing a lot of the things I was trying to fix about that as well.

You are free to find whatever OSR throwback game you want that can accommodate the wood chipper style of play. But it's nice to have rules that support the kind of gameplay D&D was pushing for decades.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Why hasn't anybody asked ChatGPT to write a case study in the style of Harvard Business School describing what would happen if Elon Musk took over Hasbro?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I started in the early 90s with BECMI and 2e. That old style dungeon crasher play was so antithetical to the game style that TSR was producing in its settings, modulus and supplements it might as well be a different game. In fact, the style of play TSR encouraged wasn't even compatible with the legacy rules carried over from 1e to 2e, and it was so frustrating that the game wanted us to be bold but the rules wanted us to be paranoid. I ended up houseruling the game to fix the disconnect and was surprised to see 3e was fixing a lot of the things I was trying to fix about that as well.

You are free to find whatever OSR throwback game you want that can accommodate the wood chipper style of play. But it's nice to have rules that support the kind of gameplay D&D was pushing for decades.

I'm glad you have a ruleset you like, but you're acting like your way is objectively better and everyone should just accept your point of view. The 1e style is a perfectly good way, played by many still today.

 

[Maxperson]

In a word: bullpoop.

There is this myth that D&D in the past was some grand test of grit, skill and luck. You sent dozens of PCs into the dungeon wood chipper and eventually you ended up with a group of hyper paranoid 2nd level PCs who would steal every item worth a gold piece, avoid almost any action with even a whiff of risk, and were the 2nd biggest source of henchmen paychecks aside from monarchy and evil overlords. They weren't adventurers, they were a bunch of middle managers with severe PTSD. And the game was better for it.

That's not how the game was played for the majority of its lifespan. It was played like Dragonlance. Adventures were fairly linear, highly narrative, and focused on the PCs doing epic things and fighting powerful monsters. That style of adventure won out decades ago, it just has taken the D&D rules much longer to actually support the style of play it was pushing.

I've been playing at least weekly since 1983. I never had a character get past 7th level until 3e. Now a character that doesn't make it past 7th level(In games that don't restart at that point) is almost as rare as chupacabra or unicorn.

 

[AnotherGuy]

The handful of people that still ask about this is a tiny fraction of the people that play the game.

I'd like the flying car we were supposed to have by now according to Back to the Future. But I'm realistic enough to accept that it's not happening and I'm not going to complain about it for the millionth time.

People blew things way out of proportion with ideas of a style of game that was never practical. D&D is not GURPS.

At a certain point complaining about something that didn't happen whether it was "promised" or not is ... boring. I get it. People got their hopes up. But it didn't happen, it was never going to happen.

The problem for me Oofta is that it was an advertised design goal, like it or not, and I can forgive them for the DMG lacking in those expected modular options, but what exactly has WotC done since to make good on that promise?

We constantly look at 3pp product to satiate our wants because honestly WotC, I feel, has no clue.

 

[Azzy]

Most of that sounds great to me, coming from a 1e play background. I would leave the irl downtime to heal in the past, but I dearly wish more players kept multiple active PCs. My D&D in space game has three PCs per player, for example.

I'm not trying to knock your preference (there is no one true way), but as a player I would hate running more than one character.

 

[Azzy]

I'm glad you have a ruleset you like, but you're acting like your way is objectively better and everyone should just accept your point of view. The 1e style is a perfectly good way, played by many still today.

That style of play (perfectly good as it is for many people—that aren't me) didn't even survive (as being the default style) the full length of 1e, either. The Hickman Revolution and all that (which happen a year or two before I started playing BECMI & 1e in late '86). Increasingly narrative modules were becoming more common and were setting the stage for 2e.