In Defense of Dungeons & Dragons
A D&D session probably calls to mind the following: a group of overweight, awkward men who have no social lives. They spend weeks locked in a parent’s basement, blissfully unaware of reality.
But that is not the case.
Some famous people speak fondly of their experience with D&D. Jonah Goldberg referenced it in his latest piece for National Review Online:
Washington is full of nerds. I know. I speak nerd — not fluently, mind you, at least not anymore. But I certainly know more than a few phrases memorized from a Berlitz nerd-to-English phrase book. I can talk Dungeons & Dragons (both D&D and AD&D). I know about the Golden Age of Comics (as in comic books — if you thought that was a reference to Bob Newhart’s heyday, subtract 20 nerd points right there).
The game is essentially improvisational theater. The player crafts his avatar and he must dive into his character’s soul. Most stories, which are crafted by the Dungeon Master, involve quests which look something like The Lord of the Rings. A group of different people have come together in order to solve a problem. If they can’t get past their differences, then the mission will fail.
Most people, however, don’t take the game too seriously. And, if played with a group of friends, then the game can be hilarious.
Now’s the time to give D&D a second chance: Wizards has announced that the game’s fifth edition will be tentatively play-tested May 24th. They utilized player input in crafting new rules, characters, and classes. But they also attempted to further streamline the game in order to maximize the experience.
The release is important because there would be no video games without Dungeons and Dragons. As Mike Mearls notes on the Wizards website:
D&D is more than just a set of rules for fantasy gaming. It launched an entire gaming genre and played a pivotal role in creating the entirety of the gaming industry, both analog and digital. The game has lived and thrived because it has awoken a spark of creation, visions of daring adventure, wondrous vistas, and untold horrors that pull us all together as a community of RPG fans. It is the countless players and DMs who have brought it to life over the years. The game is at its best when it is yours.
Anyone interested in gaming should try it at least once. Forget the stereotypes. Grab some friends, create fascinating characters, craft a story, grab a few beers, and you’ll have a wonderful weekend. To wit: some of my best memories in college involved Dungeons and Dragons.
And yes, I still went to parties, had relationships, and made many friends.
*Correction: A previous version of this post erroneously noted that Wizards would release the Fifth Edition on May 24.
Tabletop roleplaying is, I fear, a dying form, and lacks the point-of-entry appeal which it once had. It is a relatively laborious process, particularly for the gamemaster, who lacks the data-juggling capacity (not to mention the snazzy graphics capabilities) of even the most modest PC.
The hobby’s one, true advantage is that creative control rests in the hands of those who play the game, rather than in those of some professional game designer. The world you craft is yours; even if you play in a published game setting (Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, or whatever has become the current mainstream D&D standard, these days), inevitably, elements emerge reflecting the personality not only of the gamemaster, but also of the players.
But with such alternatives on computer as Skyrim, Diablo, and Path of Exile (my current fave, an indie ARPG from New Zealand), your average gamer isn’t likely to want to navigate the not insurmountable requirements of a tabletop game: The snail-slow pace (necessitated by “manually” handling all the minutiae of play), the requirement of the physical proximity of the other participants (yes, I know, one can game long-distance, but…), and a not-inconsiderable investment in heavy, bulky materials such as books, dice, and miniature figurines, whose collective cost can far exceed the price of a computer game CD and guide.
I see tabletop RPGS going the way of their spiritual predecessor, miniature wargaming. A few stalwarts will continue to play, but more convenient, faster, less demanding computer games will eclipse even that market, and the hundreds of pounds of paper, plastic, and lead in my basement will become the curiosities of a bygone era. =’[.]‘=
It isn’t just [Advanced] Dungeons and Dragons, you know. Games like Call of Cthulhu and Champions have influenced the video game culture greatly. The White Wolf World of Darkness games seem to show up in every medium.
Actually, miniatures are doing well. If anything, the Internet and relatively inexpensive shipping has brought about a Golden Age. There are more miniature lines and varieties than in the past.
Yes, but miniatures are still working out the issues of collectible versus non-collectible marketing, and the lifespans of most of those lines are not that impressive.
I’ve been saying all of that for years.
At best tabletop RPGs can survive by becoming a specialty hobby like model trains, priced appropriately.
I started when D&D was three poorly mimeographed booklets with 3 character classes and pretty much everything was decided via (n)d6 and the DM’s sense of where his story was heading. A couple of dollar boxes of airfix plastic cowboys and indians sufficed for the bad guys and random NPC’s, a dollar bag of farm animals for most of the rest. What was important was the tale and the interactions ‘twixt all at the table. The explosion of craptacularity since then has been at the behest of the rules lawyers and those who demand certainty (in their favor, or course) rather than to trust in the DM. Can I declare jihad against rules lawyers? Please, can I huh? You destroyed my entertainment, bastages.
Gee, we started out with a Constitution that fit on a couple of pages, which has led to how many possibly millions of pages of USC and enabling regulations? For the benefit of, you guessed it, the thrice-damned rules lawyers.
I agree. Years ago I stopped buying rulebooks and started creating my own “free flow” adventures where I just made up the rules. In terms of game reality- Players don’t want to be cheated – if they can convince me say: “I am going to create an improvised explosive out of the magnesium in that chair leg and use Yesha’s lighter as the ignition we can blow out the bars and escape from this prison.”
OK, you’ve got a 76% chance given your “impro explosive skill”, roll the dice!
Doing it this way has been a great success, not time consuming, and rule-book lawyer players don’t want to join.
My best memories of college don’t involve staring at a monitor. If you yourself didn’t think there was an emptiness afoot, you’d just enjoy this cave and not say anything.
Some entertainments do indeed enhance life, others replace it. My benchmark always involves whether a door to the outside world should be involved. Startlingly, one can have actual, real adventures in this world – you just have to go outside that door to have them.
It’s ironic that such a thing should grow out of fantastic literature, fantasy, when it’s close cousin, science-fiction, is almost literally a panoply of warnings about why not to do such things, starting with E.M. Forester’s The Machine Stops. That was my D&D, and it said, “Get out.”
Go to Syria – they have real dungeons and perfect analogues to dragons. People will at least bounce a rock off your head to remind you you’re alive. Or, smash your games and sit under a tree and marvel at the smell of rain or grass. Both have a strong whiff of reality about them.
You’ve never spent an evening with friends, shooting bull and maybe playing a game? Never had a standing poker night or movie night?
I’d not trade the experiences I’ve had for anything — and that includes moments at the game table. “Hey invisible mage, see anything?!” “We’re here for the rats.” “I’m the slut he’s dancing with.” “Mages cost me my eye.” All moments of friendship and humor that can’t be matched. Moments as memorable as standing on the walls of Constantinople or the ruins of a pre-Columbian city 4,000 years gone.
There are certainly times for sitting under a tree, listening to the world. And for travelling to new places and trying new things. But there are also times when you can’t do that — sitting under a tree in the middle of a central Illinois winter can be your death; you have classes the next day; you already have stacks of paper and pens; the campus is crammed with places to meet; you don’t have the money to travel anyway — why not spend that time with some friends and each others’ imagination?
You’re living up to your name here, Fail. D&D is not a computer game and does not require a monitor. Pen, paper, dice, and imagination are the main tools involved.
Oh, and you’re seriously telling me a fantasy-flavored “make-believe” with roots in – among other things – tabletop reenactment of historical battles, mythological studies (I always found the borrowings from mythology much more amusing when I knew more about them), history, and various other sources is some kind of horrible life-sucking monster? You’re as bad as the twits who claimed the games were “satanic” because they have magic.
Wow, Fail Burton spewing negative opinions about something when he knows nothing about it. That’s never happened before!
Clearly you’ve got no clue.
Agreed one hundred percent, Mr. Bishop. I actually didn’t start tabletop gaming until my first year of college, but once I got into it, I discovered how much fun it can be. As with any entertainment, there are those who take it too seriously, but for the most part spending one evening a week embroiled in adventure is just a bit of imaginative fun.
I’ve enjoyed playing computer and console games, but honestly, D&D (and its ilk) can be better than any of them. As you said, it’s improv, and with the right group you can create some amazing stories. Much better than being spoon-fed an epic quest by someone else, in my opinion. Sure, the game master can try, but characters inhabited by real people have a bad habit of doing their own thing.
While I am definitely up on RPGs and D&D in general, I would not get all that excited over the new version WOTC is churning out.
First and foremost, unless they make a very definitive announcement, it is clear they are sticking with their five year product cycle. That means this new set of rules will only be supported for about 3-1/2 years, and is likely to undergo a significant revision halfway through that. Add in the inevitable expansions, and the cost will quickly become prohibitive.
Second, this is not going to be D&D. It is going to yet another completely new rules set, that may not be particularly well suited to tabletop gaming, and likely completely unsuited to introductory gaming, that just recycles the D&D brand name to sell it. Indeed given the trends of the 4E “4dventure” half-edition revision “Essentials”, it is likely to be designed for the on-the-go Yuppie to play off his phone or tablet in a coffee shop during a break or waiting for a train. If any actual need for creativity survives the design process this time around I will be well and truly shocked. (Not that I will be throwing my money away to find out.)
Overall, people would be much better off picking up a massively discounted set of (BECMI)D&D, AD&D or (maybe) 3E rules off a reseller or auction site than giving WOTC any more money for the junk they have been churning out for the last 4-12 years.
Naw. Just bow to the inevitable and pick up GURPS.
Been there, done that . . . when it was Melee/Wizard/The Fantasy Trip.
Wow . . . now I’m envious. I never played TFT; it was a bit before my time. But from what I read about it, it sounded like fun.
I’ve never played GURPS though I own a few of their Traveller sourcebooks.
Fundamentally, it is the same game. Three ability scores, 3d6 task resolution, some skills, and setting appropriate equipment and “specials” (spells).
The really amazing thing about it is the bulk of the rules. You can fit the whole thing, plus the older Melee and Wizard Microgame supplements, in a single 8-12/x11 game box, with more than enough room left over for paper, pencils, dice, standard hex map, and game pieces. You could throw that in a backpack with enough space for munchies and caffeine and get to and from a game without throwing out your back.
You’re entitled to you own opinion, Sam, but my friends and I will decide for ourselves what is best for us. We’ve been playing 4th edition and Essentials since they came out, and we’re very happy with them. And we’re going to give the next iteration of the game a fair shake when it comes out, too. I’m sorry to hear that you’re not willing to do that.
Your predictions about the next iteration are interesting, but they don’t seem to be based on anything that’s being discussed on the D&D Next forum at the Wizards website. Do you have an inside source who’s telling you things the rest of us don’t know?
An inside source?
Yep. Two: WotC with their full history and me.
When D20 was rolling out WotC was very clear that they were planning a five year product cycle. Nobody took it too seriously, after all would they really port over the Magic: the Gathering sales plan to D&D?
When they announced the D20 revision they were quite clear that they were doing it ahead of schedule because of all the issues with the original release.
So time passes, everyone forgets about the five year plan except me, constantly reminding everyone that it is coming and that “4E” will be announced for 2008, everyone telling me I’m full of it, and lo and behold, there are the banners at Gen Con 2007, with the release at Gen Con 2008, right on schedule.
Okay, so everyone settles into Adventure system, and I come along and remind people of the five year plan yet again, and tell them that the announcement is coming in 2012 for a 2013 release date. Nobody really cares, the Essential revision comes along almost like clockwork, and once again, there is the announcement for Next.
So that makes me 2-for-2 on reminding people of WotC’s clearly announced product cycle plan and WotC sticking to it.
As for the game structure itself, once again, what did WotC say?
Well, when D20 was being planned, the big thing was the RPGA Living City campaign, and the talk was about expanding organizaed play. So what did I predict? Yep, that D20 would try and “standardize” everything in AD&D to make it more suited for tournament play. Not that such would be surprising. TSR had smacked down their own divergent variants being used in Living City years back, so why wouldn’t they plan the product line specifically for organized play use? And of course D20 did try to make a rule for everything and give everything a rule. The full organized play plan glitched a bit because they lost control of the Living Greyhawk campaign, but they maintained much more control over Living Green Regent, Mark of Heroes, and Mark of Xen’drik, introducing their online character recording and updating.
So the time comes around for Adventure system. I say the product schedule shows they are getting ready for the new product line, with more divergent variants being alpha tested as it were, along with more fluff and filler products like rules compendiums, getting insulted for labeling them as such along the way of course, and what happens? Why look, Adventure system has every class with general use, once per encounter, and once per day powers. And what else happens? Well, in WotC’s own preview products they make a big deal about playing the game “right”, and what sorts of stuff is right for character background, and of course that is all in the final rules. While the big plans for a full online game server fell through (there’s a separate rant about WotC and vaporware I won’t get into right now), they did push their online character builder heavily, particularly the subscription part of it.
So now it is time for Next. What have the developments been? Well, let’s see, the Living Forgotten Realms campaign has been dumped in favor of the D&D Encounters program. The big difference is going from an adventure to be played in four hours to an encounter to be played in two at most. To support it, they have bonuses available by plugging into their social media. Characters design is pretty much set to work with their electronic tools rather than tabletop design. Then there are their numerous articles about design plans they have been posting for a few months, all focused on their now standard musings about “balance”, combined with desperate attempts to appeal to elements of the older editions that their established customers liked but that their desired demographic doesn’t want to have anything to do with.
So again WotC is two-for-two with sticking to their announced plans and I am two-for-two in believing them and projecting from them.
Now if you don’t want to believe WotC will do what they say they will do and have done twice already that is your choice. I’m going to stick with trusting their record.
I was referring to your claim that “it is likely to be designed for the on-the-go Yuppie to play off his phone or tablet in a coffee shop during a break or waiting for a train.” I have seen no evidence that the next iteration will be even vaguely like that, and I don’t believe you have, either.
Did you miss the part where I noted the change in the organized play program from four hour events to one to two hour events?
Despite their rhetoric about wanting to get back to the roots of the game, other things they have said and done clearly indicate a focus on a completely different demographic for their customers.
They said that for years and I didn’t want to accept it, but the Adventure system finally made it clear, and I’ve resolved myself to accepting that the company that owns the IP of my favorite hobby no longer wants to make a product I want to buy.
4th edition is more a miniatures game than a role-playing game.
Fun, but you can’t use it to game in the Theater of the Mind.
Our group still used it despite its limitations until WotC radically revamped its character builder software. 4th Ed. is now reviled because it exemplifies bad corporate strategy, and not just less-than-stellar design.
(I don’t think WotC is going to be able to rescue the brand. They gave Pathfinder the market, and 5th Edition has to be something really special for them to get it back.)
“Fun, but you can’t use it to game in the Theater of the Mind.”
Hogwash. My friends and I ARE doing exactly that on a weekly basis. So don’t tell me it can’t be done.
Let’s not start any of that Edition Wars nonsense here. Instead, watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRZ1CYYIsCg
The man speaks truth.
I’m not an “Edition War” kind of guy. I’m more of a systems guy.
The trick is to design a game that covers all the various levels of interaction, and the problem is that mechanics that work good for one level don’t work at another level.
If you’re familiar with Savage Worlds and Deadlands: compare them to each other and you’ll quickly see the difference I’m talking about. SW is very specifically designed for huge battles, with lots of minis on the table-top, and not-very-fleshed-out heroes. Deadlands works for small-scale affairs and non-combat events, but doesn’t scale up real well.
This, by itself, is not a big deal — few games manage to capture every operational level properly, and GMs don’t necessarily need all the levels. (Though Legend of the Five Rings makes the best attempt, by using three different mechanical systems for three different operational levels.)
The big problem with 4th Edition — and why I consider it more of a minis game and a “failed” design — is that they tacked a hideously bad skill system onto it, one that meant that proper-leveled characters succeed at tasks half the time (no matter their level) and unskilled characters get worse at those skills as they advance. Instead of rewarding players for doing things other than fighting, the skill system ended up excluding players from the activity if they weren’t the party expert.
Scarily enough, I think 1st edition dealt with that problem better by simply ignoring it.
Sure you can.
You can role-play with anything, including a pure wargame. That’s how D&D came about in the first play.
The sad thing about the “modern” edition wars (older vs. D20 vs. Adventure) is that they were created by WotC, attacking its own prior products in an attempt to promote their “new hotness” as the greatest thing in cutting edge RPG design since xp and hit points. Sadly, too many fans have been willing to embrace it, leading to the perversions of the current so-called “Old School Renaissance” movement uttering drivel about how great the old game was if only it had a better game system like the modern one. Hero worshiping Gygax and/or Arneson while calling them incompetent game designers is more than a bit oxymoronic from where I’m sitting.
Edition Wars are as useless as format wars – the arguments over whether gaming only counts if it miniatures, board, RPGs, CCGs, CRPGs/MMORPGs/Console Games, or whatever other new form comes out in the future.
It doesn’t matter, it is all gaming.
Sure it would be nice if everyone played the way/game/edition I did. But having tons of gamers who can stand up for gaming is a lot better than having me and three other recluses, huddled over our collector’s editions like dragons over Rheingold, because my way is the one true way and everything else is a fraud.
I don’t think I’ve ever called the 1st edition creators “incompetent”. They were the first (sort of), and what’s come after was built on what they did and learned — and should be better, if experience means anything.
I think if you read my reply to Patrick, you’ll see what I was getting after a little better, but to put it more succinctly:
The mechanics are supposed to help you with the game you’re playing, not hinder you. Because mechanics are pitched to certain styles and settings, certain systems will better fit the game you’re running.
There was of course a critical bridge between Tolkien and D&D, and that was the console computer game of Adventure, maybe known to more people by its first freebie and then early days video game derivatives of Zork.
I’m afraid you’re mistaken. Will Crowther began creating the earliest version of his Colossal Cave Adventure game in the fall of 1975. The original edition of D&D had already been on store shelves for a year at that point. In fact, at least one account that I’ve seen states that Crowther was already playing D&D when he started working on his computer game. So D&D probably influenced Colossal Cave Adventure, not the other way around.
I’m baffled by your reference to “the console computer game of Adventure”. Crowther’s first version of the game ran on a PDP-10 minicomputer. Later versions ran on other minicomputers and mainframes. The first console version (a cartridge for the Atari 2600) didn’t become available until 1979, when D&D was five years old.
“console” being Window-speak for command-line, text-only.
Did D&D precede Adventure, such that Crowther saw or played D&D first?
Huh. Well, coulda been I guess. I was just going from memory. I knew some very early D&D players, though never quite wanted to sit down for it myself. D&D didn’t get big, IIRC, until several years later. I’m not sure it ever got big before the Zork and video versions were already more common anyway.
OK, I guess I saw the Woods version that came a year later? It was a long time ago, …
No video games without D&D? Pong, Space War, and even the Magnavox Odyssey, a game console, predate D&D (and they certainly far predate any influence it could possibly have had). Perhaps you meant “role-playing video games”?
I played D & D with a large group of friends for years when I was college age. We tried several capaign settings, but the one that lasted the longest was in they Greyhawk campaign world, and our characters reached 12th or 13th level.
I remember the personalities and intricate back stories we invested in our characters (and a few of their adventures together), but what I remember most are the good times – a bunch of people (10 or 12 of us) gathering with beer, cigarettes, stacks of books, paper, and dice letting our imaginations run rampant until 2 or 3 in the morning. I still have all my books, and most of them are beer stained, dogeared, and duct-taped together…as they should be.
I’m 42 now and wouldn’t mind getting another group started, but I doubt it would be the same. Some things just can’t be recreated. I’m sure the game itself would be just as fun, though.
No need to start a new group — there are probably multiple groups already playing D&D in your area. You could join one of them.
I’m 52 years old, and I’ve been playing D&D since 1979. My current gaming group includes four people that I’ve been playing the game with for over three decades. I’m married to one of them.
Also, the group in your area is probably playing a game called Pathfinder.
There is a long (and convoluted) explanation of why, but it’s the game that evolved from the D&D that you probably remember.
Good point, Meiczyslaw. I haven’t had the opportunity to play Pathfinder, but I’ve heard good things about it, and I’d love to give it a try.
The problem with Pathfinder is that the adventure products they put out wallow on the edges of torture porn and similar “edginess”.
Add in the hard left politics of the company, and I decided my money was better spent elsewhere.
Pathfinder is very damn fun indeed- it brought me back to table top gaming. 4E from Wizards of the Coast was not appealing to me- felt like a computer game adapted to a table top. Try Pathfinder- I bet you will like it!
Back in the Stone Age at a GenCon in Kenosha Gary Gygax and I got drunk and he offered me a job and a daughter. I Probably should have taken him up on the offer. Think that she married a dentist. Gamers were smart fun people.
“Adventure” was on the DEC-20. I hated getting stuck in the series of twisty rooms.
Adventure quickly migrated to other platforms, and is still around today.
I first saw it circa 1976, played it for about thirty minutes, then went out seeking solution keys and source code. That’s just me.
xyzzy
“Now’s the time to give D&D a second chance: Wizards has announced that the game’s fifth edition will be released on May 24th.”
That statement is wrong on several counts.
First of all, Wizards has NOT announced the release of a new edition of D&D. The link in Jon Bishop’s sentence points to a four-month-old online article by Mike Mearls stating that Wizards was BEGINNING to work on what they call “the next iteration” of D&D. The date May 24 does not appear ANYWHERE in that article.
If Wizards had announced the release of a new edition, that announcement would appear in the Press Release Archive on the company’s website:
http://www.wizards.com/Company/Press.aspx?category=dungeonsdragons
Take a look. As of this morning, no such announcement exists. The most recent announcement about D&D is almost a year old and is about the resolution of a legal dispute with Atari.
Second, the release of a new edition of D&D on May 24 is physically impossible, unless Wizards has invented time travel. If Jon Bishop had bothered to look at the D&D Next forum on the Wizards website, he would have seen that major changes to the game’s rules are still being discussed, and that playtesting of proposed rules for the next iteration is still at an early stage:
http://community.wizards.com/dndnext
External playtesting (i.e., by people not employed by Wizards) won’t even BEGIN until “later this year”. The new rules are not even CLOSE to being finalized. Bishop’s claim that a new edition will be printed, distributed, and on store shelves just 17 days from now is ludicrous.
Third, Wizards has been very careful to refer to this update as “the next iteration” of D&D. The phrase “Fifth Edition” has NOT been used anywhere. The new iteration MAY end up being presented as a new edition, or it may not. There is plenty of precedent for this. The Third Edition was followed not by the Fourth, but by D&D 3.5. And the Fourth Edition has already received a major update in the form of D&D Essentials, a consolidated and streamlined version of the rules that was NOT presented as a new edition.
I have no idea what prompted Bishop to make such a bizarrely premature claim. It certainly isn’t backed up by ANY factual evidence.
Well, I’d guess he means May 24, 2013. Assuming that, his claim is backed up by, yet again, WotC’s proven history.
The schedule is nearly identical to their schedule for their Adventure system, the only differnce being when they announced it. Last time they waited for Gen Con, this time they did it before DDXP. And, having been at DDXP the year they announced Adventure system, they had promised a “big” announcement during their presentation that changed at the last minute to just the retirement of an RPGA campaign. It was rather clear something was up, exacerbated when during their product placement they answered a question by saying they had D20 products scheduled “through the end of the year”, limiting themselves to how many they had. Anyone who had checked their catalogue knew the schedule was lighter than it had been, and it tapered off even more for the 1st quarter of 2008.
Also, when they announced their “public” playtesting for the Adventure system, it was at Gen Con 2007, got going after that, was finished by March 2008, and the books were off to the printer for the Origins release and Gen Con organized play premiere. While they were pushing their deadlines with that, they obviously made them.
As for this being the “next iteration”, once again, read the rest of their announcements and design columns relating to the Next system. It is clearly going to be something different, not the least because of clear failures in the Adventure system. Yes, D20 was followed by D20.5 because of the problems with D20, and Adventure was followed by Essentials because of the problems with Adventure. Since they are not waiting five years on Essentials it is much more likely the rules will be a heavier revision, which is probably why WotC has referred to it as “D&D Next”.
The date may be off, the referenced announcement outdated, and follow up design articles not addressed, but the key elements of a new edition coming out is accurate.
You’re missing the point, Sam. Wizards has not announced the release of Fifth Edition on ANY date of ANY year. Jon Bishop’s statement is simply false.
But I suspect that you’re right, Sam, about “the next iteration” turning out to be a new edition. And the middle of next year seems quite plausible as a release date. That’s all conjecture, though. At present, D&D Next is basically just a preliminary research project with no official name or release date.
Just channel the revised BSG and repeat “This has all happened before; and this will all happen again.”
Also note, just by making this announcement WotC has undercut sales of Essentials. Very few people will bother buying material for a product whose obsolescence date is imminent. If they don’t get a new edition out they will be handing Hasbro the last thing needed to shut the entire RPG division down.
I don’t have a line on the precise release date, but if Next isn’t out by Gen Con next year I’ll eat a legendary dire crow of legend.
I seem to remember some sort of D&D played long distance, on paper, in ,like, 1970?
The D&D my son plays are interesting, but I can’t seem to get past the gratuitously florid prose and bad grammar and punctuation. Those guys sure didn’t have Mrs. Washburton for English Comp.
D&D in 1970? No, that’s not possible. The original version of the game was published in 1974.
I’m not sure what to make of your complaint about gratuitously florid prose, bad grammar, and bad punctuation. Are you referring to the language used by the players in your son’s group? Or the writing of the rulebooks? If it’s the latter, what edition are you looking at? I remember some florid prose in the first edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, but I’ve played every edition of the game, and I don’t recall seeing poor grammar or punctuation in any of the rulebooks.
(Who is Mrs. Washburton?)
The florid prose wasn’t gratuitous, that was how Gary Gygax wrote. He was very old school in his style, and in his expectations of the reading level of his audience. Further, as the game derived from wargaming, a certain level of expertise and familiarity with the jargon of that hobby was expected.
As it goes, getting away from that prose, florid as it may have been, contributed to the decline of the game until its temporary resurgence with the D20 system.
I liked Gygax’s writing style in 1st Edition AD&D. But I’ve always had a large vocabulary myself. I can certainly understand why some folks found his writing hard to follow, and preferred the simpler and more accessible style of later editions. Tastes differ.
i never really ‘played’ d&d but i had the books and rolled scores of characters (after taking lib-like liberties with the dice tosses)
i must admit that my addicted days on world of warcraft weened me off the d&d vibe
A correction, the playtest starts 5/24, not the commercial release. They aren’t even in beta yet on their release.
Thought the title of this piece implied that the new D&D would eject the time-tested rules of alignment amongst the races in the D&D universe. Somehow I thought there would be a compare-contrast of house this maps to the real world ignorance of the “can’t we all just get along” crowd who think that you can reason with orc’s, save the dragons, and make sure that the princess feels more like a washerwoman.
#solved.