Whatever happened to Dungeons and Dragons?Follow

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3655627.stm

I played as a middle-schooler and early on in high school in the late 70's, early 80's. Sure, it implied a certain level of geekdom, but what with my involvement in the marching band, there was really no hope for my social life until college anyway. EQ is hugely comparable to D&D IMO - its one of the first things I noticed on my first log in: "this is like watching D&D actually happen." Maybe that's why I'm so addicted to it...shades of childhood and all that.

You obviously didn't play with the same nutsacks I was usually saddled with.

"Dude! My lvl 44 paladin with his +10 Holy Flaming Intelligent Sword totally kicked Orcus's ***! Then he sold the Wand of Orcus for a bajillion platinum pieces and bought all of Greyhawk!"

~*~

Edited, Mon Apr 26 13:02:13 2004 by sofakingwetoddid

Just read the article:
Actually, the controversy inspired a novel called Mazes & Monsters which was pretty bad, but not near as awful as the movie. I think I still have a copy of it floating around someplace.

I am Pardu the Holyman!

Although constantly under attack by the religious right, D&D/AD&D didn't go belly up until the mid-late 1990's when computer games took front and center stage. This was very obvious at Gencon, when more and more convention space was dedicated completely to computer games. What were some of the causes for the decline:

1) You could play the computer game anytime you wanted to for any duration. Remember how hard it was sometimes was getting a regular group of good friends together for D&D. Remember how there usually was a set time limit because someone in the group had an obligation.

2) The game was restricted to the quality of the Dungeon Master. We've all had good DMs and bad DMs. When you get a bad DM it sometimes is quite difficult finding someone else who wants to take on the role (it can be quite time consuming creating your own modules), or finding another group to play with. With a bad computer game you simply throw it in the trash and head out to the computer store for another one.

3) D&D (and many computer games that followed after it) was session based, while computer games became more real-time oriented. Instead of following a set sequence of events and waiting your turn, computer games allowed you immidiate and constant interaction. I firmly believe that our society's attention span is getting shorter and shorter. Computer games cater to the short attention span crowd. (Remember how some people in the D&D group would constantly space out waiting for their turn and missed out on something important).

4) Visual eye candy. No imagination is required...unlike D&D where you are fully dependant upon the story telling skills of the Dungeon Master in order to paint a picture in the player's minds. Some people can do this quite well, while other people are required to slowly learn this skill.

Mind you I absolutely love D&D, but sold all of my books some time ago because I couldn't find anyone who was interested in still playing it. I can now solo with Everquest and group with people all over the world. The friendships are not as deep as my D&D friends back in college, but I guess MMPORGs are a good substitue in the computer age.

Unearthed Arcana wouldn't have been so bad if it didn't fall into a sheaf of loose paper the first time you opened it

I still have my old AD&D 1st ed books. Coincidentally, I was leafing through my old Monster Manual the other night, just for kicks and nostolgia.

How about Fiend Folio or Dieties and Demigods...now that's nostalgia.

I role played extensively through my misspent youth. D&D, Call of Cthulhu, Vampire the Masquerade, we even played some star frontiers, Runequest, Other Suns, Ringworld, Warhammer, Gurps, Marvel Superheros, Traveller (you've gotta love Traveller - only system where you can die during your character creation), and others.

I think the really successful ones had relatively simple rules, like D&D, Call of Cthuhul or Vampire, along with an immediately engaging environment, and a sense of progress. Many systems didn't give a good sense of actual progress (partly because one began the game so powerful).

As a (decent) GM, I would spend 2 hours of preparation for every hour we played. That means if we game every Friday night for 4-5 hours, I spend 8-10 hours during the week cramming together stuff that, in good part, the players may totally ignore.

I very rarely GM'ed in college, but when I did there were occasions where I'd have 10-12 people show up - people wanted to play. I was part of the science fiction club at my University and we would hang out a couple times a week but rarely role play because of the time involved on the GM's part. Mostly people used the canned modules and they just aren't that good. Basically, you can use them for ideas but often heavy modification is required to make them interesting and playable. Also, you really have to be flexible. If the players want to try to bribe the guard instead of just fight, or if they sneak around, or if they try to dig their own enterance into the dungeon, you should let them try.

D&D is just not destined to be commercially successful. Once you have the rules, you don't need much. I'm sure TSR made more money off the novels and magazines then the actual RPG materials - and Wizards of the Coast made all their cash off collectable card games.

They also used up their goodwill toward their loyal fans with poor quality books (Unearthed Arcana is still infamous) and virtually content free additions like the Wilderness Survival Guide, and then the frequent rules upgrades from 2nd to 3rd to 3.5 rules none of which addressed key game balance issues like my level 1 mage is very likely to die from a single arrow strike and requires hours to regain his whopping one first level spell and by level 18 he exceedes the firepower of modern 3rd world nation's combined armed forces.

House rules were the standard. Most people I played with had some system of "spell points" e.g. mana, and virtually everyone ignored the racial level restrictions and the rolling for chance of learning a particular spell. If you're making up your own rules anyhow, why buy their supplements?

I have a 3rd edition D&D group that still plays once a week. I was DM for the longest time, but then I got sick of it, so my housemate is DM for our group. I don't have as much fun as I used to--I'd rather play EQ--but I don't want to spend the time to DM any more so I'm not going to bother volunteering again even though I don't like his campaign much. Although someone else in the group wants to DM, and that scares me...I think that they would do a horrible job. /sigh.

I usually end up having my trader up on EQ, and since we play at my house, I go in and check it every so often, talk to guildmates and friends, etc. A pretty obvious sign of disrespect, yet no one's called me out on it. Ah, well.

Game on,

The Oneiromancer

Greetings,

Ah - the roll of dice and the moan as it falls off the edge and comes up with a 20 on the floor! (Our house rules included one that only dice rolls on the table counted.)

It's been about 3 years now since I played, but prior to that, I DM'd and played in groups weekly from Kings Lynn to Saudi Arabia. There's been too much to do since I got back to think about getting a group together, but maybe next year...

Started with the 3-book box set in 1976 during training for the RAF - added the other books, then moved on to AD&D when it arrived. I'd like to try out 3rd Edition, to see how it compares to the modified 2nd Edition rules we used in Saudi. We had a great group out there, and hacked/slashed/lasered/wibbled our way through Traveller, Paranoia and Call of Cthulhu as well as AD&D. While D&D has a special attraction for me, I have to say that the most fun game to GM was Call of Cthulhu - the Sanity system was something else, and introduced a bit of uncertainty into every encounter. The body count and commitments to mental health institutes were high, but the world was saved a couple of times through different campaigns. The quality of the writing really stands out too - The Orient Express and Shadows of Yog-Sothoth campaigns have to be some of the best RPG writing I've seen.

Anyway - enough nostalgia - back to Everquest, which has to be my D&D fix for now until I've got enough time to put together both a group and a new campaign. D&D is still alive and well in the minds of those who play or have played it - and we'll be back....

If you're talking about PnP games in general (that's paper and pencil), then I agree. But not all PnP games == D&D. I could list off other games that are similar in type (PnP roleplaying games) that required much more imagination then D&D, and were a lot "smarter" as well. They just aren't as well known.

Call of Cthulhu was one of the best IMO. I loved that game as well. Roleplaying your character going insane was the most fun of the game! And discovering the "horror" that was behind a scenario was something that just didn't happen in D&D. In D&D is was like: "Oh. Another monster. We'll kill it and take it's treasure". In CoC, you'd damn well better figure out what was going on *first*, cause if the bad guys found out about you before you found out about them, you were pretty much toast.


RuneQuest (which I still play regularly today), was and is still a vastly superior game system to D&D. Many of the changes in D&D as they went through a second, then a 3rd, then 3.5 editions were attempts by D&D to intruduce the same basic concepts into their game that RuneQuest had from day one back in 1979. Differences in defenses based on whether they were armor, skill (dodge), or magical only really appeared in 3rd edition D&D. They've been in RQ from day one. Skills simply did not exist in D&D. They only thing close was the rogue skills which were set percentages based on level. Melee characters had proficiencies (which basically meant you picked a specific number of weapons you could use and took a minus if you used something else). That was it. In 2nd edition, they extended the proficiencies to include many skills, and skill trees, but it was still very basic (and kinda silly IMO). 3rd edition now kinda has skills, but it's still not nearly as elegant as the pure skill system that RQ has had for 25 years.

Different spell availability based on deity worship was a standard feature in RuneQuest. You didn't see that in D&D until sometime in 2nd edition, and you had to buy a ton of extra books to get it. Heck. The spell system in RQ alone is just vastly better then D&D ever had (or probably ever will). While they've kinda improved things by putting in DC values for stuff and making higher level spells harder to resist and such, it's still not nearly as elegant as the very simply point based system that RQ uses for spell interaction.

Combat in RQ is vastly easier then D&D as well. D&D has *finally* gotten close. Back in 1st edition, you literally had to look up 3-4 charts in 2 different books *minimum* just to determine if you hit or not. With RQ, you never had to look up a table during a combat (cept the fumble tables, but those are fun...). With the Thaco system of 2nd edition D&D finally moved in the right direction, but they still had so many modifiers that things were annoying. Finally, in 3rd edition they fixed one of the major flaws in the game (the silly way they did their AC rankings), and really simplified combat. However, they still use a base HP scale, have no hit locations, and no secondary combat effects that aren't "exception" cases (ie: You're looking something up to see what happens).


But hey. That's just what I've played for a long time. To me, the waning desire for D&D really isn't that big a deal. I do agree that PnP RPGs are great to play. I just totally lost interest in D&D about 15-20 years ago, when it became apparent that the only goal of TSR (then later WoTC, then later Hasbro) was to make you buy more and more expansion packs and rules additions then it was to make a game system that worked. I remember sometime in the mid 90s (height of the 2nd edition system), looking at the shelves in some game store and seeing an entire row, several shelves high, of game suppliments for D&D and thinking: "Man am I glad I don't play that game. I'd have to shell out $500 bucks just to have all the rules". 3rd edition is actually pretty good, but not good enough for me to want to go out and buy the game. But that's just me...

I wanted to add something, I love D&D. My collection of various hardcovers numbers 30 some, the little weenie paperbacks that still bite you for $20, and my subscriptions to Dungeon & Dragon are always a joy to read through. Most of my time is spent simply reading the manuals, taking what story value I can get from them. Thinking about the horro of insanity that is the Far Realm, a reality our minds weren't built to grasp sends a shiver up my mind at the thought.

However.

I cannot honestly say I have ever played D&D. I tried to play in a beginners campaign at out local "Wizards of the Coast" store, and lasted 30 minutes, as the DM didn't know what he was doing. In despiration I have tried to run adventures with family members and me as DM, but I felt so overwhelmed, trying to DM and teach the game to 4 people when I have never really even played? I used to play magic a lot at various stores years ago, (Wizards of the Coast stores are closing) and at my old haunts that still actually exist no one has known where to get a game. I looked up some leads on the net, but... I wouldn't say I'm shy, but driving out to a stranger's house on a single e-mail? nah. One was monthly, another was over an hour away. As for actually playing online, I've looked at a couple of tools, but you'd really have to have a prescheduled game.

So yeah, I'm kinda stuck. As a last ditch effort, I live in the Ellicott City, Maryland area if anyone's around. :P