For grognards, when was the point of no turning back for DnD?

[S.torch]

The original Dragonlance adventure module series had 12 entries, published from 1984-1986, plus one module in the series was just background (DL5 Dragons of Mystery; more about the novels than anything else), and one module was an optional wargame (DL11 Dragons of Glory). People blaming the "Hickman Revolution" for destroying D&D think that things went awry in the mid-80s.

And don't forget they were the original creators of the Ravenloft module, which was rated second best module of all time.

 

[Immortal]

3.5E was the perfect sweet spot.

4E didn't just kill DnD from a rules perspective, it bent over and took a huge dump over the entire FR Lore and sparked the introduction of snowflakey Races and Character Concepts.. It's when the art direction started to shift from this high quality stylized semi-realistic aesthetic to a buncha lame Cheebo shit.

Nuu-DnD is vomit inducing to me.

 

[laclongquan]

4E.

4th Edition just took the wind out of everybody's sail~ Later on they tried to fix things with 5E, but the spirit is already gone~ if we bother we would return to 3E or 3.5

 

[nikolokolus]

Unearthed Aracana in 1985 was the beginning of the end, and that was Gygax's last product. For a 12 year-old munchkin, it was a dream come true. This is where all of the Drizzt clones came from, the ridiculously overpowered and unbalanced Barbarian and Cavalier classes, the ridiculous stat generation system for human characters (roll 9d6k3 for prime, followed by 8d6k3, 7d6k3, etc.).

Hell, you could probably place the inflection point of D&D's decline right at the moment that Gygax, squeezed out Dave Arneson and tried to screw him out of his royalties.

 

[Old One]

The real end was when D&D moved to Seattle and wasn't based in the Midwest anymore. Nothing good could come of that.

 

[Rocket-Propelled Game]

I first got into TTRPGs through 3e (didn't like it much). Skipped 4e, 5e got me back into it because I could fit it into my busy schedule. Had good times, made friends, my best bud and I visited a table some of his friends were running and beat up Aztec vampires to the Pillar Men theme from Jojo.

Then 5e plummeted straight to the Nine Hells over that OGL fiasco and I've mostly given up on the rest of the hobby since.

 

[ProphetSword]

For me, it all went south when the systems started to treat each character as a special snowflake who can't be killed lest we hurt the player's itty-bitty feelings for the minor inconvenience of having died in a dangerous line of work.

When I DM, I make it a point to let players know that back in the day our characters went through the meat grinder. If you die, I will let you die. I will not fudge things to protect your precious character; because death is the grim reality of fighting armies of monsters and plundering dangerous dungeons. Besides, death is only a temporary setback in D&D and not every death means something. Some deaths are random and meaningless, and that's just life. Get over yourself.

So, I don't know...maybe AD&D 2e is where the cracks started to show?

 

[Mortmal]

For me, it all went south when the systems started to treat each character as a special snowflake who can't be killed lest we hurt the player's itty-bitty feelings for the minor inconvenience of having died in a dangerous line of work.

When I DM, I make it a point to let players know that back in the day our characters went through the meat grinder. If you die, I will let you die. I will not fudge things to protect your precious character; because death is the grim reality of fighting armies of monsters and plundering dangerous dungeons. Besides, death is only a temporary setback in D&D and not every death means something. Some deaths are random and meaningless, and that's just life. Get over yourself.

So, I don't know...maybe AD&D 2e is where the cracks started to show?

There its not a question of ruleset , but mindset. You can make the game as lethal you wish it to be even with 4E 5E. Getting lot of trouble with that too, half of my players (of a certain age) love it being grim and deadly and having lot of fun like that, but one of the other (millenials) went all emo , one complained about feeling like shit in the game when his life was shit already etc etc...

 

[Alex]

I had voted for 3e because it is when the game changed from what I learned to love about AD&D. But I probably should mention that this is an answer about my preferences, not about what "grognards" think. Many people out there dislike 2e already, and for good reason to be honest. I love 2e, but it is pretty different from 1e, not only because Gygax left TSR. It had already a rather different focus from what made 1e work, and to be honest I like this focus better than what 1e was about (but I can enjoy both, unlike say, 4e). The focus on verisimilitude that took most of the big RPGs from those days in some way or other was awesome in my opinion and I think games mostly became worse for abandoning it. In AD&D's case you can see the difference very well given how monster entries differ from 2e and 1e, with aspects such as habitat and ecology becoming an important (or at least taking up valuable space) aspect of each monster entry. 1e is built for a greater focus on certain kinds of games such as dungeon crawling.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The point of no turning back for D&D? When Dave Arneson demonstrated it to Gary Gygax in 1973.

 

[Zombra]

People here play editions other than 1E?

 

[King Crispy]

1E started it all, legendary.

2E was a bit of a shock, removing key components, but contained some improvements.

3E was even more of a shock and started to bring doubts with it. Munchkinism made its arrival.

3.5E was an improvement over 3.0 and was bolstered by solid implementation into several decent CRPGs, but the damage had already been done.

4E was like a shotgun blast to the temple of anyone still interested in AD&D. Flatline.

5E was offered to the offspring of the now-dead "grognards", lying stone-cold in their graves.

 

[Tyranicon]

The ironic part is that 5e, which is generally agreed by grognards to be shit and appeals to normies broad audiences, is also the most popular according to Wizards.

Wait, did I type ironic? I meant most expected.

God I hate fucking casuals, fucking getting in my pnp, making up ludicious backstories about their edgelord furry mary sues, reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

 

[WhiteShark]

The focus on verisimilitude that took most of the big RPGs from those days in some way or other was awesome in my opinion and I think games mostly became worse for abandoning it.

Necessarily so, for the essence of an RPG is verisimilitude and the further one strays from that essence, the more it becomes a board game or playacting. You can't become immersed in a world that doesn't make sense.

 

[ind33d]

When was the point that grognards said there was no salvation from that point in regards to each edition of Dungeon and Dragons and why?

I don't think this question has been made here before. You people have any stories to share about how the old players felt with every edition?

4e was still a tactical combat game with an emphasis on player skill. 5e is a gay pride parade

 

[WhiteShark]

When was the point that grognards said there was no salvation from that point in regards to each edition of Dungeon and Dragons and why?

I don't think this question has been made here before. You people have any stories to share about how the old players felt with every edition?

4e was still a tactical combat game with an emphasis on player skill. 5e is a gay pride parade

True, but D&D as an RPG was toast by the time of 4E. Speaking as someone who ran it for a year it was indeed an excellent tactics game but not an RPG.

 

[ind33d]

I think 4e could have done well if they automated the monster turns and ran it as a competitive PVE game like dungeons in WOW, which it was clearly based on anyway. If game stores made players divide into teams of four and all run the same module and whichever team got the most gold won, that would have been sick and similar to what Gygax originally intended

 

[WhiteShark]

I think 4e could have done well if they automated the monster turns and ran it as a competitive PVE game like dungeons in WOW, which it was clearly based on anyway. If game stores made players divide into teams of four and all run the same module and whichever team got the most gold won, that would have been sick and similar to what Gygax originally intended

At that point why even have multiple players? D&D 4e is not so complex that one guy couldn't handle a party of four. In fact, this is one of my general complaints against tabletop RPGs: the breadth of available actions and decisions to a player of a single character is not that large and is one of the main reasons I would rather GM.

 

[ind33d]

I think 4e could have done well if they automated the monster turns and ran it as a competitive PVE game like dungeons in WOW, which it was clearly based on anyway. If game stores made players divide into teams of four and all run the same module and whichever team got the most gold won, that would have been sick and similar to what Gygax originally intended

At that point why even have multiple players? D&D 4e is not so complex that one guy couldn't handle a party of four. In fact, this is one of my general complaints against tabletop RPGs: the breadth of available actions and decisions to a player of a single character is not that large and is one of the main reasons I would rather GM.

Well some of the characters would have different races, alignments, objectives, etc. People fight over loot in WOW all the time. It's not a hivemind

 

[WhiteShark]

Well some of the characters would have different races, alignments, objectives, etc. People fight over loot in WOW all the time. It's not a hivemind

I think if it were an excplicit competition and not just an implicit one as in WoW, there would be a lot of hiveminding.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Never anything to turn back to, RuneQuest was always superior.

 

[Zombra]

Never anything to turn back to, RuneQuest was always superior.

Well yeah. The point of no return for D&D was discovering that any other RPGs existed.

 

[mediocrepoet]

1E started it all, legendary.

2E was a bit of a shock, removing key components, but contained some improvements.

3E was even more of a shock and started to bring doubts with it. Munchkinism made its arrival.

3.5E was an improvement over 3.0 and was bolstered by solid implementation into several decent CRPGs, but the damage had already been done.

4E was like a shotgun blast to the temple of anyone still interested in AD&D. Flatline.

5E was offered to the offspring of the now-dead "grognards", lying stone-cold in their graves.

The hell is this, Crispy? Munchkinism was a thing since 1E. I mean, it got turbocharged with 3E, but it's always been a thing.

 

[Norfleet]

The hell is this, Crispy? Munchkinism was a thing since 1E. I mean, it got turbocharged with 3E, but it's always been a thing.

The hardcore munchkinism really started to creep in with the 2E expansions, and became core rules by 3E. This was the point at which we had character builds as the core mechanic, with all that it entails. Prior to that, you rolled some stats and picked a race/class, and a few pieces of fluff that generally didn't impact combat. After 3E, you had build points to allocate. All of it would directly impact combat performance.

 

[mediocrepoet]

The hell is this, Crispy? Munchkinism was a thing since 1E. I mean, it got turbocharged with 3E, but it's always been a thing.

The hardcore munchkinism really started to creep in with the 2E expansions, and became core rules by 3E. This was the point at which we had character builds as the core mechanic, with all that it entails. Prior to that, you rolled some stats and picked a race/class, and a few pieces of fluff that generally didn't impact combat. After 3E, you had build points to allocate. All of it would directly impact combat performance.

Yeah, that's true. But even so, before all that you still had the guys trying to push to be super powerful, mysteriously rolling multiple 18s in chargen, etc. Certainly it was more of a barebones toolkit to play with though. But you could say that about every aspect of the game other than the weird one off tables for various mechanics.