I have noticed that the edition affects the kinds of stories one can tell. Early published adventures often focused on episodic tales of dungeon delving and treasure seeking. While things were already changing even in that edition, over the decades, the focus has shifted more to pulp action. I think if you're trying to tell stories that are more focused on the former in 5E than the latter, you're going to find the experience is not as fulfilling.
That would be extremely early years of D&D like an original box set early. D&D adventures by the time 1st edition was middle-aged varied wildly from classic dungeon crawls, hex crawls, campaign adventures, dominion management adventures, even crazy stuff like linear railroads stuff where you would literally play through the Dragonlance novels using the Dragonlance novel characters and essentially following alone a pre-determined story. I don't think I could think of anything that wasn't tried during the 1e era, they did everything twice over.
It wasn't all good mind you, I would say in the 1e days for every 1 good published adventure you would have half a dozen that were... let's just say, poorly executed and leave it at that.
The thing that was true about 1e, mainly because it was a very light system and very modular, was that you could pretty easily add modular rules to focus on whatever aspect of the game you wanted the adventure to focus on. So like, you could do fast travel to avoid wilderness stuff, but if you wanted to make an adventure out of it, you had detailed wilderness adventure rules that you could deploy. If you wanted to do stronghold building and dominion running a narrative story thing, no problem, or you had a system you could add to turn it into a mini game.
Well, if you exclude the Greyhawk modules, ignore the Mystara modules, and focus solely on adventures and campaign settings written by Tracy and Laura Hickman, then yeah. You're absolutely right. Classic dungeon crawls were no longer a thing by the time 2E came out. 🙄
Regardless of how you want to look at it, though, the further you move from 1E, the more the storytelling style moves away from collecting treasure and more towards pulp action. 5E went even further than earlier editions, deciding to make it unnecessary for players to have an arsenal of magic items to take on high level creatures. As a result, the class means more than the items.
I'm not saying that's good or bad. In fact, my players have wondered aloud what would motivate someone to become an adventurer if fortune isn't a factor. I'm just saying that it has changed how people play the game and storytelling devices that worked in previous editions are not as satisfying in the current edition.
I think there's plenty of story hooks, it's just with a safer world, (because people are less able to handle offensive or controversial material in an adult manner, both from a DM and a player perspective.), The focus of the rules being on combat, and thus, combat dominates over role playing means a less and less of a drive for narrative, whether overtly or subconsciously, I'd argue players are more motivated than ever to find the biggest treasure hoard, be the strongest just cause, etc.
I see more PVP death match style play than I do quests to save the realm, rescue a long lost love, etc. Irreverent fun storytelling is nice from time to time, but when it's the norm it gets... tiring.
EDIT: I guess my point is, old actual dungeon crawls and hex crawls are gone, but in their place are thinly veiled narratives for what players are basically treating as dungeon crawls and hex crawls and...
People can handle controversial stuff fine. That’s why Wizards still leaves in questions about slavery in Out of the Abyss, mind control magic, and… literally a week ago… talking about how the Gith might use biological weapons “for the greater good,” collateral damage and innocent deaths be darned.
It just isn’t as in your face as prior editions, because 5e isn’t led by notorious bigot Gary Gygax, who seemed insistent on forcing his pro-genocide views into the game. Rather than a man who had all the subtlety of a Commander ordering his men to kill women and children (whom Gygax quoted to justify why good characters should be allowed to murder innocents), 5e has competent writers who know how to deal with controversial topics without also being offensive asses who hammer you over the face with their opinions.
People can handle controversial stuff fine. That’s why Wizards still leaves in questions about slavery in Out of the Abyss, mind control magic, and… literally a week ago… talking about how the Gith might use biological weapons “for the greater good,” collateral damage and innocent deaths be darned.
It just isn’t as in your face as prior editions, because 5e isn’t led by notorious bigot Gary Gygax, who seemed insistent on forcing his pro-genocide views into the game.
5e isn’t any less controversial - it just has competent writers who know how to deal with controversial topics without also being offensive asses who hammer you over the face with their opinions.
I disagree. It's there, but it's as you say, "not in your face". the lore may have it, and the slavery happens off screen, and so on. Players tend to be very....
Look, people in general are fairly politically charged and it turns into where unless you are SUPER comfortable with your own group, and generally even then you will know what you can and cannot portray within your games.
Personally, I like morally grey stories. Where sometimes you have to help out some not so great people as a matter of choosing the lesser of evils. Or having choices of "for the greater good". I am very aware of comfort levels and I'm not going to violate them, but I can only touch the surfaces of things.
In fact, my players have wondered aloud what would motivate someone to become an adventurer if fortune isn't a factor.
I dunno. Of the five characters in the party I DM for, exactly zero have backstories that made them motivated to find riches. Not even the pirate
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
For a potentially better way of phrasing "because people are less able to handle offensive or controversial material in an adult manner, both from a DM and a player perspective" try this:
"because people will stand up and speak out when old harms that were accepted just a generation ago are seen as harmful today".
Spitting on the sidewalk is offensive to some people. It is not in the same category as the racism that was addressed in the game -- that isn't a question of offensiveness or controversiality, it is a question of active harm.
I don't suggest this because I am offended or because it might be controversial, even though some folks may see it as both or neither. I suggest it because it is common human decency.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
For a potentially better way of phrasing "because people are less able to handle offensive or controversial material in an adult manner, both from a DM and a player perspective" try this:
"because people will stand up and speak out when old harms that were accepted just a generation ago are seen as harmful today".
Spitting on the sidewalk is offensive to some people. It is not in the same category as the racism that was addressed in the game -- that isn't a question of offensiveness or controversiality, it is a question of active harm.
I don't suggest this because I am offended or because it might be controversial, even though some folks may see it as both or neither. I suggest it because it is common human decency.
No, I get that that's the case for many, but what I very pointedly mean is that people cannot handle negative situations. And I'm not talking racism or slavery.
People are hair triggered about a LOT of subjects. many that border upon political. The Saltmarsh module has some very.... political messaging, (at least as presented to me in my own experience as a player). I'm also not a fan of having to linguistically dance through a minefield because some people may be more conservative than I am and thus I get into a thanksgiving style debate at what's supposed to be just a fun time.
I have noticed that the edition affects the kinds of stories one can tell. Early published adventures often focused on episodic tales of dungeon delving and treasure seeking. While things were already changing even in that edition, over the decades, the focus has shifted more to pulp action. I think if you're trying to tell stories that are more focused on the former in 5E than the latter, you're going to find the experience is not as fulfilling.
That would be extremely early years of D&D like an original box set early. D&D adventures by the time 1st edition was middle-aged varied wildly from classic dungeon crawls, hex crawls, campaign adventures, dominion management adventures, even crazy stuff like linear railroads stuff where you would literally play through the Dragonlance novels using the Dragonlance novel characters and essentially following alone a pre-determined story. I don't think I could think of anything that wasn't tried during the 1e era, they did everything twice over.
It wasn't all good mind you, I would say in the 1e days for every 1 good published adventure you would have half a dozen that were... let's just say, poorly executed and leave it at that.
The thing that was true about 1e, mainly because it was a very light system and very modular, was that you could pretty easily add modular rules to focus on whatever aspect of the game you wanted the adventure to focus on. So like, you could do fast travel to avoid wilderness stuff, but if you wanted to make an adventure out of it, you had detailed wilderness adventure rules that you could deploy. If you wanted to do stronghold building and dominion running a narrative story thing, no problem, or you had a system you could add to turn it into a mini game.
Well, if you exclude the Greyhawk modules, ignore the Mystara modules, and focus solely on adventures and campaign settings written by Tracy and Laura Hickman, then yeah. You're absolutely right. Classic dungeon crawls were no longer a thing by the time 2E came out. 🙄
Regardless of how you want to look at it, though, the further you move from 1E, the more the storytelling style moves away from collecting treasure and more towards pulp action. 5E went even further than earlier editions, deciding to make it unnecessary for players to have an arsenal of magic items to take on high level creatures. As a result, the class means more than the items.
I'm not saying that's good or bad. In fact, my players have wondered aloud what would motivate someone to become an adventurer if fortune isn't a factor. I'm just saying that it has changed how people play the game and storytelling devices that worked in previous editions are not as satisfying in the current edition.
I think there's plenty of story hooks, it's just with a safer world, (because people are less able to handle offensive or controversial material in an adult manner, both from a DM and a player perspective.), The focus of the rules being on combat, and thus, combat dominates over role playing means a less and less of a drive for narrative, whether overtly or subconsciously, I'd argue players are more motivated than ever to find the biggest treasure hoard, be the strongest just cause, etc.
I see more PVP death match style play than I do quests to save the realm, rescue a long lost love, etc. Irreverent fun storytelling is nice from time to time, but when it's the norm it gets... tiring.
EDIT: I guess my point is, old actual dungeon crawls and hex crawls are gone, but in their place are thinly veiled narratives for what players are basically treating as dungeon crawls and hex crawls and...
Please don't use my comments to derail the thread into a lament about the game not being offensive enough. My comments were about treasure seeking and pulp action. There is nothing in them that would suggest I think offensive materials have any place in the game and I don't appreciate my comments getting used as a jumping off point for that discussion. Please leave me out of your conversation.
I have noticed that the edition affects the kinds of stories one can tell. Early published adventures often focused on episodic tales of dungeon delving and treasure seeking. While things were already changing even in that edition, over the decades, the focus has shifted more to pulp action. I think if you're trying to tell stories that are more focused on the former in 5E than the latter, you're going to find the experience is not as fulfilling.
That would be extremely early years of D&D like an original box set early. D&D adventures by the time 1st edition was middle-aged varied wildly from classic dungeon crawls, hex crawls, campaign adventures, dominion management adventures, even crazy stuff like linear railroads stuff where you would literally play through the Dragonlance novels using the Dragonlance novel characters and essentially following alone a pre-determined story. I don't think I could think of anything that wasn't tried during the 1e era, they did everything twice over.
It wasn't all good mind you, I would say in the 1e days for every 1 good published adventure you would have half a dozen that were... let's just say, poorly executed and leave it at that.
The thing that was true about 1e, mainly because it was a very light system and very modular, was that you could pretty easily add modular rules to focus on whatever aspect of the game you wanted the adventure to focus on. So like, you could do fast travel to avoid wilderness stuff, but if you wanted to make an adventure out of it, you had detailed wilderness adventure rules that you could deploy. If you wanted to do stronghold building and dominion running a narrative story thing, no problem, or you had a system you could add to turn it into a mini game.
Well, if you exclude the Greyhawk modules, ignore the Mystara modules, and focus solely on adventures and campaign settings written by Tracy and Laura Hickman, then yeah. You're absolutely right. Classic dungeon crawls were no longer a thing by the time 2E came out. 🙄
Regardless of how you want to look at it, though, the further you move from 1E, the more the storytelling style moves away from collecting treasure and more towards pulp action. 5E went even further than earlier editions, deciding to make it unnecessary for players to have an arsenal of magic items to take on high level creatures. As a result, the class means more than the items.
I'm not saying that's good or bad. In fact, my players have wondered aloud what would motivate someone to become an adventurer if fortune isn't a factor. I'm just saying that it has changed how people play the game and storytelling devices that worked in previous editions are not as satisfying in the current edition.
I think there's plenty of story hooks, it's just with a safer world, (because people are less able to handle offensive or controversial material in an adult manner, both from a DM and a player perspective.), The focus of the rules being on combat, and thus, combat dominates over role playing means a less and less of a drive for narrative, whether overtly or subconsciously, I'd argue players are more motivated than ever to find the biggest treasure hoard, be the strongest just cause, etc.
I see more PVP death match style play than I do quests to save the realm, rescue a long lost love, etc. Irreverent fun storytelling is nice from time to time, but when it's the norm it gets... tiring.
EDIT: I guess my point is, old actual dungeon crawls and hex crawls are gone, but in their place are thinly veiled narratives for what players are basically treating as dungeon crawls and hex crawls and...
Please don't use my comments to derail the thread into a lament about the game not being offensive enough. My comments were about treasure seeking and pulp action. There is nothing in them that would suggest I think offensive materials have any place in the game and I don't appreciate my comments getting used as a jumping off point for that discussion. Please leave me out of your conversation.
not my intention. But this demonstrates the point I am making.
The zero tolerance means less stories and more dungeon crawling.
One should even ask if it's morally right to attack tribes of goblins, or just waltz in and attack a thieves guild because some random guy in a bar told you to... It would make for an excellent story, but tables would shy away.
The problem with the classic dungeon crawl is that, well, going into someone else's house, killing them, and stealing their stuff is normally described as... evil. Assuming your players don't want to be evil, that means you need to rethink the fundamental motivation of PCs: rather than dungeon crawling for loot, they're dungeon crawling to foil someone's evil plot. And this in turn means that the game is just going to be less treasure focused, because your measure of success is no longer gaining treasure, it's foiling evil. This doesn't mean there can't be magic items and loot, but it does mean they are incidental, rather than primary -- first write the adventure, then go in at the end and sprinkle an appropriate amount of treasure around.
Hey now, Acererak wasn’t plotting jack. He was just sitting there in his trap filled mausoleum like some b grade pharaoh. grave robbing isn’t grave robbing if you give the jewels to a museum. That’s how Indy did it, that’s how Bigby does it, and it’s worked okay so far…
Come to think of it, the idea of most early dungeons being someone’s home is a bit out there — prison seems more likely given they weren’t always able to leave, lol.
but then, wandering into a prison and killing all the criminals also isn’t looked on fondly…
Context.
The “thwarting evil” is one. Opposing malice, defying despair, rescue, finding the lost Shiri shama tribe, seeking a rare flower — all others.
But recovering a dead pirate’s loot, clearing out one of those damnable pits, snatching loot from the evil king (but not fixing the problem of an evil king), or exploring that big ole hole in the side of that hill are also all valid contexts.
That’s not counting the basic underlying deal of “there is a weird magical place over there, and you can earn a living by finding the magical chests in it. Monsters appear to kill or eat you.” Survival is also a context.
I wonder if “the kids these days” could handle a dungeon without a clear context…
… and if the old farts could tackle a moral and ethical hex crawl that requires overcoming foes instead of killing them.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Whether the premise of the Dungeon Crawl is "appropriate" or "ethical" is a question of what you consider a monster to be. In modern-day D&D we have redefined the word monster to exclude most "humanoid" monsters that have societies and cultures, so like Orcs and Goblins are not in the same category as Rust Monsters and Gelatinous Cubes. In old-school Dungeon Crawls, there was no distinction between an Orc and a Zombie, they were both evil monsters that you didn't have to feel bad about ruthlessly murdering.
Dungeon Crawls however can be done in a way that doesn't really pose this ethical question or offend modern players today. It's all about what you put in a Dungeon. If it's filled with Zombies and Skeletons, does anyone have a moral objection to killing the undead? I doubt it, hell you have entire classes dedicated to murdering undead without remorse as a virtue of gods work.
The question here I think is more about whether Dungeon Crawls can or should be part of a D&D story and some would argue that the premise is opposed to a story-driven game. With that I disagree. The emergent story of exploring an old ruin or some long-forgotten crypt can be every bit as fun, interesting and narrative as whatever a DM can scribble as a plot and it has the added advantage of being emergent and dynamic where most DM-written plots are linear railroads.
Someone mentioned how in 2e AD&D we started to see more and more "plot-based adventures", what wasn't mentioned is how harshly these were rejected by the community and universally hated they were to such an extent that when WotC took over the franchise and remade D&D they didn't dare try any plot based adventures, instead the core focus of adventure writing went back to dungeon crawls for the first 2 years before anyone even considered it again. It was later proven with stuff like Red Hand of Doom that this type of adventure can be really great if done right and we have since seen a lot of great stuff in that area. That said, even these plot-driven adventures always have dungeons for players to crawl around in, I can't think of an adventure written in the last 20 years that doesn't have a dungeon. I'm sure there are some just saying it's kind of a rare thing and I think there is good reason for that.
Dungeon Crawls are an inherent part of D&D so this conversation about whether or not it "should" be a thing is silly, it has to be a thing, without support for Dungeon Crawls I proclaim here and now, you are not D&D, objectively. D&D will always have dungeon crawling. Exploration is one of the tiers of the game which heavily supports the combat tier. Two of the three tiers essentially exist to support Dungeon Crawls almost exclusively.
Modern players have tried very hard to get away from Dungeon Crawls and to that I can only say.. meh.. to reach their own I guess. I mean I honestly don't care what people do in their games, but I personally don't see the point of having so many game mechanics in an RPG if the whole thing is going to boil down to free-form role-playing and storytelling. I mean, the more role-playing you have in a game where there are few fights and the focus is on the narrative the less mechanics you need, so if you're going to run political drama's or games about Wizardry School Students ala Harry Potter for example... less mechanics is better, it begs the question, why use D&D as a platform for games like that. It's a lot of unnecessary fiddly bits that get under your feet.
D&D is built under the assumption that the characters are going to go out and adventure, explore, fight monsters, find treasure, and become famous heroes known for their great deeds. All of the mechanics and architecture of the game are built around this premise and now we are meant to believe that modern D&D is not about these things? I don't buy it.
Whether the premise of the Dungeon Crawl is "appropriate" or "ethical" is a question of what you consider a monster to be. In modern-day D&D we have redefined the word monster to exclude most "humanoid" monsters that have societies and cultures, so like Orcs and Goblins are not in the same category as Rust Monsters and Gelatinous Cubes. In old-school Dungeon Crawls, there was no distinction between an Orc and a Zombie, they were both evil monsters that you didn't have to feel bad about ruthlessly murdering.
Dungeon Crawls however can be done in a way that doesn't really pose this ethical question or offend modern players today. It's all about what you put in a Dungeon. If it's filled with Zombies and Skeletons, does anyone have a moral objection to killing the undead? I doubt it, hell you have entire classes dedicated to murdering undead without remorse as a virtue of gods work.
This is what it comes down to.
People want the combat and they want the HP bags.
They don't want ambiguous villains, (like the real world has), they don't want complexity, and this is reflected in the complaints that you hear about players who just rush rooms and beat things up and automatically think because they are the heroes they can do no evil..
And to say that the younger generation don't have the same biases or urges that the older generation has is a fallacy, it's just sanitized or decontextualized so that people never feel bad. Hate week from 1984 or the point to much of The Giver (and not the crappy movie)
The gag rule on offensive and questionable content means that those issues never get addressed nor do they come up in a way that actually addresses issues.
DM's are also incredibly inept at handling issues, and that's a separate issues that leads to gratuity that people justify as gritty realism.
In essence the old dungeon crawls were because they didn't care and the new ones, people still have those wants and desires, they just want them in a decontextualized form.
So for all the talk of story, nobody wants stories, they want HP bags.
Which is a complaint for someone like myself who wants to write things that are now questionable that make people think or consider moral greyness.
What people instead want is an absolute black and white morality. Us vs. Them. It's just the trappings and decoration are different.
EDIT Thank you OSR for helping me find the words to make my point.
I also said the world is "safer" that the players inhabit. This isn't an implication of liberalism, it's to address the comment about slavery still being part of the mindflayers.
All of that is sanitized and it happens off screen and it's just windowdressing to justify why killing a sentient race like the mind flayers is ok.
Even the creation of a mindflayer (which has great mind body problem philosophical implications), is one that the books would rather use as "the old person is just gone" so that even that "intelligent life" is easier to get around.
I'm a person of books and words. I live and die on fantastic stories that make me feel and make me question. There's just so much out there that's just... dead now. It feels very Fahrenheit 451, in that the people themselves wish for the world to be sanitized, and this isn't a justification for racism, in fact the push to santize against it has only increased is prevalence somehow. but the loss of Dover Beaches .
The lottery is another story.
It's also strange to me. The late 90's and early 00's were a high point for post modernism, intellectualism, and deconstruction. The regression is a strange thing to watch.
2nd edit: the reason modules for stories fails is because of what you said, often it's a forced narrative and very railroaded. If you want to write stories you need something more like the 5th edition dmg with it's focus on world building and setting up scenarios (this isn't to rationalize or excuse the garbage pile of the DMG), it's supposed to be up to the player to decide the rest.
The closest you can come to this is something I remember from the late 80's/early 90's, in the form of a choose your own adventure book that used d6's and you fought monsters within the CYOA book.
It was weird, and I found out later on there were a handful of them published, by the name of it escapes me.
Even those have a dungeon crawl aesthetic and feel though mostly because even just mapping out a dungeon crawl requires a lot of narrative forks in the road.
Even though I've talked at length in the above about the need for darker things to be explored and some lifting of taboo, and generally the things we don't want to accept, the flip side is that as humans (the players that is) we also have a weird empathetic ability to anthropomorphize things and give them stories...
The openness of the game allows for storytelling to emerge, but you need a group that is willing to explore characters (including characters they don't like). You start with a list of stats and then over time you want to flesh them out.... not the reverse.
Whether the premise of the Dungeon Crawl is "appropriate" or "ethical" is a question of what you consider a monster to be. In modern-day D&D we have redefined the word monster to exclude most "humanoid" monsters that have societies and cultures, so like Orcs and Goblins are not in the same category as Rust Monsters and Gelatinous Cubes. In old-school Dungeon Crawls, there was no distinction between an Orc and a Zombie, they were both evil monsters that you didn't have to feel bad about ruthlessly murdering.
Actually the word 'Monster' in 5e seems to mean 'Anything living that isn't a PC.
And 'creature' means 'anything living,' including PC's (undead and constructs being counted as living for purposes of this definition).
True but it's based on books printed 10 years ago and without a specific setting in mind. D&D culture in the last year or so have started to look at the premise of monsters and raised issue with certain types of monsters being addressed as such. In particular anything that can be identified as "people", be it Orcs, Goblins or Drow.
As such the premise of Dungeon Crawls is by association under scrutiny as people are questioning the ethics of going into say a Goblin cave and killing everyone there. Rather than seeing it as a monster lair, they see it as "People who live in caves minding their own business"..
Just saying that if that is a thing for you, that doesn't mean the Dungeon Crawl baby needs to be tossed out with the "sensitivity committee" bathwater. You can simply put whatever you think qualifies as "Monster" into Dungeons and the issue is resolved.
This is not a sword I'm willing to fall on, but I don't think anyone has to, we can just redefine what constitutes a monster for ourselves and then build Dungeons around that concept. I mean, personally, I did this ages ago but I'm not about to tell someone with a different setting than mine what is or isn't a monster in their world. In the setting I use, Mystara, Orcs and Goblins are civilizations with their own dedicated cultures so they aren't monsters. In The Scared Lands, Undead aren't even monsters, they have their own city called Hollofaust. Every setting is different so I don't know why this has become a political ethics issue about racism. Its a setting thing, different worlds have different parameters. In Dragonlance, Dragonborn are monsters.. we know them as Draconin.
Edit: I will say however it's going to be interesting to see what WotC does about this in the next monster manual. I mean, its a book of monsters, if its in there, you're saying its a monster... so is that mean there will be two books... a monster manual and a people manual? Are there going to be official instructions about what can be put into Dungeons or not? Are they going to retcon all the settings? Im curious how they plan to enforce this new ethical code of conduct.
They don't want ambiguous villains, (like the real world has), they don't want complexity, and this is reflected in the complaints that you hear about players who just rush rooms and beat things up and automatically think because they are the heroes they can do no evil..
I have played with dozens upon dozens upon dozens of different people in the 20-30 range. I have had conversations about D&D with my much younger cousins, who are high school. In my experience, most of the younger generation loves a morally ambiguous villain. They love the questions of right or wrong. They love a bad guy who they think “huh, they might be right.” They love a good guy who they think “that person is a real bastard, I need to work with them, but I don’t like those methods.”
Are some of them sticks in the mud who don’t like moral complexity? Sure - but you go onto the forums any time Wizards tries to add moral complexity to something like orcs, and you’ll see a whole bunch of old school players whining about that (usually while hypocritically whining about the younger generation being soft). “I do not want moral complexity” is not something new to D&D, and it certainly is not the exclusive purview of the younger generation. Again, Gygax himself didn’t want moral complexity in the game - he wasn’t the kind of man who wanted his own bigotry on trial.
Wizards has also been pretty careful to include morally complex choices in adventures. Take Descent into Avernus - an entire campaign based on the moral question of “can someone who has done as much evil as a Prince of Hell” be redeemed.
Contrary to the assertions on this thread, the game is more open, and more welcome to moral complexity than it ever has been.
If you are seeing a decrease in moral complexity, the problem isn’t the game, the problem isn’t the younger generation - the problem is you. You are either telling a story you think is complex and isn’t, and therefore isn’t engaging, or you just are playing with sticks in the mud and should find new players.
Whether the premise of the Dungeon Crawl is "appropriate" or "ethical" is a question of what you consider a monster to be. In modern-day D&D we have redefined the word monster to exclude most "humanoid" monsters that have societies and cultures, so like Orcs and Goblins are not in the same category as Rust Monsters and Gelatinous Cubes. In old-school Dungeon Crawls, there was no distinction between an Orc and a Zombie, they were both evil monsters that you didn't have to feel bad about ruthlessly murdering.
Actually the word 'Monster' in 5e seems to mean 'Anything living that isn't a PC.
And 'creature' means 'anything living,' including PC's (undead and constructs being counted as living for purposes of this definition).
True but it's based on books printed 10 years ago and without a specific setting in mind. D&D culture in the last year or so have started to look at the premise of monsters and raised issue with certain types of monsters being addressed as such. In particular anything that can be identified as "people", be it Orcs, Goblins or Drow.
As such the premise of Dungeon Crawls is by association under scrutiny as people are questioning the ethics of going into say a Goblin cave and killing everyone there. Rather than seeing it as a monster lair, they see it as "People who live in caves minding their own business"..
Just saying that if that is a thing for you, that doesn't mean the Dungeon Crawl baby needs to be tossed out with the "sensitivity committee" bathwater. You can simply put whatever you think qualifies as "Monster" into Dungeons and the issue is resolved.
This is not a sword I'm willing to fall on, but I don't think anyone has to, we can just redefine what constitutes a monster for ourselves and then build Dungeons around that concept. I mean, personally, I did this ages ago but I'm not about to tell someone with a different setting than mine what is or isn't a monster in their world. In the setting I use, Mystara, Orcs and Goblins are civilizations with their own dedicated cultures so they aren't monsters. In The Scared Lands, Undead aren't even monsters, they have their own city called Hollofaust. Every setting is different so I don't know why this has become a political ethics issue about racism. Its a setting thing, different worlds have different parameters. In Dragonlance, Dragonborn are monsters.. we know them as Draconin.
Edit: I will say however it's going to be interesting to see what WotC does about this in the next monster manual. I mean, its a book of monsters, if its in there, you're saying its a monster... so is that mean there will be two books... a monster manual and a people manual? Are there going to be official instructions about what can be put into Dungeons or not? Are they going to retcon all the settings? Im curious how they plan to enforce this new ethical code of conduct.
I see this less as an actual thing and more symptomatic of a moral panic. (Yays. First the red scare of the 60's then the moral panic of the 80's and now.... whatever this is.)
People have no issue running roughshod through adventures, beating the crap out of kenku, at 4th level feels ng like they can beat the crap out of xanathar for the hell of it, steal his gold fish, whatever... because he's "evil".
Toss a morally ambiguous character in there and they cannot deal. New player or old, they loose their s***.
It's not about the orcs being a sentient species or skeletons not having souls...
People want the ability to do a dungeon crawl and that's what 90% of the game now is about. The rest is just window dressing, and the moral dilemma of orcs or goblins is just signalling, because as soon as you start doing that... well...
People want the ability to do a dungeon crawl and that's what 90% of the game now is about.
[Citation Needed]
Wizards is very, very good at one thing - data collection. They do a huge number of surveys and they combine surveys with sales figures to capture what players want. They then adjust product development to match what players want. If 90% of players wanted dungeon crawls, they’d be publishing dungeon crawls.
They are not. The published adventures have not been dungeon crawls for the most part - they have overwhelmingly been “here is a region, here is an objective, go do your objective.” Some of them have been more linear than others - Avernus, for example, is pretty straightforward, while Icewind Dale is extremely open ended - but they’re very rarely a straight “here is a dungeon, go to the end” dungeon crawls.
Given the overwhelming focus on non-dungeon crawl adventures, and the knowledge that Wizards based their products on data about players (and what they think 70%+ of players who use the content want) we can reasonably conclude the overwhelming number of players do not, in fact, want dungeon crawls.
They don't want ambiguous villains, (like the real world has), they don't want complexity, and this is reflected in the complaints that you hear about players who just rush rooms and beat things up and automatically think because they are the heroes they can do no evil..
I have played with dozens upon dozens upon dozens of different people in the 20-30 range. I have had conversations about D&D with my much younger cousins, who are high school. In my experience, most of the younger generation loves a morally ambiguous villain. They love the questions of right or wrong. They love a bad guy who they think “huh, they might be right.” They love a good guy who they think “that person is a real bastard, I need to work with them, but I don’t like those methods.”
Are some of them sticks in the mud who don’t like moral complexity? Sure - but you go onto the forums any time Wizards tries to add moral complexity to something like orcs, and you’ll see a whole bunch of old school players whining about that (usually while hypocritically whining about the younger generation being soft). “I do not want moral complexity” is not something new to D&D, and it certainly is not the exclusive purview of the younger generation. Again, Gygax himself didn’t want moral complexity in the game - he wasn’t the kind of man who wanted his own bigotry on trial.
Wizards has also been pretty careful to include morally complex choices in adventures. Take Descent into Avernus - an entire campaign based on the moral question of “can someone who has done as much evil as a Prince of Hell” be redeemed.
Contrary to the assertions on this thread, the game is more open, and more welcome to moral complexity than it ever has been.
If you are seeing a decrease in moral complexity, the problem isn’t the game, the problem isn’t the younger generation - the problem is you. You are either telling a story you think is complex and isn’t, and therefore isn’t engaging, or you just are playing with sticks in the mud and should find new players.
You're being very...... confrontational and accusatory of me without any context or reason to be so.
I find your attitude and overall assertions to border on the rules of conduct.
I purposefully gauge comfort levels and reactions with my players and I adjust accordingly. The complaint of players "just want combat" isn't just mine but echoed in the complaints of others I talk to as well as the descriptors of games as described to me by other players.
It's also a common complaint in many dm threads about the Avengers" style play, the min/maxer and so on.
Your experience may vary, and that's fine, but please stop attacking me with accusations of racism and other forms.of defamation.
People want the ability to do a dungeon crawl and that's what 90% of the game now is about.
[Citation Needed]
Wizards is very, very good at one thing - data collection. They do a huge number of surveys and they combine surveys with sales figures to capture what players want. They then adjust product development to match what players want. If 90% of players wanted dungeon crawls, they’d be publishing dungeon crawls.
They are not. The published adventures have not been dungeon crawls for the most part - they have overwhelmingly been “here is a region, here is an objective, go do your objective.” Some of them have been more linear than others - Avernus, for example, is pretty straightforward, while Icewind Dale is extremely open ended - but they’re very rarely a straight “here is a dungeon, go to the end” dungeon crawls.
Given the overwhelming focus on non-dungeon crawl adventures, and the knowledge that Wizards based their products on data about players (and what they think 70%+ of players who use the content want) we can reasonably conclude the overwhelming number of players do not, in fact, want dungeon crawls.
A lot of the published adventures are old content just updated with stat blocks.
Tomb of horrors, curse of strahd, etc.
A lot of them books are just updated re-releases spelljammer, for example.
The one that does strike me as purposefully designed without a need to solve via conflict is the circus one...
Which I have yet to see or experience. (I hate running stuff from the books, not for their content, but for their atrocious formatting.) It's probably also one of the ones that is original to 5e.
I may be over exaggerating a bit but the thing is, most people seem to play for relaxation and enjoyment, not terribly different than they do video games in my experience and if you challenge them too much with thinking bits they don't like it. They want something to swing a +3 longsword at and something to cast fireball at.
Wizards is very, very good at one thing - data collection. They do a huge number of surveys and they combine surveys with sales figures to capture what players want. They then adjust product development to match what players want. If 90% of players wanted dungeon crawls, they’d be publishing dungeon crawls.
They are not. The published adventures have not been dungeon crawls for the most part - they have overwhelmingly been “here is a region, here is an objective, go do your objective.” Some of them have been more linear than others - Avernus, for example, is pretty straightforward, while Icewind Dale is extremely open ended - but they’re very rarely a straight “here is a dungeon, go to the end” dungeon crawls.
Given the overwhelming focus on non-dungeon crawl adventures, and the knowledge that Wizards based their products on data about players (and what they think 70%+ of players who use the content want) we can reasonably conclude the overwhelming number of players do not, in fact, want dungeon crawls.
I'm not sure how you are making this assertion, I don't think this is really accurate. Obviously, I haven't read all the adventures, but I have quite a few and every single one of them has Dungeons in it. I think perhaps your confusing the concept of Dungeons as a "definition". Like, Dungeons doesn't just mean "Dungeons". Its any form of exploring a place, be it a crypt, a cemetery, a town, ruin, a jungle .. whatever. Essentially anywhere you go you are tracking movement on an area by area, where each area is defined with stuff that happens there which may include traps, monsters, finding treasure, meeting someone interesting or what have you.
Again i haven't read every adventure ever printed but to the best of my knowledge, there hasn't been an adventure printed in 50 years that doesn't have some sort of dungeon exploration. I would be curious for you to point me to an adventure that doesn't have dungeons, I actually would like to read it.
A lot of the published adventures are old content just updated with stat blocks.
Tomb of horrors, curse of strahd, etc.
A lot of them books are just updated re-releases spelljammer, for example.
The one that does strike me as purposefully designed without a need to solve via conflict is the circus one...
Which I have yet to see or experience. (I hate running stuff from the books, not for their content, but for their atrocious formatting.) It's probably also one of the ones that is original to 5e.
I may be over exaggerating a bit but the thing is, most people seem to play for relaxation and enjoyment, not terribly different than they do video games in my experience and if you challenge them too much with thinking bits they don't like it. They want something to swing a +3 longsword at and something to cast fireball at.
Yeah I have to agree. I know people get grumpy when I talk about my gaming experience so I won't say it, lets just say in my time with the game, for all the player posturing about story this, narrative that, background here etc, I see.. at the end of the day, players never disappoint when it comes to their approach to D&D. They want to wack stuff with magical weapons of doom and blow shit up with fireballs.. It really is.. that simple.
I'm yet to meet this legendary "theatre" group that circumvents expectations with their dedication to story, lore and focus on deep in-character storytelling. I have seen it a million times over.. "roll initiative" and suddenly everyone is paying attention and excited.
I would love for someone to point me to any evidence anywhere in which a group of players doesn't perk up when a fight starts. Like I want to see that group that is like "oh no, a fight, damn it, I hate these!". I don't believe they exist, so consider that a challenge! Proof or it never happened!
Yeah I have to agree. I know people get grumpy when I talk about my gaming experience so I won't say it, lets just say in my time with the game, for all the player posturing about story this, narrative that, background here etc, I see.. at the end of the day, players never disappoint when it comes to their approach to D&D. They want to wack stuff with magical weapons of doom and blow shit up with fireballs.. It really is.. that simple.
I'm yet to meet this legendary "theatre" group that circumvents expectations with their dedication to story, lore and focus on deep in-character storytelling. I have seen it a million times over.. "roll initiative" and suddenly everyone is paying attention and excited.
I would love for someone to point me to any evidence anywhere in which a group of players doesn't perk up when a fight starts. Like I want to see that group that is like "oh no, a fight, damn it, I hate these!". I don't believe they exist, so consider that a challenge! Proof or it never happened!
That's a better summation than my pages of botched misunderstandings.
I love the story telling, but to say that the motives and enjoyment of playing now are somehow more "refined" than in the past is just wrong..... window dressing aside, it's frustratingly annoying how much focus is just on hitting things and feeling justified because you've self proclaimed yourselves to be "the heroes".
All the rest surrounding it is just justifying why that's the case, and if anything the older editions didn't make you feel like the heroes out the gate, and that is why I feel today's version is even more of a dungeon crawl experience. That heroism is reinforced more now than ever, and there's no moments of reflection and there's somehow less moral ambiguity. You're always on the side of right, the HP bags are always the most vilest evil ever....
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People can handle controversial stuff fine. That’s why Wizards still leaves in questions about slavery in Out of the Abyss, mind control magic, and… literally a week ago… talking about how the Gith might use biological weapons “for the greater good,” collateral damage and innocent deaths be darned.
It just isn’t as in your face as prior editions, because 5e isn’t led by notorious bigot Gary Gygax, who seemed insistent on forcing his pro-genocide views into the game. Rather than a man who had all the subtlety of a Commander ordering his men to kill women and children (whom Gygax quoted to justify why good characters should be allowed to murder innocents), 5e has competent writers who know how to deal with controversial topics without also being offensive asses who hammer you over the face with their opinions.
I disagree. It's there, but it's as you say, "not in your face". the lore may have it, and the slavery happens off screen, and so on. Players tend to be very....
Look, people in general are fairly politically charged and it turns into where unless you are SUPER comfortable with your own group, and generally even then you will know what you can and cannot portray within your games.
Personally, I like morally grey stories. Where sometimes you have to help out some not so great people as a matter of choosing the lesser of evils. Or having choices of "for the greater good". I am very aware of comfort levels and I'm not going to violate them, but I can only touch the surfaces of things.
I dunno. Of the five characters in the party I DM for, exactly zero have backstories that made them motivated to find riches. Not even the pirate
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
For a potentially better way of phrasing "because people are less able to handle offensive or controversial material in an adult manner, both from a DM and a player perspective" try this:
"because people will stand up and speak out when old harms that were accepted just a generation ago are seen as harmful today".
Spitting on the sidewalk is offensive to some people. It is not in the same category as the racism that was addressed in the game -- that isn't a question of offensiveness or controversiality, it is a question of active harm.
I don't suggest this because I am offended or because it might be controversial, even though some folks may see it as both or neither. I suggest it because it is common human decency.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
No, I get that that's the case for many, but what I very pointedly mean is that people cannot handle negative situations. And I'm not talking racism or slavery.
People are hair triggered about a LOT of subjects. many that border upon political. The Saltmarsh module has some very.... political messaging, (at least as presented to me in my own experience as a player). I'm also not a fan of having to linguistically dance through a minefield because some people may be more conservative than I am and thus I get into a thanksgiving style debate at what's supposed to be just a fun time.
Please don't use my comments to derail the thread into a lament about the game not being offensive enough. My comments were about treasure seeking and pulp action. There is nothing in them that would suggest I think offensive materials have any place in the game and I don't appreciate my comments getting used as a jumping off point for that discussion. Please leave me out of your conversation.
not my intention. But this demonstrates the point I am making.
The zero tolerance means less stories and more dungeon crawling.
One should even ask if it's morally right to attack tribes of goblins, or just waltz in and attack a thieves guild because some random guy in a bar told you to... It would make for an excellent story, but tables would shy away.
Long live the dungeon crawl.
The problem with the classic dungeon crawl is that, well, going into someone else's house, killing them, and stealing their stuff is normally described as... evil. Assuming your players don't want to be evil, that means you need to rethink the fundamental motivation of PCs: rather than dungeon crawling for loot, they're dungeon crawling to foil someone's evil plot. And this in turn means that the game is just going to be less treasure focused, because your measure of success is no longer gaining treasure, it's foiling evil. This doesn't mean there can't be magic items and loot, but it does mean they are incidental, rather than primary -- first write the adventure, then go in at the end and sprinkle an appropriate amount of treasure around.
Hey now, Acererak wasn’t plotting jack. He was just sitting there in his trap filled mausoleum like some b grade pharaoh. grave robbing isn’t grave robbing if you give the jewels to a museum. That’s how Indy did it, that’s how Bigby does it, and it’s worked okay so far…
Come to think of it, the idea of most early dungeons being someone’s home is a bit out there — prison seems more likely given they weren’t always able to leave, lol.
but then, wandering into a prison and killing all the criminals also isn’t looked on fondly…
Context.
The “thwarting evil” is one. Opposing malice, defying despair, rescue, finding the lost Shiri shama tribe, seeking a rare flower — all others.
But recovering a dead pirate’s loot, clearing out one of those damnable pits, snatching loot from the evil king (but not fixing the problem of an evil king), or exploring that big ole hole in the side of that hill are also all valid contexts.
That’s not counting the basic underlying deal of “there is a weird magical place over there, and you can earn a living by finding the magical chests in it. Monsters appear to kill or eat you.” Survival is also a context.
I wonder if “the kids these days” could handle a dungeon without a clear context…
… and if the old farts could tackle a moral and ethical hex crawl that requires overcoming foes instead of killing them.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Whether the premise of the Dungeon Crawl is "appropriate" or "ethical" is a question of what you consider a monster to be. In modern-day D&D we have redefined the word monster to exclude most "humanoid" monsters that have societies and cultures, so like Orcs and Goblins are not in the same category as Rust Monsters and Gelatinous Cubes. In old-school Dungeon Crawls, there was no distinction between an Orc and a Zombie, they were both evil monsters that you didn't have to feel bad about ruthlessly murdering.
Dungeon Crawls however can be done in a way that doesn't really pose this ethical question or offend modern players today. It's all about what you put in a Dungeon. If it's filled with Zombies and Skeletons, does anyone have a moral objection to killing the undead? I doubt it, hell you have entire classes dedicated to murdering undead without remorse as a virtue of gods work.
The question here I think is more about whether Dungeon Crawls can or should be part of a D&D story and some would argue that the premise is opposed to a story-driven game. With that I disagree. The emergent story of exploring an old ruin or some long-forgotten crypt can be every bit as fun, interesting and narrative as whatever a DM can scribble as a plot and it has the added advantage of being emergent and dynamic where most DM-written plots are linear railroads.
Someone mentioned how in 2e AD&D we started to see more and more "plot-based adventures", what wasn't mentioned is how harshly these were rejected by the community and universally hated they were to such an extent that when WotC took over the franchise and remade D&D they didn't dare try any plot based adventures, instead the core focus of adventure writing went back to dungeon crawls for the first 2 years before anyone even considered it again. It was later proven with stuff like Red Hand of Doom that this type of adventure can be really great if done right and we have since seen a lot of great stuff in that area. That said, even these plot-driven adventures always have dungeons for players to crawl around in, I can't think of an adventure written in the last 20 years that doesn't have a dungeon. I'm sure there are some just saying it's kind of a rare thing and I think there is good reason for that.
Dungeon Crawls are an inherent part of D&D so this conversation about whether or not it "should" be a thing is silly, it has to be a thing, without support for Dungeon Crawls I proclaim here and now, you are not D&D, objectively. D&D will always have dungeon crawling. Exploration is one of the tiers of the game which heavily supports the combat tier. Two of the three tiers essentially exist to support Dungeon Crawls almost exclusively.
Modern players have tried very hard to get away from Dungeon Crawls and to that I can only say.. meh.. to reach their own I guess. I mean I honestly don't care what people do in their games, but I personally don't see the point of having so many game mechanics in an RPG if the whole thing is going to boil down to free-form role-playing and storytelling. I mean, the more role-playing you have in a game where there are few fights and the focus is on the narrative the less mechanics you need, so if you're going to run political drama's or games about Wizardry School Students ala Harry Potter for example... less mechanics is better, it begs the question, why use D&D as a platform for games like that. It's a lot of unnecessary fiddly bits that get under your feet.
D&D is built under the assumption that the characters are going to go out and adventure, explore, fight monsters, find treasure, and become famous heroes known for their great deeds. All of the mechanics and architecture of the game are built around this premise and now we are meant to believe that modern D&D is not about these things? I don't buy it.
This is what it comes down to.
People want the combat and they want the HP bags.
They don't want ambiguous villains, (like the real world has), they don't want complexity, and this is reflected in the complaints that you hear about players who just rush rooms and beat things up and automatically think because they are the heroes they can do no evil..
And to say that the younger generation don't have the same biases or urges that the older generation has is a fallacy, it's just sanitized or decontextualized so that people never feel bad. Hate week from 1984 or the point to much of The Giver (and not the crappy movie)
The gag rule on offensive and questionable content means that those issues never get addressed nor do they come up in a way that actually addresses issues.
DM's are also incredibly inept at handling issues, and that's a separate issues that leads to gratuity that people justify as gritty realism.
In essence the old dungeon crawls were because they didn't care and the new ones, people still have those wants and desires, they just want them in a decontextualized form.
So for all the talk of story, nobody wants stories, they want HP bags.
Which is a complaint for someone like myself who wants to write things that are now questionable that make people think or consider moral greyness.
What people instead want is an absolute black and white morality. Us vs. Them. It's just the trappings and decoration are different.
EDIT Thank you OSR for helping me find the words to make my point.
I also said the world is "safer" that the players inhabit. This isn't an implication of liberalism, it's to address the comment about slavery still being part of the mindflayers.
All of that is sanitized and it happens off screen and it's just windowdressing to justify why killing a sentient race like the mind flayers is ok.
Even the creation of a mindflayer (which has great mind body problem philosophical implications), is one that the books would rather use as "the old person is just gone" so that even that "intelligent life" is easier to get around.
I'm a person of books and words. I live and die on fantastic stories that make me feel and make me question. There's just so much out there that's just... dead now. It feels very Fahrenheit 451, in that the people themselves wish for the world to be sanitized, and this isn't a justification for racism, in fact the push to santize against it has only increased is prevalence somehow. but the loss of Dover Beaches .
The lottery is another story.
It's also strange to me. The late 90's and early 00's were a high point for post modernism, intellectualism, and deconstruction. The regression is a strange thing to watch.
2nd edit: the reason modules for stories fails is because of what you said, often it's a forced narrative and very railroaded. If you want to write stories you need something more like the 5th edition dmg with it's focus on world building and setting up scenarios (this isn't to rationalize or excuse the garbage pile of the DMG), it's supposed to be up to the player to decide the rest.
The closest you can come to this is something I remember from the late 80's/early 90's, in the form of a choose your own adventure book that used d6's and you fought monsters within the CYOA book.
It was weird, and I found out later on there were a handful of them published, by the name of it escapes me.
Even those have a dungeon crawl aesthetic and feel though mostly because even just mapping out a dungeon crawl requires a lot of narrative forks in the road.
Even though I've talked at length in the above about the need for darker things to be explored and some lifting of taboo, and generally the things we don't want to accept, the flip side is that as humans (the players that is) we also have a weird empathetic ability to anthropomorphize things and give them stories...
The openness of the game allows for storytelling to emerge, but you need a group that is willing to explore characters (including characters they don't like). You start with a list of stats and then over time you want to flesh them out.... not the reverse.
True but it's based on books printed 10 years ago and without a specific setting in mind. D&D culture in the last year or so have started to look at the premise of monsters and raised issue with certain types of monsters being addressed as such. In particular anything that can be identified as "people", be it Orcs, Goblins or Drow.
As such the premise of Dungeon Crawls is by association under scrutiny as people are questioning the ethics of going into say a Goblin cave and killing everyone there. Rather than seeing it as a monster lair, they see it as "People who live in caves minding their own business"..
Just saying that if that is a thing for you, that doesn't mean the Dungeon Crawl baby needs to be tossed out with the "sensitivity committee" bathwater. You can simply put whatever you think qualifies as "Monster" into Dungeons and the issue is resolved.
This is not a sword I'm willing to fall on, but I don't think anyone has to, we can just redefine what constitutes a monster for ourselves and then build Dungeons around that concept. I mean, personally, I did this ages ago but I'm not about to tell someone with a different setting than mine what is or isn't a monster in their world. In the setting I use, Mystara, Orcs and Goblins are civilizations with their own dedicated cultures so they aren't monsters. In The Scared Lands, Undead aren't even monsters, they have their own city called Hollofaust. Every setting is different so I don't know why this has become a political ethics issue about racism. Its a setting thing, different worlds have different parameters. In Dragonlance, Dragonborn are monsters.. we know them as Draconin.
Edit: I will say however it's going to be interesting to see what WotC does about this in the next monster manual. I mean, its a book of monsters, if its in there, you're saying its a monster... so is that mean there will be two books... a monster manual and a people manual? Are there going to be official instructions about what can be put into Dungeons or not? Are they going to retcon all the settings? Im curious how they plan to enforce this new ethical code of conduct.
I have played with dozens upon dozens upon dozens of different people in the 20-30 range. I have had conversations about D&D with my much younger cousins, who are high school. In my experience, most of the younger generation loves a morally ambiguous villain. They love the questions of right or wrong. They love a bad guy who they think “huh, they might be right.” They love a good guy who they think “that person is a real bastard, I need to work with them, but I don’t like those methods.”
Are some of them sticks in the mud who don’t like moral complexity? Sure - but you go onto the forums any time Wizards tries to add moral complexity to something like orcs, and you’ll see a whole bunch of old school players whining about that (usually while hypocritically whining about the younger generation being soft). “I do not want moral complexity” is not something new to D&D, and it certainly is not the exclusive purview of the younger generation. Again, Gygax himself didn’t want moral complexity in the game - he wasn’t the kind of man who wanted his own bigotry on trial.
Wizards has also been pretty careful to include morally complex choices in adventures. Take Descent into Avernus - an entire campaign based on the moral question of “can someone who has done as much evil as a Prince of Hell” be redeemed.
Contrary to the assertions on this thread, the game is more open, and more welcome to moral complexity than it ever has been.
If you are seeing a decrease in moral complexity, the problem isn’t the game, the problem isn’t the younger generation - the problem is you. You are either telling a story you think is complex and isn’t, and therefore isn’t engaging, or you just are playing with sticks in the mud and should find new players.
I see this less as an actual thing and more symptomatic of a moral panic. (Yays. First the red scare of the 60's then the moral panic of the 80's and now.... whatever this is.)
People have no issue running roughshod through adventures, beating the crap out of kenku, at 4th level feels ng like they can beat the crap out of xanathar for the hell of it, steal his gold fish, whatever... because he's "evil".
Toss a morally ambiguous character in there and they cannot deal. New player or old, they loose their s***.
It's not about the orcs being a sentient species or skeletons not having souls...
People want the ability to do a dungeon crawl and that's what 90% of the game now is about. The rest is just window dressing, and the moral dilemma of orcs or goblins is just signalling, because as soon as you start doing that... well...
[Citation Needed]
Wizards is very, very good at one thing - data collection. They do a huge number of surveys and they combine surveys with sales figures to capture what players want. They then adjust product development to match what players want. If 90% of players wanted dungeon crawls, they’d be publishing dungeon crawls.
They are not. The published adventures have not been dungeon crawls for the most part - they have overwhelmingly been “here is a region, here is an objective, go do your objective.” Some of them have been more linear than others - Avernus, for example, is pretty straightforward, while Icewind Dale is extremely open ended - but they’re very rarely a straight “here is a dungeon, go to the end” dungeon crawls.
Given the overwhelming focus on non-dungeon crawl adventures, and the knowledge that Wizards based their products on data about players (and what they think 70%+ of players who use the content want) we can reasonably conclude the overwhelming number of players do not, in fact, want dungeon crawls.
You're being very...... confrontational and accusatory of me without any context or reason to be so.
I find your attitude and overall assertions to border on the rules of conduct.
I purposefully gauge comfort levels and reactions with my players and I adjust accordingly. The complaint of players "just want combat" isn't just mine but echoed in the complaints of others I talk to as well as the descriptors of games as described to me by other players.
It's also a common complaint in many dm threads about the Avengers" style play, the min/maxer and so on.
Your experience may vary, and that's fine, but please stop attacking me with accusations of racism and other forms.of defamation.
A lot of the published adventures are old content just updated with stat blocks.
Tomb of horrors, curse of strahd, etc.
A lot of them books are just updated re-releases spelljammer, for example.
The one that does strike me as purposefully designed without a need to solve via conflict is the circus one...
Which I have yet to see or experience. (I hate running stuff from the books, not for their content, but for their atrocious formatting.) It's probably also one of the ones that is original to 5e.
I may be over exaggerating a bit but the thing is, most people seem to play for relaxation and enjoyment, not terribly different than they do video games in my experience and if you challenge them too much with thinking bits they don't like it. They want something to swing a +3 longsword at and something to cast fireball at.
I'm not sure how you are making this assertion, I don't think this is really accurate. Obviously, I haven't read all the adventures, but I have quite a few and every single one of them has Dungeons in it. I think perhaps your confusing the concept of Dungeons as a "definition". Like, Dungeons doesn't just mean "Dungeons". Its any form of exploring a place, be it a crypt, a cemetery, a town, ruin, a jungle .. whatever. Essentially anywhere you go you are tracking movement on an area by area, where each area is defined with stuff that happens there which may include traps, monsters, finding treasure, meeting someone interesting or what have you.
Again i haven't read every adventure ever printed but to the best of my knowledge, there hasn't been an adventure printed in 50 years that doesn't have some sort of dungeon exploration. I would be curious for you to point me to an adventure that doesn't have dungeons, I actually would like to read it.
Yeah I have to agree. I know people get grumpy when I talk about my gaming experience so I won't say it, lets just say in my time with the game, for all the player posturing about story this, narrative that, background here etc, I see.. at the end of the day, players never disappoint when it comes to their approach to D&D. They want to wack stuff with magical weapons of doom and blow shit up with fireballs.. It really is.. that simple.
I'm yet to meet this legendary "theatre" group that circumvents expectations with their dedication to story, lore and focus on deep in-character storytelling. I have seen it a million times over.. "roll initiative" and suddenly everyone is paying attention and excited.
I would love for someone to point me to any evidence anywhere in which a group of players doesn't perk up when a fight starts. Like I want to see that group that is like "oh no, a fight, damn it, I hate these!". I don't believe they exist, so consider that a challenge! Proof or it never happened!
That's a better summation than my pages of botched misunderstandings.
I love the story telling, but to say that the motives and enjoyment of playing now are somehow more "refined" than in the past is just wrong..... window dressing aside, it's frustratingly annoying how much focus is just on hitting things and feeling justified because you've self proclaimed yourselves to be "the heroes".
All the rest surrounding it is just justifying why that's the case, and if anything the older editions didn't make you feel like the heroes out the gate, and that is why I feel today's version is even more of a dungeon crawl experience. That heroism is reinforced more now than ever, and there's no moments of reflection and there's somehow less moral ambiguity. You're always on the side of right, the HP bags are always the most vilest evil ever....