My love to hate relationship with D&D

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Dumarest said:
For what it's worth, my copies of the AD&D Players Handbook, DMG, and Monster Manual are all still in nearly perfect shape circa 40 years later, so the production values of the actual books measures up better than most anyone else's RPG books that I know of.
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Same. 1E AD+D is my preferred system for any kind of remotely D+D like game, and part of the reason is that my original core books still look better than anything I've bought in the last 10 years.
 
robertsconley said:
You can get a sense of the numbers involved by looking at the category listings over on DrivethrugRPG

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While I share Moonglum sentiment on the amount and quality of OSR material, D&D 5e, Pathfinder, and other have seen their own wave of creativity both OGL and DM's Guild. And is its larger than the OSR. In general the past decade has been a 2nd Golden Age for all RPGs.
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One thing that colors my opinions on this issue is that I'm super bummed out by anything resembling 'adventure path' style published gaming materials, which wipes out a large slice of the Pathfinder and 5E materials. In fact most of what is being produced for 5E right now that I would find interesting is clearly OSR material that has been re-statted for 5E (e.g., Frog God's 5E dungeons).
 
I think it’s fair to say more material has been created for 3.0/3.5/3.75 D&D than any other RPG in history by a substantial margin.
 
More like this...

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Gamers bought that shit up and still do.
 
Dumarest said:
For what it's worth, my copies of the AD&D Players Handbook, DMG, and Monster Manual are all still in nearly perfect shape circa 40 years later, so the production values of the actual books measures up better than most anyone else's RPG books that I know of.
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Production values I take to include art, graphic design, page layout and typography. I'm not sure if the AD&D books are the most 'durable' of RPG books, though I'd at least accept that as a claim
 
Eh, I know plenty of people who enjoyed 3rd edition/the D20 system or one of it's many variants. It may not be my cup of tea, but then no edition of D&D is, I've got nothing to complain about. The glut did drive me out of game stores for a few years, and inadvertently killed a few game companies I liked, but I think the good that came from the OGL (which includes the OSR) ultimately outweighs the bad.
 
Armchair Gamer said:
Savage Worlds is arguably in contention as well.
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Savage Worlds also was also ahead of the curve on bringing back a lot of OSR conventions. Look at 50 Fathoms, the first proper campaign setting for Savage Worlds. I think it came out around 2004, and it was a sandbox setting with tables for random encounters and generating adventures on the fly. There was an assumption that PCs were hiring NPC backup. It was already doing a lot of the things that the OSR movement would promote a few years later. I think any history of the return to popularity of these conventions needs to mention Savage Worlds even if it isn't an old school system.
TristramEvans said:
Eh, I know plenty of people who enjoyed 3rd edition/the D20 system or one of it's many variants. It may not be my cup of tea, but then no edition of D&D is, I've got nothing to complain about. The glut did drive me out of game stores for a few years, and inadvertently killed a few game companies I liked, but I think the good that came from the OGL (which includes the OSR) ultimately outweighs the bad.
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I think the industry was really lucky that the PDF and POD boom came along soon after D20 killed off so many games and companies. Without that technological shift in the ease of publishing and distributing games, I think the recovery would have been much slower.

As it did come along, I have to agree with you. It's all ultimately been for the best, and most of the games worth mentioning that either died or went dormant have made comebacks since.
 
50 Fathoms has a really good structure for something between full sandbox and full adventure path. Like, there were expected progressions of some adventures, and a core storyline, but most of it is "if your characters are here, these are the hooks that are available" with some stuff gated off until after they've done other things in logical ways (can't have people hunting them for doing x when they haven't done x yet). It also straight up mentioned that "this might not have gone to plan, so you probably will need to improvise" in a lot of places in the core story progression, and gave you a few examples of alternate ideas if the players didn't manage to do the expected thing in an earlier adventure.

Personally I think the Plot Point campaign settings are my favorite as far as structure goes. (50 Fathoms, Sundered Skies, Rippers, etc.)
 
Moonglum said:
Fine, there are other good games; that wasn't my point. My point was that the total volume of all new material published for all the games you listed doesn't come close to what is coming out for OSR games each year. And a large fraction of it is really good.
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I obviously can't track how much new material is coming out for OSR each year, but I suspect that each ofd100 and Savage Worlds might well be equalling it:smile:.
 
I started playing D&D with my older brother and I didn’t really start playing other games until I was old enough to go the hobby shop and pick out my own games. One reason games like TMNT, Palladium Fantasy, RuneQuest, and Pendragon are so big for me is that I picked out those games myself. My brother had all of the AD&D stuff and if we played AD&D I didn’t need any books. It freed me up to explore other games.

I loved D&D but after 3.x, 4E, and everything it’s hard for me to give it a fair shake. I freely admit that if I gave 5E a sari shot I’m sure I’d like it. I just am so put off anything D&D that I don’t really want to give in. I don’t like that D&D is sucking up all of the oxygen and I am taking it personal (I shouldn’t) that a lot of folks online that I see talking about RPGs are only interested in D&D. Another thing that bothers me is that we have people charging folks to run a D&D game for them online. I just am not okay with that. A lot of the D&D online hobby that is very visible to me seems very...fake and insincere. I don’t think a lot of the people on these YouTube shows would have anything to do with D&D if they were not getting paid to do so. I’m sure most of that is just generational. I just get a creepy vibe when I see folks treating a RPG brand as part of their identity.

But, I still want to play D&D. I own the 5E core books and I like AiME. I am thinking about going and downloading to my Kindle some of the old FR novels I liked as a kid and maybe that will help me regain my interest in D&D. Or, I should just learn to be happy with the games I do enjoy playing still.
 
Ulairi said:
I don’t think a lot of the people on these YouTube shows would have anything to do with D&D if they were not getting paid to do so.
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Eh, there are way easier ways to make money, and for the two ones that I know off the top of my head, with Critical Role, Matt Mercer has been a player for a long time, and the new Geek and Sundry show with Deborah Ann Woll I was reading articles about her being a huge D&D nerd during first season of Daredevil and her trying to convince her castmates to play with her when I was like "who is this actress" and searching youtube.
 
EmperorNorton said:
Eh, there are way easier ways to make money, and for the two ones that I know off the top of my head, with Critical Role, Matt Mercer has been a player for a long time, and the new Geek and Sundry show with Deborah Ann Woll I was reading articles about her being a huge D&D nerd during first season of Daredevil and her trying to convince her castmates to play with her when I was like "who is this actress" and searching youtube.
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I’m some really like the game. But, I’m not just talking about Critical Role. I mean some of these YouTube shows between advertisements, Patreon, etc. are making more money than the folks that write the games! I am sad that some moron like Dawn Fordged Cast makes a living with his nonsense content while guys that actually write the games make very little. I’m not saying my reaction is fair or even completely rational. I know we are in a D&D 5E fad or something and I’m sure when 6E comes out it will calm down a little bit or maybe it won’t. On the other end, I’m also older and I am just now feeling the “not connecting to the youth” the way my parents probably did back when I was a teenager.

What I’m trying to say is: I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary.
 
EmperorNorton said:
At this point, I honestly don't begrudge how anyone decides to make money as long as it isn't harmful to anyone.
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And even I don’t really begrudge them.... just I don’t get it. I don’t really hate the players I hate the game.
 
I think I’m learning the older you get just embrace what you enjoy and if you don’t understand or get what the younger crowd is into, don’t sweat it. For example, I think new music sucks so I’ll just keep enjoying what Little Stevie refers to as the Rock ‘N Roll Era (1950s-1990s).

If you don’t like new gen RPGs don’t play them!
 
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robertsconley said:
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And as to why I did any of this in the first place is the below. Even with being laminated in 1986 it still battered and torn. For my personal maps (the first two) I didn't stick with the original 100% because by late 80s I had my own take on the setting which eventually became the Majestic Wilderlands.

View attachment 6496
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And I thought my original map was in bad shape...I have to keep it because of all the penciled in notes...which are now more sentimental artifacts than needed for my games.
 
TristramEvans said:
Production values I take to include art, graphic design, page layout and typography. I'm not sure if the AD&D books are the most 'durable' of RPG books, though I'd at least accept that as a claim
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For the day, AD&D had very high production values and was hardcover, no other game of the era could say that IIRC. Now rules organization...another matter but I loved the organic feel of AD&D organization then. It was fresh and made the rules more guidelines (which was always my religion...yes I refuse to bow to RAW) as opposed to war games rules that were well organized, but dense oh so dense.
 
xanther said:
For the day, AD&D had very high production values and was hardcover, no other game of the era could say that IIRC. Now rules organization...another matter but I loved the organic feel of AD&D organization then. It was fresh and made the rules more guidelines (which was always my religion...yes I refuse to bow to RAW) as opposed to war games rules that were well organized, but dense oh so dense.
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And to be fair, RPG books of the '70s were often pretty tough reads. Runequest's first couple of editions aren't the easiest reads in the world. I'd say Traveller is the most accessible of the big three games of the '70s from a modern perspective.
 
Baulderstone said:
And to be fair, RPG books of the '70s were often pretty tough reads. Runequest's first couple of editions aren't the easiest reads in the world. I'd say Traveller is the most accessible of the big three games of the '70s from a modern perspective.
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I’d agree Traveller had the cleanest layout and best organization. I’d say TFT had the most elegant for the day, most complete and most streamlined/fast to play, especially if you went theater of the mind sans miniatures.
 
Moonglum said:
Same. 1E AD+D is my preferred system for any kind of remotely D+D like game, and part of the reason is that my original core books still look better than anything I've bought in the last 10 years.
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Late to reply but have to agree. My AD&D books saw much use over 40years as did all the others from that time. Only the AD&D books are solid.
 
Baulderstone said:
And to be fair, RPG books of the '70s were often pretty tough reads. Runequest's first couple of editions aren't the easiest reads in the world. I'd say Traveller is the most accessible of the big three games of the '70s from a modern perspective.
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Organisation wasn't the problem with RQ. It was the Section 1.2.3.4 format and the incredibly dry writing.
 
Bite your tongues! RQ2 is a masterpiece. The writing is not 'incredibly dry'. It is succinct, clear and often funny.
 
Stevethulhu said:
Organisation wasn't the problem with RQ. It was the Section 1.2.3.4 format and the incredibly dry writing.
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I'm not familiar with RQ, but the formatting you describe sounds more like Rolemaster ...
 
Moonglum said:
Bite your tongues! RQ2 is a masterpiece. The writing is not 'incredibly dry'. It is succinct, clear and often funny.
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GURPS 3 follows in its footsteps. Being clear, succinct and sometimes very funny. Yet having a reputation that suggests otherwise.
 
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