"Where D&D failed" or "How D&D lost its D&D" (no Prak/Kaeli)
Posted: Thu Jun 27, 2013 6:52 pm
In recent reading and thinking I think I finally understand where D&D failed for many people and why the great divide of TSR v WotC and such exists.
Now there are many divides via playstyles, but I think one person make the best sense describing them, and the worst person to be dealing with D&D; Robin Laws.
Over reading threads in various places and taking my memory into account and gathering all the terms people want to assign as labels of things today, I think I can finally say where the greatest divide between old-school and new-school lies. Now it might seem obvious at first glance and accepted, but then it is often disregarded just as quickly as noticed.
Robin Laws classified games in his method and one type was the Narrativist style. This is where a lot of "player empowerment" comes from that the player was in some way "lacking" in power to direct the game and its outcome.
I think this fails on quite a few levels in the case of D&D. While some players may feel like this, they might not understand what D&D is or was to begin with.
First, D&D isn't one persons story. The authoritative control is spread around between all people, that means NO player has more control than another. Now it is said that a DM is a player, and this may be where confusion begins, but the DM is more than just a player, he is a referee. Yes everyone knows he msut do more work to create things or adjudicate rules, and some people feel that since there are some bad DMs, that all msut be bad, but those outliers should be ignored. If the case is that many DMs are truly that bad, then they should not be allowed to DM. These are things that have been said over and over so they are not really the point. D&D requires a DM.
Second, with knowing the first problem you can see how the DM v Player argument would come into it, and players wanting a way to gain control back to be able to play. Well if the problem DM exists, this MIGHT be a way to solve the issue, but in cases where the problem DM doesn't exist, you may be causing another problem. The biggest change to allow players to gain control was in something called "Player's Options" for AD&D. This seemed to give more control to the players, but did it really? DMs still ahd the right to veto use of anything in their own worlds, which refers most back to feeling like they are dealing with the first case again.
Now both of these have probably existed since the beginning of gaming and even further back as a bad ref could easily make a player of any sort of game feel put out. So why did the game need such a drastic change to remedy this? What did the game change to form new-school from the old to remedy this?
That answer is simple. The game had a simple connective point from the real world player to interact with the world. This was the PC. The game was then one in which you wanted to keep your PC alive the best you can to adventure and explore the world. What happened when the "player empowerment" and "narrativist" concepts were brought into D&D was the adventure begin second-fiddle to playing the character creation game. the RPG was removed in order to turn D&D into a Storyteller Game.
I recall Fuchs, I think, on this forum stating that a DM OWED him a magical rapier as treasure since his character was so specialized in such that he couldn't continue to play after leveling without one. The idea of the character from an authorial concept was more important than the game itself. This is the damage done from trying to change D&D from a game of exploration and adventure to one which tries to tell a single players story. Honestly there are so MANY people that feel the single player has so many rights that none can be discarded for the sake of the game, it is even seen in current D&D design.
D&D lost the RPG in favor of being an extension of the player in a storytelling device. Now this could always have been done before with the right group of people, but forcing this kind of playstyle onto all people jsut really makes no sense, and really does cause the divide between old and new school trains of thought. The likes of skills to tweak your character to a specific concept already loses the focus of playing in the world.. While some people seem it still possible to play the old-way with new systems, the problem is that all the extra parts to have to deal with drives many people away that just don't want them.
3.x has been described as having these parts in such a way that they cannot be removed, and 4/E surely is so hard-coded that you just cannot remove these things. Archetype v Skills list and the level you tweak your character begins to take away from just being able to play for many people. We all know that the newest incarnation has such "dials" to add even more fiddly-bits to have to deal with.
So D&D failed when it went from the adventure-game to the character-building-game. Those elements some people wanted were there prior to 2000, but often they weren't allowed by most. It was just extra work for very little added reward. To many it still is. This is also why it seems that current D&D refuses to go back to less character-designing and more adventure.
What has existed since the mid-90s has long since ceased to be D&D, and is where the greatest divide in D&D is. I can understand the technology of the age changing and providing more things relative to what came out then in the form of video entertainment, but the technology itself helped greatly with all those extra fiddly-bits. That is why today so many people ask for phone-apps, and other such technology to HELP play a game.
This to me, just means there are too many parts. D&D failed when it added those parts to turn the game from WWID (what would I do?) into the game of WCCIM (what character can I make?). Sure making characters is fun, but do you really need all the bells and whistle to be able to take part in the story in the case where you have a working group of players that cooperate?
~1999: D&D was an adventure game framework that allowed you to take part in a fantasy world, and you take what the world throws at you and try to survive in it.
2000~: D&D is a storytelling tool for you to act out your pet character concept, and the world you are in should exist for you to tell your characters story.
So maybe Robin wasn't as dumb as I make him out to be all the time? (Though taking the name of a popular and well known board game and renaming his crappy RPG to it only to confuse people was still pretty dumb.)
I still think it really breaks down that simply as to what old-school and new-school are really about, and why the two jsut don't get along if you prefer one style over the other. All the dungeon crawl versus political intrigue type stuff really doesn't matter that much. Whether there are rules to work out the diplomatic interaction to finite details or it resolves through MTP doesn't really matter. I think it really jsut boils down to D&D being changed from a game you played to play it, into a tool to help people act as if they were a best-selling author to tell their characters story. The individual PCs have gained MUCH too much importance than just being the connective point to the game. This did exist in the Jack Chick era, but I think the connection and importance to a PC has gotten worse as much more pop culture references it, player's emphasize it, and worse, the manufacturers promote it. The character is just a playing piece used to be able to interact with the world, and new-school D&D forgets that too often when it tries to emulate all other forms of entertainment. Those forms of entertainment, by coincidence, you have no control over your character that you connect with except to watch or read about as those stories and videos are already written by someone else. Yet those forms of entertainment are still as popular as ever. Even the video games that ideas are taken from, the player has to accept the choices made by the producer of the game and the studio and just pick from a list.
D&D should stop trying to be every board game, every video game, and trying to follow the latest fads, but should be itself again. An adventure game where you take what you need and try to survive what the world throws at you. Anyone that wants to change that to be something else, has the right, but for the majority, as evident with DDN modules; most of those other things are NOT wanted and will be discarded. You can't use every module all the time since they will work counter to each other.
If people want a new-school game, then there should be something like WoD made in the vein of D&D for those people and give it to them, but it should not sacrifice that which made D&D, and in turn, created everything it now steals from because it lost its own focus.
I am sure I have said most of this over years already, but this time I ask a question.
1. In all the playstyles mentioned everywhere, and in all the game types available; does it really break down that simply old-school v new-school?
Old-school design: an adventure game you play in the world
New-school design: a game that lets you tell your novella of your own personal character in the world in which you take part.
2. If your idea doesn't fit with this, then how do YOU see old-school design versus new-school design to be at the greatest seperation point?
Now there are many divides via playstyles, but I think one person make the best sense describing them, and the worst person to be dealing with D&D; Robin Laws.
Over reading threads in various places and taking my memory into account and gathering all the terms people want to assign as labels of things today, I think I can finally say where the greatest divide between old-school and new-school lies. Now it might seem obvious at first glance and accepted, but then it is often disregarded just as quickly as noticed.
Robin Laws classified games in his method and one type was the Narrativist style. This is where a lot of "player empowerment" comes from that the player was in some way "lacking" in power to direct the game and its outcome.
I think this fails on quite a few levels in the case of D&D. While some players may feel like this, they might not understand what D&D is or was to begin with.
First, D&D isn't one persons story. The authoritative control is spread around between all people, that means NO player has more control than another. Now it is said that a DM is a player, and this may be where confusion begins, but the DM is more than just a player, he is a referee. Yes everyone knows he msut do more work to create things or adjudicate rules, and some people feel that since there are some bad DMs, that all msut be bad, but those outliers should be ignored. If the case is that many DMs are truly that bad, then they should not be allowed to DM. These are things that have been said over and over so they are not really the point. D&D requires a DM.
Second, with knowing the first problem you can see how the DM v Player argument would come into it, and players wanting a way to gain control back to be able to play. Well if the problem DM exists, this MIGHT be a way to solve the issue, but in cases where the problem DM doesn't exist, you may be causing another problem. The biggest change to allow players to gain control was in something called "Player's Options" for AD&D. This seemed to give more control to the players, but did it really? DMs still ahd the right to veto use of anything in their own worlds, which refers most back to feeling like they are dealing with the first case again.
Now both of these have probably existed since the beginning of gaming and even further back as a bad ref could easily make a player of any sort of game feel put out. So why did the game need such a drastic change to remedy this? What did the game change to form new-school from the old to remedy this?
That answer is simple. The game had a simple connective point from the real world player to interact with the world. This was the PC. The game was then one in which you wanted to keep your PC alive the best you can to adventure and explore the world. What happened when the "player empowerment" and "narrativist" concepts were brought into D&D was the adventure begin second-fiddle to playing the character creation game. the RPG was removed in order to turn D&D into a Storyteller Game.
I recall Fuchs, I think, on this forum stating that a DM OWED him a magical rapier as treasure since his character was so specialized in such that he couldn't continue to play after leveling without one. The idea of the character from an authorial concept was more important than the game itself. This is the damage done from trying to change D&D from a game of exploration and adventure to one which tries to tell a single players story. Honestly there are so MANY people that feel the single player has so many rights that none can be discarded for the sake of the game, it is even seen in current D&D design.
D&D lost the RPG in favor of being an extension of the player in a storytelling device. Now this could always have been done before with the right group of people, but forcing this kind of playstyle onto all people jsut really makes no sense, and really does cause the divide between old and new school trains of thought. The likes of skills to tweak your character to a specific concept already loses the focus of playing in the world.. While some people seem it still possible to play the old-way with new systems, the problem is that all the extra parts to have to deal with drives many people away that just don't want them.
3.x has been described as having these parts in such a way that they cannot be removed, and 4/E surely is so hard-coded that you just cannot remove these things. Archetype v Skills list and the level you tweak your character begins to take away from just being able to play for many people. We all know that the newest incarnation has such "dials" to add even more fiddly-bits to have to deal with.
So D&D failed when it went from the adventure-game to the character-building-game. Those elements some people wanted were there prior to 2000, but often they weren't allowed by most. It was just extra work for very little added reward. To many it still is. This is also why it seems that current D&D refuses to go back to less character-designing and more adventure.
What has existed since the mid-90s has long since ceased to be D&D, and is where the greatest divide in D&D is. I can understand the technology of the age changing and providing more things relative to what came out then in the form of video entertainment, but the technology itself helped greatly with all those extra fiddly-bits. That is why today so many people ask for phone-apps, and other such technology to HELP play a game.
This to me, just means there are too many parts. D&D failed when it added those parts to turn the game from WWID (what would I do?) into the game of WCCIM (what character can I make?). Sure making characters is fun, but do you really need all the bells and whistle to be able to take part in the story in the case where you have a working group of players that cooperate?
~1999: D&D was an adventure game framework that allowed you to take part in a fantasy world, and you take what the world throws at you and try to survive in it.
2000~: D&D is a storytelling tool for you to act out your pet character concept, and the world you are in should exist for you to tell your characters story.
So maybe Robin wasn't as dumb as I make him out to be all the time? (Though taking the name of a popular and well known board game and renaming his crappy RPG to it only to confuse people was still pretty dumb.)
I still think it really breaks down that simply as to what old-school and new-school are really about, and why the two jsut don't get along if you prefer one style over the other. All the dungeon crawl versus political intrigue type stuff really doesn't matter that much. Whether there are rules to work out the diplomatic interaction to finite details or it resolves through MTP doesn't really matter. I think it really jsut boils down to D&D being changed from a game you played to play it, into a tool to help people act as if they were a best-selling author to tell their characters story. The individual PCs have gained MUCH too much importance than just being the connective point to the game. This did exist in the Jack Chick era, but I think the connection and importance to a PC has gotten worse as much more pop culture references it, player's emphasize it, and worse, the manufacturers promote it. The character is just a playing piece used to be able to interact with the world, and new-school D&D forgets that too often when it tries to emulate all other forms of entertainment. Those forms of entertainment, by coincidence, you have no control over your character that you connect with except to watch or read about as those stories and videos are already written by someone else. Yet those forms of entertainment are still as popular as ever. Even the video games that ideas are taken from, the player has to accept the choices made by the producer of the game and the studio and just pick from a list.
D&D should stop trying to be every board game, every video game, and trying to follow the latest fads, but should be itself again. An adventure game where you take what you need and try to survive what the world throws at you. Anyone that wants to change that to be something else, has the right, but for the majority, as evident with DDN modules; most of those other things are NOT wanted and will be discarded. You can't use every module all the time since they will work counter to each other.
If people want a new-school game, then there should be something like WoD made in the vein of D&D for those people and give it to them, but it should not sacrifice that which made D&D, and in turn, created everything it now steals from because it lost its own focus.
I am sure I have said most of this over years already, but this time I ask a question.
1. In all the playstyles mentioned everywhere, and in all the game types available; does it really break down that simply old-school v new-school?
Old-school design: an adventure game you play in the world
New-school design: a game that lets you tell your novella of your own personal character in the world in which you take part.
2. If your idea doesn't fit with this, then how do YOU see old-school design versus new-school design to be at the greatest seperation point?
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