I cannot know how new to D&D you are—for all I know you have been playing for decades—but this idea that the game is mostly about fighting is a new phenomenon as that was simply not the case prior to 3rd. Edition.
It's not new, nor is it something that has gotten more pronounced over the years. The whole concept of original D&D was that the PCs were assaulting a dungeon (hence the name, and the title of 'dungeon master'). They had discretion about how they went about it, but the vast majority of options involved combat. Sure, actual campaigns could have plenty of roleplaying, but it wasn't particularly mechanically supported by the game system, nor was it a focus of published adventures (Keep on the Borderlands doesn't even bother to give NPCs names).
Now, later editions do have a greater focus on set-piece fights and splitting the monsters into distinct encounters (the Caves of Chaos had extensive notes on monsters running for reinforcements) but it's historical revisionism to think that original D&D wasn't focused on combat.
The pioneers of the hobby themselves—Gygax and Arneson—played in campaigns that stretched over years in which the characters and their stories and their interactions with the campaign worlds in which they played and with those in them were front and center. With combat just something that happened from time to time and that was a part of that story. They ran Western Marches-style campaigns that were more about the worlds and those in them and how these evolved than they were about mere fighting. The only historical revision going on is yours.
EDIT: OD&D came with supplements for entire campaign settings. The idea that it was just about "assaulting a dungeon" is laughable. Do you honestly believe the purpose of the game is reducible to its name?
And again this is funny: Because this is the charge leveled against so many rules-light games. They "can't" do anything but dungeon crawling!
Many TSR and Judges Guild supplements were focused on that immersion in a world. Were rich in detail about these worlds and those in them. What the rules facilitated is beside the point. The very beginnings of the hobby were about moving away from wargames that were purely combat games and aiming for emergent storytelling in fictional worlds.
Your emphasis on what the rules cover is ignoring how old-school D&D was more rulings not rules. The rules were there for the referee. To inform decisions that he or she would make. But many if not even most things that would happen were—and probably even remain so at most tables—independent of the rules.
The very moment that roleplaying games as we now know them were born is arguably the moment Arneson thought to himself what if these Napoleonic soldiers had names and lives and could do things for which there were no rules? If it wasn't just about fighting. Let's add a referee to adjudicate these sorts of things. That is what made a roleplaying game a roleplaying game. Now you want to pretend all else is secondary to the very thing Arneson sought to make secondary.
I own shelves' worth of old D&D and AD&D resources. No matter how many pages are given to how combat is resolved in the Player's Handbook it does not compare to the pages dedicated to world-building and NPCs who aren't just bags of HP not to mention the worlds of our own we have crafted and the stories we have woven in them.
I cannot know how new to D&D you are—for all I know you have been playing for decades—but this idea that the game is mostly about fighting is a new phenomenon as that was simply not the case prior to 3rd. Edition.
It's not new, nor is it something that has gotten more pronounced over the years. The whole concept of original D&D was that the PCs were assaulting a dungeon (hence the name, and the title of 'dungeon master'). They had discretion about how they went about it, but the vast majority of options involved combat. Sure, actual campaigns could have plenty of roleplaying, but it wasn't particularly mechanically supported by the game system, nor was it a focus of published adventures (Keep on the Borderlands doesn't even bother to give NPCs names).
Now, later editions do have a greater focus on set-piece fights and splitting the monsters into distinct encounters (the Caves of Chaos had extensive notes on monsters running for reinforcements) but it's historical revisionism to think that original D&D wasn't focused on combat.
D&D is, after all, originally derived from a war game.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I cannot know how new to D&D you are—for all I know you have been playing for decades—but this idea that the game is mostly about fighting is a new phenomenon as that was simply not the case prior to 3rd. Edition.
It's not new, nor is it something that has gotten more pronounced over the years. The whole concept of original D&D was that the PCs were assaulting a dungeon (hence the name, and the title of 'dungeon master'). They had discretion about how they went about it, but the vast majority of options involved combat. Sure, actual campaigns could have plenty of roleplaying, but it wasn't particularly mechanically supported by the game system, nor was it a focus of published adventures (Keep on the Borderlands doesn't even bother to give NPCs names).
Now, later editions do have a greater focus on set-piece fights and splitting the monsters into distinct encounters (the Caves of Chaos had extensive notes on monsters running for reinforcements) but it's historical revisionism to think that original D&D wasn't focused on combat.
D&D is, after all, originally derived from a war game.
Correction: it was derived from taking a wargame and imagining if all those miniatures had names and lives and stories to tell. And adding a referee to adjudicate what the combat rules did not facilitate.
You can read academic histories of the hobby—not to mention see how Gygax and Arneson played—that make fairly clear the game was about getting beyond just combat and being more about emergent storytelling in fictional worlds.
Combat has been a part of most games. It's fun and can serve as a great storytelling device itself. But it is neither necessary nor what is most important. To some tables perhaps. Not to all. Are you telling me a group consisting of people who are big fans of the fiction of this or that fantasy author using D&D to play a game with greater emphasis on roleplaying and character interaction are playing "the wrong game"? Because people have been using the D&D system to run games in all manner of worlds and to achieve all manner of things for fifty years. If you need to be reminded.
EDIT: Let's say a group of players prefer the romantic fantasy of authors like Mercedes Lackey than they do that of authors whose works are filled with violence. Now while this group of let's say women more into romantic fantasy than what your idea of fantasy is could find a game whose rules or lack of them might be more conducive to this type of game what would you call players who told them to go away and play something else because D&D has "always mostly been about the fighting"? Sounds awfully gatekeeper-y to me.
Easy fix: get rid of having casters having to make attack rolls or their targets having to make saves. You roll to cast and it works or it doesn't.
Static target numbers that don't depend on the traits of the target are bad, and if you are making the TN depend on target traits... it's an attack roll.
You have a tendency to use the word "bad" as if you are the grand arbiter of what is good in good design.
He's not wrong. In the context of a game where bonuses scale upwards, a constant target number either becomes trivial, or starts out insurmountable. Both are bad design. A non-scaling fixed failure chance with bad consequences for basic powers is also not so hot.
Having never played shadowdark, I cannot speak as to its implementation, but shoehorned into 5e, it would be bad.
Like you expect us to just lose memories of having played D&D at a time when casters had fewer spells and would run out of them—You know? Like they did in the Vance novels that once inspired how magic worked in the game?—and insist those experiences must have been "bad." For everyone.
I do not rule out the possibility that you enjoyed it, but for the majority of players, it sucked. The badness of low-level wizards was oft explained as a balancing factor for them being so great later, but that excuse is a crock. It just means the design was bad at both ends.
ShadowDark took home four ENNIEs including the one for best rules. The praise and promotion the game has received is practically unprecedented among games not called D&D. But we are supposed to believe how it handles magic is "bad" ... because you say so?
You keep harping on this, and four ENNIEs is so unprecedented that it last happened in 2023 if I read correctly. Three awards seems pretty much a given for anything winning the bigger categories. Five has happened as well. The ENNIEs have a lot of categories, with significant overlap. ("Best game", "best rules", "product of the year", for instance.)
Is shadowdark good at achieving what it sets out to do? Maybe; I cannot opine. Is it popular in your circles? Certainly seems so, but I'd've likely never heard of it if not for 2-3 of you harping on about it. Is it taking the world of tabletop RPGs by storm? Can't say it has been.
Does any of this mean D&D should be more like shadowdark? No.
I cannot know how new to D&D you are—for all I know you have been playing for decades
Assuming I recall you mentioning your start date correctly, longer than you.
—but this idea that the game is mostly about fighting is a new phenomenon as that was simply not the case prior to 3rd.
A system's purpose is what it does. A game's players will focus on engaging with the mechanics that are provided. D&D has always, first and foremost, provided combat mechanics. Third edition was the point at which they started providing real mechanics for anything else. People have always done more on the edges, but the core loop of old D&D for most people was "go into dungeon, fight monsters, find treasure". They even encouraged wandering monster tables to make sure your dungeon crawl was regularly punctuated with combat.
It's funny that one of the criticisms leveled against so many rules-light games is that they just don't have the rules to allow for much more than fighting monsters and obtaining treasure.
Say what? This literally describes no rules-light game I'm aware of, except probably Dungeon World. But then, I already knew we existed in entirely different RPG spheres.
Are you forgetting my having mentioned domain-level play and how this used to be given greater attention? What do you think most gaming groups playing AD&D did back in the day with their high-level campaigns? Do you think they just went on fighting things for gold and glory?
Yes.
I am aware that it was a thing that was mentioned in 1e. I do not recall there being any meaningful support for a GM to make it happen and make it interesting. I expect most high-level play that engaged with it at all went something like "Fast forward Now there's an evil enemy threatening your domains.Time to go and stop it." Same basic game, but more epic in scope.
The more and more the game has become a combat game—which we first saw with the advent of the 3rd. Edition—with barely a story stringing together combat sequences like in the worst of MCU movies the less and less it has been about story. But you suggesting it is not as if it has never been about telling a story is laughable:
D&D has, over the generations, become less and less about the archetypal dungeon crawl, and more about story. Did Keep on the Borderlands have a story of note? Tomb of Horrors? Expedition to the Barrier Peaks?
If you love combat so much and don't care for story why not just roll up characters and stage tournaments between them and monsters?
Because I'm not the straw man you think I am? That I acknowledge that D&D is a game designed first for combat does not mean that I prefer it to other parts of the experience, much less that it's all I care about.
EDIT: I remember when 3rd. Edition first dropped. It was the first of the editions to assume combat would be resolved using miniatures and this not just being something that might be done but that was entirely unnecessary given theatre of the mind would suffice.
Given its direct descent from Chainmail, I find myself skeptical that 3e was the first time that assumption was made, if it even was. (4e certainly assumed miniatures, but 4e was a radical break with what had come before.)
The pioneers of the hobby themselves—Gygax and Arneson—played in campaigns that stretched over years in which the characters and their stories and their interactions with the campaign worlds in which they played and with those in them were front and center.
Which is entirely irrelevant as long as it wasn't published.
EDIT: OD&D came with supplements for entire campaign settings. The idea that it was just about "assaulting a dungeon" is laughable.
D&D was first published in 1974; AD&D was first published in 1977. The first dedicated setting books were published in 1987. Sure, a name can be deceptive... but for early D&D, it wasn't.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with combat-light or combat-free D&D. However, I don't think that's playing to the system's strengths. There are other games that do combatless or narrative/exploration/intrigue/social-heavy far better.
Easy fix: get rid of having casters having to make attack rolls or their targets having to make saves. You roll to cast and it works or it doesn't.
Static target numbers that don't depend on the traits of the target are bad, and if you are making the TN depend on target traits... it's an attack roll.
You have a tendency to use the word "bad" as if you are the grand arbiter of what is good in good design.
He's not wrong. In the context of a game where bonuses scale upwards, a constant target number either becomes trivial, or starts out insurmountable. Both are bad design. A non-scaling fixed failure chance with bad consequences for basic powers is also not so hot.
Having never played shadowdark, I cannot speak as to its implementation, but shoehorned into 5e, it would be bad.
Like you expect us to just lose memories of having played D&D at a time when casters had fewer spells and would run out of them—You know? Like they did in the Vance novels that once inspired how magic worked in the game?—and insist those experiences must have been "bad." For everyone.
I do not rule out the possibility that you enjoyed it, but for the majority of players, it sucked. The badness of low-level wizards was oft explained as a balancing factor for them being so great later, but that excuse is a crock. It just means the design was bad at both ends.
ShadowDark took home four ENNIEs including the one for best rules. The praise and promotion the game has received is practically unprecedented among games not called D&D. But we are supposed to believe how it handles magic is "bad" ... because you say so?
You keep harping on this, and four ENNIEs is so unprecedented that it last happened in 2023 if I read correctly. Three awards seems pretty much a given for anything winning the bigger categories. Five has happened as well. The ENNIEs have a lot of categories, with significant overlap. ("Best game", "best rules", "product of the year", for instance.)
Is shadowdark good at achieving what it sets out to do? Maybe; I cannot opine. Is it popular in your circles? Certainly seems so, but I'd've likely never heard of it if not for 2-3 of you harping on about it. Is it taking the world of tabletop RPGs by storm? Can't say it has been.
Does any of this mean D&D should be more like shadowdark? No.
I cannot know how new to D&D you are—for all I know you have been playing for decades
Assuming I recall you mentioning your start date correctly, longer than you.
—but this idea that the game is mostly about fighting is a new phenomenon as that was simply not the case prior to 3rd.
A system's purpose is what it does. A game's players will focus on engaging with the mechanics that are provided. D&D has always, first and foremost, provided combat mechanics. Third edition was the point at which they started providing real mechanics for anything else. People have always done more on the edges, but the core loop of old D&D for most people was "go into dungeon, fight monsters, find treasure". They even encouraged wandering monster tables to make sure your dungeon crawl was regularly punctuated with combat.
It's funny that one of the criticisms leveled against so many rules-light games is that they just don't have the rules to allow for much more than fighting monsters and obtaining treasure.
Say what? This literally describes no rules-light game I'm aware of, except probably Dungeon World. But then, I already knew we existed in entirely different RPG spheres.
Are you forgetting my having mentioned domain-level play and how this used to be given greater attention? What do you think most gaming groups playing AD&D did back in the day with their high-level campaigns? Do you think they just went on fighting things for gold and glory?
Yes.
I am aware that it was a thing that was mentioned in 1e. I do not recall there being any meaningful support for a GM to make it happen and make it interesting. I expect most high-level play that engaged with it at all went something like "Fast forward Now there's an evil enemy threatening your domains.Time to go and stop it." Same basic game, but more epic in scope.
The more and more the game has become a combat game—which we first saw with the advent of the 3rd. Edition—with barely a story stringing together combat sequences like in the worst of MCU movies the less and less it has been about story. But you suggesting it is not as if it has never been about telling a story is laughable:
D&D has, over the generations, become less and less about the archetypal dungeon crawl, and more about story. Did Keep on the Borderlands have a story of note? Tomb of Horrors? Expedition to the Barrier Peaks?
If you love combat so much and don't care for story why not just roll up characters and stage tournaments between them and monsters?
Because I'm not the straw man you think I am? That I acknowledge that D&D is a game designed first for combat does not mean that I prefer it to other parts of the experience, much less that it's all I care about.
EDIT: I remember when 3rd. Edition first dropped. It was the first of the editions to assume combat would be resolved using miniatures and this not just being something that might be done but that was entirely unnecessary given theatre of the mind would suffice.
Given its direct descent from Chainmail, I find myself skeptical that 3e was the first time that assumption was made, if it even was. (4e certainly assumed miniatures, but 4e was a radical break with what had come before.)
I was not merely talking about the ENNIEs ShadowDark got: You even quoted me talking about the praise and promotion it has received. By which I mean prominent YouTubers in the hobby and so on. Just because you might now exist and play in a 5E bubble does not mean the rest of us have to.
You have been playing for more than 41 years but you believe all those supplements for campaign settings rich in detail and in their descriptions of NPCs et cetera et cetera and all those Western Marches-style campaigns that saw their worlds evolve with every session means combat has really always been the true focus of the game?
Not the emergent storytelling in fictional worlds that—you know—defines what a roleplaying game is according to even those who have studied the history of the hobby like Jon Peterson.
I have never played Dungeon World. Many games—in fact just about any OSR game including Old School Essentials despite its essentially being Moldvay/Cook and that ruleset being more than capable of handling things beyond dungeon crawling and older OSR games like Swords & Wizardry and and newer ones like Knave and Into the Odd and even now ShadowDark—get accused of being just for dungeon crawling. They might be more conducive to this provided their rules. But no more than D&D. So yes it would seem you are in that bubble if you are truly oblivious to this.
Did you never own anything from Judges Guild? You have never picked up over all those years of gaming anything by them? How about by others producing game content for OD&D and AD&D? Anything by Gabor Lux or others today producing the sorts of resources Judges Guild and TSR once produced that you seem to be of the mind never were? Look at 2nd. Edition and what we got with Planescape alone. Not just a boxed campaign setting. Boxed sets for different planes et cetera et cetera.
Domain-level play with players managing guilds and kingdoms and so on was supported. And these were things we would roleplay in extensive campaigns. You don't just get to erase people's experiences by pretending how you might play D&D is how everyone plays D&D.
Let me ask you what I asked someone else:
Let's say a group of players prefer the romantic fantasy of authors like Mercedes Lackey than they do that of authors whose works are filled with violence. Now while this group of let's say women more into romantic fantasy than what your idea of fantasy is could find a game whose rules or lack of them might be more conducive to this type of game what would you call players who told them to go away and play something else because D&D has "always mostly been about the fighting"? Sounds awfully gatekeeper-y to me.
Given its direct descent from Chainmail, I find myself skeptical that 3e was the first time that assumption was made, if it even was. (4e certainly assumed miniatures, but 4e was a radical break with what had come before.)
You said you have been playing for over 41 years. But now you are leaning on skepticism and apparently just not knowing how earlier editions you would have been playing yourself made pretty clear miniatures might be used but that theater of the mind suffices?
Arneson conceived of the idea of a roleplaying game as we know it by doing two things:
(1) adding a referee to adjudicate those things combat rules would did not cover;
(2) doing this to create a game that was more about emergent storytelling in fictional worlds than just simulating combat.
The pioneers of the hobby themselves—Gygax and Arneson—played in campaigns that stretched over years in which the characters and their stories and their interactions with the campaign worlds in which they played and with those in them were front and center.
Which is entirely irrelevant as long as it wasn't published.
EDIT: OD&D came with supplements for entire campaign settings. The idea that it was just about "assaulting a dungeon" is laughable.
D&D was first published in 1974; AD&D was first published in 1977. The first dedicated setting books were published in 1987. Sure, a name can be deceptive... but for early D&D, it wasn't.
OD&D had supplements for both Blackmoor (Arneson's campaign world) and Greyhawk (Gygax's campaign world). So now you are just making things up.
This thread is quickly degenerating into But that's not how you play D&D and if you want to play this or that type of game you should probably go play something else from the very people who most insist there is no one right way to play and who most complain about what they have perceived as gatekeeping. It's poetically ironic.
What is happening right now to those complaining about art in the 2024 PHB because much of it isn't depicting combat and some of it is depicting more domestic scenes? Those people are being told D&D is about more than just fighting dragons. That characters do lead lives outside of the dungeon. That some players even like to run whole games that revolve more around what most might consider just downtime activities. I have known female gamers over the years who ran more romantic fantasy themed campaigns. This might not be my cup of tea but I ain't about to tell them D&D ain't the game for them. Because I am not a jerk.
But the names provided those supplements were the names of those pioneers' respective settings. And the fact is both ran and played extensive campaigns more about emergent storytelling in fictional settings of their own creation than mere fighting.
Judges Guild were providing setting resources during the lifecycles of OD&D and AD&D before TSR would publish one.
Do you honestly believe because we did not see a published campaign setting from TSR for a while none of us played that way? We all just fought one thing after another? We all just ran through published modules? We never came up with our own things? As if DIY/homebrew has never been at the heart of the hobby? I played D&D extensively between '83 and around about '96 or '97 and I don't think I ever ran a single published adventure. I would harvest ideas from fantasy fiction and create worlds of my own inspired by these. And typically run these as sandboxes.
I started with the Mentzer red box. Friends of mine and I played in things like Howard's Hyborian Age before there was ever published content for the game set in it because we loved Conan comics. Even with the comparatively minimal rules of Basic D&D we crafted stories more than just went from one fight to another.
Some in this thread could really use reading Jon Peterson's Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People, and Fantastic Adventures from Chess to Role-Playing Games and The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity. Watching Secrets of Blackmoor: The True History of Dungeons & Dragons. Instead of telling themselves because those who pioneered D&D played a wargame before they did their intentions for D&D was that it be primarily about combat.
As I said before Arneson conceived of the idea of a roleplaying game as we know it by doing two things:
(1) adding a referee to adjudicate those things combat rules did not cover;
(2) doing this to create a game that was more about emergent storytelling in fictional worlds than just simulating combat.
Both Arneson and Gygax sought to create a game that went well beyond combat. Both ran and played games that went well beyond combat. Games in which worlds evolved. In which characters played very active roles in those worlds beyond just fighting in them for gold and glory.
That doesn't mean your game must emulate how they played and how many others did play or prefer to play still.
You can play how you want. But stop rewriting history.
I'd love to see more martial base classes along with a sorcerer divine class. Frankly I've been playing 5e since the playtest off and on and I don't find any of the classes interesting anymore. Subclasses don't really help much either cus its still "A ranger but with..." I've just been there done that too much. I think 2e with the options and 3e held my interest longer because you had kits/prestige classes along with a longer skill list so I could flavor the ranger up in a lot more ways to make it a little different than my last ranger. Right now your pretty much limited to a few subclasses and spells to change it up.
I got to wondering: Do we really need so many melee classes? Melee classes include fighters, barbarians, rangers, paladins, rogues, warlocks, bards, druids, clerics .. and wizards. Actually, the only class in the entire game that doesn't really have any viable melee option is the sorcerer.
Maybe the real question is 'do we need so many classes?'
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Some in this thread could really use reading Jon Peterson's Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People, and Fantastic Adventures from Chess to Role-Playing Games and The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity. Watching Secrets of Blackmoor: The True History of Dungeons & Dragons. Instead of telling themselves because those who pioneered D&D played a wargame before they did their intentions for D&D was that it be primarily about combat.
As I said before Arneson conceived of the idea of a roleplaying game as we know it by doing two things:
(1) adding a referee to adjudicate those things combat rules did not cover;
(2) doing this to create a game that was more about emergent storytelling in fictional worlds than just simulating combat.
Both Arneson and Gygax sought to create a game that went well beyond combat. Both ran and played games that went well beyond combat. Games in which worlds evolved. In which characters played very active roles in those worlds beyond just fighting in them for gold and glory.
That doesn't mean your game must emulate how they played and how many others did play or prefer to play still.
You can play how you want. But stop rewriting history.
I don't want to put words into the mouth of the person you are arguing with, but all they've said (as far as I can tell) is that the sourcebook rules were combat heavy since the beginning, and due to that, the main rules support in the game has always been combat.
I don't think they've once suggested that's the "correct" or "best" way to play; simply that if tables were running role-play heavy campaigns with little combat in the early days, it was in spite of the official released materials, not because of it.
Some in this thread could really use reading Jon Peterson's Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People, and Fantastic Adventures from Chess to Role-Playing Games and The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity. Watching Secrets of Blackmoor: The True History of Dungeons & Dragons. Instead of telling themselves because those who pioneered D&D played a wargame before they did their intentions for D&D was that it be primarily about combat.
As I said before Arneson conceived of the idea of a roleplaying game as we know it by doing two things:
(1) adding a referee to adjudicate those things combat rules did not cover;
(2) doing this to create a game that was more about emergent storytelling in fictional worlds than just simulating combat.
Both Arneson and Gygax sought to create a game that went well beyond combat. Both ran and played games that went well beyond combat. Games in which worlds evolved. In which characters played very active roles in those worlds beyond just fighting in them for gold and glory.
That doesn't mean your game must emulate how they played and how many others did play or prefer to play still.
You can play how you want. But stop rewriting history.
I don't want to put words into the mouth of the person you are arguing with, but all they've said (as far as I can tell) is that the sourcebook rules were combat heavy since the beginning, and due to that, the main rules support in the game has always been combat.
I don't think they've once suggested that's the "correct" or "best" way to play; simply that if tables were running role-play heavy campaigns with little combat in the early days, it was in spite of the official released materials, not because of it.
They have been arguing for almost a day about how "the most significant part of the game"—their words— is moments of combat. They have said D&D is not really about telling a story. When historically the game was developed as one in which emergent storytelling would take place in fictional worlds. They have said —contrary to what you are now saying—D&D is probably not the right game for those who want more of a focus on things other than combat. They have suggested the "Dungeons" in Dungeons & Dragons is there because it started as a game about "assaulting a dungeon." Which is laughable. Because even Gygax and Arneson both played in and ran extensive campaigns that were more about the worlds in which they took place and how those worlds evolved due to how the characters in them interacted with them than they were just fighting dragons. So no. Their point has not simply been that there is a greater focus on combat in the rulebooks. And to that point I mentioned how Arneson conceived of the idea of a roleplaying game by introducing a referee to adjudicate for those things not determined by the combat rules. So the game could be about so much more. About the stories we could tell at our tables. In which combat might take place. They have not replied to this particular point. The very beginnings of the game of D&D began with asking why just fight when we can do so much more? It began with Arneson and others seeking to roleplay the roles of commanding officers in a wargame. To make them do and say things. To make them be someone. To weave their stories. It began with wondering why stage historical battles when stories could be told in fictional worlds like those they read about. To make anything possible. To allow players to choose to do practically anything when interacting with those fictional worlds. Anything. But we are supposed to believe because the rules for running a game are so focused on combat that combat is "the most significant part of the game"? They have tirelessly disregarded the very definition of a roleplaying game and how Gygax and Arneson themselves approached the game of D&D to assert D&D is really a combat-oriented game. It's worth noting that many of the even simplest of earlier modules would have more things to do in them than they would mere encounters. Rooms with puzzles and traps say. And this isn't to go into the interactions between fully fledged NPCs who were not just bags of HP in those that were more vast in scale and range.
The rulebooks gave more space to combat because players were required to roleplay just about everything else.
Amazing that this should be the case in what is known as a roleplaying game.
If the rules focus on those used to resolve combat it is because none are required for most everything else.
Few are those roleplaying games with complex rules for social interactions. Because there is no need to gamify what can be roleplayed.
Again the very development of these games as we know them began because Arneson took a wargame and figured that he could take games beyond just combat by imbuing those figures on the table with personalities and histories and placing them in fictional worlds like those in the fiction that inspired him and his peers. To add to this formula a referee who could adjudicate those roleplayed elements.
Earlier editions of D&D did not even have skills other than those thieves were capable of. Players would say what they wanted to do. Describe this. And the referee would determine the outcome or call for a roll. Just because ample space in the rulebooks wasn't dedicated to how to manage skills doesn't mean people didn't try to do anything but fight. The entire premise that so much has gone into those rules used to resolve combat and this somehow means it's "the most significant part of the game" is to completely miss the point of what makes a roleplaying game a roleplaying game.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with combat-light or combat-free D&D. However, I don't think that's playing to the system's strengths. There are other games that do combatless or narrative/exploration/intrigue/social-heavy far better.
Imagine if you will a bunch of male grognards telling a group of female players who want to play a game of D&D with minimal violence that is more focused on other things in a setting say inspired by the more YA novels of Andre Norton (a major influence on Gygax by the way) or the romantic fantasy of Mercedes Lackey and of others like her to maybe go play something else because without the violence D&D just ain't D&D ...
That would be a little thing we call gatekeeping.
Are you saying someone who had experienced trauma and who did not handle violence very well but who wished to try D&D should be told Yeah maybe it's not the game for you because violence is just so integral to the game? Seriously?
I have known parents over the years to use D&D to run games for their kids inspired by media they like.
Today there may very well be other games that may be more conducive to what these people are looking for. But if someone wants to do this with D&D who are you to tell them otherwise? It's not as if expansive campaigns haven't taken place using D&D over the years and these more about managing guilds and kingdoms and the like than they were fighting. So how do you figure it's just not cut out for this sort of stuff?
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay's rules are similar in that most concern combat. Its most well received published campaign for almost forty years has remained one of intrigue and not just let's now fight the thing in the next room. Here is what someone said about the first book in this six-volume campaign series:
"Politics, history or religion, everything is covered! It is more focused on role playing than on combat."
Emphasis mine.
And as has already been pointed out few are those games whose rules extensively cover social interaction because there is no need to gamify what can just be roleplayed.
When your insistence on D&D being a combat-oriented game leads you down the path of telling people they are playing it wrong or playing the wrong game or they ought to go play something else you have become what you claim to be resisting for the sake of argument. A gatekeeper.
This thread has been fascinating for me. For years, I've been seeing a constant litany of complaints about 5e from DMs of older editions (which is to say, pre-3e) because it drives character attachment too much. We shouldn't be so invested in the characters and it should be about raiding dungeons and seeing how far your build gets before it gets itself killed. And when they die? Well, no worries! If Romulo Ironheart gets killed, just put a II next to his name, his son mysteriously steps up, and keep playing. When he dies, just add another tally mark.
Their chief complaint about 5e is the plot armour characters get, which is the mechanics chasing the desire of players to invest in their character and their story...which means they need to survive - at least for a while. Honestly, I'm not sure a week has gone by without someone complaining about 5e because it's abandoned the core precepts of D&D over this.
It's literally the first time I've ever seen anyone not only claim that the early editions were about the story (rather than the players trying to survive the DM's fights), but also that it's the other way around - 5e is all about fights and that early D&D was about story. It's been really interesting seeing this very different point of view.
I got to wondering: Do we really need so many melee classes? Melee classes include fighters, barbarians, rangers, paladins, rogues, warlocks, bards, druids, clerics .. and wizards. Actually, the only class in the entire game that doesn't really have any viable melee option is the sorcerer.
Maybe the real question is 'do we need so many classes?'
I think you're really stretching the idea of "melee" classes here. Wizards have one subclass that works as a melee (to my memory and view, maybe I've missed others). All the other Casters you mention really aren't melee unless you specifically build for it, and are like calling Barbarians Casters because they have a Subclass that can cast spells. Fighter and Barbarian kind of have a fuzzy boundary - Barbarians get Rage, Fighters hit more often. Ranger and Paladin have more daylight between them but are still close. Wizards/Sorcerers and Clerics/Bards are other pairings that are a bit close.
I don't think they need to cut classes, and they could even add more, but I would like it if for 6e they worked in making the classes more genuinely distinct. Out of the Casters, only the Warlock feels distinct and like they actually have a different source of power from the others - despite there being at least three different "Sources of Power" for Casters in the game.
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The pioneers of the hobby themselves—Gygax and Arneson—played in campaigns that stretched over years in which the characters and their stories and their interactions with the campaign worlds in which they played and with those in them were front and center. With combat just something that happened from time to time and that was a part of that story. They ran Western Marches-style campaigns that were more about the worlds and those in them and how these evolved than they were about mere fighting. The only historical revision going on is yours.
EDIT: OD&D came with supplements for entire campaign settings. The idea that it was just about "assaulting a dungeon" is laughable. Do you honestly believe the purpose of the game is reducible to its name?
And again this is funny: Because this is the charge leveled against so many rules-light games. They "can't" do anything but dungeon crawling!
Many TSR and Judges Guild supplements were focused on that immersion in a world. Were rich in detail about these worlds and those in them. What the rules facilitated is beside the point. The very beginnings of the hobby were about moving away from wargames that were purely combat games and aiming for emergent storytelling in fictional worlds.
Your emphasis on what the rules cover is ignoring how old-school D&D was more rulings not rules. The rules were there for the referee. To inform decisions that he or she would make. But many if not even most things that would happen were—and probably even remain so at most tables—independent of the rules.
The very moment that roleplaying games as we now know them were born is arguably the moment Arneson thought to himself what if these Napoleonic soldiers had names and lives and could do things for which there were no rules? If it wasn't just about fighting. Let's add a referee to adjudicate these sorts of things. That is what made a roleplaying game a roleplaying game. Now you want to pretend all else is secondary to the very thing Arneson sought to make secondary.
I own shelves' worth of old D&D and AD&D resources. No matter how many pages are given to how combat is resolved in the Player's Handbook it does not compare to the pages dedicated to world-building and NPCs who aren't just bags of HP not to mention the worlds of our own we have crafted and the stories we have woven in them.
D&D is, after all, originally derived from a war game.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Correction: it was derived from taking a wargame and imagining if all those miniatures had names and lives and stories to tell. And adding a referee to adjudicate what the combat rules did not facilitate.
You can read academic histories of the hobby—not to mention see how Gygax and Arneson played—that make fairly clear the game was about getting beyond just combat and being more about emergent storytelling in fictional worlds.
Combat has been a part of most games. It's fun and can serve as a great storytelling device itself. But it is neither necessary nor what is most important. To some tables perhaps. Not to all. Are you telling me a group consisting of people who are big fans of the fiction of this or that fantasy author using D&D to play a game with greater emphasis on roleplaying and character interaction are playing "the wrong game"? Because people have been using the D&D system to run games in all manner of worlds and to achieve all manner of things for fifty years. If you need to be reminded.
EDIT: Let's say a group of players prefer the romantic fantasy of authors like Mercedes Lackey than they do that of authors whose works are filled with violence. Now while this group of let's say women more into romantic fantasy than what your idea of fantasy is could find a game whose rules or lack of them might be more conducive to this type of game what would you call players who told them to go away and play something else because D&D has "always mostly been about the fighting"? Sounds awfully gatekeeper-y to me.
He's not wrong. In the context of a game where bonuses scale upwards, a constant target number either becomes trivial, or starts out insurmountable. Both are bad design. A non-scaling fixed failure chance with bad consequences for basic powers is also not so hot.
Having never played shadowdark, I cannot speak as to its implementation, but shoehorned into 5e, it would be bad.
I do not rule out the possibility that you enjoyed it, but for the majority of players, it sucked. The badness of low-level wizards was oft explained as a balancing factor for them being so great later, but that excuse is a crock. It just means the design was bad at both ends.
You keep harping on this, and four ENNIEs is so unprecedented that it last happened in 2023 if I read correctly. Three awards seems pretty much a given for anything winning the bigger categories. Five has happened as well. The ENNIEs have a lot of categories, with significant overlap. ("Best game", "best rules", "product of the year", for instance.)
Is shadowdark good at achieving what it sets out to do? Maybe; I cannot opine. Is it popular in your circles? Certainly seems so, but I'd've likely never heard of it if not for 2-3 of you harping on about it. Is it taking the world of tabletop RPGs by storm? Can't say it has been.
Does any of this mean D&D should be more like shadowdark? No.
Assuming I recall you mentioning your start date correctly, longer than you.
A system's purpose is what it does. A game's players will focus on engaging with the mechanics that are provided. D&D has always, first and foremost, provided combat mechanics. Third edition was the point at which they started providing real mechanics for anything else. People have always done more on the edges, but the core loop of old D&D for most people was "go into dungeon, fight monsters, find treasure". They even encouraged wandering monster tables to make sure your dungeon crawl was regularly punctuated with combat.
Say what? This literally describes no rules-light game I'm aware of, except probably Dungeon World. But then, I already knew we existed in entirely different RPG spheres.
Yes.
I am aware that it was a thing that was mentioned in 1e. I do not recall there being any meaningful support for a GM to make it happen and make it interesting. I expect most high-level play that engaged with it at all went something like "Fast forward Now there's an evil enemy threatening your domains.Time to go and stop it." Same basic game, but more epic in scope.
D&D has, over the generations, become less and less about the archetypal dungeon crawl, and more about story. Did Keep on the Borderlands have a story of note? Tomb of Horrors? Expedition to the Barrier Peaks?
Because I'm not the straw man you think I am? That I acknowledge that D&D is a game designed first for combat does not mean that I prefer it to other parts of the experience, much less that it's all I care about.
Given its direct descent from Chainmail, I find myself skeptical that 3e was the first time that assumption was made, if it even was. (4e certainly assumed miniatures, but 4e was a radical break with what had come before.)
Which is entirely irrelevant as long as it wasn't published.
D&D was first published in 1974; AD&D was first published in 1977. The first dedicated setting books were published in 1987. Sure, a name can be deceptive... but for early D&D, it wasn't.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with combat-light or combat-free D&D. However, I don't think that's playing to the system's strengths. There are other games that do combatless or narrative/exploration/intrigue/social-heavy far better.
I was not merely talking about the ENNIEs ShadowDark got: You even quoted me talking about the praise and promotion it has received. By which I mean prominent YouTubers in the hobby and so on. Just because you might now exist and play in a 5E bubble does not mean the rest of us have to.
You have been playing for more than 41 years but you believe all those supplements for campaign settings rich in detail and in their descriptions of NPCs et cetera et cetera and all those Western Marches-style campaigns that saw their worlds evolve with every session means combat has really always been the true focus of the game?
Not the emergent storytelling in fictional worlds that—you know—defines what a roleplaying game is according to even those who have studied the history of the hobby like Jon Peterson.
I have never played Dungeon World. Many games—in fact just about any OSR game including Old School Essentials despite its essentially being Moldvay/Cook and that ruleset being more than capable of handling things beyond dungeon crawling and older OSR games like Swords & Wizardry and and newer ones like Knave and Into the Odd and even now ShadowDark—get accused of being just for dungeon crawling. They might be more conducive to this provided their rules. But no more than D&D. So yes it would seem you are in that bubble if you are truly oblivious to this.
Did you never own anything from Judges Guild? You have never picked up over all those years of gaming anything by them? How about by others producing game content for OD&D and AD&D? Anything by Gabor Lux or others today producing the sorts of resources Judges Guild and TSR once produced that you seem to be of the mind never were? Look at 2nd. Edition and what we got with Planescape alone. Not just a boxed campaign setting. Boxed sets for different planes et cetera et cetera.
Domain-level play with players managing guilds and kingdoms and so on was supported. And these were things we would roleplay in extensive campaigns. You don't just get to erase people's experiences by pretending how you might play D&D is how everyone plays D&D.
Let me ask you what I asked someone else:
Let's say a group of players prefer the romantic fantasy of authors like Mercedes Lackey than they do that of authors whose works are filled with violence. Now while this group of let's say women more into romantic fantasy than what your idea of fantasy is could find a game whose rules or lack of them might be more conducive to this type of game what would you call players who told them to go away and play something else because D&D has "always mostly been about the fighting"? Sounds awfully gatekeeper-y to me.
You said you have been playing for over 41 years. But now you are leaning on skepticism and apparently just not knowing how earlier editions you would have been playing yourself made pretty clear miniatures might be used but that theater of the mind suffices?
Arneson conceived of the idea of a roleplaying game as we know it by doing two things:
(1) adding a referee to adjudicate those things combat rules would did not cover;
(2) doing this to create a game that was more about emergent storytelling in fictional worlds than just simulating combat.
OD&D had supplements for both Blackmoor (Arneson's campaign world) and Greyhawk (Gygax's campaign world). So now you are just making things up.
Neither book actually included setting information.
Blackmoor
Greyhawk
This thread is quickly degenerating into But that's not how you play D&D and if you want to play this or that type of game you should probably go play something else from the very people who most insist there is no one right way to play and who most complain about what they have perceived as gatekeeping. It's poetically ironic.
What is happening right now to those complaining about art in the 2024 PHB because much of it isn't depicting combat and some of it is depicting more domestic scenes? Those people are being told D&D is about more than just fighting dragons. That characters do lead lives outside of the dungeon. That some players even like to run whole games that revolve more around what most might consider just downtime activities. I have known female gamers over the years who ran more romantic fantasy themed campaigns. This might not be my cup of tea but I ain't about to tell them D&D ain't the game for them. Because I am not a jerk.
I stand corrected.
But the names provided those supplements were the names of those pioneers' respective settings. And the fact is both ran and played extensive campaigns more about emergent storytelling in fictional settings of their own creation than mere fighting.
Judges Guild were providing setting resources during the lifecycles of OD&D and AD&D before TSR would publish one.
Do you honestly believe because we did not see a published campaign setting from TSR for a while none of us played that way? We all just fought one thing after another? We all just ran through published modules? We never came up with our own things? As if DIY/homebrew has never been at the heart of the hobby? I played D&D extensively between '83 and around about '96 or '97 and I don't think I ever ran a single published adventure. I would harvest ideas from fantasy fiction and create worlds of my own inspired by these. And typically run these as sandboxes.
I started with the Mentzer red box. Friends of mine and I played in things like Howard's Hyborian Age before there was ever published content for the game set in it because we loved Conan comics. Even with the comparatively minimal rules of Basic D&D we crafted stories more than just went from one fight to another.
Some in this thread could really use reading Jon Peterson's Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People, and Fantastic Adventures from Chess to Role-Playing Games and The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity. Watching Secrets of Blackmoor: The True History of Dungeons & Dragons. Instead of telling themselves because those who pioneered D&D played a wargame before they did their intentions for D&D was that it be primarily about combat.
As I said before Arneson conceived of the idea of a roleplaying game as we know it by doing two things:
(1) adding a referee to adjudicate those things combat rules did not cover;
(2) doing this to create a game that was more about emergent storytelling in fictional worlds than just simulating combat.
Both Arneson and Gygax sought to create a game that went well beyond combat. Both ran and played games that went well beyond combat. Games in which worlds evolved. In which characters played very active roles in those worlds beyond just fighting in them for gold and glory.
That doesn't mean your game must emulate how they played and how many others did play or prefer to play still.
You can play how you want. But stop rewriting history.
I'd love to see more martial base classes along with a sorcerer divine class. Frankly I've been playing 5e since the playtest off and on and I don't find any of the classes interesting anymore. Subclasses don't really help much either cus its still "A ranger but with..." I've just been there done that too much. I think 2e with the options and 3e held my interest longer because you had kits/prestige classes along with a longer skill list so I could flavor the ranger up in a lot more ways to make it a little different than my last ranger. Right now your pretty much limited to a few subclasses and spells to change it up.
As far as "sorcerer divine class", I believe that's called the Divine Soul Sorcerer.
I got to wondering: Do we really need so many melee classes? Melee classes include fighters, barbarians, rangers, paladins, rogues, warlocks, bards, druids, clerics .. and wizards. Actually, the only class in the entire game that doesn't really have any viable melee option is the sorcerer.
Maybe the real question is 'do we need so many classes?'
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I don't want to put words into the mouth of the person you are arguing with, but all they've said (as far as I can tell) is that the sourcebook rules were combat heavy since the beginning, and due to that, the main rules support in the game has always been combat.
I don't think they've once suggested that's the "correct" or "best" way to play; simply that if tables were running role-play heavy campaigns with little combat in the early days, it was in spite of the official released materials, not because of it.
They have been arguing for almost a day about how "the most significant part of the game"—their words— is moments of combat. They have said D&D is not really about telling a story. When historically the game was developed as one in which emergent storytelling would take place in fictional worlds. They have said —contrary to what you are now saying—D&D is probably not the right game for those who want more of a focus on things other than combat. They have suggested the "Dungeons" in Dungeons & Dragons is there because it started as a game about "assaulting a dungeon." Which is laughable. Because even Gygax and Arneson both played in and ran extensive campaigns that were more about the worlds in which they took place and how those worlds evolved due to how the characters in them interacted with them than they were just fighting dragons. So no. Their point has not simply been that there is a greater focus on combat in the rulebooks. And to that point I mentioned how Arneson conceived of the idea of a roleplaying game by introducing a referee to adjudicate for those things not determined by the combat rules. So the game could be about so much more. About the stories we could tell at our tables. In which combat might take place. They have not replied to this particular point. The very beginnings of the game of D&D began with asking why just fight when we can do so much more? It began with Arneson and others seeking to roleplay the roles of commanding officers in a wargame. To make them do and say things. To make them be someone. To weave their stories. It began with wondering why stage historical battles when stories could be told in fictional worlds like those they read about. To make anything possible. To allow players to choose to do practically anything when interacting with those fictional worlds. Anything. But we are supposed to believe because the rules for running a game are so focused on combat that combat is "the most significant part of the game"? They have tirelessly disregarded the very definition of a roleplaying game and how Gygax and Arneson themselves approached the game of D&D to assert D&D is really a combat-oriented game. It's worth noting that many of the even simplest of earlier modules would have more things to do in them than they would mere encounters. Rooms with puzzles and traps say. And this isn't to go into the interactions between fully fledged NPCs who were not just bags of HP in those that were more vast in scale and range.
The rulebooks gave more space to combat because players were required to roleplay just about everything else.
Amazing that this should be the case in what is known as a roleplaying game.
If the rules focus on those used to resolve combat it is because none are required for most everything else.
Few are those roleplaying games with complex rules for social interactions. Because there is no need to gamify what can be roleplayed.
Again the very development of these games as we know them began because Arneson took a wargame and figured that he could take games beyond just combat by imbuing those figures on the table with personalities and histories and placing them in fictional worlds like those in the fiction that inspired him and his peers. To add to this formula a referee who could adjudicate those roleplayed elements.
Earlier editions of D&D did not even have skills other than those thieves were capable of. Players would say what they wanted to do. Describe this. And the referee would determine the outcome or call for a roll. Just because ample space in the rulebooks wasn't dedicated to how to manage skills doesn't mean people didn't try to do anything but fight. The entire premise that so much has gone into those rules used to resolve combat and this somehow means it's "the most significant part of the game" is to completely miss the point of what makes a roleplaying game a roleplaying game.
Imagine if you will a bunch of male grognards telling a group of female players who want to play a game of D&D with minimal violence that is more focused on other things in a setting say inspired by the more YA novels of Andre Norton (a major influence on Gygax by the way) or the romantic fantasy of Mercedes Lackey and of others like her to maybe go play something else because without the violence D&D just ain't D&D ...
That would be a little thing we call gatekeeping.
Are you saying someone who had experienced trauma and who did not handle violence very well but who wished to try D&D should be told Yeah maybe it's not the game for you because violence is just so integral to the game? Seriously?
I have known parents over the years to use D&D to run games for their kids inspired by media they like.
Today there may very well be other games that may be more conducive to what these people are looking for. But if someone wants to do this with D&D who are you to tell them otherwise? It's not as if expansive campaigns haven't taken place using D&D over the years and these more about managing guilds and kingdoms and the like than they were fighting. So how do you figure it's just not cut out for this sort of stuff?
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay's rules are similar in that most concern combat. Its most well received published campaign for almost forty years has remained one of intrigue and not just let's now fight the thing in the next room. Here is what someone said about the first book in this six-volume campaign series:
"Politics, history or religion, everything is covered! It is more focused on role playing than on combat."
Emphasis mine.
And as has already been pointed out few are those games whose rules extensively cover social interaction because there is no need to gamify what can just be roleplayed.
When your insistence on D&D being a combat-oriented game leads you down the path of telling people they are playing it wrong or playing the wrong game or they ought to go play something else you have become what you claim to be resisting for the sake of argument. A gatekeeper.
This thread has been fascinating for me. For years, I've been seeing a constant litany of complaints about 5e from DMs of older editions (which is to say, pre-3e) because it drives character attachment too much. We shouldn't be so invested in the characters and it should be about raiding dungeons and seeing how far your build gets before it gets itself killed. And when they die? Well, no worries! If Romulo Ironheart gets killed, just put a II next to his name, his son mysteriously steps up, and keep playing. When he dies, just add another tally mark.
Their chief complaint about 5e is the plot armour characters get, which is the mechanics chasing the desire of players to invest in their character and their story...which means they need to survive - at least for a while. Honestly, I'm not sure a week has gone by without someone complaining about 5e because it's abandoned the core precepts of D&D over this.
It's literally the first time I've ever seen anyone not only claim that the early editions were about the story (rather than the players trying to survive the DM's fights), but also that it's the other way around - 5e is all about fights and that early D&D was about story. It's been really interesting seeing this very different point of view.
Anyways.
I think you're really stretching the idea of "melee" classes here. Wizards have one subclass that works as a melee (to my memory and view, maybe I've missed others). All the other Casters you mention really aren't melee unless you specifically build for it, and are like calling Barbarians Casters because they have a Subclass that can cast spells. Fighter and Barbarian kind of have a fuzzy boundary - Barbarians get Rage, Fighters hit more often. Ranger and Paladin have more daylight between them but are still close. Wizards/Sorcerers and Clerics/Bards are other pairings that are a bit close.
I don't think they need to cut classes, and they could even add more, but I would like it if for 6e they worked in making the classes more genuinely distinct. Out of the Casters, only the Warlock feels distinct and like they actually have a different source of power from the others - despite there being at least three different "Sources of Power" for Casters in the 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.