Posted August 08, 2021
low rated
From what I can tell D&D started life almost boardgame like.
Lots of rules, little mercy.
You were a human or you were nerf'd/kneecapped deal with it; sort of thing.
Then there was all this exploration of what was possible to elaborate on and represent.
As such it became a tool to ground fantasy into something more tangible as it could never be real and it was the best you could do to allow creative expression to be underpinned by an amount of logic and statistics.
Then people wanted to have heroes that were heroes, that went on epic quests and ended up with epic loot.
As such 3rd ed became an almost wild west of content and a cornucopia of a power trip.
You started in a nobles employ and within 10 gaming sessions you were taking on demons and laughing how pathetic they were.
Of course there remained the need to reign in the fantasy for it to retain impact; with so many varied rules starting to compound, we ended up with more regimental ruling and suddenly nobody much was having fun (4th ed).
I can't say it wasn't necessary I made a character once that could flat foot 1 hit kill Demogorgan; parties became monsters in their own right and frankly you can't have another world ending Tiamat invasion of Mechanus every damn week.
The failure of 4th ed led to the simplification of D&D which is modern 5th ed which chose a way to play fast and loose and then tried to shove everything that D&D created back into a now much tinier box.
& of course that doesn't work so we have every man and his dog now homebrewing the rules because the official rule is there are no rules that exist outside the DM's wishes.
So now we have rules that are a shifting molass to a point of it being relatively speaking meaningless; where the official rules as written are so poorly done they are broken (cantrip shift earth - instantly excavates a pit of loose earth that can then be moved 5' to bury the medium size creature till they suffocate & die); illusions magic is cancelled by interaction making most of it completely useless because a stray leaf going into it completely dispels it's effect; and of course a focus on story telling.
If you wonder why that is look at how much representation it has online; stream of many eyes anyone?
It's not so much a game anymore, it's a pretentious story telling medium that they couldn't get rid of dice rolling entirely for because people really like rolling dice.
Don't kid yourselves the best of it was straight 3rd ed; the modern day version (5th ed) for all intents should just have 'narrative combat' where you try to come to a conclusion of what is the likely outcome and then go back and narrate how you got there and what positions the party ended up in.
Now we have a stupid hp system instead of ac as a representation of how hard something is because we want people to have their little league trophy of being able to hit a Balrog with their hand me down sword because gamers can't handle real magic anymore :P .
AD&D death was real and it was coming for you and btw you are noone special human maggot, dnd 5th ed oh noes we need death saves because my character is pimp jesus a totally original character I chose from the cookie cutout system i'm too invested in the edgelord backstory to let go of :P.
D&D totally overrated, would rather play warhammer fantasy roleplay, because if you're looting that plaguebearer for his sword your gonna die of nurgles rot faster than you can cleave 9 skulls clear off the hit location table as is often the goal.
A system that has character focused attributes that the GM directs it's rules problems to like firing a ballista and as is often the case if you don't dodge there's the gritty certainty of a gruesome death.
Lots of rules, little mercy.
You were a human or you were nerf'd/kneecapped deal with it; sort of thing.
Then there was all this exploration of what was possible to elaborate on and represent.
As such it became a tool to ground fantasy into something more tangible as it could never be real and it was the best you could do to allow creative expression to be underpinned by an amount of logic and statistics.
Then people wanted to have heroes that were heroes, that went on epic quests and ended up with epic loot.
As such 3rd ed became an almost wild west of content and a cornucopia of a power trip.
You started in a nobles employ and within 10 gaming sessions you were taking on demons and laughing how pathetic they were.
Of course there remained the need to reign in the fantasy for it to retain impact; with so many varied rules starting to compound, we ended up with more regimental ruling and suddenly nobody much was having fun (4th ed).
I can't say it wasn't necessary I made a character once that could flat foot 1 hit kill Demogorgan; parties became monsters in their own right and frankly you can't have another world ending Tiamat invasion of Mechanus every damn week.
The failure of 4th ed led to the simplification of D&D which is modern 5th ed which chose a way to play fast and loose and then tried to shove everything that D&D created back into a now much tinier box.
& of course that doesn't work so we have every man and his dog now homebrewing the rules because the official rule is there are no rules that exist outside the DM's wishes.
So now we have rules that are a shifting molass to a point of it being relatively speaking meaningless; where the official rules as written are so poorly done they are broken (cantrip shift earth - instantly excavates a pit of loose earth that can then be moved 5' to bury the medium size creature till they suffocate & die); illusions magic is cancelled by interaction making most of it completely useless because a stray leaf going into it completely dispels it's effect; and of course a focus on story telling.
If you wonder why that is look at how much representation it has online; stream of many eyes anyone?
It's not so much a game anymore, it's a pretentious story telling medium that they couldn't get rid of dice rolling entirely for because people really like rolling dice.
Don't kid yourselves the best of it was straight 3rd ed; the modern day version (5th ed) for all intents should just have 'narrative combat' where you try to come to a conclusion of what is the likely outcome and then go back and narrate how you got there and what positions the party ended up in.
Now we have a stupid hp system instead of ac as a representation of how hard something is because we want people to have their little league trophy of being able to hit a Balrog with their hand me down sword because gamers can't handle real magic anymore :P .
AD&D death was real and it was coming for you and btw you are noone special human maggot, dnd 5th ed oh noes we need death saves because my character is pimp jesus a totally original character I chose from the cookie cutout system i'm too invested in the edgelord backstory to let go of :P.
D&D totally overrated, would rather play warhammer fantasy roleplay, because if you're looting that plaguebearer for his sword your gonna die of nurgles rot faster than you can cleave 9 skulls clear off the hit location table as is often the goal.
A system that has character focused attributes that the GM directs it's rules problems to like firing a ballista and as is often the case if you don't dodge there's the gritty certainty of a gruesome death.
