Dungeons and Dragons is easily the biggest name in the TTRPG space. The original D&D, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson's 1974 release was a sequel to Gygax's previous work Chainmail (1971) as well as Avalon Hill's Outside Survival, changing the simulationist wargame into a system of individuals fighting in a fantasy world. The system was full of inconsistencies, and was heavily modded and discussed for 15 years in the social media of the 70s - the zine. Those changes got collected by Gygax in 1989 with AD&D 2nd edition. If you're interested in the history of the early editions of the hobby, check out this amazing (albeit long) video from gaming legend Matt Colville giving a breakdown of Jon Peterson's The Elusive Shift (2002):
In the year 2000, 3rd edition came in and created the style of D&D that we're most connected to today - the D20+mod roll-over system, modern interpretations of terms like "difficulty check" & "armor class", the beginnings of a standardized setup for what a creature stat block or spell looks like. D&D 4th edition, in 2008, took that standardization even further - streamlining all character classes (and creatures!) and abilities into discrete chunks, making things very precise with "game-y" language, instead of the more narrative style text. This wasn't particularly popular, and caused the creation of Pathfinder, which was an extension of the 3.5 modified rules by a different company. 5th edition came out in 2014, keeping some of the streamlining that was introduced in 4th edition, but otherwise reverted back to the more familiar 3rd edition differentiation. That ruleset was supposed to be rebooted in 2024, but the changes were relatively mild, leaving some existing issues open, while creating brand new ones. Even now, erratas are being leveled on the brand new edition as it came out with a whimper.
The various D&D editions have a couple really interesting things that have kept it in the public eye. First, there's a ton of content - the simple inertia the biggest game stays the biggest because it was always the biggest. There are now decades of adventures, classes, spells, settings, monsters and everything else - while the various editions and spin-offs are slightly different in execution, they're always close enough for reference. The gaming license allowed 3rd-party publishers to also be churning out content. Secondly, with all of the issues that the game has, the core concept is pretty simple - you follow the directions, create a character of a bunch of numbers, then most things come down to "roll a d20, and add that number". Finally, it kept the core conceit of the hobby with the Tolkien-style Fantasy adventuring, while opening the system up to a wider public, inspiring multiple executions into superheroic and scifi settings.
Pros:
It's relatively simple. It's usually simple addition of a static number and a number no bigger than 20.
5th Edition combatted the "modifier bloat" from previous editions by boiling it down to Advantage (Roll twice, take the highest) and Disadvantage (Roll Twice take the lowest).
D&D is so enmeshed in the cultural zeitgeist that the average person just "gets" it to a certain extent. The wizard acts wizard-y, the Barbarian smashes stuff, the fighter fights, the rogue sneaks, etc. The average enjoyer of fantasy media will have enough information to piggyback off of to get into the vibe.
It's also the game that is most tied to RPGs in the media - it's own blockbuster movie (in 2023, not the hilariously bad bomb in 2000) and the animated series Legends of Vox Machina, references in shows like Community, Gravity Falls and Stranger Things, emulated in video games (Knights of the Old Republic, Divinity: Original Sin, the Baulder's Gate and Neverwinter series), and is publicly adopted by celebrity actors like Vin Diesel, Deborah Ann Woll, and Joe Manganiello.
The popularity of the game has created an entire ecosystem of third-party products and accessories. Beyond the expected items like dice and character sheets, there are trackers, cards, condition markers, swag (like pins stickers, shirts and other apparel), digital apps, dice towers, miniatures, battle map miniature accessories (like terrain and dungeon tiles), and DM screens that are available for any price point, from cheap & plasticky all the way up to high-quality hardwood.
Cons:
The games are heavily powered by the GM. The Creature Level system falls apart beyond a certain level, the economy leaves a lot to be desired, and while there are many adventures that are created for the systems, they are wildly inconsistent in description and how to interact with when the players go "off script".
As mentioned in the above embedded video - there's no one 'correct' way to play D&D. Some tables are there for the thrilling heroics where the players are awesome all the time, others are gritty survival games where each pound, arrow and torch is important; Some games contain deep & narrative roleplay involving politics and intrigue, while others are just playing tabletop Diablo, hacking and slashing to paint the town red. Going into a game with a new group blind, you have no idea what you are getting into.
 |
| Dungeon Master's Guide, 2014 |
There isn't really a definitive way to determine how hard something abstract is. For creatures it's relatively straightforward - their stats and equipment determine things like their Armor class or how well they shrug off psychic influence. But for traps, hazards, and more off-the-cuff encounters (jumping from a moving carriage, clinging to the side of a wall, etc) are left completely open. There are suggestions (to the right) but it's completely arbitrary - is jumping off a horse to tackle someone medium or hard? Very hard? It is completely arbitrary. And doesn't scale well - an average player character begins with a +4 in something they're half-decent in, but can end beyond +9 without serious investment. Things you're proficient in gain a +2 to +6 over time with a 0 in the stat, and between expertise and stat modifiers, can get up to +17.
The way the game is created, it's very reference-intensive and segmented. There's very little freestyling and remixing available in the game - if you're going to be a barbarian, here are the 4 barbarians you can be. If you choose this background, you get these skills. If you're playing a caster, you have X number of spells available that you must pick from this limited list. If all players have a comfortable understanding of the system, and access to tools either online or their own books, this is great. But nothing makes me cringe more than a new player picking up a druid - Not only do you have your own race, background, skills, equipment and spells to choose, you should look over all of the possible creature stat blocks you can transform into! The previous editions of the game also had the wildly annoying habit of making individual classes gain features at different levels. This was finally corrected in the 2024 "5.5" edition, tying subclass advancement to levels 3, 6, 10 and 14, and class advancements in all of the others.
In a very new-player-facing way, it is a game that seems to require a large financial investment. A casual perusal of what is available can be overwhelming - dozens of books, legions of miniatures, dice sets costing over $50, and professional-quality gaming tables made for RPGs and board games that cost thousands of dollars. DnDBeyond, the official app from the creators of the game Wizards of the Coast, requires either a monthly subscription to use, or for players to pay for each digital book at about the same price as a print book. Someone who is in the hobby knows that all of those are frivolous and extra, and the game can be played using the cheapest dice and scrap paper, but someone looking in from outside, it looks an unscalable wall.
Lastly, the popularity of the system's name has gotten so ubiquitous that it tends to suck the air out of the room. People new to the hobby don't want to play "Tabletop Role-Playing Games", they want to play D&D. This is a giant issue for anyone wanting to find new players for smaller systems, as the bulk of players want to only play the "real thing" and not other systems, even though another system might be more appropriate for the story at hand. In addition, there are massive amounts of terrible information all over the internet that is D&D related - bad takes on forums and Reddit, giant databases of hilariously unbalanced homebrew on websites like DnDWiki - while WotC tries to keep their IP as far behind a paywall as possible, so it's really easy for a quick google search to take a curious new player down a completely idiotic rabbit hole.
What we're going to borrow from D&D:
Honestly, not much. While it is easily the system I know the most about, it's much more like a 50-year version of the quote "I have not failed - I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work" that is attributed to Thomas Edison. Some of the things I would want to avoid would include
- Leaving Abstract issues up to the GM discretion
- Refusing to flesh out world-building elements like economics & crafting
- Requiring the players to look up multiple references to get simple things done.
- Containing interesting mechanics that are locked behind specific subclasses
- Limiting the players' interpretation of magic or ingenuity to a tighter list.
The Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic as a way to easily give a bonus is probably the most applicable thing that can be ported over to other games. While it was used in the system to combat a bloat of modifiers, it also caused a new problem - nothing stacks. If I have advantage from one boon based on circumstances, spells, or something else, there's no point in trying to use another ability to get more of an advantage.
No comments:
Post a Comment