Wizards of the Coast Announces One D&D

[C.R.Ryan]

50 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

D&D is awesome.

I have played in a 5e campaign a few years back. We had a blast. Most games can be great if you like the players around the table with you. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

I agree, the system matters less than the players and GM.  A good system makes things better, and a worse system makes things less fun, but you can still have a blast.  You can have a fun Tunnels & Trolls campaign, or a memorable Top Secret game.  You can play RuneQuest or AD&D, or Universe and have fun.

 

But the system makes things better.  Bad mechanics annoy and grate at me even when I am enjoying a game.

[Opal]

56 minutes ago, Opal said:

Though, really neither of those is fair... D&D didn't claim to be an RPG, initially, but "Rules  for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures" ...

And, also TBF, D&D wasn't really a wargame, either, it used Chainmail for actual miniatures wargaming and, according to legend something called Wilderness Survival for hexcrawling (never heard of it, I've at least read Chainmail).

D&D, itself, was mostly a just sort of puzzle game focussed on dungeoncrawling and managing resources like spells, hit points (restored with cure spells), scrolls of spells, potions that acted like spells (esp cure spells), and wand/staff/rods or other charged items that cast spells.

 

Players insisted on frequently pausing the game to speak in character or describe actions, though, especially the dungeoncrawling portion where you might avoid a trap or find a treasure by describing how you looked for it in sufficiently exhaustive detail. 

So talking in character and disengaging from the rules by declaring actions too granular for them to resolve, became "Role Playing" and D&D became "the first"  RPG. 

 

[Ragitsu]

Even if you dislike the overall system mechanics (pick an edition...any edition), most of the TSR-era material is aces when it comes to settings, adventure hooks and NPCs.

[Opal]

If we're casting about for nice things to say about D&D of that era, 2e had nice art and 1e had nice sales numbers.

[assault]

3 hours ago, Opal said:

Though, really neither of those is fair... D&D didn't claim to be an RPG, initially, but "Rules  for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures" ...

 

Indeed, and you can argue that it wasn't the first published RPG on that basis.

 

There were skirmish wargames that you could play campaigns with before that.

 

Here's one contender:

Western Gunfight Wargame Rules 1st Ed (Steve Curtis, Ian Colwill, Mike Blake 1970. 2nd Ed 1971)

 

Other people were playing similar games without publishing their rules. Some were even fantasy!

[Old Man]

2 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

Even if you dislike the overall system mechanics (pick an edition...any edition), most of the TSR-era material is aces when it comes to settings, adventure hooks and NPCs.

 

What's interesting to me about that era is that aside from D&D, only Gamma World used polyhedrals.  Every other TSR RPG ran on percentile dice.  And yet each one was its own system.

[Scott Ruggels]

1 hour ago, assault said:

 

Indeed, and you can argue that it wasn't the first published RPG on that basis.

 

There were skirmish wargames that you could play campaigns with before that.

 

Here's one contender:

Western Gunfight Wargame Rules 1st Ed (Steve Curtis, Ian Colwill, Mike Blake 1970. 2nd Ed 1971)

 

Other people were playing similar games without publishing their rules. Some were even fantasy!

 

 

Fascinating article, and it's interesting how from wargames, came Simulationist Roleplaying.

[Duke Bushido]

On 2/16/2023 at 4:02 PM, Ragitsu said:

Even if you dislike the overall system mechanics (pick an edition...any edition), most of the TSR-era material is aces when it comes to settings, adventure hooks and NPCs.

 

 

NPCs I will give you; they were usually detailed enough to play immediately.  I owned the bulk of the Star Frontiers stuff, and I have to tell you, there was diddly / squat for setting.  Individual modules gave you relevant location details, of course, but the closest it got to setting was saying "here's some stuff about the four playable races, and these wormy things are evil. 

 

Various adventures made you space cops or soldiers or something in between, but there was no real explanation of why the war was actually about, either. " The Sathar are at it again! " isn't terribly far from "Somehow, Palpatine is alive."

 

Looking back on my memories of Gamma World, it didn't beyond generic until the middle of the 2e life cycle, then shot itself in the face with 3e and the Marvel Superheroes "here are some charts with colors on them.  Use these to know everything about your character and his abilities."

 

Though that doesn't really point to setting. 

 

I have a sneaking suspicion that the key difference between "here are some factoids" and full-fledged settings is that it was forty years ago, it was new and exciting, and we just let our imaginations and hearts run away with assumed details in a way that for some weird reason we flat out refuse to do today. 

 

Still, I did enjoy both of those games, and to some extent, Boot Hill.  The only game more lethal than Paranoia.  Ha! 

 

 

 

 

[Opal]

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

 

What's interesting to me about that era is that aside from D&D, only Gamma World used polyhedrals.  Every other TSR RPG ran on percentile dice.  And yet each one was its own system.

 It was interesting how similar games from the same company could be, like Boot Hill to Top Secret and D&D to Metamorphosis Alpha to Gamma World to EPT.  Stormbringer to RuneQuest to Call of Cthulhu.  IDK, was it just saving design effort?  Anyway, a game would use a lot of basic mechanics of a prior game, all the time.

 

When Chaosium just admitted that and called their Core System "Basic RolePlaying," well, that was the beginning of an era, I think.  Hero, d6, Interlock, Storyteller, etc...

 

...d20 was kinda the end of that era. 

 

[Cygnia]

I still think the art from 2e Planescape is my favorite -- it just fit.

[Scott Ruggels]

Hasbro earnings call. Interesting quotes. 
 

https://www.geeknative.com/152972/hasbro-q4-2022-earnings-call-quotes/

 

 

[Cygnia]

D&D Wasn't "Under Monetized," but Belief that it was Probably Hurt the Brand

[Ragitsu]

On 2/17/2023 at 6:51 AM, Cygnia said:

I still think the art from 2e Planescape is my favorite -- it just fit.

 

Especially the 2e PS Erinyes, Alu-Fiend and Succubus.

 

"Hey baby...your soul or mine?"

 

On 2/16/2023 at 1:25 PM, Opal said:

2e had nice art

 

Sadly, some 2e art is just as bland or bad as quite a few 1e pieces (e.g., the 2e MM Banshee and Poltergeist are straight out of Scooby-Doo).

[Cygnia]

19 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

 

Especially the 2e PS Erinyes, Alu-Fiend and Succubus.

 

The tiefling was the one for me

[Ninja-Bear]

On 2/16/2023 at 2:59 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

I agree, the system matters less than the players and GM.  A good system makes things better, and a worse system makes things less fun, but you can still have a blast.  You can have a fun Tunnels & Trolls campaign, or a memorable Top Secret game.  You can play RuneQuest or AD&D, or Universe and have fun.

 

But the system makes things better.  Bad mechanics annoy and grate at me even when I am enjoying a game.

Yeah I understand about the the bad mechanics and it grating you. I’ve been working on being like Elsa and let it go.

[Old Man]

On 2/17/2023 at 4:51 AM, Cygnia said:

I still think the art from 2e Planescape is my favorite -- it just fit.

 

The importance of art and art direction in RPG books, especially setting books.  DiTerlizzi's sketches lent an ethereal and alien quality to a setting that needed to feel ethereal and alien.  Brom's art likewise set the tone for Dark Sun.

[Cygnia]

2e Planescape to me was like Robert Asprin's Myth series come to life. The Bazaar at Deva was like Sigil

[Scott Ruggels]

8 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Yeah I understand about the the bad mechanics and it grating you. I’ve been working on being like Elsa and let it go.

Yeah, but sometimes the mechanics don’t support what you like. I just cannot play narrative games.  It feels bad to me. Feels fake. 

[C.R.Ryan]

As much as I can enjoy a 5e D&D game, I do begin chaffing against the system eventually. Then someone busts out Gestalt or some other variant, and I am willing cause it's their game, but let's just play something else that does what we want out of the box.

 

As much as I like a steal mechanics from Narrative games I usually find the games as a whole less satisfying than a more robust rules environment. At least in Hero, I know what I'm ignoring.

 

 

[Scott Ruggels]

https://diterlizzi.com/essay/owlbears-rust-monsters-and-bulettes-oh-my/

 

THe Origins of the original D&D Monsters.

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Its kind of like what I've done in the past: a strange image or figure.  What the heck is this thing?  What can it do?  Bingo, new monster.

[Old Man]

OneD&D beta changes are being dropped to the player base in drips and drabs and the proposed changes to druids today are not going well at all.

[Duke Bushido]

On 2/23/2023 at 4:44 PM, Scott Ruggels said:

https://diterlizzi.com/essay/owlbears-rust-monsters-and-bulettes-oh-my/

 

THe Origins of the original D&D Monsters.

 

 

 

This has come up before, but I owned that exact bag of plastic monsters when I was a kid.  Simple clear vynil bag with a paste board banner that had japanese script sprawled all over it, and the one word in enflish: Diosaurs! 

 

So yeah- my first introduction to D and D was "can they

just do that?  Just steal some Japanese toys and call it his? 

 

 

The answer was apparently" yes, " but then you have to remember that this is the same company that tried to trademark the word" Nazis" within the Indiana Jones rpg (you won't here this often, but Daredevils was _way_ better). 

 

For the record, if you dropped the "rust monster" _just right_, it would bounce and lurch forward.  Owing to a combination of design and materials, the legs were springy and that weird tail dragged just enough to keep it from getting high enough to flip over. 

 

Of course, it made a noise like a herd of cats scampering across plate glass, but that was just a bonus. 

 

[death tribble]

I recall the monsters being sold singly in Britain. The Bulette design is the one I recall the most.