Killer obstructive DM, nintendo hard games, and shift in gamer culture

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I can't speak of Tomb of Horrors, but I know 2E encouraged adversarial DMing. The DMG was all about the DM saying no to players. The worst offender for me was in ability score generation. In 2E you needed minimum scores to play classes. The game discouraged the DM to adjust rolled stats, but if you are doing it anyway don't let a player qualify for a special class like paladin or ranger. "If the character already qualifies for a fighter does he really need to be a ranger? Why not play a fighter who always wanted to be a ranger but is allergic to trees. Inspire roleplaying!" That's male bovine feces.

For reference, here's the section you're talking about:

All of the above notwithstanding, you don't want to force a player to accept a character he doesn't really like. All you will do is lose a player. If someone really is dissatisfied, either make some adjustments to the character or let him roll up a new one.

When adjusting ability scores, follow these guidelines:
• Don't adjust an ability score above the minimum required to qualify for a particular class or race. You are being kind enough already without giving away 10 percent experience bonuses.
• Don't adjust an ability score above 15. Only two classes have ability minimums higher than 15: paladins and illusionists. Only very special characters can become paladins and illusionists. If you give these classes away, they lose their charm.
• Don't adjust an ability score that isn't required for the race or class the player wants his character to be.
• Think twice before raising an ability score to let a character into an optional class if he already qualifies for the standard class in that group. For example, if Kirizov has the scores he needs to be a half-elf fighter, does he really need to be a half-elf ranger? Encourage the player to develop a character who always wanted to be a ranger but just never got the chance, or who fancies himself a ranger but is allergic to trees. Encourage role-playing!

Keep in mind that that's not an isolated section telling the DM to screw over the players, but rather the last of a sequence of sections giving general advice about ability scores and power levels. Here are some excerpts from those other sections:

Spoiler: Wall O' Quotes

Show

At the same time, watch out for a tendency in some players to want the most powerful character possible. Powerful characters are fine if that's the sort of campaign you want. A problem arises, however, if players are allowed to exploit the rules, or your good nature, to create a character who is much more powerful than everyone else's characters. At best, this leads to an unbalanced game. At worst, it leads to bored players and hurt feelings.

The following methods are different from one another. Some produce more powerful characters than others (although none produces extremely powerful characters). For this reason, every player in your game should start out using the same method. If, at some later point in your campaign, you want to change methods, simply announce this to your players. Try to avoid making the announcement just as a player starts rolling up a new character, lest the other players accuse you of favoritism.

This method is more time-consuming than I or II, especially if players try to "minimize/maximize" their choice of race and class. (To minimize/maximize, or min/max, is to examine every possibility for the greatest advantage.) Players may need to be encouraged to create the character they see in their imaginations, not the one that gains the most pluses on dice rolls.

Before choosing to use this method, think about how adventurers fit into the population as a whole. There are two schools of thought.

One holds that adventurers are no different from everyone else (except for being a little more foolhardy, headstrong, or restless). The man or woman down the street could be an adventurer--all that's required is the desire to go out and be one. Therefore, adventurers should get no special bonuses on their ability rolls.

The other school holds that adventurers are special people, a cut above the common crowd. If they weren't exceptional, they would be laborers and businessmen like everyone else. Player characters are heroes, so they should get bonuses on their ability rolls to lift them above the rabble. If you choose method V for creating player characters, then you agree with this second view and believe that adventurers should be better than everyone else.

This method creates above-average characters. They won't be perfect, but the odds are that even their worst ability scores will be average or better. More scores push into the exceptional range (15 and greater). It is easy for a player to create a character of any class and race.

Method V Disadvantages: Like other methods that allow deliberate arrangement of ability scores, this one takes some time. It also creates a tendency toward "super" characters. Unless you have a considerable amount of experience as a DM, however, beware of extremely powerful characters. They are much more difficult to challenge and control than characters of moderate power. On the plus side, their chance for survival at lower levels is better than "ordinary" characters.

One of the great temptations for players is to create super characters. While this is not true of every player all the time, the desire for power above everything else afflicts most players at one time or another. Many players see their characters as nothing more than a collection of numbers that affects game systems. They don't think of their characters as personalities to be developed. Players like this want to "win" the game. These players are missing out on a lot of fun.
[...]
The greatest difficulty occurs when a player asks to bring in a character from another campaign where characters are more powerful. Unless you are prepared to handle them, super characters can seriously disrupt a campaign: Players with average characters gradually become bored and irritated as the powerful characters dominate the action. And players with powerful characters feel held back by their weaker companions. None of this contributes to harmony and cooperation among the characters or the players.

Cooperation is a key element of role-playing. In any group of player characters, everyone has strengths to contribute and weaknesses to overcome. This is the basis for the adventuring party--even a small group with sufficiently diverse talents can accomplish deeds far greater than its size would indicate. Now, throw in a character who is an army by himself. He doesn't need the other characters, except perhaps as cannon fodder or bearers. He doesn't need allies. His presence alone destroys one of the most fundamental aspects of the game--cooperation.

At the other extreme from the super character is the character who appears hopeless. The player is convinced his new character has a fatal flaw that guarantees a quick and ugly death under the claws of some imaginary foe. Discouraged, he asks to scrap the character and create another.

In reality, few, if any, characters are truly hopeless. Certainly, ability scores have an effect on the game, but they are not the overwhelming factor in a character's success or failure. Far more important is the cleverness and ingenuity the player brings to the character. When a player bemoans his bad luck and "hopeless" character, he may just be upset because the character is not exactly what he wanted. Some players write off any character who has only one above-average ability score. Some complain if a new character does not qualify for a favorite class or race. Others complain if even one ability score is below average. Some players become stuck in super-character mode. Some want a character with no penalties. Some always want to play a particular character class and feel cheated if their scores won't allow it.

Some players cite numerical formulas as proof of a character's hopelessness ("A character needs at least 75 ability points to survive" or "A character without two scores of 15 or more is a waste of time"). In reality, there is no such hard and fast formula. There are, in fact, few really hopeless characters.

Dealing with Hopeless Characters

Before you agree that a character is hopeless, consider the player's motives. Try to be firm and encourage players to give "bad" characters a try. They might actually enjoy playing something different for a change.

A character with one or more very low score (6 or less) may seem like a loser, like it would be no fun to play. Quite simply, this isn't true! Just as exceptionally high scores make a character unique, so do very low scores. In the hands of good role-players, such characters are tremendous fun. Encourage the player to be daring and creative. Some of the most memorable characters from history and literature rose to greatness despite their flaws.

In many ways, the completely average character is the worst of all. Exceptionally good or exceptionally bad ability scores give a player something to base his role-playing on--whether nimble as a cat or dumb as a box of rocks, at least the character provides something exciting to role-play.

Average characters don't have these simple focal points. The unique, special something that makes a character stand out in a crowd must be provided by the player, and this is not always easy. Too many players fall into the "he's just your basic fighter" syndrome. In truth, however, even an average character is okay. The only really hopeless character is the rare one that cannot qualify for any character class. The playability of all other characters is up to you.

The context of that advice, then, is not "don't let players play what they want and give flippant Stormwind Fallacy suggestions if they ask you to," but rather basic advice that if a player is being disruptive or complaining or asking for concessions and if you've offered to let them reroll and they refused that and if you've talked to them about making the character work and they still refused to give that character a try, and if after all that you feel like changing scores for their benefit, you should make the minimum adjustments to let them play the character they want and not give out extra perks on top of that.

It's much like a hypothetical section in the 3e DMG that said "if a player really wants to take a PrC but his PC won't qualify for a few levels because he needs two more feats, go ahead and waive a few prereqs if you feel like it but don't give him those two feats for free" or something like that. Hardly adversarial DMing or encouraging the DM to "say no" to everything.

[EggKookoo]

And it's not an edition thing really. In my recent revisits to it, I was surprised at how adversarial the 3e DMG positioned the DM toward the players. Things like setting the DC to what you want and not even letting the player know you did (just tell them pass or fail) and repeated reassurances that you're the Top Man in Charge Now. I'm not going to say 3e was the worst in encouraging a DM vs. Player mindset, but it certainly encouraged it strongly.

[Aotrs Commander]

I think this is actually all down to one factor. 3.0 came around at the time the internet was becoming widespread.

Before that, the only window into what anyone outside your own group or people in your own area was doing was a) conventions and b) magazines and that assumes you did either. (I didn't, really, aside from the, like four issues of Dragon I think I picked up at sporadic intervals).

Forums migth have existed before then, but before 3.0, there wasn't the congregatation of people, nor the facility for, well - us to be having this conversation.

And I think in a more globally-connected culture, the simple spread of ideas has made some of the stuff more prominent. Stuff that we always cite now with interpersonal conflicts "talk to the plyer out of game" - there just WASN'T the facility to do that, save for the very few bothered enough to maybe write into Dragon or something and lucky enough to get said letter published. I think we all have a tendancy to forget this stuff just wasn't as obvious even twenty years ago (let alone in, like, the 80s? I want to say?) When the AD&D DMG was written.

The fact that sometimes a player or a DM doesn't fit with a group's playstyle is something we talk about now, but even in the dawn of 3.0, probably wasn't something anyone mostly considered. If it was your local group, it's be just considering the odd-one-out to be "That Guy," without genuinely realising that in another group, their playstyle might make them "That Guy" because if all you know is the same group, then how CAN you?

For (somewhat trivial) example, my group would NEVER in a million years considered the idea of "someone other than the DM has the character sheets," until I saw people talking about it. (Because no-one had done it any other way.) And thus, when we have had the players that want to do that, being prepared for such things not coming out of the blue, all I say (for our weekly games) is they have to keep a copy for me reasonably updated in case they are away one session.

I think part of it is, we're all now MUCH more self-aware about this sort of thing, both in RPGs specifically and generally culturaly, simply because of the freedom and ease of communication. (And partly because while it allows the like-minded to find each other more easily, that can be a double-edged sword sometimes as well.)

[NigelWalmsley]

I think this is actually all down to one factor. 3.0 came around at the time the internet was becoming widespread.

Yep. I promise you, if you had the same number of people analyzing the problems of 2e, you'd find just as many issues. And conversely, if you play 3e without exposure to the internet charop culture, you will likely have very few balance problems.

[Willie the Duck]

Keep in mind that that's not an isolated section telling the DM to screw over the players, but rather the last of a sequence of sections giving general advice about ability scores and power levels. Here are some excerpts from those other sections:

The context of that advice, then, is not "don't let players play what they want and give flippant Stormwind Fallacy suggestions if they ask you to," but rather basic advice that if a player is being disruptive or complaining or asking for concessions and if you've offered to let them reroll and they refused that and if you've talked to them about making the character work and they still refused to give that character a try, and if after all that you feel like changing scores for their benefit, you should make the minimum adjustments to let them play the character they want and not give out extra perks on top of that.

It's much like a hypothetical section in the 3e DMG that said "if a player really wants to take a PrC but his PC won't qualify for a few levels because he needs two more feats, go ahead and waive a few prereqs if you feel like it but don't give him those two feats for free" or something like that. Hardly adversarial DMing or encouraging the DM to "say no" to everything.

FWIW, 2e overall was written with some very bizarre flavor (perhaps as a way to make it distinctive from the Gygaxian prose of 1E). There are passages of examples of play and the like where the DM is somewhere between tonedeaf and clueless to halfway jerkish.

And it's not an edition thing really. In my recent revisits to it, I was surprised at how adversarial the 3e DMG positioned the DM toward the players. Things like setting the DC to what you want and not even letting the player know you did (just tell them pass or fail) and repeated reassurances that you're the Top Man in Charge Now. I'm not going to say 3e was the worst in encouraging a DM vs. Player mindset, but it certainly encouraged it strongly.

If you include Strategic Review/Dragon articles, the game seems to have always struggled its whole life with whether a DM needs to see players as people they are trying to accommodate or people trying to get away with something.

I think this is actually all down to one factor. 3.0 came around at the time the internet was becoming widespread.

Before that, the only window into what anyone outside your own group or people in your own area was doing was a) conventions and b) magazines and that assumes you did either. (I didn't, really, aside from the, like four issues of Dragon I think I picked up at sporadic intervals).

Forums migth have existed before then, but before 3.0, there wasn't the congregatation of people, nor the facility for, well - us to be having this conversation.

There were local BBSes and Usenet in the 80s and 90s. What I got from that is that there was that whining and complaining was certainly not a modern gaming phenomenon. No one has ever been satisfied with TTRPGs (D&D or otherwise) ever, be it the rules, their group, their DM/GM, or anything else. Very much a nothing-new-under-the-sun thing.

Yep. I promise you, if you had the same number of people analyzing the problems of 2e, you'd find just as many issues. And conversely, if you play 3e without exposure to the internet charop culture, you will likely have very few balance problems.

I think, without the internet culture, you just fix things that are problems. Everyone seemed to have a binder of house rules, fixes, mods, combos, clipped out articles, and the like.

[prabe]

I think, without the internet culture, you just fix things that are problems. Everyone seemed to have a binder of house rules, fixes, mods, combos, clipped out articles, and the like.

I think pre-Internet you might not have as many problems you felt you needed to solve, but finding solutions for them might be more difficult. I wouldn't call it a complete wash, but maybe it's kinda close.

[Zarrgon]

I think this is actually all down to one factor. 3.0 came around at the time the internet was becoming widespread.

Though it is amazing how much the internet homogenized everything.

Before The Net, each gaming group was unique and people in the group though all sorts of different things.

After Internet: Just about everyone is the same and thinks the same things with no acceptance for any other viewpoint.

Just pick a random topic, like say Monks. Immediately the huge bulk of people online will say "Monk's Suck!". And you will only find a couple people like myself that say it's not true.

Just look at the houserules for any posted game...amazingly just about all of them are the same from game to game and you will see the same ones repeated over and over and over and over again.

And look at just about any "asking for help thread" and you will see the same answer given by nearly everyone every time. I stand out nearly every time typing "well, I have a different view point then all the other posters above me".

I think part of it is, we're all now MUCH more self-aware about this sort of thing, both in RPGs specifically and generally culturaly, simply because of the freedom and ease of communication. (And partly because while it allows the like-minded to find each other more easily, that can be a double-edged sword sometimes as well.)

It just does not seem as if the communication is good for the game....

Though really this is a big lifestyle culture shift, and not just a game one.

[Quertus]

The GM, as the hostiles of a game world, is in an inherently adversarial relationship with the characters. Not ever the players. For the players the GM is all about creating and having fun.

Agreed. Granted, I've had some GMs who just weren't capable of role-playing non-hostile NPCs, with non-adversarial relationships with the characters. I think it might be fair to consider them "hostile GMs".

Of course, you can see the problem of way to many players "play the game, as themselves" in every way, but most of all mentally. So when the DM orc attacks their character the player sees and feels it's an attack on them personally..

That certainly could explain some people's definitions of "hostile GM", I suppose.

I think this is actually all down to one factor. 3.0 came around at the time the internet was becoming widespread.

Before that, the only window into what anyone outside your own group or people in your own area was doing was a) conventions and b) magazines and that assumes you did either. (I didn't, really, aside from the, like four issues of Dragon I think I picked up at sporadic intervals).

Forums migth have existed before then, but before 3.0, there wasn't the congregatation of people, nor the facility for, well - us to be having this conversation.

And I think in a more globally-connected culture, the simple spread of ideas has made some of the stuff more prominent. Stuff that we always cite now with interpersonal conflicts "talk to the plyer out of game" - there just WASN'T the facility to do that, save for the very few bothered enough to maybe write into Dragon or something and lucky enough to get said letter published. I think we all have a tendancy to forget this stuff just wasn't as obvious even twenty years ago (let alone in, like, the 80s? I want to say?) When the AD&D DMG was written.

The fact that sometimes a player or a DM doesn't fit with a group's playstyle is something we talk about now, but even in the dawn of 3.0, probably wasn't something anyone mostly considered. If it was your local group, it's be just considering the odd-one-out to be "That Guy," without genuinely realising that in another group, their playstyle might make them "That Guy" because if all you know is the same group, then how CAN you?

For (somewhat trivial) example, my group would NEVER in a million years considered the idea of "someone other than the DM has the character sheets," until I saw people talking about it. (Because no-one had done it any other way.) And thus, when we have had the players that want to do that, being prepared for such things not coming out of the blue, all I say (for our weekly games) is they have to keep a copy for me reasonably updated in case they are away one session.

I think part of it is, we're all now MUCH more self-aware about this sort of thing, both in RPGs specifically and generally culturaly, simply because of the freedom and ease of communication. (And partly because while it allows the like-minded to find each other more easily, that can be a double-edged sword sometimes as well.)

Yep. I promise you, if you had the same number of people analyzing the problems of 2e, you'd find just as many issues. And conversely, if you play 3e without exposure to the internet charop culture, you will likely have very few balance problems.

Would I come across as a conceited, Lawful Evil super genius if i said, "it's always been that obvious"?

How about if I said "it's always been that obvious, but most people weren't standing on the backs of The Giant and company back then to realize it"?

[Pex]

For reference, here's the section you're talking about:



Keep in mind that that's not an isolated section telling the DM to screw over the players, but rather the last of a sequence of sections giving general advice about ability scores and power levels. Here are some excerpts from those other sections:


The context of that advice, then, is not "don't let players play what they want and give flippant Stormwind Fallacy suggestions if they ask you to," but rather basic advice that if a player is being disruptive or complaining or asking for concessions and if you've offered to let them reroll and they refused that and if you've talked to them about making the character work and they still refused to give that character a try, and if after all that you feel like changing scores for their benefit, you should make the minimum adjustments to let them play the character they want and not give out extra perks on top of that.

There are lots of Don'ts there. The player is not disruptive or complaining. He's only dissatisfied he can't play the character he wants because he didn't roll the required stats, and the DMG is saying don't let him.

[NigelWalmsley]

I think, without the internet culture, you just fix things that are problems. Everyone seemed to have a binder of house rules, fixes, mods, combos, clipped out articles, and the like.

Do you think people don't do that now? Every D&D player I've ever met has their own idiosyncratic collection of houserules, homebrew, variant rules, bannings, rules interpretations, and allowed sources. People don't argue on the internet instead of fixing their problems, they do both.

Before The Net, each gaming group was unique and people in the group though all sorts of different things.

After Internet: Just about everyone is the same and thinks the same things with no acceptance for any other viewpoint.

Is there any issue you can't reduce to a false binary between two groups of people, where there's a group you belong to that is virtuous and maintains its ancient traditions, and a group other people belong to that is evil whiners?

[Knaight]

Eh, I'm not sure of that. The phenomenon even occurs on message boards.

I'm not sure about this - there's toxicity on RPG message boards, sure, but the bad ones are nowhere near the bad ones I've seen for other hobbies. Starting with the trash fire that is the general videogame community, but also music centered and weightlifting centered ones in particular.

There are also good sites for most all of these, though I'm not sure a videogame forum with a functioning culture actually exists. Maybe for certain specific video games.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

There are also good sites for most all of these, though I'm not sure a videogame forum with a functioning culture actually exists. Maybe for certain specific video games.

Definitely for certain specific videogames, particularly smaller communities can be very nice. But I have to admit I wouldn't personally know an exactly similarly sized equivalent of say GiantITP centered around video games/a video game series/a fan comic of a video game series.

[Zarrgon]

Agreed. Granted, I've had some GMs who just weren't capable of role-playing non-hostile NPCs, with non-adversarial relationships with the characters. I think it might be fair to consider them "hostile GMs".

This is why wise people say DMing is hard. It's not hard to toss monsters at players: it's hard to have a non-adversarial relationships with the characters. And a great many other things.

That certainly could explain some people's definitions of "hostile GM", I suppose.

It's no less common in most things in life: way too many people take way too many things personally.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

FWIW, 2e overall was written with some very bizarre flavor (perhaps as a way to make it distinctive from the Gygaxian prose of 1E). There are passages of examples of play and the like where the DM is somewhere between tonedeaf and clueless to halfway jerkish.

If you include Strategic Review/Dragon articles, the game seems to have always struggled its whole life with whether a DM needs to see players as people they are trying to accommodate or people trying to get away with something.

I wouldn't say it struggled with the issue so much as it viewed the DM as wearing many different hats in a way that later editions didn't really distinguish. 3e and later basically refer to the DM as the "DM" everywhere, but AD&D material talked about "Dungeon Master" or "judge" or "referee" or a few other terms depending on the context, and those three were roughly used as "DM" = building adventures and running the monsters, "judge" = knowing rules and making rulings or resolving rules disputes, and "referee" = group manager and moderator of inter-player disputes.

It wouldn't be unreasonable for the DMG or a Dragon article or whatever to both recommend always sticking with the rules as written and to work with a player to houserule something, because those are two different approaches to the same issue (make using the rules simpler by being inflexible with them vs. make the players happier by accommodating them) and DMs were expected to decide how they personally wanted to resolve those issues.

There are lots of Don'ts there. The player is not disruptive or complaining. He's only dissatisfied he can't play the character he wants because he didn't roll the required stats, and the DMG is saying don't let him.

Again:

A problem arises, however, if players are allowed to exploit the rules, or your good nature, to create a character who is much more powerful than everyone else's characters. At best, this leads to an unbalanced game. At worst, it leads to bored players and hurt feelings.

While this is not true of every player all the time, the desire for power above everything else afflicts most players at one time or another. Many players see their characters as nothing more than a collection of numbers that affects game systems. They don't think of their characters as personalities to be developed. Players like this want to "win" the game.

When a player bemoans his bad luck and "hopeless" character, he may just be upset because the character is not exactly what he wanted. Some players write off any character who has only one above-average ability score. Some complain if a new character does not qualify for a favorite class or race. Others complain if even one ability score is below average. Some players become stuck in super-character mode. Some want a character with no penalties. Some always want to play a particular character class and feel cheated if their scores won't allow it.

Some players cite numerical formulas as proof of a character's hopelessness ("A character needs at least 75 ability points to survive" or "A character without two scores of 15 or more is a waste of time"). In reality, there is no such hard and fast formula. There are, in fact, few really hopeless characters.

The section is not giving advice on players like someone who goes "Darn, I needed my Cha to be 2 higher to play Sir Bob the Paladin. Hey DM, do you mind if bump up his Cha by 2 and, I dunno, drop his Dex by 2 so he can be a paladin?" and is fine rolling up a different character if the DM says no. The section is advising DMs on how to deal with powergamers, munchkins, the "No, I totally rolled thre 18s when you weren't looking" types, the "But 3d6 is order isn't fair!" types, and similar, even though the general advice about raising stats is applicable in both cases.

[Composer99]

We all heard horror DM tales. games where you don't get any loot, and most smart solution are vetoed. games where you can get a negative debuff that willl never get away, as you won't have the magic to heal it. games where your character can die for a critical fumble. and we wonder why the players put up with them.

then i was browsing tvtropes, and went to nintendo hard, and i realized that in the past, it was the norm for games to be much more brutal and unforgiving. it was pretty common that a single hit could kill you, that you would not be allowed to skip stuff by being clever, that you would not get any significant power-up through all the game.

So I'm thinking, maybe those bad DM and bad games aren't exactly bad per se, but they are rather a leftover after a shift in gamer culture. And perhaps the people in those games - even those people who feel miserable - think that it should be normal for a game to make you miserable unless you are an absolute pro, because it was the norm.

which, by the way, was probably a result of games being, by necessity, much simpler at the time. so the only way to make them challenging would be to have them being very unforgiving of small mistakes.

I'm wondering if a lot of bad games could be explained by a clash in gamer culture.

This thread has got into some serious weeds, even if some of the unfolding discussions are interesting to read (even if they are rehashing much well-covered ground on these forums).

But to look at this original post, I would say that, having lived through the age of Nintendo Hard console games but somewhat after Ye Olden Days of TTRPGs (I cut my teeth on the BE part of BECMI in the late 80s), I'm not sure I could agree that changes in TTRPG culture over time relate to the phenomenon of Nintendo Hard. I'm also not sure that "it should be normal for a game to make you miserable" was ever a norm for TTRPGs. (Indeed, I can't agree that Nintendo Hard meant playing games "ma[d]e you miserable", necessarily.)

I'd be more inclined to say that (a) changes in TTRPG culture are likely reflections of changes in the overall culture in which TTRPGs are embedded, and (b) insofar as DMs ranging from poor to toxic were indeed more commonly encountered in the past, such that their existence today can come across as a holdover, it's likely because the kinds of attitudes, mindsets, and behaviours that encouraged their existence were more likely to be accepted or tolerated in the wider culture in the past.

[EggKookoo]

I think part of it is, we're all now MUCH more self-aware about this sort of thing, both in RPGs specifically and generally culturaly, simply because of the freedom and ease of communication. (And partly because while it allows the like-minded to find each other more easily, that can be a double-edged sword sometimes as well.)

What I've found for myself is my tendency to homebrew has lessened as I'm exposed to more information. I don't have a solid reason why, but I suspect it has to do with how, in the relative isolation of the past, I felt more like I was the only one to notice Problem X and had no one outside my immediate gaming group to discuss Problem X with, and if they weren't interested in working out the kinks with me (and they usually weren't), I would come up with Solution X on my own. Solution X might be horribly broken in a dozen ways, but if none of those ways come up in our actual real-life game, they functionally didn't exist for us. Which only encouraged more imbalanced homebrewing.

With my current access to a forum of experience, I might bring up Problem X to learn that maybe it's not really a problem after all, but exists for a reason (a reason I can take back to my players). Or I might see that people agree it's a problem, but my Solution X is a very bad idea and I should never implement it. Instead, people have been applying Solution Y, which I would never have thought of. Or maybe I would have if I had reason to reject Solution X, but since in the old days that solution never caused a perceptible problem I was never motivated to. Mostly, I find, it's the former (X is not really a problem, it was a design decision, and here are the reasons...). Which discourages changing it, and encourages a kind of "trust the system" mentality. Which in turn reduces my sensitivity to small quirks and inconsistencies in the mechanics. A kind of How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the RAW.

[ExLibrisMortis]

With my current access to a forum of experience, I might bring up Problem X to learn that maybe it's not really a problem after all, but exists for a reason (a reason I can take back to my players). Or I might see that people agree it's a problem, but my Solution X is a very bad idea and I should never implement it. Instead, people have been applying Solution Y, which I would never have thought of. Or maybe I would have if I had reason to reject Solution X, but since in the old days that solution never caused a perceptible problem I was never motivated to. Mostly, I find, it's the former (X is not really a problem, it was a design decision, and here are the reasons...). Which discourages changing it, and encourages a kind of "trust the system" mentality. Which in turn reduces my sensitivity to small quirks and inconsistencies in the mechanics. A kind of How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the RAW.

This, very much. "Trust the system" not in the sense of "trust that the writers did a good job balancing", because they didn't, but "trust that the system describes a functioning, playable, interesting-to-explore game world", which it does, even if it isn't necessarily the average fantasy kitchen sink one might expect (see: Tippyverse, the Dream of Metal, and other RAW-inspired world-building). Or that the designers thought they were describing, for that matter.

[kyoryu]

What I've found for myself is my tendency to homebrew has lessened as I'm exposed to more information. I don't have a solid reason why, but I suspect it has to do with how, in the relative isolation of the past, I felt more like I was the only one to notice Problem X and had no one outside my immediate gaming group to discuss Problem X with, and if they weren't interested in working out the kinks with me (and they usually weren't), I would come up with Solution X on my own. Solution X might be horribly broken in a dozen ways, but if none of those ways come up in our actual real-life game, they functionally didn't exist for us. Which only encouraged more imbalanced homebrewing.

With my current access to a forum of experience, I might bring up Problem X to learn that maybe it's not really a problem after all, but exists for a reason (a reason I can take back to my players). Or I might see that people agree it's a problem, but my Solution X is a very bad idea and I should never implement it. Instead, people have been applying Solution Y, which I would never have thought of. Or maybe I would have if I had reason to reject Solution X, but since in the old days that solution never caused a perceptible problem I was never motivated to. Mostly, I find, it's the former (X is not really a problem, it was a design decision, and here are the reasons...). Which discourages changing it, and encourages a kind of "trust the system" mentality. Which in turn reduces my sensitivity to small quirks and inconsistencies in the mechanics. A kind of How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the RAW.

In general, 100%. Presume some level of competence from the designers. The way I view it is:

1. Play and really internalize the system before tweaking it
2. When you understand the rule, and can argue for it, you're in a good position to tweak it
3. When you tweak a rule, understand what impact it's having on the game, why it's not what you want, and what you want to have happen as a result. In other words, tweak not because you don't like the process but because you have a different result in mind
4. Beware of unintended consequences

This, very much. "Trust the system" not in the sense of "trust that the writers did a good job balancing", because they didn't, but "trust that the system describes a functioning, playable, interesting-to-explore game world", which it does, even if it isn't necessarily the average fantasy kitchen sink one might expect (see: Tippyverse, the Dream of Metal, and other RAW-inspired world-building). Or that the designers thought they were describing, for that matter.

And even the Tippyverse is really the result of applying rules that were meant for the fairly narrow application of adventuring, and applying them to "general world sim" problems. Understanding what the rules were really meant to do is a huge part of the process above.

Rules that work amazingly well in one context often "fail" horribly in another. Though you could certainly argue that the Tippyverse isn't a "failure", in this case it's a "failure" to achieve the ostensibly intended result (though, as I said, by using the rules for other than their intended purposes).

[ExLibrisMortis]

Though you could certainly argue that the Tippyverse isn't a "failure", in this case it's a "failure" to achieve the ostensibly intended result (though, as I said, by using the rules for other than their intended purposes).

Yes, if you're looking to use the system for a typical fantasy world, the Tippyverse is... not your ideal result, to say the least (designer intent doesn't interest me as much, but it's safe to say they weren't thinking of the Tippyverse either). However, if you're looking to follow the system as presented and arrive in a world you hadn't thought of, it's very good. Over time, I've grown naturalized to 3.5 to the extent that it's become a very specific fantasy setting shaped by RAW, rather than a game system that represents a generic fantasy setting. Where 3.5 completely fails to simulate a generic fantasy setting--i.e. in many places--it often produces interesting alternatives. That's something certain other types of system (rules-light and narrativist, I think) don't provide, for better or for worse.

[Zarrgon]

What I've found for myself is my tendency to homebrew has lessened as I'm exposed to more information. I don't have a solid reason why,

Back in the Days Before The Net, nobody played D&D "by the book": Every game was a ton of Homebrew built around the D&D rules. And this was encouraged by the creators: right there in the rulebooks it would say "go ahead and make up all your own stuff and make D&D yours."

This carried on a bit until after The Net, and into 3X....but then came the flood of the Rules are Top players. Encouraged by 3X's stance that only they, the makers of D&D could make rules(and sell them to you), a great many players took the stance that the game must be played only by the written rules. Everyone had to follow the rules or you were "not playing D&D". This brought a massive stop to even the idea of homebrew. Just sit back and let the super smart people at Wizards make all the content(and sell it to you).

[Aotrs Commander]

Back in the Days Before The Net, nobody played D&D "by the book": Every game was a ton of Homebrew built around the D&D rules. And this was encouraged by the creators: right there in the rulebooks it would say "go ahead and make up all your own stuff and make D&D yours."

Certainly, none of the several DMs I ever played AD&D with ever used the same set of rules; and only one of them played it relatively close to core.

(I, as you might expect, absolutely did not, immediatly allowing any and all races to multiclass or dual class however they liked. Notably, the one and only proper campaign party I started in AD&D (it flipped to 3.0 as soon as that came out) had five characters, and yet two each of the base four class paradigms... As I recall, it was thief, fighter, cleric/fighter, thief/wizard and druid/wizard...)

[EggKookoo]

Certainly, none of the several DMs I ever played AD&D with ever used the same set of rules; and only one of them played it relatively close to core.

In my experience, rules weren't adjusted so much as settings. I've never played any RPG in any of its established settings. D&D was either just in a generic sword & sorcery mishmash (1e), or the DM took pains to make his own world with very specific details (2e). The Call of Cthulhu campaigned I joined in 1986 (but it had been in existence for a couple years by then) takes place in a world cooked up by the GM. My own W:tA campaign spun off from that, so a shared universe. My current 5e campaign is the closest I've come to using a published setting. It's in Eberron, but not really. In fact I'm putting my players through Dragon Heist in Sharn, and I've replaced much of the world's mythology with my own, where...

Spoiler: ...Eberron is...

Show

...a distant-future Dying Earth Road-Warrior-for-Dragons kind of place.

But in this latest game, I can count the number of actual homebrew mechanics (so far) on one hand.

[Pex]

Back in the Days Before The Net, nobody played D&D "by the book": Every game was a ton of Homebrew built around the D&D rules. And this was encouraged by the creators: right there in the rulebooks it would say "go ahead and make up all your own stuff and make D&D yours."

This carried on a bit until after The Net, and into 3X....but then came the flood of the Rules are Top players. Encouraged by 3X's stance that only they, the makers of D&D could make rules(and sell them to you), a great many players took the stance that the game must be played only by the written rules. Everyone had to follow the rules or you were "not playing D&D". This brought a massive stop to even the idea of homebrew. Just sit back and let the super smart people at Wizards make all the content(and sell it to you).

No.

The issue was 3E has this problem because of Rule X. Some would say 3E doesn't have this problem because the DM can change Rule X. The response was of course the DM can change Rule X but that doesn't change the fact the problem exists because 3E has Rule X. Some people still insisted the problem didn't exist because the DM can change it.

Then there are those who didn't find Rule X to be a problem at all and didn't need fixing.

In 5E now people are saying Rule X isn't a problem because the DM can change it and cheer that as a feature.

[Zarrgon]

No.

The issue was 3E has this problem because of Rule X. Some would say 3E doesn't have this problem because the DM can change Rule X. The response was of course the DM can change Rule X but that doesn't change the fact the problem exists because 3E has Rule X. Some people still insisted the problem didn't exist because the DM can change it.

Then there are those who didn't find Rule X to be a problem at all and didn't need fixing.

In 5E now people are saying Rule X isn't a problem because the DM can change it and cheer that as a feature.

You lost me here.

Before 3X: The books had guidelines and suggestions and soft rules, as many of the books said right there in the type. Every DM was encouraged to make the game their own and do whatever they wanted to do to make a fun game.

The Dark Ages of 3X: The books have the Official Rules and you Must use our rules to play our game. The Rules are your Friend. Every player dm person must follow the official rules. End of Line.

4E: Er, skip.

5E: The books have lite rules: DMs are encouraged to make the game their own and do whatever they wanted to do to make a fun game.

[EggKookoo]

The Dark Ages of 3X: The books have the Official Rules and you Must use our rules to play our game. The Rules are your Friend. Every player dm person must follow the official rules. End of Line.

Are you talking about the "d20 System" or do you mean the way the 3e manuals presented the rules?

Because, as I've said above, the 3e DMG is shameless in how it promotes Rule Zero. Almost aggressively. The 5e DMG doesn't even come close to the level of the "tell the players they're lucky to be in your game and they should take what you give them and like it" mindset that 3e promoted. I know the cultural mythology often says otherwise, but go reread your 3e DMG.

If 3e had a locked-in-the-rules problem, it came from both the DM having the final say and having lists of examples that the DM could use to determine what that final statement was. Players looked at the examples and felt they were hard and fast rules that the DM was obliged to follow. At the same time, the DMG told the DM they were not obliged to follow those examples and that they didn't have to justify their decision to the players. That they didn't even have to let the players know what those decisions were (i.e. don't state a DC, just ask for a roll and tell the player if they passed or failed -- talk about "mother may I?"). It was like the manuals were written specifically to foster crunch arguments at the table.

[Aotrs Commander]

The Dark Ages of 3X: The books have the Official Rules and you Must use our rules to play our game. The Rules are your Friend. Every player dm person must follow the official rules. End of Line.

Never saw that myself. House-ruled a freely in 3.0 and beyond as I did in AD&D; the big difference was that (comparitively) 3.0s flaw's were several orders of magnitude LESS than AD&D's (and twenty years ago, those flaws as 3.x has were not so immediately obvious), so it required less work from the get-go; so I didn't START with pages of house-rule rules before I set pen to paper.



Again, I think this perception is largely because of the simply lack of widespread connectiviety tha congruently emerged at the same time as 3.0 did. Had that come several years later, I suspect you'd have seen basically the same set of conversations. The part that isn't that likely comes from the idea of theorhetical optimisation (which also really only emerged with the wider use of the internet and WotC's own forum - which was the most populous one for a long time), in which you take the RAW in the most literal interpretation as possible (it's theorhetical for a reason) to see what that allows you to Numbers.

[Zarrgon]

Never saw that myself. House-ruled a freely in 3.0 and beyond as I did in AD&D; the big difference was that (comparitively) 3.0s flaw's were several orders of magnitude LESS than AD&D's (and twenty years ago, those flaws as 3.x has were not so immediately obvious), so it required less work from the get-go; so I didn't START with pages of house-rule rules before I set pen to paper.

The rules have never changed how I play a game either, I still house rule and homebrew freely.

Back in the Time Before Time pre 3E, just about no one ever would say that a game of D&D was being "played wrong" because of house rules or homebrew. Everyone accepted that everyone's game was different. If a player shows up to play, and were told a rule they did not like: they simply accepted it.

3X is where you get the rise of the hard 'the official by the book rules are the only way to play the real game of D&D". Also this gives rise to the DM that only uses what is written on the page: even at times going so far as the say they "can't" use skeletal birds because they are not listed in the Monster Manual.

[Willie the Duck]

3X is where you get the rise of the hard 'the official by the book rules are the only way to play the real game of D&D". Also this gives rise to the DM that only uses what is written on the page: even at times going so far as the say they "can't" use skeletal birds because they are not listed in the Monster Manual.

Again, I think a lot of people here dispute that this was any way the case, excepting perhaps vocal voices on various online sites that did not reflect the gamer base as a whole.

[prabe]

Again, I think a lot of people here dispute that this was any way the case, excepting perhaps vocal voices on various online sites that did not reflect the gamer base as a whole.

I don't disagree with the premise that 3.x had enough player-facing information that a suitably-minded player had more ammunition for a rules argument with the DM. I don't think I ever saw it be a problem at any table I was at, but I'll be first to admit my experience was kinda limited there.

[Willie the Duck]

I don't disagree with the premise that 3.x had enough player-facing information that a suitably-minded player had more ammunition for a rules argument with the DM. I don't think I ever saw it be a problem at any table I was at, but I'll be first to admit my experience was kinda limited there.

I don't disagree with the premise that 3.x had enough player-facing information that a suitably-minded player had more ammunition for a rules argument with the DM. I don't think I ever saw it be a problem at any table I was at, but I'll be first to admit my experience was kinda limited there.

Eh, 'Rules Lawyer' became a term in gaming before AD&D finished hitting shelves. Certainly there were more places where one couldn't argue down to one irrefutable conclusion. That said, we are talking about what people did with these rules. When it comes to "only way" or "can't," I'm solidly unconvinced (quite possibly because I lived through both eras, and did not see it). Now, on Enworld, Wizards.com, and probably here did there arise a whole bunch of navel gazing over the rules and builds that relied on 'technically correct*' interpretations of mass confluence of rules text amongst the game book rules (bolstered by 'but it's RAW' as defense against critique that no DM would allow it). I don't know exactly what that shows or proves unless people went and took those builds to actual gametables, and DMs allowed them -- not because they thought it would be interesting to see in action, but because they felt powerless to object. And I have absolutely never seen any substantive evidence to the case that this took place.
*No judgement on whether specific instances were actually correct. I certainly saw plenty of people argue their case well past having been shown to be mistaken.

AFAICT, 3e gaming played out very much like AD&D gaming and BX gamin and oD&D gaming -- each group ran the game as best they could, making decisions about how closely to hew to the rulebook as they individually felt necessary, and neither total mass of situations rules-covered, nor specific guidance in the DMG about what powers the DM specifically had were in any way relevant.