Here's the other thing this group of "old guard" players do not like to admit, even though it is objectively true - they can pretend all they like that the game is "too friendly" and "does not have any risk", but the real problem? They are just bad at balancing 5e. Even with death saves, multiattack creatures, even low-level monsters, can easily take out a downed player. Very simple tweaks to game design can instantly make 5e as deadly as the DM wants (just like AD&D recommended very simple tweaks to make the game as safe as the DM wants).
How many players' characters have died in the games you have run?
I can't speak for Caerwyn, but in my games over the last decade, death is slightly less frequent in 5e.
But death in those games has been fairly consistent at around one every 3 to 5 Sessions or so. Of course, this is still D&D, so it doesn't stick around -- there's always been a way to bring PCs back from death, and my folks have no problem heading out to do that.
Now, I will also note that my default measure for encounters is "hard", that combat is only about 20% of my game, and that I budget according to what I call an "episode", which is a series of events ("Scenes") within a larger adventure, and that I might spend an entire episode budget on just one encounter (Scene) (at hard, making it harder) though there will be plenty of other encounters (though not combat) in the same episode.
How a DM structures hings has an impact on lethality, even according to RAW rules. I had fewer PCs die from 80 to 87 than I have had in the last 7 years equivalent.
Some of that is experience -- we were a LOT younger -- of the folks at the table, some of that is the core difference in systems (mages died really easily in 1e, and are tougher to kill and more effective in combat in 5e), but most of it is that I have a much more mixed group of players, typically, than in the past, in terms of age.
Now, in my "open game", which is a straight RAW 5e dungeon crawl, there's a death every week. Someone does something foolish, and I am a fiendish dungeon designer that suffers no fools.
Usually two to three. Not that it is a "killer dungeon" -- OG Tomb of Horrors is way more murderous. It is just that I am sneaky, calculating, and methodical. And all the encounters there are set to Medium. And I design dungeons and adventures and the rest without any knowledge of what the PCs are going to be -- everything is done beforehand.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Good question, with a big answer, big enough for a book actually, which is exactly what I'm working on. I should thank you because I was struggling with what to call it and I think "Old School Sensibilities" will definitely be that book's title.
On a very high level without getting into too much detail, there are two things that are characteristically different between old school D&D and modern D&D "playstyle" if we are not getting into specific playstyles like Dungeon Crawling and Dungeon Survival for example.
Skills vs. no skills: This is a key thing and one very simple way to bring 5e into old school style gaming is to just cut skills out of the game entirely.
Danger of death - Very simple to fix in 5e. Just change it to 1 missed death save = death.
Now I think there is a lot more to it, enough to write a 32 page book, but that goes into detail about certain classes, building up archetypes, making spells and feats more narratively focused rather than mechanically focused and of course controlling power creep at higher levels. The book Im writing focuses more on those key elements, but on a very simple level those two things get you more than half way there.
Have you though? Cut skills out of the game entirely? How do you find your players respond to this?
That however is kind of the contradiction of B/X, its claim is that "this is the version of the game for new, inexperienced players and DM's", but what it actually is, is the greatest challenge to run as a DM and one of the most unforgiving and toughest challenges for players. There is no question in my mind that the ultimate test of skill and attention to detail as a player is going to be playing B/X Raw using an adventure module like B2. The chances of you navigating that adventure and that system successfully without dying repeatedly is slim. Its a brutal game.
Interestingly enough Edward Bluddworth had a video just the other day insisting the opposite is true. That it is much easier to DM older editions of the game and OSR games than it is to DM 5E.
I was ten when I picked up Mentzer's 1983 revisions of B/X. And I read and understood the rules and ran the game with ease. Many a ten year old today might pick up the Starter Set and manage the same. The full rules? I've watched many close to my age struggle to remember how things work in 5E the game now suffers from such colossal rules bloat. In comparison the Basic and Expert rulebooks were 64 pages in length.
I have considered donating my OSE books to my school's library. A solid clone of B/X. And one I am sure the average fifth or sixth grader will be perfectly capable of getting it. I will be running a different variant of these old rules for my next game. I tried running 5E and while the players enjoyed themselves I found it to be the least rewarding of systems I have ever run.
I saw that video and he makes some good points but his entire thesis is about knowing the subtle art of things like DM adjudication is easy. The basic premise of B/X is that "you can just make stuff up, you are the DM" and this just somehow works out and is presumed to be an inherited skill we all have. Its simply not true.
It's not easy at all. It's actually super hard for most people and the entire evolution of D&D since 1e has been squarely focused on trying to create architecture for the game that instructs you on how to do this well but more importantly creating mechanics so that you don't have to.
Systems like 5e are certainly more complex mechanically, but the instructions are clear and if you follow them, you will have a very fun and very stable game. So it's only as hard as reading and understanding the rules. It's not super easy but it's quite within the range of the average person to learn the rules.
To run 1e well, you have to learn the nuanced philosophy of running a free-form, interactive story game in which the mechanics are designed to kill characters outright if they do not act with narrative precision. Going through an adventure like B2 without characters dying left and right takes master-level role-playing out of a group. It's an insanely difficult adventure and that is the starting point of the game. Old school gamers don't acknowledge this, especially DM's who view characters dying left and right as a normal part of the game, not really recognizing that a character dying ruins the game for most people. They don't want that to be a norm at a game session but it very much is. In a B/X game a character or two will die every session, its quite normal unless you playing with a very elite squad of extremely focused and conscious players. A skill that takes years to learn and decades to master.
Edward is a salesmen, he wants to sell the idea that old-school D&D is easy and fun, to a degree I agree with him. The rules are easy to understand the game is super fun. But being successful running and playing 1e B/X, that requires tremendous experience and skill to pull of.
Here is the thing: WHY does a character dying ruin the game for a player? Back in the day, it was simply accepted, as part of the game. Most people did not get emotional when a PC died. Yes, it did happen. I TPK'ed a group because they made an incredibly stupid decision, and the one player is still bitter over 35 years later. But overall, most people just went on with the game.
Good question, with a big answer, big enough for a book actually, which is exactly what I'm working on. I should thank you because I was struggling with what to call it and I think "Old School Sensibilities" will definitely be that book's title.
On a very high level without getting into too much detail, there are two things that are characteristically different between old school D&D and modern D&D "playstyle" if we are not getting into specific playstyles like Dungeon Crawling and Dungeon Survival for example.
Skills vs. no skills: This is a key thing and one very simple way to bring 5e into old school style gaming is to just cut skills out of the game entirely.
Danger of death - Very simple to fix in 5e. Just change it to 1 missed death save = death.
Now I think there is a lot more to it, enough to write a 32 page book, but that goes into detail about certain classes, building up archetypes, making spells and feats more narratively focused rather than mechanically focused and of course controlling power creep at higher levels. The book Im writing focuses more on those key elements, but on a very simple level those two things get you more than half way there.
Have you though? Cut skills out of the game entirely? How do you find your players respond to this?
Well my players are quite accustomed and comfortable with a system without skills. Its one of the fundamentals of old-school gaming that skills aren't really a part of the game. Resolution of actions is negotiated, usually based on race, class, backgrounds, backstories and general application of narrative logic. It's just a style of play.
You get used to it pretty quickly, but I wouldn't do it unless my players want to do it. One of the main outcomes is that there is just a lot more DM-Player narrative interaction rather than mechanical execution.
Honestly, since most 1e players ignored the rules on death, and just treated 0 and the end, there is a lot of disconnect on the lethality thing.
B/X, which is not part of the edition naming (it is ignored entirely by WotC, which paid to not have to publish it anymore), did have the 0 = dead rule.
1e did not; you had to go to -10 to die. It also took 10 minutes to die if you were not attacked.
so a lot of folks think that when folks talk about “old D&D”, they think people mean AD&D, since that is 1e.
what folks talking about lethality really mean is the B/X rules. So, really, B/X p,Ayer’s were apparently less likely to pick up their friend and run to get a raise dead. Which says a lot about the players…
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I saw that video and he makes some good points but his entire thesis is about knowing the subtle art of things like DM adjudication is easy. The basic premise of B/X is that "you can just make stuff up, you are the DM" and this just somehow works out and is presumed to be an inherited skill we all have. Its simply not true.
It's not easy at all. It's actually super hard for most people and the entire evolution of D&D since 1e has been squarely focused on trying to create architecture for the game that instructs you on how to do this well but more importantly creating mechanics so that you don't have to.
Systems like 5e are certainly more complex mechanically, but the instructions are clear and if you follow them, you will have a very fun and very stable game. So it's only as hard as reading and understanding the rules. It's not super easy but it's quite within the range of the average person to learn the rules.
To run 1e well, you have to learn the nuanced philosophy of running a free-form, interactive story game in which the mechanics are designed to kill characters outright if they do not act with narrative precision. Going through an adventure like B2 without characters dying left and right takes master-level role-playing out of a group. It's an insanely difficult adventure and that is the starting point of the game. Old school gamers don't acknowledge this, especially DM's who view characters dying left and right as a normal part of the game, not really recognizing that a character dying ruins the game for most people. They don't want that to be a norm at a game session but it very much is. In a B/X game a character or two will die every session, its quite normal unless you playing with a very elite squad of extremely focused and conscious players. A skill that takes years to learn and decades to master.
Edward is a salesmen, he wants to sell the idea that old-school D&D is easy and fun, to a degree I agree with him. The rules are easy to understand the game is super fun. But being successful running and playing 1e B/X, that requires tremendous experience and skill to pull of.
I must have been quite the exceptional ten year old then to have had no trouble running BECMI. As must have been many kids who would run B/X successfully. It's not for no reason it is the most popular iteration of the game in the OSR. The movement is home to many who started with those basic rules. I find it as easy as 123 to run games that are more freeform and not tethered to superfluous rules. It's literally just like child's play. I play in 5E games and even those I play with who have been running the system since 2014 constantly have to look things up. It's not "complexity" as much as it is the utter needlessness of so much of it.
These days the average player is constantly having to consult the rules—often using a phone or some other device at the table—because he or she can't remember every detail about every feature or spell made available to a character. I would argue that a game that runs well doesn't even need a copy of the rules at the table.
It takes "tremendous experience and skill" to be a good DM. No matter what version of the game one is running. The ease with which many a newcomer might read and understand 5E does not a good DM make. You can learn the rules of the game and still be terrible at running the thing. Creativity is more critical to be being a good DM than is how versed one is in the rules.
As for Bluddworth's motivations it's not as if he is alone in the OSR movement when it comes to promoting the idea that old school is easier and more fun to run and not just play—you will get the same message from more prominent figures in the OSR like Gavin Norman, Chris McDowall, David McGrogan, Ben Milton, Professor DM, Patrick Stuart, Ben Laurence, Gabor Lux, Paolo Greco, Logan Knight, Courtney C. Campbell, Luka Rejec ... and I could go on. You are a minority of one when it comes to interpreting the OSR the way you do. Literally the only person I have seen identify with the movement who claims running old-school games is harder than running 5E.
Here is the thing: WHY does a character dying ruin the game for a player? Back in the day, it was simply accepted, as part of the game. Most people did not get emotional when a PC died. Yes, it did happen. I TPK'ed a group because they made an incredibly stupid decision, and the one player is still bitter over 35 years later. But overall, most people just went on with the game.
Well, I think you illustrate the point quite concisely. Consider what you just said there. "The players made a stupid decision". That statement suggests that the DM is the arbitrator of deciding what is and isn't stupid and as you point out "I TPK'ed a group", which makes you the executioner. So as a DM you are the judge, jury and executioner. This is an accepted premise in old-school culture, but it is rejected in modern gaming culture.
The reason is that there is a social contract in modern games that the characters in the story are the main characters of the movie. If you're watching Conan The Barbarian, you don't expect Conan to die and even if he does, it's going to be at the end of the story in a pivotal final moment.
In old school gaming, your character is more like a soldier in Saving Private Ryan. Half of them are going to die running up the beach... then half of those are going to die during the trench fighting. And in the course of the movie, most of the characters are going to probably meet a grizzly end, but you know that going into that movie. Its accepted, it's war and you kind of try to survive as long as you can but most of the characters aren't going to make it.
Both methods can be dramatic, filled with role-playing and create amazing moments, but they are different approaches and it really just comes down to preference. One way isn't better or worse, its just different. Modern gamers like to have long narratives that are focused on individual characters that are developed over time, over the course of a larger ongoing plot. Players want to meet up every week for months at a time with the same characters and while character death itself is not outright rejected, they want it to be more meaningful than "you screwed up, so now your all dead".
Old school gaming is also centered around setting and ongoing stories but its built around the game world. So players know the world and in a meta way, wether their character lives or dies, the world continues and they must make new characters that rejoin it. Players write histories with their characters that add to the setting and to the DM's world and some contribute a lot when they do well over longer periods, while many characters are mere blips that fade in and out of existence quickly.
Well my players are quite accustomed and comfortable with a system without skills. Its one of the fundamentals of old-school gaming that skills aren't really a part of the game. Resolution of actions is negotiated, usually based on race, class, backgrounds, backstories and general application of narrative logic. It's just a style of play.
You get used to it pretty quickly, but I wouldn't do it unless my players want to do it. One of the main outcomes is that there is just a lot more DM-Player narrative interaction rather than mechanical execution.
So what are your thoughts on those who assert that skills are a "necessity"? How some here believe it is unfair if a player doesn't have a mechanical means to "persuade" or "deceive" an NPC? Must instead engage in that "DM-Player narrative interaction"?
In another thread you were asserting that games without rules for specific things aren't made for those things. I believe you went as far as saying ShadowDark had no rules for anything but dungeon crawling. When that isn't even true. You brought up how BECMI over time introduced rules specific for things and claimed before these things the game "wasn't" made for them. Even though those who played OD&D did just fine without such rules. You carried on as if before the Expert Set hit the shelves overland travel was just not possible in D&D or that adventuring parties were not supposed to engage in it. Which is absurd. Using just the B in BECMI I ran every imaginable type of campaign. It was the only ruleset I owned for years. For many others the same was true of its predecessor.
Now you are saying a skill system is just not necessary in order for characters to perform tasks beyond combat. So which is it?
Here is the thing: WHY does a character dying ruin the game for a player? Back in the day, it was simply accepted, as part of the game. Most people did not get emotional when a PC died. Yes, it did happen. I TPK'ed a group because they made an incredibly stupid decision, and the one player is still bitter over 35 years later. But overall, most people just went on with the game.
Well, I think you illustrate the point quite concisely. Consider what you just said there. "The players made a stupid decision". That statement suggests that the DM is the arbitrator of deciding what is and isn't stupid and as you point out "I TPK'ed a group", which makes you the executioner. So as a DM you are the judge, jury and executioner. This is an accepted premise in old-school culture, but it is rejected in modern gaming culture.
The reason is that there is a social contract in modern games that the characters in the story are the main characters of the movie. If you're watching Conan The Barbarian, you don't expect Conan to die and even if he does, it's going to be at the end of the story in a pivotal final moment.
In old school gaming, your character is more like a soldier in Saving Private Ryan. Half of them are going to die running up the beach... then half of those are going to die during the trench fighting. And in the course of the movie, most of the characters are going to probably meet a grizzly end, but you know that going into that movie. Its accepted, it's war and you kind of try to survive as long as you can but most of the characters aren't going to make it.
Both methods can be dramatic, filled with role-playing and create amazing moments, but they are different approaches and it really just comes down to preference. One way isn't better or worse, its just different. Modern gamers like to have long narratives that are focused on individual characters that are developed over time, over the course of a larger ongoing plot. Players want to meet up every week for months at a time with the same characters and while character death itself is not outright rejected, they want it to be more meaningful than "you screwed up, so now your all dead".
Old school gaming is also centered around setting and ongoing stories but its built around the game world. So players know the world and in a meta way, wether their character lives or dies, the world continues and they must make new characters that rejoin it. Players write histories with their characters that add to the setting and to the DM's world and some contribute a lot when they do well over longer periods, while many characters are mere blips that fade in and out of existence quickly.
All right...some details might be necessary for the particular example I referenced. Then I will get into general philosophy.
The players' stupid decision: They were 9th level, 1e game, traversing the Underdark. The group had never been up against Mind Flayers, among other heavy hitters. They had never even seen them, but knew they were terrifyingly lethal. Anyway, I decided to give them a tableau. Not an encounter, but a vision of the dangers of the Underdark. The group comes over a rise and I describe what they see: A quarter mile away, they see 20 Mind Flayers fighting 20 Githyanki. Oh, and remember how the Gith had air support in the form of Red Dragons, per the lore? Well, there were 3, at 100 HP (I always thought 88 HP was too low, and I had passed the stat bloc to the players earlier), patrolling the battlefield. I explicitly stated to the group that the MF's, Gith, and Red Dragons DO NOT KNOW of the presence of the group, and they can continue on without incident.
But no, they say this to me: "We decide to attack." I ask, "Who?". They answer "Everyone". I then spend 20 minutes spin up the stat blocs for the monsters. The group then charges a quarter mile across broken ground to engage all the monsters....who knew that would end in a TPK.....
Now, referring to this general philosophy, who says there is some social contract in modern games that the characters in the story are the main characters of the movie? Why should it be any different than it was 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years ago? What has changed in the emotional makeup of human beings?
So what are your thoughts on those who assert that skills are a "necessity"? How some here believe it is unfair if a player doesn't have a mechanical means to "persuade" or "deceive" an NPC? Must instead engage in that "DM-Player narrative interaction"?
So... use skills if you think they are necessary. I'm illustrating how it worked and why you would use it based on a direct question, Im not giving you an instruction or making a case for which is better. Do whatever you want.
Im not going to address the rest of your comment as they are all strawman B.S., I never said or claimed any of those things to the extremes your suggestion nor derived the meaning your claiming on my behalf. You want to have a discussion, lets have one, you one to make up BS, do it with someone else.
Here is the thing: WHY does a character dying ruin the game for a player? Back in the day, it was simply accepted, as part of the game. Most people did not get emotional when a PC died. Yes, it did happen. I TPK'ed a group because they made an incredibly stupid decision, and the one player is still bitter over 35 years later. But overall, most people just went on with the game.
Well, I think you illustrate the point quite concisely. Consider what you just said there. "The players made a stupid decision". That statement suggests that the DM is the arbitrator of deciding what is and isn't stupid and as you point out "I TPK'ed a group", which makes you the executioner. So as a DM you are the judge, jury and executioner. This is an accepted premise in old-school culture, but it is rejected in modern gaming culture.
The reason is that there is a social contract in modern games that the characters in the story are the main characters of the movie. If you're watching Conan The Barbarian, you don't expect Conan to die and even if he does, it's going to be at the end of the story in a pivotal final moment.
In old school gaming, your character is more like a soldier in Saving Private Ryan. Half of them are going to die running up the beach... then half of those are going to die during the trench fighting. And in the course of the movie, most of the characters are going to probably meet a grizzly end, but you know that going into that movie. Its accepted, it's war and you kind of try to survive as long as you can but most of the characters aren't going to make it.
Both methods can be dramatic, filled with role-playing and create amazing moments, but they are different approaches and it really just comes down to preference. One way isn't better or worse, its just different. Modern gamers like to have long narratives that are focused on individual characters that are developed over time, over the course of a larger ongoing plot. Players want to meet up every week for months at a time with the same characters and while character death itself is not outright rejected, they want it to be more meaningful than "you screwed up, so now your all dead".
Old school gaming is also centered around setting and ongoing stories but its built around the game world. So players know the world and in a meta way, wether their character lives or dies, the world continues and they must make new characters that rejoin it. Players write histories with their characters that add to the setting and to the DM's world and some contribute a lot when they do well over longer periods, while many characters are mere blips that fade in and out of existence quickly.
All right...some details might be necessary for the particular example I referenced. Then I will get into general philosophy.
The players' stupid decision: They were 9th level, 1e game, traversing the Underdark. The group had never been up against Mind Flayers, among other heavy hitters. They had never even seen them, but knew they were terrifyingly lethal. Anyway, I decided to give them a tableau. Not an encounter, but a vision of the dangers of the Underdark. The group comes over a rise and I describe what they see: A quarter mile away, they see 20 Mind Flayers fighting 20 Githyanki. Oh, and remember how the Gith had air support in the form of Red Dragons, per the lore? Well, there were 3, at 100 HP (I always thought 88 HP was too low, and I had passed the stat bloc to the players earlier), patrolling the battlefield. I explicitly stated to the group that the MF's, Gith, and Red Dragons DO NOT KNOW of the presence of the group, and they can continue on without incident.
But no, they say this to me: "We decide to attack." I ask, "Who?". They answer "Everyone". I then spend 20 minutes spin up the stat blocs for the monsters. The group then charges a quarter mile across broken ground to engage all the monsters....who knew that would end in a TPK.....
Now, referring to this general philosophy, who says there is some social contract in modern games that the characters in the story are the main characters of the movie? Why should it be any different than it was 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years ago? What has changed in the emotional makeup of human beings?
Here is the thing: WHY does a character dying ruin the game for a player? Back in the day, it was simply accepted, as part of the game. Most people did not get emotional when a PC died. Yes, it did happen. I TPK'ed a group because they made an incredibly stupid decision, and the one player is still bitter over 35 years later. But overall, most people just went on with the game.
Well, I think you illustrate the point quite concisely. Consider what you just said there. "The players made a stupid decision". That statement suggests that the DM is the arbitrator of deciding what is and isn't stupid and as you point out "I TPK'ed a group", which makes you the executioner. So as a DM you are the judge, jury and executioner. This is an accepted premise in old-school culture, but it is rejected in modern gaming culture.
The reason is that there is a social contract in modern games that the characters in the story are the main characters of the movie. If you're watching Conan The Barbarian, you don't expect Conan to die and even if he does, it's going to be at the end of the story in a pivotal final moment.
In old school gaming, your character is more like a soldier in Saving Private Ryan. Half of them are going to die running up the beach... then half of those are going to die during the trench fighting. And in the course of the movie, most of the characters are going to probably meet a grizzly end, but you know that going into that movie. Its accepted, it's war and you kind of try to survive as long as you can but most of the characters aren't going to make it.
Both methods can be dramatic, filled with role-playing and create amazing moments, but they are different approaches and it really just comes down to preference. One way isn't better or worse, its just different. Modern gamers like to have long narratives that are focused on individual characters that are developed over time, over the course of a larger ongoing plot. Players want to meet up every week for months at a time with the same characters and while character death itself is not outright rejected, they want it to be more meaningful than "you screwed up, so now your all dead".
Old school gaming is also centered around setting and ongoing stories but its built around the game world. So players know the world and in a meta way, wether their character lives or dies, the world continues and they must make new characters that rejoin it. Players write histories with their characters that add to the setting and to the DM's world and some contribute a lot when they do well over longer periods, while many characters are mere blips that fade in and out of existence quickly.
All right...some details might be necessary for the particular example I referenced. Then I will get into general philosophy.
The players' stupid decision: They were 9th level, 1e game, traversing the Underdark. The group had never been up against Mind Flayers, among other heavy hitters. They had never even seen them, but knew they were terrifyingly lethal. Anyway, I decided to give them a tableau. Not an encounter, but a vision of the dangers of the Underdark. The group comes over a rise and I describe what they see: A quarter mile away, they see 20 Mind Flayers fighting 20 Githyanki. Oh, and remember how the Gith had air support in the form of Red Dragons, per the lore? Well, there were 3, at 100 HP (I always thought 88 HP was too low, and I had passed the stat bloc to the players earlier), patrolling the battlefield. I explicitly stated to the group that the MF's, Gith, and Red Dragons DO NOT KNOW of the presence of the group, and they can continue on without incident.
But no, they say this to me: "We decide to attack." I ask, "Who?". They answer "Everyone". I then spend 20 minutes spin up the stat blocs for the monsters. The group then charges a quarter mile across broken ground to engage all the monsters....who knew that would end in a TPK.....
Now, referring to this general philosophy, who says there is some social contract in modern games that the characters in the story are the main characters of the movie? Why should it be any different than it was 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years ago? What has changed in the emotional makeup of human beings?
Well, I certainly don't disagree in terms of assessment of the situation, that sounds like a pretty self-destructive decision, but that scenario you described and the original message of the post don't really line up. In this situation, your players walked into a combat they had ample information about, fought a battle and lost. That may be a foolish decision, but you (The DM) didn't TPK them, they TPK'ed themselves. This is not the same rationale as a DM judging characters' actions as foolish and arranging their death.
That practice of judge, jury, and executioner was fairly common back in the day mainly because it was supported by the AD&D DMG. Gygax was very vocal on the philosophy that foolish player characters should be killed as a punishment/consequence of actions deemed "foolish". It's that rationale for character death that has fallen out of favor in modern gaming.
In regards to social contracts, I mean, that's kind of the thing with social contracts is that they are not written, sometimes not even said, they are buried deep in gaming culture. I do think that the social contracts between classic D&D and modern D&D are not that different, but there are subtle things that I think can be identified, driven by philosophies and approaches to the game.
For example I would argue as you point out that old school gamers and in classic gaming there was a general social contract between DM and Player that, character death was very much on the table and this really wasn't up for discussion. If a player in the 80's suggested the characters get plot armor, most DM's and most gaming groups would adamantly object, as a core part of the allure of the game was the danger of character death, that was in a way ... the juice, what attracted players to the game. The whole risk vs. reward thing. This was very much supported in the architecture of the game with rules like 1 gold = 1 XP, limited XP for monster kills and the power curve being built around magic items. Everything was designed to draw you to dangerous places to explore at grave risk to find the goodies and this in a big way was kind of a center of the games meta. If you removed the high risk of character death from that, a key meta-motivation for players to play was rendered benign.
In modern gaming, the key driver to come to the table is quite different. Much of the focus and reason to play is the creation of characters tailored to a backstory with intricate details written in, with the intent that the DM would take those character stories and make them central to the campaign. That is kind of the main architecture of a modern 5e game. The main motivation is to explore those stories and find out how they play out and what creative ways the DM and player weave those characterizations into the game. Things like XP, magic items and gold, really don't play as much of a role in the game at all at modern tables.
I think based on those two philosophical differences in gaming culture you end up with slightly altered social contracts.
Its important to note though that these are generalizations because there are plenty of old-school gamers who were playing under what I'm calling modern gaming and plenty of modern gamers that still today using 5e play using the old school methods (Im one of those DM's). These things are cultural generalities that existed (exist) but every group is different and especially now, 10 years into 5e's life span, more and more cross-over takes place because these two different D&D cultures are mingling a lot more than ever before. 15 years ago old school gamers and modern gamers where at irreconcilable odds with each others playstyles, I don't think that is the case anymore. More and more old-school players are finding their way into modern games, influencing people from that direction and vice versus, more and more modern gamers are going back and trying old-school games and passing their influence along.
The idea of old-school gaming and modern gaming is becoming more difficult to identify as a result there is a lot more diversity in gaming today than at any other time before in terms of playstyles and preferences.
So when you ask the question "who says there is some social contract in modern games that the characters in the story are the main characters of the movie?" That's a tough question because "The Who" is filled with endless layers of grey areas. The difference between modern and old school used to be a lot clearer, but with 5e, its such a mixture of old school and modern gaming ideas that its developed almost into a new 3rd gaming culture. Old school being gamers from 2e and prior, modern gamers being 3rd-4th edition and than 5e gamers which are this new thing that is kind of a blending of both.
I do think it would be disingenuous to suggest that old school games where character-narrative driven. That simply wasn't the case. The game was very much a player-centric gamist challenge more than a game of narrative storytelling. You played to gain XP, find treasure, find magic items to level up to see if you could take on bigger and bigger challenges. The term "the story" was mostly what was dynamically generated from those interactions, but DM's didn't start writing plots and creating narrative-focused story games until well into the 90's when White Wolf starting showing off what storyteller systems can do and 2e AD&D tried to replicate that with their adventures. Even then, this concept was largely rejected by that generation of D&D players of the time because the gamist component was and still very much is considered to be first and foremost what D&D is. Adventures like the Dragonlance series for example that tried to create narrative-story-driven games were seen as being linear railroads not as a effort to injective more story into the game.
Since I've helped my kids and nephews break into 5e, I've been getting nostalgic for those crazy and dangerous days of 1st edition. No Dwarf Paladins, no funky Dragon-like races, pure AD&D. Has anyone else been tempted to go and revisit the old stomping grounds of '78 to '84?
To all the 5e folks, my question for you: Are you wondering what all the hype is about?
One crazy thought that was revealed to me recently: During my playing years, I was a DM longer than any single job I've held since I left school... what does that say I wonder.
I am nostalgic about AD&D but I have no interest going back and playing it. I was glad when 3E got rid of race restrictions on class and levels etc. Although I do find myself usually only looking at those core races/species when making characters.
"In modern gaming, the key driver to come to the table is quite different. Much of the focus and reason to play is the creation of characters tailored to a backstory with intricate details written in, with the intent that the DM would take those character stories and make them central to the campaign. That is kind of the main architecture of a modern 5e game. The main motivation is to explore those stories and find out how they play out and what creative ways the DM and player weave those characterizations into the game. Things like XP, magic items and gold, really don't play as much of a role in the game at all at modern tables."
That is called narcissism. How about playing a game where the players don't have main character syndrome. The game called D&D today is not a better game, for many reasons, but this has to be one of the key reasons.
It's not narcissism, its preference and a preference in a fun hobby meant to entertain people. We aren't trying to put a man on the moon here or doing brain surgery, no one is going to get hurt. People just want to throw some dice and have some fun, if being the star of the show is what gets you there, why even have an opinion about it?
If there is anything that makes D&D great it is that the experience can be tailored to preferences. It's narcissistic to suggest that there is a right way and a wrong way to have fun playing D&D, it is hardly narcissistic to decide between friends at your own table how your group is going to do it.
There is nothing about 5th edition rules that forces this culture, it's just something that evolved around and outside of the game. This character-driven narrative focus is just something that evolved in D&D for many reasons, but probably the main reason is that this is almost always how fantasy stories are told. From Lord of the Rings to Stranger Things and everything in between, stories are always character-driven, this is the most common way to tell stories. When you read lord of the Rings you know from the start that Frodo isn't going to die in the first book right... he is a main character. You know it, the author knows it, Frodo doesn't know it, but that doesn't change the fact that he is one of the stars of the show. Its an accepted analog to D&D, players expect their characters to be the stars because the game is about them. Its not weird, its quite normal.
"In modern gaming, the key driver to come to the table is quite different. Much of the focus and reason to play is the creation of characters tailored to a backstory with intricate details written in, with the intent that the DM would take those character stories and make them central to the campaign. That is kind of the main architecture of a modern 5e game. The main motivation is to explore those stories and find out how they play out and what creative ways the DM and player weave those characterizations into the game. Things like XP, magic items and gold, really don't play as much of a role in the game at all at modern tables."
That is called narcissism. How about playing a game where the players don't have main character syndrome. The game called D&D today is not a better game, for many reasons, but this has to be one of the key reasons.
That has always been there, though. Except that good DM's work with their players on said backstories. And players, even modern ones, usually do not expect their stories to be central, just... there. The biggest issues occur, after all, where said backstories are incompatible with the DM's setting, however that is an issue from both sides.
What is the alternative? Characters arrive as blank slates, effectively literally born yesterday, without any personalities, or at least without any stories how they go to their starting point? That certainly hasn't been any sort of default, either.
There is an issue with too many players and DM's coming from solo computer game environments or from their favorite series (particularly anime series), but that has always been there, just replacing people wanting characters like those in their favorite book series. Or DM's thinking everything is their story, rather it being their world and the PC's free thinking beings living in said world. But these are not new issues. They have been there from day 1, right from the 0e days of the white box.
"In modern gaming, the key driver to come to the table is quite different. Much of the focus and reason to play is the creation of characters tailored to a backstory with intricate details written in, with the intent that the DM would take those character stories and make them central to the campaign. That is kind of the main architecture of a modern 5e game. The main motivation is to explore those stories and find out how they play out and what creative ways the DM and player weave those characterizations into the game. Things like XP, magic items and gold, really don't play as much of a role in the game at all at modern tables."
That is called narcissism. How about playing a game where the players don't have main character syndrome. The game called D&D today is not a better game, for many reasons, but this has to be one of the key reasons.
That has always been there, though. Except that good DM's work with their players on said backstories. And players, even modern ones, usually do not expect their stories to be central, just... there. The biggest issues occur, after all, where said backstories are incompatible with the DM's setting, however that is an issue from both sides.
What is the alternative? Characters arrive as blank slates, effectively literally born yesterday, without any personalities, or at least without any stories how they go to their starting point? That certainly hasn't been any sort of default, either.
There is an issue with too many players and DM's coming from solo computer game environments or from their favorite series (particularly anime series), but that has always been there, just replacing people wanting characters like those in their favorite book series. Or DM's thinking everything is their story, rather it being their world and the PC's free thinking beings living in said world. But these are not new issues. They have been there from day 1, right from the 0e days of the white box.
It may have been different at other tables, but at our table with AD&D hardly anything was character driven and we didn’t have backstories. Maybe because we were early teens (young and dumb) and we just wanted to go around and kill monsters. Or that it wasn’t uncommon for your characters to die frequently. Our game was mostly module driven. So for me, the game has evolved with 5E, where role play and backstory have become more important.
"In modern gaming, the key driver to come to the table is quite different. Much of the focus and reason to play is the creation of characters tailored to a backstory with intricate details written in, with the intent that the DM would take those character stories and make them central to the campaign. That is kind of the main architecture of a modern 5e game. The main motivation is to explore those stories and find out how they play out and what creative ways the DM and player weave those characterizations into the game. Things like XP, magic items and gold, really don't play as much of a role in the game at all at modern tables."
That has always been there, though. Except that good DM's work with their players on said backstories. And players, even modern ones, usually do not expect their stories to be central, just... there. The biggest issues occur, after all, where said backstories are incompatible with the DM's setting, however that is an issue from both sides.
I will remind people of the existence of (and pre-existing rules for) the AD&D Permanent Character Record Sheets.
Those were official product, and had all the stuff for the backstory of the PC, their assorted holdings beyond treasure, debts, and (famously) ended with a simple last will and testament.
Flat out, saying that backstories and overall stories weren't important in early editions is horse puckey.
A game that took place anywhere other than a dungeon almost always had stuff like that. There were rules for conducting sieges, for building fortifications, for experiencing life in a town, for creating individual stories and even backstories (and holy poop, the tables).
I know that nostalgia twists things a bit, but I'm celebrating my 3,000th session as a DM next weekend, and I still have character records from 1980 -- and there's not a one that doesn't have some sort of backstory that ended up part of the larger world.
Yes, there has been more focus on Players in 3.x to 5 2024, but that started in 2e, and they have always been important and had their own stories.
The shift that is likely being thought of is the shift to a more narrative style in published material, triggered by the release of Ravenloft. Except that ignores the whole connected series from T to Q, which was explicit in making sure that PCs were involved in this had had reasons in their backstories to do so. Hell, half the time, the backstory was *given* to the PCs (as they did with the DL characters) -- and that never went over super well with a lot of folks because they didn't get to create their own; so folks did that.
Sorry, but its true: PC backstories have always been part of the game and the story -- for the simple reason that they were how you got folks invested in a really big story easily.
And let's not forget the A series...
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I will remind people of the existence of (and pre-existing rules for) the AD&D Permanent Character Record Sheets.
Those were official product, and had all the stuff for the backstory of the PC, their assorted holdings beyond treasure, debts, and (famously) ended with a simple last will and testament.
Flat out, saying that backstories and overall stories weren't important in early editions is horse puckey.
Yeah but...eeef.. Not really the same thing.
For one, those things that you're talking about are earned through play, you start the game with an empty record sheet. Things like debts, holdings, henchmen, followers, titles etc.. those are all things you can earn through play you do not start with any of them.
More importantly, however these things are not backstories even when they are gained, they are a types of asset, it's a listing of things you own or have achieved through play. It is really no different to hold a title and own a castle than it is to have a magic wand.
Flat out, saying that backstories and overall stories weren't important in early editions is horse puckey.
A game that took place anywhere other than a dungeon almost always had stuff like that. There were rules for conducting sieges, for building fortifications, for experiencing life in a town, for creating individual stories and even backstories (and holy poop, the tables).
Yes there were rules for conducting sieges, raising armies, building castles, holding dominion over entire regions, holding titles.. but these were earned through play which disqualifies them outright as backstories. Telling a story through play, is not the same as writing a backstory for a character, these things are not at all connected.
Backstories is a straight up write up of all the things your character achieved and has done up to the point the game starts. If what your suggesting are back stories, at 1st level you might start with commanding an army or already having a castle, being crowned king over a dominion. That effectively never happened unless you conceivably started the game at higher level. In fact, you by the rules were not allowed to have those things until you reached a certain level (around 9th in most cases).
I understand what your saying but none of that has anything to do with backstories.
The shift that is likely being thought of is the shift to a more narrative style in published material, triggered by the release of Ravenloft. Except that ignores the whole connected series from T to Q, which was explicit in making sure that PCs were involved in this had had reasons in their backstories to do so. Hell, half the time, the backstory was *given* to the PCs (as they did with the DL characters) -- and that never went over super well with a lot of folks because they didn't get to create their own; so folks did that.
Sorry, but its true: PC backstories have always been part of the game and the story -- for the simple reason that they were how you got folks invested in a really big story easily.
And let's not forget the A series...
That is not it at all, in fact its the exact opposite. Modern adventures don't support modern D&D culture at all. They are written in the same style as they have always been written, making no assumptions about backstories. This isn't a design thing and has nothing to do with the edition of the game or adventure writing or how background story writing influences the game, this is a pure shift in culture.
A modern player will create a 3 page background on all the events of their character's life up to that point, they produce detailed accounts of things they were involved in as well as plot hooks for the DM to use based on those backstories and their is a clear expectation that the DM will take those backstories and infuse it into their setting and into their campaign plots to ensure that character has a pre-ordained purpose in the game. Its even common for players to list magical items they wish to find along their adventures, create NPC's, even entire towns sometimes even entirely new classes, races and cultures to support their characters' backstories.
That sort of thing never existed in old-school D&D and even today the OSR is adamantly opposed to any such concept. This type of approach is just a hard no from old-school gaming. If you don't believe me, pop over to Dragonfoot Forums and suggest it, see what kind of response you get.
I will remind people of the existence of (and pre-existing rules for) the AD&D Permanent Character Record Sheets.
Those were official product, and had all the stuff for the backstory of the PC, their assorted holdings beyond treasure, debts, and (famously) ended with a simple last will and testament.
Flat out, saying that backstories and overall stories weren't important in early editions is horse puckey.
Yeah but...eeef.. Not really the same thing.
For one, those things that you're talking about are earned through play, you start the game with an empty record sheet. Things like debts, holdings, henchmen, followers, titles etc.. those are all things you can earn through play you do not start with any of them.
More importantly, however these things are not backstories even when they are gained, they are a types of asset, it's a listing of things you own or have achieved through play. It is really no different to hold a title and own a castle than it is to have a magic wand.
Flat out, saying that backstories and overall stories weren't important in early editions is horse puckey.
A game that took place anywhere other than a dungeon almost always had stuff like that. There were rules for conducting sieges, for building fortifications, for experiencing life in a town, for creating individual stories and even backstories (and holy poop, the tables).
Yes there were rules for conducting sieges, raising armies, building castles, holding dominion over entire regions, holding titles.. but these were earned through play which disqualifies them outright as backstories. Telling a story through play, is not the same as writing a backstory for a character, these things are not at all connected.
Backstories is a straight up write up of all the things your character achieved and has done up to the point the game starts. If what your suggesting are back stories, at 1st level you might start with commanding an army or already having a castle, being crowned king over a dominion. That effectively never happened unless you conceivably started the game at higher level. In fact, you by the rules were not allowed to have those things until you reached a certain level (around 9th in most cases).
I understand what your saying but none of that has anything to do with backstories.
The shift that is likely being thought of is the shift to a more narrative style in published material, triggered by the release of Ravenloft. Except that ignores the whole connected series from T to Q, which was explicit in making sure that PCs were involved in this had had reasons in their backstories to do so. Hell, half the time, the backstory was *given* to the PCs (as they did with the DL characters) -- and that never went over super well with a lot of folks because they didn't get to create their own; so folks did that.
Sorry, but its true: PC backstories have always been part of the game and the story -- for the simple reason that they were how you got folks invested in a really big story easily.
And let's not forget the A series...
That is not it at all, in fact its the exact opposite. Modern adventures don't support modern D&D culture at all. They are written in the same style as they have always been written, making no assumptions about backstories. This isn't a design thing and has nothing to do with the edition of the game or adventure writing or how background story writing influences the game, this is a pure shift in culture.
A modern player will create a 3 page background on all the events of their character's life up to that point, they produce detailed accounts of things they were involved in as well as plot hooks for the DM to use based on those backstories and their is a clear expectation that the DM will take those backstories and infuse it into their setting and into their campaign plots to ensure that character has a pre-ordained purpose in the game. Its even common for players to list magical items they wish to find along their adventures, create NPC's, even entire towns sometimes even entirely new classes, races and cultures to support their characters' backstories.
That sort of thing never existed in old-school D&D and even today the OSR is adamantly opposed to any such concept. This type of approach is just a hard no from old-school gaming. If you don't believe me, pop over to Dragonfoot Forums and suggest it, see what kind of response you get.
Formal modules very rarely make any accommodation for the backstories of specific characters. This has always been so. The reason is rather clear... the module writers cannot anticipate literally everything.
This is the whole point to having a live DM (and why I was talking about a dialogue on character creation between player and DM, working together to figure out a character that works for planned adventures, be they module or purely homebrew).
Formal modules very rarely make any accommodation for the backstories of specific characters. This has always been so. The reason is rather clear... the module writers cannot anticipate literally everything.
This is the whole point to having a live DM (and why I was talking about a dialogue on character creation between player and DM, working together to figure out a character that works for planned adventures, be they module or purely homebrew).
Of course and I don't think there is any expectation for them to do that or even generally a perceived problem with the way adventures are written. My point was that the fact that character-centric narrative focus is not really a generally supported concept in D&D adventures and even in the core game (past or present), doesn't change the fact that this is how the D&D culture today see's the game.
D&D culture and D&D as a game mechanically are the not the same principles, but usually such discussions devolve into what the rules of the game are and how that affects role-playing, but realistically these two things are usually not connected. Role-playing and how that applies to the game is more commonly free-form philosophy and approach thing, it really has little to do with the game mechanically.
Now I would argue that there are things that do impact role-playing approach. Obvious things like wether or not you have a skill system for example is going to impact how role-playing situations resolve and this too will affect how adventures are written. So mechanics aren't completely benign, but generally speaking D&D culture and D&D culture preferences tend to lead the way on how the game is executed far more than the mechanics of the game.
This is why this debate about "how it was done in the old school days vs. new school" is also kind of a generalization at absolute best because old school D&D also had its various sub-cultures and methods, as well as eras of play (big difference between 70', 80's, 90's for example).
There is no denying though that the most prevalent and most widely accepted way the game is played today is with a square focus on character-centric narrative play. It's so established that if you walk into a 5e group and you tell them "I don't want to write a backstory", chances are that you won't be allowed into the game and/or the DM for that game is going to be complaining about it on these forums. Like, writing a detailed backstory for your character is non-negotiable at most tables, its the main part of creating a character. This was definitely not true in old school days, I mean, the concept of writing backgrounds existed, but it was far more prevalent to skip this step. Most players had binders full of characters of various levels with little more than a name on for them and sure they had a Character Record sheet that listed their accomplishments, assets, titles etc... but that again, isn't the same thing as a backstory.
I can't speak for Caerwyn, but in my games over the last decade, death is slightly less frequent in 5e.
But death in those games has been fairly consistent at around one every 3 to 5 Sessions or so. Of course, this is still D&D, so it doesn't stick around -- there's always been a way to bring PCs back from death, and my folks have no problem heading out to do that.
Now, I will also note that my default measure for encounters is "hard", that combat is only about 20% of my game, and that I budget according to what I call an "episode", which is a series of events ("Scenes") within a larger adventure, and that I might spend an entire episode budget on just one encounter (Scene) (at hard, making it harder) though there will be plenty of other encounters (though not combat) in the same episode.
How a DM structures hings has an impact on lethality, even according to RAW rules. I had fewer PCs die from 80 to 87 than I have had in the last 7 years equivalent.
Some of that is experience -- we were a LOT younger -- of the folks at the table, some of that is the core difference in systems (mages died really easily in 1e, and are tougher to kill and more effective in combat in 5e), but most of it is that I have a much more mixed group of players, typically, than in the past, in terms of age.
Now, in my "open game", which is a straight RAW 5e dungeon crawl, there's a death every week. Someone does something foolish, and I am a fiendish dungeon designer that suffers no fools.
Usually two to three. Not that it is a "killer dungeon" -- OG Tomb of Horrors is way more murderous. It is just that I am sneaky, calculating, and methodical. And all the encounters there are set to Medium. And I design dungeons and adventures and the rest without any knowledge of what the PCs are going to be -- everything is done beforehand.
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
Have you though? Cut skills out of the game entirely? How do you find your players respond to this?
Here is the thing: WHY does a character dying ruin the game for a player? Back in the day, it was simply accepted, as part of the game. Most people did not get emotional when a PC died. Yes, it did happen. I TPK'ed a group because they made an incredibly stupid decision, and the one player is still bitter over 35 years later. But overall, most people just went on with the game.
Well my players are quite accustomed and comfortable with a system without skills. Its one of the fundamentals of old-school gaming that skills aren't really a part of the game. Resolution of actions is negotiated, usually based on race, class, backgrounds, backstories and general application of narrative logic. It's just a style of play.
You get used to it pretty quickly, but I wouldn't do it unless my players want to do it. One of the main outcomes is that there is just a lot more DM-Player narrative interaction rather than mechanical execution.
Honestly, since most 1e players ignored the rules on death, and just treated 0 and the end, there is a lot of disconnect on the lethality thing.
B/X, which is not part of the edition naming (it is ignored entirely by WotC, which paid to not have to publish it anymore), did have the 0 = dead rule.
1e did not; you had to go to -10 to die. It also took 10 minutes to die if you were not attacked.
so a lot of folks think that when folks talk about “old D&D”, they think people mean AD&D, since that is 1e.
what folks talking about lethality really mean is the B/X rules. So, really, B/X p,Ayer’s were apparently less likely to pick up their friend and run to get a raise dead. Which says a lot about the players…
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
I must have been quite the exceptional ten year old then to have had no trouble running BECMI. As must have been many kids who would run B/X successfully. It's not for no reason it is the most popular iteration of the game in the OSR. The movement is home to many who started with those basic rules. I find it as easy as 123 to run games that are more freeform and not tethered to superfluous rules. It's literally just like child's play. I play in 5E games and even those I play with who have been running the system since 2014 constantly have to look things up. It's not "complexity" as much as it is the utter needlessness of so much of it.
These days the average player is constantly having to consult the rules—often using a phone or some other device at the table—because he or she can't remember every detail about every feature or spell made available to a character. I would argue that a game that runs well doesn't even need a copy of the rules at the table.
It takes "tremendous experience and skill" to be a good DM. No matter what version of the game one is running. The ease with which many a newcomer might read and understand 5E does not a good DM make. You can learn the rules of the game and still be terrible at running the thing. Creativity is more critical to be being a good DM than is how versed one is in the rules.
As for Bluddworth's motivations it's not as if he is alone in the OSR movement when it comes to promoting the idea that old school is easier and more fun to run and not just play—you will get the same message from more prominent figures in the OSR like Gavin Norman, Chris McDowall, David McGrogan, Ben Milton, Professor DM, Patrick Stuart, Ben Laurence, Gabor Lux, Paolo Greco, Logan Knight, Courtney C. Campbell, Luka Rejec ... and I could go on. You are a minority of one when it comes to interpreting the OSR the way you do. Literally the only person I have seen identify with the movement who claims running old-school games is harder than running 5E.
Well, I think you illustrate the point quite concisely. Consider what you just said there. "The players made a stupid decision". That statement suggests that the DM is the arbitrator of deciding what is and isn't stupid and as you point out "I TPK'ed a group", which makes you the executioner. So as a DM you are the judge, jury and executioner. This is an accepted premise in old-school culture, but it is rejected in modern gaming culture.
The reason is that there is a social contract in modern games that the characters in the story are the main characters of the movie. If you're watching Conan The Barbarian, you don't expect Conan to die and even if he does, it's going to be at the end of the story in a pivotal final moment.
In old school gaming, your character is more like a soldier in Saving Private Ryan. Half of them are going to die running up the beach... then half of those are going to die during the trench fighting. And in the course of the movie, most of the characters are going to probably meet a grizzly end, but you know that going into that movie. Its accepted, it's war and you kind of try to survive as long as you can but most of the characters aren't going to make it.
Both methods can be dramatic, filled with role-playing and create amazing moments, but they are different approaches and it really just comes down to preference. One way isn't better or worse, its just different. Modern gamers like to have long narratives that are focused on individual characters that are developed over time, over the course of a larger ongoing plot. Players want to meet up every week for months at a time with the same characters and while character death itself is not outright rejected, they want it to be more meaningful than "you screwed up, so now your all dead".
Old school gaming is also centered around setting and ongoing stories but its built around the game world. So players know the world and in a meta way, wether their character lives or dies, the world continues and they must make new characters that rejoin it. Players write histories with their characters that add to the setting and to the DM's world and some contribute a lot when they do well over longer periods, while many characters are mere blips that fade in and out of existence quickly.
So what are your thoughts on those who assert that skills are a "necessity"? How some here believe it is unfair if a player doesn't have a mechanical means to "persuade" or "deceive" an NPC? Must instead engage in that "DM-Player narrative interaction"?
In another thread you were asserting that games without rules for specific things aren't made for those things. I believe you went as far as saying ShadowDark had no rules for anything but dungeon crawling. When that isn't even true. You brought up how BECMI over time introduced rules specific for things and claimed before these things the game "wasn't" made for them. Even though those who played OD&D did just fine without such rules. You carried on as if before the Expert Set hit the shelves overland travel was just not possible in D&D or that adventuring parties were not supposed to engage in it. Which is absurd. Using just the B in BECMI I ran every imaginable type of campaign. It was the only ruleset I owned for years. For many others the same was true of its predecessor.
Now you are saying a skill system is just not necessary in order for characters to perform tasks beyond combat. So which is it?
All right...some details might be necessary for the particular example I referenced. Then I will get into general philosophy.
The players' stupid decision: They were 9th level, 1e game, traversing the Underdark. The group had never been up against Mind Flayers, among other heavy hitters. They had never even seen them, but knew they were terrifyingly lethal. Anyway, I decided to give them a tableau. Not an encounter, but a vision of the dangers of the Underdark. The group comes over a rise and I describe what they see: A quarter mile away, they see 20 Mind Flayers fighting 20 Githyanki. Oh, and remember how the Gith had air support in the form of Red Dragons, per the lore? Well, there were 3, at 100 HP (I always thought 88 HP was too low, and I had passed the stat bloc to the players earlier), patrolling the battlefield. I explicitly stated to the group that the MF's, Gith, and Red Dragons DO NOT KNOW of the presence of the group, and they can continue on without incident.
But no, they say this to me: "We decide to attack." I ask, "Who?". They answer "Everyone". I then spend 20 minutes spin up the stat blocs for the monsters. The group then charges a quarter mile across broken ground to engage all the monsters....who knew that would end in a TPK.....
Now, referring to this general philosophy, who says there is some social contract in modern games that the characters in the story are the main characters of the movie? Why should it be any different than it was 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years ago? What has changed in the emotional makeup of human beings?
So... use skills if you think they are necessary. I'm illustrating how it worked and why you would use it based on a direct question, Im not giving you an instruction or making a case for which is better. Do whatever you want.
Im not going to address the rest of your comment as they are all strawman B.S., I never said or claimed any of those things to the extremes your suggestion nor derived the meaning your claiming on my behalf. You want to have a discussion, lets have one, you one to make up BS, do it with someone else.
ahhhhhh ... AD&D .. .back when bad things were allowed to happen (and they did) and people were able to deal with it.
Nostalgia for sure.
Well, I certainly don't disagree in terms of assessment of the situation, that sounds like a pretty self-destructive decision, but that scenario you described and the original message of the post don't really line up. In this situation, your players walked into a combat they had ample information about, fought a battle and lost. That may be a foolish decision, but you (The DM) didn't TPK them, they TPK'ed themselves. This is not the same rationale as a DM judging characters' actions as foolish and arranging their death.
That practice of judge, jury, and executioner was fairly common back in the day mainly because it was supported by the AD&D DMG. Gygax was very vocal on the philosophy that foolish player characters should be killed as a punishment/consequence of actions deemed "foolish". It's that rationale for character death that has fallen out of favor in modern gaming.
In regards to social contracts, I mean, that's kind of the thing with social contracts is that they are not written, sometimes not even said, they are buried deep in gaming culture. I do think that the social contracts between classic D&D and modern D&D are not that different, but there are subtle things that I think can be identified, driven by philosophies and approaches to the game.
For example I would argue as you point out that old school gamers and in classic gaming there was a general social contract between DM and Player that, character death was very much on the table and this really wasn't up for discussion. If a player in the 80's suggested the characters get plot armor, most DM's and most gaming groups would adamantly object, as a core part of the allure of the game was the danger of character death, that was in a way ... the juice, what attracted players to the game. The whole risk vs. reward thing. This was very much supported in the architecture of the game with rules like 1 gold = 1 XP, limited XP for monster kills and the power curve being built around magic items. Everything was designed to draw you to dangerous places to explore at grave risk to find the goodies and this in a big way was kind of a center of the games meta. If you removed the high risk of character death from that, a key meta-motivation for players to play was rendered benign.
In modern gaming, the key driver to come to the table is quite different. Much of the focus and reason to play is the creation of characters tailored to a backstory with intricate details written in, with the intent that the DM would take those character stories and make them central to the campaign. That is kind of the main architecture of a modern 5e game. The main motivation is to explore those stories and find out how they play out and what creative ways the DM and player weave those characterizations into the game. Things like XP, magic items and gold, really don't play as much of a role in the game at all at modern tables.
I think based on those two philosophical differences in gaming culture you end up with slightly altered social contracts.
Its important to note though that these are generalizations because there are plenty of old-school gamers who were playing under what I'm calling modern gaming and plenty of modern gamers that still today using 5e play using the old school methods (Im one of those DM's). These things are cultural generalities that existed (exist) but every group is different and especially now, 10 years into 5e's life span, more and more cross-over takes place because these two different D&D cultures are mingling a lot more than ever before. 15 years ago old school gamers and modern gamers where at irreconcilable odds with each others playstyles, I don't think that is the case anymore. More and more old-school players are finding their way into modern games, influencing people from that direction and vice versus, more and more modern gamers are going back and trying old-school games and passing their influence along.
The idea of old-school gaming and modern gaming is becoming more difficult to identify as a result there is a lot more diversity in gaming today than at any other time before in terms of playstyles and preferences.
So when you ask the question "who says there is some social contract in modern games that the characters in the story are the main characters of the movie?" That's a tough question because "The Who" is filled with endless layers of grey areas. The difference between modern and old school used to be a lot clearer, but with 5e, its such a mixture of old school and modern gaming ideas that its developed almost into a new 3rd gaming culture. Old school being gamers from 2e and prior, modern gamers being 3rd-4th edition and than 5e gamers which are this new thing that is kind of a blending of both.
I do think it would be disingenuous to suggest that old school games where character-narrative driven. That simply wasn't the case. The game was very much a player-centric gamist challenge more than a game of narrative storytelling. You played to gain XP, find treasure, find magic items to level up to see if you could take on bigger and bigger challenges. The term "the story" was mostly what was dynamically generated from those interactions, but DM's didn't start writing plots and creating narrative-focused story games until well into the 90's when White Wolf starting showing off what storyteller systems can do and 2e AD&D tried to replicate that with their adventures. Even then, this concept was largely rejected by that generation of D&D players of the time because the gamist component was and still very much is considered to be first and foremost what D&D is. Adventures like the Dragonlance series for example that tried to create narrative-story-driven games were seen as being linear railroads not as a effort to injective more story into the game.
I am nostalgic about AD&D but I have no interest going back and playing it. I was glad when 3E got rid of race restrictions on class and levels etc. Although I do find myself usually only looking at those core races/species when making characters.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
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It's not narcissism, its preference and a preference in a fun hobby meant to entertain people. We aren't trying to put a man on the moon here or doing brain surgery, no one is going to get hurt. People just want to throw some dice and have some fun, if being the star of the show is what gets you there, why even have an opinion about it?
If there is anything that makes D&D great it is that the experience can be tailored to preferences. It's narcissistic to suggest that there is a right way and a wrong way to have fun playing D&D, it is hardly narcissistic to decide between friends at your own table how your group is going to do it.
There is nothing about 5th edition rules that forces this culture, it's just something that evolved around and outside of the game. This character-driven narrative focus is just something that evolved in D&D for many reasons, but probably the main reason is that this is almost always how fantasy stories are told. From Lord of the Rings to Stranger Things and everything in between, stories are always character-driven, this is the most common way to tell stories. When you read lord of the Rings you know from the start that Frodo isn't going to die in the first book right... he is a main character. You know it, the author knows it, Frodo doesn't know it, but that doesn't change the fact that he is one of the stars of the show. Its an accepted analog to D&D, players expect their characters to be the stars because the game is about them. Its not weird, its quite normal.
That has always been there, though. Except that good DM's work with their players on said backstories. And players, even modern ones, usually do not expect their stories to be central, just... there. The biggest issues occur, after all, where said backstories are incompatible with the DM's setting, however that is an issue from both sides.
What is the alternative? Characters arrive as blank slates, effectively literally born yesterday, without any personalities, or at least without any stories how they go to their starting point? That certainly hasn't been any sort of default, either.
There is an issue with too many players and DM's coming from solo computer game environments or from their favorite series (particularly anime series), but that has always been there, just replacing people wanting characters like those in their favorite book series. Or DM's thinking everything is their story, rather it being their world and the PC's free thinking beings living in said world. But these are not new issues. They have been there from day 1, right from the 0e days of the white box.
It may have been different at other tables, but at our table with AD&D hardly anything was character driven and we didn’t have backstories. Maybe because we were early teens (young and dumb) and we just wanted to go around and kill monsters. Or that it wasn’t uncommon for your characters to die frequently. Our game was mostly module driven. So for me, the game has evolved with 5E, where role play and backstory have become more important.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
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I will remind people of the existence of (and pre-existing rules for) the AD&D Permanent Character Record Sheets.
Those were official product, and had all the stuff for the backstory of the PC, their assorted holdings beyond treasure, debts, and (famously) ended with a simple last will and testament.
Flat out, saying that backstories and overall stories weren't important in early editions is horse puckey.
A game that took place anywhere other than a dungeon almost always had stuff like that. There were rules for conducting sieges, for building fortifications, for experiencing life in a town, for creating individual stories and even backstories (and holy poop, the tables).
I know that nostalgia twists things a bit, but I'm celebrating my 3,000th session as a DM next weekend, and I still have character records from 1980 -- and there's not a one that doesn't have some sort of backstory that ended up part of the larger world.
Yes, there has been more focus on Players in 3.x to 5 2024, but that started in 2e, and they have always been important and had their own stories.
The shift that is likely being thought of is the shift to a more narrative style in published material, triggered by the release of Ravenloft. Except that ignores the whole connected series from T to Q, which was explicit in making sure that PCs were involved in this had had reasons in their backstories to do so. Hell, half the time, the backstory was *given* to the PCs (as they did with the DL characters) -- and that never went over super well with a lot of folks because they didn't get to create their own; so folks did that.
Sorry, but its true: PC backstories have always been part of the game and the story -- for the simple reason that they were how you got folks invested in a really big story easily.
And let's not forget the A series...
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
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Yeah but...eeef.. Not really the same thing.
For one, those things that you're talking about are earned through play, you start the game with an empty record sheet. Things like debts, holdings, henchmen, followers, titles etc.. those are all things you can earn through play you do not start with any of them.
More importantly, however these things are not backstories even when they are gained, they are a types of asset, it's a listing of things you own or have achieved through play. It is really no different to hold a title and own a castle than it is to have a magic wand.
Yes there were rules for conducting sieges, raising armies, building castles, holding dominion over entire regions, holding titles.. but these were earned through play which disqualifies them outright as backstories. Telling a story through play, is not the same as writing a backstory for a character, these things are not at all connected.
Backstories is a straight up write up of all the things your character achieved and has done up to the point the game starts. If what your suggesting are back stories, at 1st level you might start with commanding an army or already having a castle, being crowned king over a dominion. That effectively never happened unless you conceivably started the game at higher level. In fact, you by the rules were not allowed to have those things until you reached a certain level (around 9th in most cases).
That is not it at all, in fact its the exact opposite. Modern adventures don't support modern D&D culture at all. They are written in the same style as they have always been written, making no assumptions about backstories. This isn't a design thing and has nothing to do with the edition of the game or adventure writing or how background story writing influences the game, this is a pure shift in culture.
A modern player will create a 3 page background on all the events of their character's life up to that point, they produce detailed accounts of things they were involved in as well as plot hooks for the DM to use based on those backstories and their is a clear expectation that the DM will take those backstories and infuse it into their setting and into their campaign plots to ensure that character has a pre-ordained purpose in the game. Its even common for players to list magical items they wish to find along their adventures, create NPC's, even entire towns sometimes even entirely new classes, races and cultures to support their characters' backstories.
That sort of thing never existed in old-school D&D and even today the OSR is adamantly opposed to any such concept. This type of approach is just a hard no from old-school gaming. If you don't believe me, pop over to Dragonfoot Forums and suggest it, see what kind of response you get.
Formal modules very rarely make any accommodation for the backstories of specific characters. This has always been so. The reason is rather clear... the module writers cannot anticipate literally everything.
This is the whole point to having a live DM (and why I was talking about a dialogue on character creation between player and DM, working together to figure out a character that works for planned adventures, be they module or purely homebrew).
Of course and I don't think there is any expectation for them to do that or even generally a perceived problem with the way adventures are written. My point was that the fact that character-centric narrative focus is not really a generally supported concept in D&D adventures and even in the core game (past or present), doesn't change the fact that this is how the D&D culture today see's the game.
D&D culture and D&D as a game mechanically are the not the same principles, but usually such discussions devolve into what the rules of the game are and how that affects role-playing, but realistically these two things are usually not connected. Role-playing and how that applies to the game is more commonly free-form philosophy and approach thing, it really has little to do with the game mechanically.
Now I would argue that there are things that do impact role-playing approach. Obvious things like wether or not you have a skill system for example is going to impact how role-playing situations resolve and this too will affect how adventures are written. So mechanics aren't completely benign, but generally speaking D&D culture and D&D culture preferences tend to lead the way on how the game is executed far more than the mechanics of the game.
This is why this debate about "how it was done in the old school days vs. new school" is also kind of a generalization at absolute best because old school D&D also had its various sub-cultures and methods, as well as eras of play (big difference between 70', 80's, 90's for example).
There is no denying though that the most prevalent and most widely accepted way the game is played today is with a square focus on character-centric narrative play. It's so established that if you walk into a 5e group and you tell them "I don't want to write a backstory", chances are that you won't be allowed into the game and/or the DM for that game is going to be complaining about it on these forums. Like, writing a detailed backstory for your character is non-negotiable at most tables, its the main part of creating a character. This was definitely not true in old school days, I mean, the concept of writing backgrounds existed, but it was far more prevalent to skip this step. Most players had binders full of characters of various levels with little more than a name on for them and sure they had a Character Record sheet that listed their accomplishments, assets, titles etc... but that again, isn't the same thing as a backstory.