Trend in Editions

(Originally written months ago but I didn't get around to posting until now...)

Taken from a comment on an old post:

Well said! I distinguish play between "gameplay", as defined by mechanics, rules and character maxing, and "Roleplay", which involves gameworld exploration, storyline and character development (in the more literary sense). The later editions of D&D appear to place more emphasis on Gameplay than on Roleplay. I also agree that this is neither good nor bad, inherently. It simply is.

Personally, I find that Gameplay focus works extremely well when translated into computer based gaming systems such as the various Baldur's Gate titles and spinoffs, Neverwinter Nights, etc. But for me to enjoy face-to-face paper and pen gaming, I much prefer either a more balanced Roleplay to Gameplay emphasis or even slightly towards Roleplay (meaning less complex rulesets and leaving more to the imagination). I run a 1st Edition AD&D campaign for my friends because that is what we started with.

As to "Old School Rennaissance", I never left the old rule sets, so it is hard for me to think of myself as "Old School", other than in a self-mocking sort of way. But I do find it refreshing to hear that I am not the only one who finds the idea of the newer rulesets to be somewhat lacking for pen and paper face-to-face gaming.

I think I would have to disagree with your statement that "...later editions of D&D appear to place more emphasis on Gameplay than on Roleplay". I know that's a common meme these days, but the idea that the rules for AD&D (1st/2nd Edition) focused on role-playing seems to be a more recent idea. I say this in part from defending the old editions years ago (pre-3rd Edition) against the constant accusations that AD&D was nothing more than a game of hack-and-slash, and that you couldn't possibly use it for role-playing. AD&D was considered a "gateway" game, and it was said more sophisticated gamers would simply move past it to more mature systems like GURPS or White Wolf's RPGs. Granted, the arguments were silly and ridiculous, but I find that's the case with "edition wars" these days as well.

One argument I used in those days, and which I believe is just as applicable today, is that a good role-player doesn't need rules for "role-playing" - it's just something you do. Rules are for things like conflict resolution, equipment tables, or magic systems. Everything else is emergent from a character concept (this is one reason why I have no issues with the changes in the skill system in 4E - for instance, you want your PC to have been a blacksmith before adventuring? You don't need a "Profession - Blacksmith" skill; just work that into your character's backstory).

"Back in the day" there were just as many number-crunching loot-hungry munchkins as there are today. Or at least there were; I think the people who were solely in it for getting "the most pluses" have moved on to on-line games like WoW, which are perfectly suited for that style of play.

That said, I imagine the perception that "modern" editions focus on gameplay rather than role-play is due in part to the larger number of rulebooks and sourcebooks available these days. And for some reason, people seem to think that so much optional material is required to play. For instance, in a 3.5 game I play in, one of the players (who has little love for D&D post-2nd edition), was looking at a stack of 3.5 books and complaining how you didn't need all those books back in "the old days". My wife pointed out to him how much material was published for 2nd Edition - from the "Complete Fighter's Handbook" to the "Players Options" books and everything in-between. His response was "yeah, but those were all optional!" Um...yeah, so are all the non-core 3.5 books (or non-core 4E books). I don't know where people get this idea that, say, "Wilderness Survival Guide" was an optional accessory for 1st Edition but "Adventurer's Vault 2" is required to play 4E.

Having said that, I think that imagination played a bigger role back in the Olden Times simply because, as I mentioned, there wasn't as much material available. Considering just what TSR released for 1st Edition, there were only eleven rulebooks published if I recall correctly: PHB, DMG, MM, MM2, FF, D&D/L&L, OA, DSG, WSG, UA, MotP. Nowadays, WotC publishes about that many in a year. I think people get overwhelmed by the options available, even though they're just that - options. Plus, it isn't as necessary to come up with your own material since there's so much available either from the official books, Dragon and Dungeon (old and new), third party publishers (both OGL and GSL), or the on-line gaming community. Given all that, one could even see the "Old School Renaissance" as a sort of "primitivist" movement, like someone who decides to flee a materialistic, busy/loud/aggressive urban lifestyle for a more laidback, peaceful, rural existence.

On Magic Items and a Sense of Wonder

An old post at d20 Source talks about "bringing back the magic" to D&D. Essentially, it laments that the "magic" of magic items has been lost since magic items are treated little better than beefed-up mundane equipment and offers some suggestions for making magic items more "magical".

While I don't disagree with anything in the article, it seems to overlook the fact that magic items in D&D are treated the way they are because that's one of the memes of the game - namely, a plethora of magic items is part of the expected norm of the game. This started well before WoW made it standard that all your gear was at least "green" even at very low levels. It was common in 3.x, and quite common in previous editions, despite grognard arguments to the contrary. 3.x even codified it with the "Wealth by Level" table (granted, all wealth doesn't have to be in magic items, but it's an easy way to distribute treasure and players have come to expect it).

I would prefer D&D be more like Warhammer FRP or Tekumel, where magic is rare, unique, and always has a story as well. But if you want to stay within the bounds of the expected rules, that's not really an option with 3.x. 4E, at least, shrinks how many items you can wear, but (based off the character creation options), it still assumes a character is going to have at least three if they're higher than first level. There are some alternate suggestions in the DMG2, so that's an option...

One area where there's more of a "sense of wonder" is artifacts. Now, prior to 4E this wasn't much of an option - artifacts belonged to the realm of those of very high level, and even then it was generous to call them "extremely rare". In fact, I can't think of any game I've been a player in where we encountered an artifact, and I can count on one hand - and have fingers left over - the number of games I've put them in (not counting the deck of many things*, which I try to drop in once to each campaign I run). With 4E, you can finally get some mileage out of artifacts due to their "tiered" nature and the concordance mechanic. That's not to say they are or should be common - I haven't used any in my game yet, actually. But now they can be a little something more than an ultra-powerful magic item that a player reads about and thinks "well, there's something we'll never see."


*: So, where's the 4E version of the deck?

Goddammit Google Mail...

I moved the f**king conversation out of the Trash back to the Inbox so you wouldn't keep popping up the goddamn "Error you're replying to a deleted conversation" pop-up, and you still keep doing it! F**K that's annoying.

I expect better of you, Google.

Skills != Role-playing

From here:

I would like an alternate skill list, one that more easily reflects the skills in 3.5. With specific skills in a subset of 4e large skills. It seems that such a thing would encourage roleplaying in those who feel like 4e left them in the cold. I don't think it would be too tough to impliment [sic], as this new skill list would still include the old ones, just allow for more refinement. As I'm writing this, I'm actually thinking of a way this could be done very easily.

Jeez..if you want to role-play, the solution isn't an expanded skills list. The solution is: role-play!

Why is that so hard for some people to figure out?

Webcomics, Blogs, Forums, and Thyme

I posted the other day about the webcomic "W.o.G.". Finding it reminded me just of how many webcomics are out there that I'd like to read and how many I realistically have time for. Sure, there's a lot of garbage out there (not just with webcomics but websites, blogs, etc.); "Sturgeon's Law" or whatever the commonly-used bastardization says is very true - 99% of everything is crap. But given the sheer volume of material out on the Net, that 1% of good stuff - even once you discount what is good but you have no interest in - is staggering.

Currently, the webcomics I follow include: W.o.G., PVP Online, Penny Arcade, xkcd, Atland, Order of the Stick, and Something Positive. I could follow more, and I'd like to, such as Looking for Group, Ctrl-Alt-Delete, User Friendly, and Least I Could Do (and maybe Sluggy Freelance, which I gave up on some years ago), not to mention ones that I can't recall.

Doesn't seem like much, but then there's the blogs (or "blog-like" news sites). In my current "Daily Sites" folder in Firefox or RSS feed I have Slashdot, Techland, RPG Blog II, Robot Viking, io9, Lifehacker, Tabletop Gaming News, and some others. Blogs like Gnome Stew, Grognardia, Chatty DM, Dungeon Mastering, and others await in my "Review" folder for me to determine if I should add them to my regular rotation.

And then there's the forums. Really, the only one I regularly visit is ENWorld and there I mostly lurk. If I had time to post more, I'd probably stick with commenting on blogs since the noise-to-signal ratio tends to be lower (which is why I rarely step foot into the WotC forums). But there are some I wouldn't mind spending more time at - the forums at Goodman Games, Necromancer Games, or RPGSite come to mind. Though I can safely say that won't be happening.

Mailing lists ("listservs" and the like) I gave up on years ago. Well, except for the TableSmith Yahoo group. And a couple others than one of my alternate accounts are subscribed to. As for Usenet, that one I can safely say I'm done with. The same old tired arguments reverberating around the same echo chambers fostered by the same stagnating participants - yeah, I don't need that any more.

One thing I don't get (from the gaming parts of the Web) - I see some folks out there prolifically posting on their own blogs, posting in forums, commenting on other blogs...where do these people find the time? With some of these folks, I have to wonder how much time they spend talking about gaming and how much time they actually spend gaming. Theory versus practice, and all that.

Oh, well. Not sure what my point was here, other than pointing out that while there's orders of magnitude of crap on the Internet, there's a ton of good stuff out there. And I lament not being able to absorb it all :)

Harsh (But Accurate) Critique of Old School Criticism of a Balanced Campaign

I just read this post by Wax Banks, where he shares his thoughts on "zero-to-hero"gaming. In particular, he calls to task those grognards* who insist their game style is superior to later editions (i.e; 3.x/4E). It's rather harsh in spots, but I don't see much to disagree about.






*: Not all OSR folks are that way. But many are, so that post certainly applies to them.

4E: All Encounters Must Be Balanced to the Party's Level

From here (though taken slightly out of context, it's a good summary of an argument put forth by many 3x/4e detractors):

Recent versions of D&D have sought to promote the idea that parties of characters should be presented with a formulaic series of encounters with challenge ratings that are balanced according to their level, plus or minus a little.

Eh...not exactly. Granted, page 56 of the 4E DMG states:

Building an encounter is a matter of choosing threats appropriate to the characters and combining them in interesting and challenging ways.

That doesn't necessarily mean that every encounter for a party of Level 5 PCs must be balanced exactly. The fact that the book gives guidelines on what constitutes an "easy" encounter, a "standard" encounter, and a "hard" encounter contradicts that. Later, the DMG states:

It’s a good idea to vary the difficulty of your encounters over the course of an adventure, just as you vary other elements of encounters to keep things interesting...

Obviously, the game is going to be boring if every encounter is a pushover, or very frustrating if the party is handed its collective ass during each battle. This is the case regardless of what edition you're using, and generally a DM is going to want to have a mix of encounters - easy ones to make the party feel heroic (or diabolic), hard ones to show them there's always something tougher than them, and "standard" ones that move the game along. The nice thing about 3.x, and especially 4E, is that the DM is given the tools to make it easier for them to determine how tough or easy their encounters are. Whether they have to be completely "balanced" or otherwise is totally up to her.

The Demise of Dungeons & Dragons

Some excerpts from a recent article* on D&D:

I'm not sure what Wizards of the Coast was thinking when they started this grand venture, but I'm hoping they missed the mark and are just too embarassed to admit it.

From the few bits and pieces about the...edition I've seen, many changes have taken place, so much so that the original core set of rules almost seems non-existant.

I don't claim to know everything about the...edition of our favorite roleplaying game (and the cause of many late, sleepness nights of pizza and bloodshed). ... What I am is a concerned gamer. Concerned with the path Wizards of the Coast has chosen for my favorite roleplaying game of all time. What's next? Will Tiamat become the very model of a modern major general? Will Elminster become a necromancer? Will umberhulks become the choice pet for kings and queens the land over? How many licks does it take to get to the center of... OK, you get my point.


*: "Recent" being August, 2000. Of course, they're talking about 3rd Edition, not 4E. But while the mechanics may have changed, the arguments haven't (read the comments and see). This is yet another example of me pointing out that the edition wars surrounding 3x/4E are just the same old thing in different clothing. What's interesting is that many of the people who would dismiss the anti-3E arguments from this article and its comments use the same logic against 4E, without looking at the discussion from a higher level and putting things into perspective.

D&D Covers

I've discussed Dragon magazine covers in the past (somewhere; too lazy to link to it), but this post from ENWorld on a discussion about PHB covers through the years sums up my feelings succinctly when it comes to Dragon:

Covers since seem to have focused more on trying to entice you into wanting to become the character displayed, rather than be involved in the scene.

"I want to be that guy!"
rather than
"I want to be THERE!"

The former was the case for Dragon for some time, particularly under Paizo. It appeals to one mindset; mine (which was served by Dragon covers moreso in the 80's) is the latter.