Wizards of the Coast Announces One D&D

[Scott Ruggels]

I would have to disagree. The RP and "Characters" predate D&D

 

The RP evolved from a modification of Napoleonics rules. 

Braunstein was a tabletop game that used miniature figures and a modified set of rules for Napoleonics miniatures. However, instead of playing as military generals, players took on the roles of mayors and other non-military figures in a small town. The game involved role-playing, social interaction, and elements of diplomacy, as players had to negotiate with each other to obtain supplies and achieve their goals.

Braunstein is considered by many to be a precursor to the modern tabletop RPG, including Dungeons and Dragons, as it introduced many of the concepts and mechanics that would later become common in RPGs, such as player-driven storytelling, character development, and improvisation.

 

[assault]

There were a lot of interesting precursors to RPGs. Some could even be considered RPGs, at least in the sense that original D&D was.

I'm currently mucking about with these wargames rules: 

The Old West Skirmish Wargames: Wargaming Western Gunfights

 

In particular, it has an interesting suggestion for playing on the Anglo-Scottish border in the 16th century.

Unfortunately, this republication is of a later edition. The original version was published in 1970. The later editions added lots of extra stuff, so it's possible that some of this was influenced by D&D.

Gary Gygax was aware of these rules.

[Cygnia]

Anyone ever read HG Wells' Little Wars game?

[Hugh Neilson]

On 3/23/2023 at 7:30 PM, Duke Bushido said:

Correct.  More specifically, it wasn't what they would _become_ very shortly after.  I can't point to any one game and say that "this is when the games changed" (though, given the era and the palpable difference, I do tend to point to Traveller, which stressed throughout the cooperation of Playes and Referees while old DnD seemed to stress "the DM can easily kill you, so he should pull his punches enough that clever playing might allow you to live, maybe, at least every so often."

 

Early D&D was, or at least could be, the antithesis of playing a role. Why give your character any personality? They are short-lived and interchangeable anyway. Would rational people walk up to some machine that, pressing a random button, has about a 60% chance at impairing you, maybe 20% of killing or permanently disabling you, a 19% chance of providing some minor benefit and a 1% chance of granting massive benefits? Players pulled the switches because I can make another 200 characters later, and one of them will eventually beat the odds.

 

To me, the games became real "role playing" when PCs became expected to have personalities, backstories and survival instincts, evolving from the green pawn, red pawn and blue pawn on a game board.

[Scott Ruggels]

4 hours ago, Cygnia said:

Anyone ever read HG Wells' Little Wars game?

Read it, and played it, with lead 54mm Soldiers, and these Matal cannon with spring slap fire breeches, suitable for firing a toothpick or a length of piano wire. Turns weren't quick, but it was fun turning the living room into a battlefield.  That  lead me into wanting to try Fletcher Pratt's Naval Wargame, but we never did.

[Cancer]

On 3/20/2023 at 3:03 PM, Duke Bushido said:

Seriously:  rpgs today are not what D and D was then.  I think it was Opal who referred to old school D and D as survival horror.  Best description I have ever heard.

 

It wasn't _quite_ adversarial, at least nor directly, but the DM's job (as generally confirmed though the earliest modules and through the convention modules for some years after role playing started to develope) was to design a situation that you _could_ kive through, but werent likely to.

 

Honestly, I can't remember ever hearing anyone under thirty spike a door open.....

 

My brother and I, after starting as old-style hexgrid wargamers due to the gift of an Avalon Hill game for Christmas 1967, and whetted by PBM Flying Buffalo games starting in Fall 1974, got started with proto-RPGs with the old faux woodgrain D&D box in the summer of 1975 after a buddy of mine came home from his first year in the Army and introduced us to the game.  As it was initially presented to me, it was little more than the survival horror genre with l00tz for those who escaped alive.  Played that happily that summer, amassed a couple dozen levels of Foulstink Dungeon, then went off to college in September.  D&D went on hold for nine months.

 

Sometime between the end of summer '75 and early summer '76 there was a profound article that appeared in one of the few gaming 'zines that existed then, and presented the much grander concept of a full world in which much broader stories might be played out.  That shifted our focus from murderous dungeon creation to grandiose high fantasy story-making.  That summer was disrupted by a move, and again at summer's end I was back off to college.  I don't think we looked at all for story modules, though we did buy a copy of Empire of the Petal Throne which gave a breathtakingly different idea about fantasy worlds and playing in them.  We had Lots to think about at that point.

 

The summer after that was more freeform RPG play, then both brother and I went back to college, where he found a community of gamers on his dorm floor, which I never had done.  Another summer off in the sticks without much personal ability to go anywhere, and I headed off to grad school in August '78, for about a decade of RPG-free absorption in that grad school thing and what followed after.  

[Scott Ruggels]

Looks like One D&D may be dead, in favor of incremental changes to 5e

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/12b3con/according_to_content_creators_at_the_dnd_summit/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=10

 

details to follow. 

[Scott Ruggels]

Daniel Kwan, contributor to a number of WOTC and Paizo publications gives his overview of the WOTC Content Creator’s  Summit. 
 

https://danielhkwan.substack.com/p/dnd-creator-summit

[Opal]

On 4/3/2023 at 9:32 PM, Scott Ruggels said:

Looks like One D&D may be dead, in favor of incremental changes to 5e

I guess this thread has come full circle, then, from announcing ONE to giving it up as a bad idea.

 

That means we're getting Ten More Years of 5e, arguably the worst D&D ever.

huzzah 😐

[dmjalund]

Next D&D 360

 

[Scott Ruggels]

2 hours ago, Opal said:

I guess this thread has come full circle, then, from announcing ONE to giving it up as a bad idea.

 

That means we're getting Ten More Years of 5e, arguably the worst D&D ever.

huzzah 😐

Worst, but also the most popular!!!😁. It’s like VHS winning the tech war all over again! Yaaay! 

[Old Man]

4 hours ago, Opal said:

I guess this thread has come full circle, then, from announcing ONE to giving it up as a bad idea.

 

That means we're getting Ten More Years of 5e, arguably the worst D&D ever.

huzzah 😐

 

I just came out of a 5e campaign and I have to say it's my favorite (or least detested) version.  1st-3rd were all needlessly and ridiculously complex. 

 

To be fair 5e was well down the same path as the others, as it was already buckling under the weight of the subclasses, spells, and feats that were piled on it like straws on a camel.  But we were playing without even Xanathar or Tasha so we didn't see too much of that.

 

Never tried 4e.

[Scott Ruggels]

4 hours ago, Opal said:

I guess this thread has come full circle, then, from announcing ONE to giving it up as a bad idea.

 

That means we're getting Ten More Years of 5e, arguably the worst D&D ever.

huzzah 😐

 

Just like how VHS won over Beta. The worst, but most popular.

[Christopher R Taylor]

As D&D goes, I thought 3rd was their peak edition personally.

[Opal]

When I say worst, I am, like giving 0e, AD&D1, and B/X a lot of attaboys, slack, and general handicapping for being developed in the hobby's first decade.

And 5e some serious demerits for actively choosing to throw away progress made by 3e and 4e.

 

Just objectively, 5e is less messed up than those early editions.  Mainly because it didn't undo 3e's consolidation of all resolution on the d20.

 

Complexity is interesting, because there's both quantifiable complexity (all RPGs are pretty complex, some push that complexity to the GM), and perceived complexity. A lot of older D&D fans find 0e, AD&D, B/X, OSR games & 5e simple, because familiarity can mask complexity.

So I'm guessing you have a more objective view. 

Spoiler

Like, in both 3e & 5e, to resolve an attack, you either roll to hit AC, or make a saving throw.  Same complexity?

Not quite. In 3e there's AC, Touch AC, and Incorporeal Touch AC. In 5e there's just AC.

OTOH, in 3e there's 3 saves, in 5e there're 6.  

 

Then you do damage. In 3e you can do hp damage, non-lethal damage, temporary ability drain, permanent ability drain, and impose any of 36 conditions (including negative levels).  

In 5e you inflict hp damage, can decide if it's non-lethal when you drop the target to 0 (in melee only), inflict hp damage that reduces max hp (energy drain), and/or one of 15 conditions.

 

You can see how 5e is objectively, or, at least quantitatively, a bit less complex, just from the common point of attack resolution.

 

A similar point of comparison is skills. 3.5 has 36 skills, 4 of which are placeholders for groups of skills, one for 9, one for 10, and two open-ended.  So there's actually well over 55 skills.  Not only that, but skills are rated in ranks from 4 through 24, and classes get between 2+INTmod and 8+INTmod ranks to distribute to skills on their list. 

In 5e, there are 19 skills, only one of which, Tool Use, is open-ended. And, you are either proficient, expert (x2 progression), or non-proficient (no progression).

 

If anything, that's an even clearer advantage to 5e.

 

Then there's classes, the major choice in making your character. In old-school D&D every class had a different exp chart, gaining levels at different rates, got different numbers of different-size HD, different spells/day, different special abilities in different orders. 

In 3e, they at least were all put on the same exp chart, and always got 1 HD/level (5 different HD).

5e kept that and put all the full casters but Warlock on basically the same spell progression, and only uses 4 different HD. 

 

 

Edited April 6, 2023 by Opal

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

A lot of older D&D fans find 0e, AD&D, B/X, OSR games & 5e simple, because familiarity can mask complexity.

 

I agree completely.  Try teaching a non-gamer wholly ignorant of the hobby AD&D out of the box and they are shocked and dismayed by all there is to learn -- because you cannot tackle it all at once.  The DM needs to know that stuff, not the player.  They are the referee that resolves issues and knows the rules.  Over time players can learn.

 

And that's the right approach for Hero.  Don't throw the entire two edition 6th edition at them and say "good luck"; just help them build a character (or use a pre-made) and start playing.  That's how we all learned AD&D and the rest of the games, we didn't try to memorize the entire rule book.

[Cygnia]

I sent my cancel notice to D&D Beyond back in January.

 

WOTC finally got around to actually doing it 2 hours ago. 🙄

[Cygnia]

Magic publishers sent Pinkerton agents to a YouTuber’s house to retrieve leaked cards

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

I sent my cancel notice to D&D Beyond back in January.

 

Took me a week to get Pay Pal to cancel my account, they put every roadblock possible in the way.

[Old Man]

3 hours ago, Cygnia said:

Magic publishers sent Pinkerton agents to a YouTuber’s house to retrieve leaked cards

Just when you thought WotC might have learned a PR lesson. Honestly, sending Pinkerton thugs to the home of a customer who did nothing wrong?  

[Duke Bushido]

In my cirlce real-world, I am the onlt person I know who made good in his decisiin to biycott the snd movie when it finally landed.  Thwt'a really all I can claim, since I haven't bought anything for DnD since the 80s, and I would rather have the itch od my inner eyelids scratched with a razor blade than have anything to so with Magic: the Marketing, so it isnt like I can boast of sticking with that boycott; I haven't been boycotting so much as not buying things I have zero interest in.

 

Still, I was curious about the movie, but I will never know.

 

And crap like this makes it always to keep not wanting to give them a dime.

 

 

[Cygnia]

I'm still pissed at the Pinkertons for strongarming Deadlands into removing all mention of them back in the day.

[Scott Ruggels]

17 hours ago, Cygnia said:

Magic publishers sent Pinkerton agents to a YouTuber’s house to retrieve leaked cards

What is this.... The 1920s again? Oh.... it's the 2020s.   Fits.

[Ninja-Bear]

@Duke Bushido, I went with my youngest to see the D&D movie. And we enjoyed it. It was a fun action packed movie. My son couldn’t believe how long it was because it didn’t seem that long. 

[Hermit]

Holy hell.... Hasbro/Wotc just can't stop being the bad guy