If one really wanted to do hardcore tactical dungeon crawling, 4e is probably the system for it, and all this discourse and my recent poking at VTTs are kind of making me want to break out the 4e books and run a "No world. Only dungeon." game. I'm sure the urge will pass long before I actually do anything about it; I'm just amused.
I am looking forward to the pendulum swinging back towards players actually having to think about consequences of the PC's actions.
This is absolutely a thing that happens in many games, modern or old-school. If anything, it's much more likely to happen in the modern sensibility, where blithely killing dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of intelligent creatures might come with consequences.
And players expected to be able to apply some basic math. It won't happen with 6e, but it might with 7e. Imagine a DM actually reminding the player "Um...that Fireball you are about to cast, you do know that the volume of a 20 foot sphere is about 33,000 cu feet, and a Fireball will conform to the shape of the space it is cast into, and will blow back if the space is too small."
That kind of thing is unlikely to ever be back, and good. Arbitrarily applying realistic(ish) physics to an explicitly unrealistic effect just to screw over the players was always bad play.
I'm a firm believer that 4e was a better system than 5. I'm aware that's a minority opinion, but I'm still right. :) Its problem was that it cut off too many of the ways that people play D&D.
I think 4e was a fine chassis / system! And it still exists for purchase, legally, via DM's Guild / DTRPG. But I'm equally glad that D&D didn't stop there.
Nothing unrealistic to basic arithmetic. 1000's of games require players to be able to add, subtract, multiply.
Accurately computing cubic volume every time a spell is cast seems to me the kind of task better suited for a video game than players sitting around a tabletop.
More to the point though - you can have "consequences for the players' actions" without this level of spatial physics fidelity.
More to the point though - you can have "consequences for the players' actions" without this level of spatial physics fidelity.
And to be honest, I really don't want it. The maths isn't hard...but combat is slow enough already. It's unbelievable just how much I enjoyed combat in TOR and STA, despite having much less complex systems for it. D&D combat is still fun, and in large part down to the complexity, but how much it slows down combat is ridiculous and takes away just as much as it adds...and adding further delays in resolutions to calculate rebounds on Fireball would push it over the edge.
TTRPGs using a few different kinds of dice isn't the place to be chasing uberfidelity, in my opinion. It slows things way down and you can't get the goal anyway. One of the things that slowed my progression to playing D&D was probably watching a Warhammer game.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Speaking personally - I think the current chassis for the game is as good as it's ever been.
I'm a firm believer that 4e was a better system than 5. I'm aware that's a minority opinion, but I'm still right. :) Its problem was that it cut off too many of the ways that people play D&D.
If one really wanted to do hardcore tactical dungeon crawling, 4e is probably the system for it, and all this discourse and my recent poking at VTTs are kind of making me want to break out the 4e books and run a "No world. Only dungeon." game. I'm sure the urge will pass long before I actually do anything about it; I'm just amused.
4e was a really good tactical fantasy system and did well with the combat elements of a kind of dungeon-crawling game, but its actually quite different from classic dungeon-crawl gaming of which a big caveat was working within the scope of limited resources and relying on clever use of gear and supplies, rather than powers and abilities.
Having enough food, water, arrows, light, use of unique items like mirrors, oil, 10-foot poles, rope and pretty much anything else you could think of was necessary to survive because there were no skill checks, so it was very much a game of working out the logic of events, traps and situations through interaction with the DM. Fighting was actually the one thing you didn't want to do in classic dungeon crawler campaign because the survival rate of fights was quite low, someone would likely die in any given fight as fights were not tactical but more deterministic. In essence, when a fight started, you already screwed up somewhere along the way and there was virtually no reward for fighting monsters. XP was gained from treasure and monsters usually offered very little unless you happen to find a lair.
That classic method however is not the only way to do Dungeon Crawls. I do agree with you that 4e's version of Dungeon Crawling was actually really fun, because it was about taking on tough fights, room by room, cleaving through hordes of enemies and to be successful you needed really good player tactics and smart execution of abilities with well-timed usage. PF2e kind fo follows along those same lines and I suspect MCDM's new RPG seems to also be aiming for that sort of tactical-focused quality.
I am looking forward to the pendulum swinging back towards players actually having to think about consequences of the PC's actions. And players expected to be able to apply some basic math. It won't happen with 6e, but it might with 7e. Imagine a DM actually reminding the player "Um...that Fireball you are about to cast, you do know that the volume of a 20 foot sphere is about 33,000 cu feet, and a Fireball will conform to the shape of the space it is cast into, and will blow back if the space is too small."
I would not expect that out of the official D&D franchise. Consequences in modern D&D are primarily presumed to be created through narrative-event or story-driven methods, not mechanical ones. Character death is the only permanent mechanical consequence in the game and we are almost at the point with the franchise where character death will simply be eliminated from the game. In fact, I suspect character death to become an "optional" rule in the next edition of the game.
Volumetric Calculation is not considered "basic math". Specifically, it is considered Geometry, which is not Basic Math. Basic Math includes direct order addition, subtraction, division, fractionalization, and multiplication (and is basic because those are what are needed to move into intermediate math, such as Geometry and Algebra).
As an expression of personal opinion,
Slow combat is a result, in my mind, of piss poor encounter design and analysis paralysis on the part of players seeking the optimal effort in the moment and taking a long time to determine it. But that's strictly an opinion -- combat in my group is not slow, and I learned a while ago that not only do my combat's have far more people participating, but that they tend to last significantly longer in terms of rounds (7 to 9 players, 4 to 6 rounds on average). I often have two completed combat sessions in a regular four hour session -- and that's in a RP heavy game.
Tactical and strategic play requires a deeper knowledge of the combination of background, personality, and capability than is often possible (especially when dealing with highly optimized PCs) in games where there is less connection to a given character on the part of the player (such as when they die frequently), so I am unsurprised to learn that some folks will simply take away potential actions rather than improve their own capabilities as a game master or encourage a more comprehensive understanding of their character.
I find the 5e combat system much simpler to deal with in most ways. The flexibility of the Action Economy system is one of the greatest strengths of the game, and allows it to engage with creative, tactical play as easily as formal strategic lay in combat scenarios -- and it smooths things out for us at higher levels.
I do see a great deal of potential in the areas of Action Economy for future evolution, but even more in future engagement around what are currently called downtime activities as well as Conditions -- there is a host of potential things to play with in just those two areas.
Hell, I used them for our mounted combat rules, which was recently a joyous centerpiece to an unplanned chase and mounted combat scenario upon dinosaurs.
I also see much room for alteration and work around the determination and designation of CRs and encounter design, Difficulty determination, and even proficiencies (but I confess to loving proficiency systems from 2e).
My biggest two complaints still are the Classes design philosophy and the overwhelming implied structures that rely overly on published settings, giving short shrift to creative worldbuilding. So I do see room for much evolution there.
Lastly,
I do have to question how character death can be "permanent" in a game that has had Raise Dead and Reincarnate as spells available to characters (either personally or through purchase) since it was released to the public.
The most probable way would be if the DM were to somehow make those spells unable to be touched or used in any form. Which, of course, would not be RAW, and therefore not something the game was designed to be. Because if permanent character death was an aspect of design intent, then it would not have those spells as options; thus, it is not a design goal.
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And players expected to be able to apply some basic math. It won't happen with 6e, but it might with 7e. Imagine a DM actually reminding the player "Um...that Fireball you are about to cast, you do know that the volume of a 20 foot sphere is about 33,000 cu feet, and a Fireball will conform to the shape of the space it is cast into, and will blow back if the space is too small."
That kind of thing is unlikely to ever be back, and good. Arbitrarily applying realistic(ish) physics to an explicitly unrealistic effect just to screw over the players was always bad play.
Nothing unrealistic to basic arithmetic. 1000's of games require players to be able to add, subtract, multiply.
Ok. What's the volume of a truncated 20-foot radius sphere, centered at a point four feet off the ground? Now, given the excess volume of the cut-off portion, how much wider does the partial sphere become when that volume is redistributed to it? You may, for the purposes of the question, assume the ground is level, and all the orcs are dimensionless points.
If I wanted calculus, I'd break out 3rd-edition GURPS Vehicles.
Accurately computing cubic volume every time a spell is cast seems to me the kind of task better suited for a video game than players sitting around a tabletop.
More to the point though - you can have "consequences for the players' actions" without this level of spatial physics fidelity.
The VTT will automatically calculate distances. That was confirmed by people who tested it at PAX. Volume is only one step more by a comp, and takes micro-seconds.
Horizontal distance is easy. Adding in approximate vertical distance isn't that much harder. Volumetric calculations require a lotmore information from the map modeler, because now you're dealing with multiple surfaces. The tools get more complicated and harder to use, and if you screw up, things get weird.
And most people don't play on a VTT. No matter what future you imagine, except the ones where we're all brains-in-jars or uploaded to Cyberspace, there's always going to be a significant percentage of people who play by sitting in a room. Mandating a VTT cuts out a lot of potential customers, and for what? Does old-school fireball really make the game more fun? Perhaps to you, but you're very much an outlier. And once you start physics-modeling one spell, why are you not doing it to all of them?
It's a bad idea, it's always going to be a bad idea, and in the unlikely event it happens, people are going to ignore it, just like they did back in 1e.
And players expected to be able to apply some basic math. It won't happen with 6e, but it might with 7e. Imagine a DM actually reminding the player "Um...that Fireball you are about to cast, you do know that the volume of a 20 foot sphere is about 33,000 cu feet, and a Fireball will conform to the shape of the space it is cast into, and will blow back if the space is too small."
That kind of thing is unlikely to ever be back, and good. Arbitrarily applying realistic(ish) physics to an explicitly unrealistic effect just to screw over the players was always bad play.
Nothing unrealistic to basic arithmetic. 1000's of games require players to be able to add, subtract, multiply.
Ok. What's the volume of a truncated 20-foot radius sphere, centered at a point four feet off the ground? Now, given the excess volume of the cut-off portion, how much wider does the partial sphere become when that volume is redistributed to it? You may, for the purposes of the question, assume the ground is level, and all the orcs are dimensionless points.
If I wanted calculus, I'd break out 3rd-edition GURPS Vehicles.
Accurately computing cubic volume every time a spell is cast seems to me the kind of task better suited for a video game than players sitting around a tabletop.
More to the point though - you can have "consequences for the players' actions" without this level of spatial physics fidelity.
The VTT will automatically calculate distances. That was confirmed by people who tested it at PAX. Volume is only one step more by a comp, and takes micro-seconds.
Horizontal distance is easy. Adding in approximate vertical distance isn't that much harder. Volumetric calculations require a lotmore information from the map modeler, because now you're dealing with multiple surfaces. The tools get more complicated and harder to use, and if you screw up, things get weird.
And most people don't play on a VTT. No matter what future you imagine, except the ones where we're all brains-in-jars or uploaded to Cyberspace, there's always going to be a significant percentage of people who play by sitting in a room. Mandating a VTT cuts out a lot of potential customers, and for what? Does old-school fireball really make the game more fun? Perhaps to you, but you're very much an outlier. And once you start physics-modeling one spell, why are you not doing it to all of them?
It's a bad idea, it's always going to be a bad idea, and in the unlikely event it happens, people are going to ignore it, just like they did back in 1e.
I tend to agree. D&D is about painting with a wide brush and creating imagery for the purpose of cinematic effect.
Fireball? Yeah you cast a fireball inside of a tight corridor there is going to be air pressure that builds up and creates a big funneled explosion. I don't need to do any math, nor do I need mechanics to quantify it for me... make an athletics check at DC20 and if you miss you are knocked prone and pushed back 20 feet. Why? Cause it sounds awesome and i'm the DM that's why!
Realism and RPG's are not a good mixture, it re-frames things from a fun activity to which we apply our imaginations to a debate about what would really happen. I think at this stage in the evolution of D&D, we have proven this beyond of a shadow of a doubt.
More to the point though - you can have "consequences for the players' actions" without this level of spatial physics fidelity.
And to be honest, I really don't want it. The maths isn't hard...but combat is slow enough already. It's unbelievable just how much I enjoyed combat in TOR and STA, despite having much less complex systems for it. D&D combat is still fun, and in large part down to the complexity, but how much it slows down combat is ridiculous and takes away just as much as it adds...and adding further delays in resolutions to calculate rebounds on Fireball would push it over the edge.
TTRPGs using a few different kinds of dice isn't the place to be chasing uberfidelity, in my opinion. It slows things way down and you can't get the goal anyway. One of the things that slowed my progression to playing D&D was probably watching a Warhammer game
.
What slows down combat in 5e is the plethora of features/spells/bonus actions a PC has. The game has to regress to a simpler version to speed up. Say bye bye to Bonus Actions. Go to a 3 action system like Pathfinder. Then doing fast math on a volume of a room, which can be calculated in micro-seconds by a comp, and seconds by a human, ends up slowing down a game by a trivial amount.
We don't really use Bonus Actions in our games. Like, it might get used three or four times a session between the players. Banning them would save would save maybe a minute off of the entire combat. You could cut down on class features, sure, but then you're removing D&D from it's niche, it's strong point over other TTRPGs and instead trying to compete with them directly on their terms...it wouldn't come off well in that fight, just like if TOR tried to push into the more complex combat of 5e, TOR would come off badly.
Yes a computer could calculate it pretty quickly. However, at that point, you're either inputting locations real time and playing a video game, not a TTRPG, or you're having to input the data into a form of some kind which takes time. You're also not going to be able to it by hand, at least not in a few seconds as you claim. Volume of a sphere, with a calculator maybe, but a bisected sphere which is the scenario given? That's not being done in a few seconds by hand.
Let's say it takes 10 seconds on average per action to calculate (that's being extremely conservative, but not everyone is casting Fireball, so let's run with it) in a 5v5 fight. That's 100 seconds per round just figuring out the volume. In a 5 round battle, that equates to 500 seconds or over 8 minutes just working out volumes of spheres.
Nah mate. I'm comfortable with numbers and enjoy solving equations, my degree is in mathematics, but I come to play D&D, not mess about with volumes of spheres.
I tend to agree. D&D is about painting with a wide brush and creating imagery for the purpose of cinematic effect.
Fireball? Yeah you cast a fireball inside of a tight corridor there is going to be air pressure that builds up and creates a big funneled explosion. I don't need to do any math, nor do I need mechanics to quantify it for me... make an athletics check at DC20 and if you miss you are knocked prone and pushed back 20 feet. Why? Cause it sounds awesome and i'm the DM that's why!
Realism and RPG's are not a good mixture, it re-frames things from a fun activity to which we apply our imaginations to a debate about what would really happen. I think at this stage in the evolution of D&D, we have proven this beyond of a shadow of a doubt.
Fully agree. You need some realism to anchor people's expectations and suspend disbelief, but ultimately, we're creating something more akin to a Hollywood film than simulating reality. It's much better to just do some rough split second estimates than to sit there working things out. Play the game, the maths is just a tool for that.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
The VTT will automatically calculate distances. That was confirmed by people who tested it at PAX. Volume is only one step more by a comp, and takes micro-seconds.
Can I ask you this? However easy you think these more realistic physics would be for the masses, what does it add to the game?
What slows down combat in 5e is the plethora of features/spells/bonus actions a PC has. The game has to regress to a simpler version to speed up. Say bye bye to Bonus Actions. Go to a 3 action system like Pathfinder. Then doing fast math on a volume of a room, which can be calculated in micro-seconds by a comp, and seconds by a human, ends up slowing down a game by a trivial amount.
Why not just... play Pathfinder then? It seems to be more of what you want.
When it comes to combat, D&D has gone through a lot of ups and downs in terms of speed of resolution and it has revolved around a number of different concepts and implementations depending on the era.
Several key design and conceptual changes have caused a continuous increase in how long combat takes. In no particular order.
Increasing hit point numbers vs. static and in some cases lowering of damage deal
Action economy (more and more types of actions)
No morale system after 2nd or 3rd edition (can't remember exactly)
Resource resets after fights aka short/long rests, this was a big one, every fight is essentially an alpha strike fight.
Increasing numbers of class abilities, many of which have complex executions even for simple classes like Martials (Fighter)
Monster rules complexity (similar to action economy but for monsters.
Those are the big ones. Mind you I'm not saying these are all bad things, but the shift in ideology here is to make fights more interesting and complex, which causes the trade-off of being longer.
There is one other thing though which is that in older editions of the game, combat was very focused on being more cinematic. A round was 1 minute long for example in AD&D, the idea being that the action was a tit-for-tat, action-oriented game, but rather, more broad strokes action where players defined their activities in narrative and descriptive terms, rather than through the execution of powers, abilities and skill checks. Combat was more of a conversation between the player and the DM, in the same way any other part of the role-playing experience was... combat was less of a mode and simply an extension of the usual way you role-play out any other scene.
Today combat is more of a tactical mini-game and less of a conversation, which means its governed by a lot more rules. I think people forget that in 1st edition AD&D, by the rules, players didn't roll dice at all. The DM rolled dice for everything and it was done mostly behind the screen. Before anyone gets their shorts in a bundle, I understand this was not the tradition and most tables did not adhere to this rule of the game, but part of the reason it was designed that way was that D&D was meant to be a conversation between the DM and the player at all times, rather than a game with sub-mini games built. There were mini-games, they just weren't for the players, they were meant to be governed by the DM behind the screen freeing up players to think more in terms of "what am I doing", rather than "what can I do based on my class/race/level etc... Like characters classes really offered very minimal "powers"... each class had one maybe two... Cleric could cast spell and turn undead, that was basically it. It was a much more basic game.
The game has evolved to be more in line with .. well being a game, which I think most people today prefer, even old dogs like me that grew up in the era of old school D&D. So the combat might be slower today, but I think its far more mechanically interesting than it was in the classic days. I don't think anyone wants to go back, so I think slow (er) combat is kind of here to stay. The only question is how much is too much and I think we have a gauge for that. 3e and 4e were to slow, 5e ... feels to like its kind of just right. I personally could do without the bonus action stuff, that tends to confuse things at most tables, I think a simpler action economy the likes of Pathfinder 2e would be better, but in general I think the speed of 5e's combat is just a matter of practice and collaborative effort by players to speed it up.
...Today combat is more of a tactical mini-game and less of a conversation, which means its governed by a lot more rules. I think people forget that in 1st edition AD&D, by the rules, players didn't roll dice at all.The DM rolled dice for everything and it was done mostly behind the screen. Before anyone gets their shorts in a bundle, I understand this was not the tradition and most tables did not adhere to this rule of the game, but part of the reason it was designed that way was that D&D was meant to be a conversation between the DM and the player at all times, rather than a game with sub-mini games built. There were mini-games, they just weren't for the players, they were meant to be governed by the DM behind the screen freeing up players to think more in terms of "what am I doing", rather than "what can I do based on my class/race/level etc... Like characters classes really offered very minimal "powers"... each class had one maybe two... Cleric could cast spell and turn undead, that was basically it. It was a much more basic game....
Would you happen to have a cite for that? It's something I've heard more than once but it's not something any of my groups ever did. I even checked my AD&D 1e Dungeon Master's Guide, and in the example of play starting on page 97 the players roll their own dice.
...Today combat is more of a tactical mini-game and less of a conversation, which means its governed by a lot more rules. I think people forget that in 1st edition AD&D, by the rules, players didn't roll dice at all.The DM rolled dice for everything and it was done mostly behind the screen. Before anyone gets their shorts in a bundle, I understand this was not the tradition and most tables did not adhere to this rule of the game, but part of the reason it was designed that way was that D&D was meant to be a conversation between the DM and the player at all times, rather than a game with sub-mini games built. There were mini-games, they just weren't for the players, they were meant to be governed by the DM behind the screen freeing up players to think more in terms of "what am I doing", rather than "what can I do based on my class/race/level etc... Like characters classes really offered very minimal "powers"... each class had one maybe two... Cleric could cast spell and turn undead, that was basically it. It was a much more basic game....
Would you happen to have a cite for that? It's something I've heard more than once but it's not something any of my groups ever did. I even checked my AD&D 1e Dungeon Master's Guide, and in the example of play starting on page 97 the players roll their own dice.
1st edition AD&D was not only inconsistent and often contradictory but it was a maze of information blended into what amounts to terrible writing and editing that took on the polite term Gygaxian. I like most people who played the game back in the day ignored/abandoned or missed this premise of DM's rolling all the dice from the first time we played and never looked back. I could page through it to find the exact quote, but it would take longer than I would care to spend to find it and to be honest, I never really cared for 1st edition AD&D, for me, classic D&D is B/X or BECMI. It's in there, somewhere....
My point here is that there are many aspects of D&D throughout the editions that players ignored, altered or interpreted, this led the game to many stumbling points causing evolutions of the games rules that would appear in future editions. Most of these evolutions in particular in how combat is executed and treated resulted in the game becoming more structured and governed by stricter rules getting further away from its original premise for combat which was far more of a "role-playing" exercise than a tactical combat game from the players perspective (which is where the DM dice thing comes from I would suspect).
Fundamentally the biggest evolutions of D&D over the last 4 editions was how much of the game was controlled by the GM and how much of it is controlled by the rules and how those rules executions were expected to be handled. In 1st edition, the GM was the only one who actually had a rulebook, you won't find the rules for combat for example in the Players Handbook, it was the intention of the game for the players to not know how combat is executed outside of their imaginations. In fact, the only rules that existed in the Players Handbook were the rules needed to create a character. The entire combat section in the Players Handbook was 1 page long explaining combat as principles of the procedure, but not the actual rules.
Anyway, the bigger point being the more the game evolved to be a tactical game with firm rules, the slower it got. I don't think there is any going back to old school D&D methodology to fix it. If you are going to speed up combat in modern D&D you have to speed it up within the context of the modern game (within the mechanics of combat).
...Today combat is more of a tactical mini-game and less of a conversation, which means its governed by a lot more rules. I think people forget that in 1st edition AD&D, by the rules, players didn't roll dice at all.The DM rolled dice for everything and it was done mostly behind the screen. Before anyone gets their shorts in a bundle, I understand this was not the tradition and most tables did not adhere to this rule of the game, but part of the reason it was designed that way was that D&D was meant to be a conversation between the DM and the player at all times, rather than a game with sub-mini games built. There were mini-games, they just weren't for the players, they were meant to be governed by the DM behind the screen freeing up players to think more in terms of "what am I doing", rather than "what can I do based on my class/race/level etc... Like characters classes really offered very minimal "powers"... each class had one maybe two... Cleric could cast spell and turn undead, that was basically it. It was a much more basic game....
Would you happen to have a cite for that? It's something I've heard more than once but it's not something any of my groups ever did. I even checked my AD&D 1e Dungeon Master's Guide, and in the example of play starting on page 97 the players roll their own dice.
1st edition AD&D was not only inconsistent and often contradictory but it was a maze of information blended into what amounts to terrible writing and editing that took on the polite term Gygaxian. I like most people who played the game back in the day ignored/abandoned or missed this premise of DM's rolling all the dice from the first time we played and never looked back. I could page through it to find the exact quote, but it would take longer than I would care to spend to find it and to be honest, I never really cared for 1st edition AD&D, for me, classic D&D is B/X or BECMI. It's in there, somewhere....
My point here is that there are many aspects of D&D throughout the editions that players ignored, altered or interpreted, this led the game to many stumbling points causing evolutions of the games rules that would appear in future editions. Most of these evolutions in particular in how combat is executed and treated resulted in the game becoming more structured and governed by stricter rules getting further away from its original premise for combat which was far more of a "role-playing" exercise than a tactical combat game from the players perspective (which is where the DM dice thing comes from I would suspect).
Fundamentally the biggest evolutions of D&D over the last 4 editions was how much of the game was controlled by the GM and how much of it is controlled by the rules and how those rules executions were expected to be handled. In 1st edition, the GM was the only one who actually had a rulebook, you won't find the rules for combat for example in the Players Handbook, it was the intention of the game for the players to not know how combat is executed outside of their imaginations. In fact, the only rules that existed in the Players Handbook were the rules needed to create a character. The entire combat section in the Players Handbook was 1 page long explaining combat as principles of the procedure, but not the actual rules.
Anyway, the bigger point being the more the game evolved to be a tactical game with firm rules, the slower it got. I don't think there is any going back to old school D&D methodology to fix it. If you are going to speed up combat in modern D&D you have to speed it up within the context of the modern game (within the mechanics of combat).
I did, however, take the time to look up the citation—you are incorrect about what AD&D said. What the rules actually say is that it is “correct and fun” to have the players roll the dice, but there might be some instances where the DM should roll the dice on behalf of players, such as keeping secret things like doors or clues. Furthermore, throughout AD&D’s DMG, there are numerous references to players rolling—in fact, the example dialogue provided in how to play a set of events specifically states the players should roll things on behalf of their characters.
Here is the actual text:
“In many situations it is correct and fun to have the players dice such things as melee hits or saving throws. However, it is your right to control the dice at any time and to roll dice for the ployers. You might wish to do this to keep them from knowing some specific fact. You also might wish to give them an edge in finding a particular clue, e g. a secret doorihat leads to a complex of monsters ond treasures that will be especially entertaining. You do have every righl to overrule the dice ot any time If there is o particular course of events that you would like to have occur. In making such a decision you should never seriously harm the party or a non-player character with your actions, "ALWAYS GIVE A MONSTER AN EVEN BREAK!"”
...Today combat is more of a tactical mini-game and less of a conversation, which means its governed by a lot more rules. I think people forget that in 1st edition AD&D, by the rules, players didn't roll dice at all.The DM rolled dice for everything and it was done mostly behind the screen. Before anyone gets their shorts in a bundle, I understand this was not the tradition and most tables did not adhere to this rule of the game, but part of the reason it was designed that way was that D&D was meant to be a conversation between the DM and the player at all times, rather than a game with sub-mini games built. There were mini-games, they just weren't for the players, they were meant to be governed by the DM behind the screen freeing up players to think more in terms of "what am I doing", rather than "what can I do based on my class/race/level etc... Like characters classes really offered very minimal "powers"... each class had one maybe two... Cleric could cast spell and turn undead, that was basically it. It was a much more basic game....
Would you happen to have a cite for that? It's something I've heard more than once but it's not something any of my groups ever did. I even checked my AD&D 1e Dungeon Master's Guide, and in the example of play starting on page 97 the players roll their own dice.
Yeah, we also all rolled our own dice. Never heard of a group where only the DM did, but that, of course, is purely anecdotal on my part.
And no matter who was rolling, the faster combat had, imo, a lot to do with it being theater of the mind as default pre-3e. You want to cast fireball. The DM says, ok, you can get four of the goblins, or five if you also get the fighter. What slows things down now is looking for the perfect place to center it to maximize enemies you target. Personally, I prefer the current way, with dwarven forge and hero forge, but I do acknowledge it’s a bit slower.
I guess the official stance now is TotM is default, too, just my group doesn’t play that way.
The Wargaming roots for AD&D -- and so 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th Editions -- are very deep. If anything, the difficulty in transitioning from wargaming to TotM was very difficult for some of the earliest folks, particularly for combat -- enough that there is a lot more emphasis placed on wargaming style stuff in AD&D and it is very much obvious that there was a strong desire to use groups in such on the part of the author.
Gygax rolled anything that a player wouldn't now himself. Including surprise and initiative, but also pretty much everything that thieves did if it was sneaky and depended on what we think of as a perception based rule in 5e. While he wasn't the only one who did that, he was close to it. It was disliked by most because of the trust issue (Player's have to trust DMs -- and most folks only needed one game to lose that trust if he was in a bad mood, but if he was in a good one I heard much praise.)
Like the "you must find spells, and the DM picks your first ones" rule, the rolling for others was quickly abandoned by most tables (and became sort of a standard in all the RPG magazines of the day).
Back to the Wargaming point, it is the use of vtt's that are bringing a lot of that back into the game in spades. It is tempting for some folks to say that AD&D was either TotM or Miniatures, but the truth is it was always a mix of those -- O/B/X was much more about a pure TotM than AD&D was, and the split was probably a little more in favor of TotM in AD&D than iit was for Minis, but both have always been that way. Most of it was really a factor of who could afford what for miniatures -- you might spend 20 bucks on a book, but you'd have to spend five bucks for a figure, then brushes, then paints, then spend the time to paint them, and blah blah blah -- minis added up.
VTTs take all of that out, and the rise of stuff like Hero forge and 3D printing now makes it much easier to get custom figures. The 1/64 scale (where an inch is 5 feet) is the common one for figs, but early rules often used a 1/120th scale set up (1 inch equals 10 feet) which throws things off for some folks. VTT's really do fix that, and I've long been more partial to a 1/36 scale -- all of which a VTT makes much more useful.
I keep trying to find a way to use a vtt that doesn't slow us down, but we are very much grounded as a group in the TotM approach, so it is always harder. be it figurines or vTT, combat always takes us twice as long. However...
It is much more strategic in planning and tactical in action than TotM, which can make a huge difference. IT does create a sense of Videogame atmosphere, though, to use a virtual tabletop, and I do see strong difference between players who had experience with earlier editions and newer players who are often far more versed in videogames. Given that D&D rules influenced even the earliest versions of Video games and still influence them today (as well as a huge swath of anime), I think that it is quite fine, and helps a lot -- my issues are all eventually going to be stripped away by the rise of more advanced generative AI based fractal terrain generation programs anyway.
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“In many situations it is correct and fun to have the players dice such things as melee hits or saving throws. However, it is your right to control the dice at any time and to roll dice for the ployers. You might wish to do this to keep them from knowing some specific fact. You also might wish to give them an edge in finding a particular clue, e g. a secret doorihat leads to a complex of monsters ond treasures that will be especially entertaining. You do have every righl to overrule the dice ot any time If there is o particular course of events that you would like to have occur. In making such a decision you should never seriously harm the party or a non-player character with your actions, "ALWAYS GIVE A MONSTER AN EVEN BREAK!"”
There is more to it than that, but even in this partial citation, the thing that is obvious is that the DM decides when players can and can't roll the dice because the default rule is that the DM rolls the dice. Gygax understood that rolling dice was part of the fun of playing the game, so allowing players to roll dice was encouraged, but it was permission granted, not a rule of the game that the players rolled dice. The rule was, the DM rolls dice unless he says otherwise.
You have to remember that it was Gygax's design that the players don't even know what the rules are. There was virtually no rules in the Players Handbook beyond character creation and spell lists, all the game rules resided in the Dungeon Masters Guide... The reading of which was considered to be the ultimate insult to the game a player could commit. A big part of the reason the players weren't supposed to roll dice, is because they weren't supposed to know what they are rolling. To Hit and Damage where kind of an exception even in the core rules, mainly because you had your THAC0 and Weapon Damage on your character sheet, but even here you are not supposed to know what sort of armor or armor class a monster had all secrets in the DMG.
For the most part, if you played 1e AD&D, the reason you usually didn't roll dice is because there was no real way of knowing what you were rolling. Like, you roll a d20 to hit.. but what is your target? You don't know the AC... The general rule of thumb was the players were supposed to focus on the description of the action, not the execution of the rules. The rules were the exclusive domain of the DM.
Obviously, this is not how the game was ultimately played by most, at least in the circles I ran in and run in today, most players know the rules backward and forward, but like I said, very few people ever actually played 1st edition AD&D the way it was written. I mean I never met anyone in 35+ of playing 1e that used speed factors for example, I actually to this day don't actually understand how its supposed to work.
“In many situations it is correct and fun to have the players dice such things as melee hits or saving throws. However, it is your right to control the dice at any time and to roll dice for the ployers. You might wish to do this to keep them from knowing some specific fact. You also might wish to give them an edge in finding a particular clue, e g. a secret doorihat leads to a complex of monsters ond treasures that will be especially entertaining. You do have every righl to overrule the dice ot any time If there is o particular course of events that you would like to have occur. In making such a decision you should never seriously harm the party or a non-player character with your actions, "ALWAYS GIVE A MONSTER AN EVEN BREAK!"”
There is more to it than that, but even in this partial citation, the thing that is obvious is that the DM decides when players can and can't roll the dice because the default rule is that the DM rolls the dice. Gygax understood that rolling dice was part of the fun of playing the game, so allowing players to roll dice was encouraged, but it was permission granted, not a rule of the game that the players rolled dice. The rule was, the DM rolls dice unless he says otherwise.
You know, there is no shame in admitting you are wrong. There is shame in doubling down on something incorrect.
Spells said that the player rolled the dice. Here is one example:
“Enchant An Item; When casting the permanency spell on an item, the magic-user need only roll 2 or belter with d20 to avoid loss of a constitution point Formulae for magic items are suggested under FABRICATION OF MAGIC ITEMS (q.v ).”
Saving throws clearly indicated “someone” other than the DM would be rolling:
“When someone or something fails to roll the number shown, or better, whatever Is coming comes In full.”
The example text, now cited by multiple people on this thread, stated players should be rolling the dice. Here is just one example of many from that section:
You manage to get ahead of the piece, jump into water about 4' deep, ond grab at it, but you must roll a d20 'to hit' to see if you can manage to grasp the object before it is swept post you and goes downstream into the pipe-like tunnel which the stream flows out through," (The player rolls and scores high enough to have hit armor class 4, the value the DM has decided is appropriate to the chance of grasping, so the DM continues:) "You are in luck ihis adventure! You have the object, ond it seems to be an ivory or bone tube with a waterproof cap.”
The literal text you casually dismiss, under plain English, makes it clear the default “fun and correct” answer is to have players roll, and that the DM rolling should be the exception, not the rule.
The AD&D DMG makes it very, very, very clear that players absolutely were allowed to roll the dice, and your absolute statement “I think people forget that in 1st edition AD&D, by the rules, players didn’t roll the dice at all” is objectively false. “By the rules,” there were plenty of times players did, in fact, roll the dice—and the DMG makes it pretty darn clear to anyone who reads it that players rolling their own dice should be the preferred way to play, unless the specific circumstances would lead to more enjoyment if the DM made the roll.
“In many situations it is correct and fun to have the players dice such things as melee hits or saving throws. However, it is your right to control the dice at any time and to roll dice for the ployers. You might wish to do this to keep them from knowing some specific fact. You also might wish to give them an edge in finding a particular clue, e g. a secret doorihat leads to a complex of monsters ond treasures that will be especially entertaining. You do have every righl to overrule the dice ot any time If there is o particular course of events that you would like to have occur. In making such a decision you should never seriously harm the party or a non-player character with your actions, "ALWAYS GIVE A MONSTER AN EVEN BREAK!"”
There is more to it than that, but even in this partial citation, the thing that is obvious is that the DM decides when players can and can't roll the dice because the default rule is that the DM rolls the dice. Gygax understood that rolling dice was part of the fun of playing the game, so allowing players to roll dice was encouraged, but it was permission granted, not a rule of the game that the players rolled dice. The rule was, the DM rolls dice unless he says otherwise.
You know, there is no shame in admitting you are wrong. There is shame in doubling down on something incorrect.
Spells said that the player rolled the dice. Here is one example:
“Enchant An Item; When casting the permanency spell on an item, the magic-user need only roll 2 or belter with d20 to avoid loss of a constitution point Formulae for magic items are suggested under FABRICATION OF MAGIC ITEMS (q.v ).”
Saving throws clearly indicated “someone” other than the DM would be rolling:
“When someone or something fails to roll the number shown, or better, whatever Is coming comes In full.”
The example text, now cited by multiple people on this thread, stated players should be rolling the dice. Here is just one example of many from that section:
You manage to get ahead of the piece, jump into water about 4' deep, ond grab at it, but you must roll a d20 'to hit' to see if you can manage to grasp the object before it is swept post you and goes downstream into the pipe-like tunnel which the stream flows out through," (The player rolls and scores high enough to have hit armor class 4, the value the DM has decided is appropriate to the chance of grasping, so the DM continues:) "You are in luck ihis adventure! You have the object, ond it seems to be an ivory or bone tube with a waterproof cap.”
The literal text you casually dismiss, under plain English, makes it clear the default “fun and correct” answer is to have players roll, and that the DM rolling should be the exception, not the rule.
The AD&D DMG makes it very, very, very clear that players absolutely were allowed to roll the dice, and your absolute statement “I think people forget that in 1st edition AD&D, by the rules, players didn’t roll the dice at all” is objectively false. “By the rules,” there were plenty of times players did, in fact, roll the dice—and the DMG makes it pretty darn clear to anyone who reads it that players rolling their own dice should be the preferred way to play, unless the specific circumstances would lead to more enjoyment if the DM made the roll.
“In many situations it is correct and fun to have the players dice such things as melee hits or saving throws. However, it is your right to control the dice at any time and to roll dice for the ployers. You might wish to do this to keep them from knowing some specific fact. You also might wish to give them an edge in finding a particular clue, e g. a secret doorihat leads to a complex of monsters ond treasures that will be especially entertaining. You do have every righl to overrule the dice ot any time If there is o particular course of events that you would like to have occur. In making such a decision you should never seriously harm the party or a non-player character with your actions, "ALWAYS GIVE A MONSTER AN EVEN BREAK!"”
There is more to it than that, but even in this partial citation, the thing that is obvious is that the DM decides when players can and can't roll the dice because the default rule is that the DM rolls the dice. Gygax understood that rolling dice was part of the fun of playing the game, so allowing players to roll dice was encouraged, but it was permission granted, not a rule of the game that the players rolled dice. The rule was, the DM rolls dice unless he says otherwise.
You know, there is no shame in admitting you are wrong. There is shame in doubling down on something incorrect.
Spells said that the player rolled the dice. Here is one example:
“Enchant An Item; When casting the permanency spell on an item, the magic-user need only roll 2 or belter with d20 to avoid loss of a constitution point Formulae for magic items are suggested under FABRICATION OF MAGIC ITEMS (q.v ).”
Saving throws clearly indicated “someone” other than the DM would be rolling:
“When someone or something fails to roll the number shown, or better, whatever Is coming comes In full.”
The example text, now cited by multiple people on this thread, stated players should be rolling the dice. Here is just one example of many from that section:
You manage to get ahead of the piece, jump into water about 4' deep, ond grab at it, but you must roll a d20 'to hit' to see if you can manage to grasp the object before it is swept post you and goes downstream into the pipe-like tunnel which the stream flows out through," (The player rolls and scores high enough to have hit armor class 4, the value the DM has decided is appropriate to the chance of grasping, so the DM continues:) "You are in luck ihis adventure! You have the object, ond it seems to be an ivory or bone tube with a waterproof cap.”
The literal text you casually dismiss, under plain English, makes it clear the default “fun and correct” answer is to have players roll, and that the DM rolling should be the exception, not the rule.
The AD&D DMG makes it very, very, very clear that players absolutely were allowed to roll the dice, and your absolute statement “I think people forget that in 1st edition AD&D, by the rules, players didn’t roll the dice at all” is objectively false. “By the rules,” there were plenty of times players did, in fact, roll the dice—and the DMG makes it pretty darn clear to anyone who reads it that players rolling their own dice should be the preferred way to play, unless the specific circumstances would lead to more enjoyment if the DM made the roll.
And where did you find those rules?
The AD&D DMG, as was very clear from the context in which we were talking about the AD&D DMG.
The AD&D DMG, as was very clear from the context in which we were talking about the AD&D DMG.
I think you missed the point of the question, I understand its in the DMG. The DMG is the book players were never allowed to read, it was strictly for the DM. Aka, everything in there is for the DM, they decide what rules are executed, when they are executed, how they are executed and who rolls the dice when they are executed.
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This is absolutely a thing that happens in many games, modern or old-school. If anything, it's much more likely to happen in the modern sensibility, where blithely killing dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of intelligent creatures might come with consequences.
That kind of thing is unlikely to ever be back, and good. Arbitrarily applying realistic(ish) physics to an explicitly unrealistic effect just to screw over the players was always bad play.
I think 4e was a fine chassis / system! And it still exists for purchase, legally, via DM's Guild / DTRPG. But I'm equally glad that D&D didn't stop there.
Accurately computing cubic volume every time a spell is cast seems to me the kind of task better suited for a video game than players sitting around a tabletop.
More to the point though - you can have "consequences for the players' actions" without this level of spatial physics fidelity.
And to be honest, I really don't want it. The maths isn't hard...but combat is slow enough already. It's unbelievable just how much I enjoyed combat in TOR and STA, despite having much less complex systems for it. D&D combat is still fun, and in large part down to the complexity, but how much it slows down combat is ridiculous and takes away just as much as it adds...and adding further delays in resolutions to calculate rebounds on Fireball would push it over the edge.
TTRPGs using a few different kinds of dice isn't the place to be chasing uberfidelity, in my opinion. It slows things way down and you can't get the goal anyway. One of the things that slowed my progression to playing D&D was probably watching a Warhammer game.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
4e was a really good tactical fantasy system and did well with the combat elements of a kind of dungeon-crawling game, but its actually quite different from classic dungeon-crawl gaming of which a big caveat was working within the scope of limited resources and relying on clever use of gear and supplies, rather than powers and abilities.
Having enough food, water, arrows, light, use of unique items like mirrors, oil, 10-foot poles, rope and pretty much anything else you could think of was necessary to survive because there were no skill checks, so it was very much a game of working out the logic of events, traps and situations through interaction with the DM. Fighting was actually the one thing you didn't want to do in classic dungeon crawler campaign because the survival rate of fights was quite low, someone would likely die in any given fight as fights were not tactical but more deterministic. In essence, when a fight started, you already screwed up somewhere along the way and there was virtually no reward for fighting monsters. XP was gained from treasure and monsters usually offered very little unless you happen to find a lair.
That classic method however is not the only way to do Dungeon Crawls. I do agree with you that 4e's version of Dungeon Crawling was actually really fun, because it was about taking on tough fights, room by room, cleaving through hordes of enemies and to be successful you needed really good player tactics and smart execution of abilities with well-timed usage. PF2e kind fo follows along those same lines and I suspect MCDM's new RPG seems to also be aiming for that sort of tactical-focused quality.
I would not expect that out of the official D&D franchise. Consequences in modern D&D are primarily presumed to be created through narrative-event or story-driven methods, not mechanical ones. Character death is the only permanent mechanical consequence in the game and we are almost at the point with the franchise where character death will simply be eliminated from the game. In fact, I suspect character death to become an "optional" rule in the next edition of the game.
As a note,
Volumetric Calculation is not considered "basic math". Specifically, it is considered Geometry, which is not Basic Math. Basic Math includes direct order addition, subtraction, division, fractionalization, and multiplication (and is basic because those are what are needed to move into intermediate math, such as Geometry and Algebra).
As an expression of personal opinion,
Slow combat is a result, in my mind, of piss poor encounter design and analysis paralysis on the part of players seeking the optimal effort in the moment and taking a long time to determine it. But that's strictly an opinion -- combat in my group is not slow, and I learned a while ago that not only do my combat's have far more people participating, but that they tend to last significantly longer in terms of rounds (7 to 9 players, 4 to 6 rounds on average). I often have two completed combat sessions in a regular four hour session -- and that's in a RP heavy game.
Tactical and strategic play requires a deeper knowledge of the combination of background, personality, and capability than is often possible (especially when dealing with highly optimized PCs) in games where there is less connection to a given character on the part of the player (such as when they die frequently), so I am unsurprised to learn that some folks will simply take away potential actions rather than improve their own capabilities as a game master or encourage a more comprehensive understanding of their character.
I find the 5e combat system much simpler to deal with in most ways. The flexibility of the Action Economy system is one of the greatest strengths of the game, and allows it to engage with creative, tactical play as easily as formal strategic lay in combat scenarios -- and it smooths things out for us at higher levels.
I do see a great deal of potential in the areas of Action Economy for future evolution, but even more in future engagement around what are currently called downtime activities as well as Conditions -- there is a host of potential things to play with in just those two areas.
Hell, I used them for our mounted combat rules, which was recently a joyous centerpiece to an unplanned chase and mounted combat scenario upon dinosaurs.
I also see much room for alteration and work around the determination and designation of CRs and encounter design, Difficulty determination, and even proficiencies (but I confess to loving proficiency systems from 2e).
My biggest two complaints still are the Classes design philosophy and the overwhelming implied structures that rely overly on published settings, giving short shrift to creative worldbuilding. So I do see room for much evolution there.
Lastly,
I do have to question how character death can be "permanent" in a game that has had Raise Dead and Reincarnate as spells available to characters (either personally or through purchase) since it was released to the public.
The most probable way would be if the DM were to somehow make those spells unable to be touched or used in any form. Which, of course, would not be RAW, and therefore not something the game was designed to be. Because if permanent character death was an aspect of design intent, then it would not have those spells as options; thus, it is not a design goal.
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
Ok. What's the volume of a truncated 20-foot radius sphere, centered at a point four feet off the ground? Now, given the excess volume of the cut-off portion, how much wider does the partial sphere become when that volume is redistributed to it? You may, for the purposes of the question, assume the ground is level, and all the orcs are dimensionless points.
If I wanted calculus, I'd break out 3rd-edition GURPS Vehicles.
Horizontal distance is easy. Adding in approximate vertical distance isn't that much harder. Volumetric calculations require a lot more information from the map modeler, because now you're dealing with multiple surfaces. The tools get more complicated and harder to use, and if you screw up, things get weird.
And most people don't play on a VTT. No matter what future you imagine, except the ones where we're all brains-in-jars or uploaded to Cyberspace, there's always going to be a significant percentage of people who play by sitting in a room. Mandating a VTT cuts out a lot of potential customers, and for what? Does old-school fireball really make the game more fun? Perhaps to you, but you're very much an outlier. And once you start physics-modeling one spell, why are you not doing it to all of them?
It's a bad idea, it's always going to be a bad idea, and in the unlikely event it happens, people are going to ignore it, just like they did back in 1e.
I tend to agree. D&D is about painting with a wide brush and creating imagery for the purpose of cinematic effect.
Fireball? Yeah you cast a fireball inside of a tight corridor there is going to be air pressure that builds up and creates a big funneled explosion. I don't need to do any math, nor do I need mechanics to quantify it for me... make an athletics check at DC20 and if you miss you are knocked prone and pushed back 20 feet. Why? Cause it sounds awesome and i'm the DM that's why!
Realism and RPG's are not a good mixture, it re-frames things from a fun activity to which we apply our imaginations to a debate about what would really happen. I think at this stage in the evolution of D&D, we have proven this beyond of a shadow of a doubt.
We don't really use Bonus Actions in our games. Like, it might get used three or four times a session between the players. Banning them would save would save maybe a minute off of the entire combat. You could cut down on class features, sure, but then you're removing D&D from it's niche, it's strong point over other TTRPGs and instead trying to compete with them directly on their terms...it wouldn't come off well in that fight, just like if TOR tried to push into the more complex combat of 5e, TOR would come off badly.
Yes a computer could calculate it pretty quickly. However, at that point, you're either inputting locations real time and playing a video game, not a TTRPG, or you're having to input the data into a form of some kind which takes time. You're also not going to be able to it by hand, at least not in a few seconds as you claim. Volume of a sphere, with a calculator maybe, but a bisected sphere which is the scenario given? That's not being done in a few seconds by hand.
Let's say it takes 10 seconds on average per action to calculate (that's being extremely conservative, but not everyone is casting Fireball, so let's run with it) in a 5v5 fight. That's 100 seconds per round just figuring out the volume. In a 5 round battle, that equates to 500 seconds or over 8 minutes just working out volumes of spheres.
Nah mate. I'm comfortable with numbers and enjoy solving equations, my degree is in mathematics, but I come to play D&D, not mess about with volumes of spheres.
Fully agree. You need some realism to anchor people's expectations and suspend disbelief, but ultimately, we're creating something more akin to a Hollywood film than simulating reality. It's much better to just do some rough split second estimates than to sit there working things out. Play the game, the maths is just a tool for that.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Can I ask you this? However easy you think these more realistic physics would be for the masses, what does it add to the game?
Why not just... play Pathfinder then? It seems to be more of what you want.
When it comes to combat, D&D has gone through a lot of ups and downs in terms of speed of resolution and it has revolved around a number of different concepts and implementations depending on the era.
Several key design and conceptual changes have caused a continuous increase in how long combat takes. In no particular order.
Those are the big ones. Mind you I'm not saying these are all bad things, but the shift in ideology here is to make fights more interesting and complex, which causes the trade-off of being longer.
There is one other thing though which is that in older editions of the game, combat was very focused on being more cinematic. A round was 1 minute long for example in AD&D, the idea being that the action was a tit-for-tat, action-oriented game, but rather, more broad strokes action where players defined their activities in narrative and descriptive terms, rather than through the execution of powers, abilities and skill checks. Combat was more of a conversation between the player and the DM, in the same way any other part of the role-playing experience was... combat was less of a mode and simply an extension of the usual way you role-play out any other scene.
Today combat is more of a tactical mini-game and less of a conversation, which means its governed by a lot more rules. I think people forget that in 1st edition AD&D, by the rules, players didn't roll dice at all. The DM rolled dice for everything and it was done mostly behind the screen. Before anyone gets their shorts in a bundle, I understand this was not the tradition and most tables did not adhere to this rule of the game, but part of the reason it was designed that way was that D&D was meant to be a conversation between the DM and the player at all times, rather than a game with sub-mini games built. There were mini-games, they just weren't for the players, they were meant to be governed by the DM behind the screen freeing up players to think more in terms of "what am I doing", rather than "what can I do based on my class/race/level etc... Like characters classes really offered very minimal "powers"... each class had one maybe two... Cleric could cast spell and turn undead, that was basically it. It was a much more basic game.
The game has evolved to be more in line with .. well being a game, which I think most people today prefer, even old dogs like me that grew up in the era of old school D&D. So the combat might be slower today, but I think its far more mechanically interesting than it was in the classic days. I don't think anyone wants to go back, so I think slow (er) combat is kind of here to stay. The only question is how much is too much and I think we have a gauge for that. 3e and 4e were to slow, 5e ... feels to like its kind of just right. I personally could do without the bonus action stuff, that tends to confuse things at most tables, I think a simpler action economy the likes of Pathfinder 2e would be better, but in general I think the speed of 5e's combat is just a matter of practice and collaborative effort by players to speed it up.
Would you happen to have a cite for that? It's something I've heard more than once but it's not something any of my groups ever did. I even checked my AD&D 1e Dungeon Master's Guide, and in the example of play starting on page 97 the players roll their own dice.
1st edition AD&D was not only inconsistent and often contradictory but it was a maze of information blended into what amounts to terrible writing and editing that took on the polite term Gygaxian. I like most people who played the game back in the day ignored/abandoned or missed this premise of DM's rolling all the dice from the first time we played and never looked back. I could page through it to find the exact quote, but it would take longer than I would care to spend to find it and to be honest, I never really cared for 1st edition AD&D, for me, classic D&D is B/X or BECMI. It's in there, somewhere....
My point here is that there are many aspects of D&D throughout the editions that players ignored, altered or interpreted, this led the game to many stumbling points causing evolutions of the games rules that would appear in future editions. Most of these evolutions in particular in how combat is executed and treated resulted in the game becoming more structured and governed by stricter rules getting further away from its original premise for combat which was far more of a "role-playing" exercise than a tactical combat game from the players perspective (which is where the DM dice thing comes from I would suspect).
Fundamentally the biggest evolutions of D&D over the last 4 editions was how much of the game was controlled by the GM and how much of it is controlled by the rules and how those rules executions were expected to be handled. In 1st edition, the GM was the only one who actually had a rulebook, you won't find the rules for combat for example in the Players Handbook, it was the intention of the game for the players to not know how combat is executed outside of their imaginations. In fact, the only rules that existed in the Players Handbook were the rules needed to create a character. The entire combat section in the Players Handbook was 1 page long explaining combat as principles of the procedure, but not the actual rules.
Anyway, the bigger point being the more the game evolved to be a tactical game with firm rules, the slower it got. I don't think there is any going back to old school D&D methodology to fix it. If you are going to speed up combat in modern D&D you have to speed it up within the context of the modern game (within the mechanics of combat).
I did, however, take the time to look up the citation—you are incorrect about what AD&D said. What the rules actually say is that it is “correct and fun” to have the players roll the dice, but there might be some instances where the DM should roll the dice on behalf of players, such as keeping secret things like doors or clues. Furthermore, throughout AD&D’s DMG, there are numerous references to players rolling—in fact, the example dialogue provided in how to play a set of events specifically states the players should roll things on behalf of their characters.
Here is the actual text:
“In many situations it is correct and fun to have the players dice such things as melee hits or saving throws. However, it is your right to control the dice at any time and to roll dice for the ployers. You might wish to do this to keep them from knowing some specific fact. You also might wish to give them an edge in finding a particular clue, e g. a secret doorihat leads to a complex of monsters ond treasures that will be especially entertaining. You do have every righl to overrule the dice ot any time If there is o particular course of events that you would like to have occur. In making such a decision you should never seriously harm the party or a non-player character with your actions, "ALWAYS GIVE A MONSTER AN EVEN BREAK!"”
Yeah, we also all rolled our own dice. Never heard of a group where only the DM did, but that, of course, is purely anecdotal on my part.
And no matter who was rolling, the faster combat had, imo, a lot to do with it being theater of the mind as default pre-3e. You want to cast fireball. The DM says, ok, you can get four of the goblins, or five if you also get the fighter. What slows things down now is looking for the perfect place to center it to maximize enemies you target. Personally, I prefer the current way, with dwarven forge and hero forge, but I do acknowledge it’s a bit slower.
I guess the official stance now is TotM is default, too, just my group doesn’t play that way.
The Wargaming roots for AD&D -- and so 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th Editions -- are very deep. If anything, the difficulty in transitioning from wargaming to TotM was very difficult for some of the earliest folks, particularly for combat -- enough that there is a lot more emphasis placed on wargaming style stuff in AD&D and it is very much obvious that there was a strong desire to use groups in such on the part of the author.
Gygax rolled anything that a player wouldn't now himself. Including surprise and initiative, but also pretty much everything that thieves did if it was sneaky and depended on what we think of as a perception based rule in 5e. While he wasn't the only one who did that, he was close to it. It was disliked by most because of the trust issue (Player's have to trust DMs -- and most folks only needed one game to lose that trust if he was in a bad mood, but if he was in a good one I heard much praise.)
Like the "you must find spells, and the DM picks your first ones" rule, the rolling for others was quickly abandoned by most tables (and became sort of a standard in all the RPG magazines of the day).
Back to the Wargaming point, it is the use of vtt's that are bringing a lot of that back into the game in spades. It is tempting for some folks to say that AD&D was either TotM or Miniatures, but the truth is it was always a mix of those -- O/B/X was much more about a pure TotM than AD&D was, and the split was probably a little more in favor of TotM in AD&D than iit was for Minis, but both have always been that way. Most of it was really a factor of who could afford what for miniatures -- you might spend 20 bucks on a book, but you'd have to spend five bucks for a figure, then brushes, then paints, then spend the time to paint them, and blah blah blah -- minis added up.
VTTs take all of that out, and the rise of stuff like Hero forge and 3D printing now makes it much easier to get custom figures. The 1/64 scale (where an inch is 5 feet) is the common one for figs, but early rules often used a 1/120th scale set up (1 inch equals 10 feet) which throws things off for some folks. VTT's really do fix that, and I've long been more partial to a 1/36 scale -- all of which a VTT makes much more useful.
I keep trying to find a way to use a vtt that doesn't slow us down, but we are very much grounded as a group in the TotM approach, so it is always harder. be it figurines or vTT, combat always takes us twice as long. However...
It is much more strategic in planning and tactical in action than TotM, which can make a huge difference. IT does create a sense of Videogame atmosphere, though, to use a virtual tabletop, and I do see strong difference between players who had experience with earlier editions and newer players who are often far more versed in videogames. Given that D&D rules influenced even the earliest versions of Video games and still influence them today (as well as a huge swath of anime), I think that it is quite fine, and helps a lot -- my issues are all eventually going to be stripped away by the rise of more advanced generative AI based fractal terrain generation programs anyway.
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There is more to it than that, but even in this partial citation, the thing that is obvious is that the DM decides when players can and can't roll the dice because the default rule is that the DM rolls the dice. Gygax understood that rolling dice was part of the fun of playing the game, so allowing players to roll dice was encouraged, but it was permission granted, not a rule of the game that the players rolled dice. The rule was, the DM rolls dice unless he says otherwise.
You have to remember that it was Gygax's design that the players don't even know what the rules are. There was virtually no rules in the Players Handbook beyond character creation and spell lists, all the game rules resided in the Dungeon Masters Guide... The reading of which was considered to be the ultimate insult to the game a player could commit. A big part of the reason the players weren't supposed to roll dice, is because they weren't supposed to know what they are rolling. To Hit and Damage where kind of an exception even in the core rules, mainly because you had your THAC0 and Weapon Damage on your character sheet, but even here you are not supposed to know what sort of armor or armor class a monster had all secrets in the DMG.
For the most part, if you played 1e AD&D, the reason you usually didn't roll dice is because there was no real way of knowing what you were rolling. Like, you roll a d20 to hit.. but what is your target? You don't know the AC... The general rule of thumb was the players were supposed to focus on the description of the action, not the execution of the rules. The rules were the exclusive domain of the DM.
Obviously, this is not how the game was ultimately played by most, at least in the circles I ran in and run in today, most players know the rules backward and forward, but like I said, very few people ever actually played 1st edition AD&D the way it was written. I mean I never met anyone in 35+ of playing 1e that used speed factors for example, I actually to this day don't actually understand how its supposed to work.
You know, there is no shame in admitting you are wrong. There is shame in doubling down on something incorrect.
Spells said that the player rolled the dice. Here is one example:
“Enchant An Item; When casting the permanency spell on an item, the magic-user need only roll 2 or belter with d20 to avoid loss of a constitution point Formulae for magic items are suggested under FABRICATION OF MAGIC ITEMS (q.v ).”
Saving throws clearly indicated “someone” other than the DM would be rolling:
“When someone or something fails to roll the number shown, or better, whatever Is coming comes In full.”
The example text, now cited by multiple people on this thread, stated players should be rolling the dice. Here is just one example of many from that section:
You manage to get ahead of the piece, jump into water about 4' deep, ond grab at it, but you must roll a d20 'to hit' to see if you can manage to grasp the object before it is swept post you and goes downstream into the pipe-like tunnel which the stream flows out through," (The player rolls and scores high enough to have hit armor class 4, the value the DM has decided is appropriate to the chance of grasping, so the DM continues:) "You are in luck ihis adventure! You have the object, ond it seems to be an ivory or bone tube with a waterproof cap.”
The literal text you casually dismiss, under plain English, makes it clear the default “fun and correct” answer is to have players roll, and that the DM rolling should be the exception, not the rule.
The AD&D DMG makes it very, very, very clear that players absolutely were allowed to roll the dice, and your absolute statement “I think people forget that in 1st edition AD&D, by the rules, players didn’t roll the dice at all” is objectively false. “By the rules,” there were plenty of times players did, in fact, roll the dice—and the DMG makes it pretty darn clear to anyone who reads it that players rolling their own dice should be the preferred way to play, unless the specific circumstances would lead to more enjoyment if the DM made the roll.
And where did you find those rules?
The AD&D DMG, as was very clear from the context in which we were talking about the AD&D DMG.
I think you missed the point of the question, I understand its in the DMG. The DMG is the book players were never allowed to read, it was strictly for the DM. Aka, everything in there is for the DM, they decide what rules are executed, when they are executed, how they are executed and who rolls the dice when they are executed.