D&D at 50 (While it's still at 50)

The end of the year is rapidly approaching - this is not my annual year end/new year's post - this is to get in something about Dungeons & Dragons 50th anniversary before the chance is gone.

The game appeared back in 1974, those three little books in a box. Was it a big deal? In a modest way, I think it was, even in 1974. It was different - not a war game as such, though rooted in war games; a game where you played a person involved in some kind of hazardous endeavor, set in a fantasy world. From what I have read, the first people playing it were still thinking more like war games - only war games where you played a single person (who might lead an army) - doing things people did in most games. accumulating wealth, defeating enemies, and so on. There were differences - the game was explicitly cooperative (though still competitive) - you worked with other players, as much as against them. And the structure was there for a lot more - for playing characters doing anything - crawling through dungeons? fighting in wars? flying into space? surviving a zombie attack? gunfights on western streets? And for changing the tone - to more talk, more intrigue, more comedy or horror or whatever you could think of. Over the next couple years, games started to appear taking up these possibilities. Soon, there were role playing games everywhere, doing everything. But that's to come.

As for me? Like most people I started with D&D. In 1982, at college, Advanced D&D, playing Leif and Roulard, along with two or three other players, going through a generic dungeon. There was a magic pool, one of the other player's characters disappeared, and when he came back, he did something stupid that angered someone else in the party. We grabbed him - he kicked poor Leif where Leifson would would have come from - and rolled a 20. We all laughed, the DM rolled to see how bad it was - he too rolled a 20 to confirm the crit. That was the end of Leif's dynastic hopes.

I was hooked. I don't know about the other player, whose characters was promptly and horribly murdered for this dastardly deed - though this was the first time we'd played the game, no one was too attached, and we were all laughing our heads off. This was fun! When I went home from college, I discovered that my brothers had D&D books as well - we started playing, and kept on playing to this very day. Well - there have been some gaps in there. After college, I didn't play much at all; by the 90s, all of us had stopped, and didn't pick it up until 3rd Edition came out. We didn't play that, exactly - but I played with it - bought lots of books, made up lots of characters. Then 4th came out and we played that a lot (though without loving it) - and when 5th came out, we picked it up like it was 1984 again. 

And now it is 2024, there is a revised version of 5th out - I have the first two books, but beyuond playing around with the PHB when I got it, I have not touched it. I have a copy of the DMG and have not opened it. It is a fact that I don't care very much anymore about D&D. I discovered, and finally played, skill games - Traveller and Call of Cthulhu, specifically - and have not looked back. WOTC has done plenty to help thsi alienation along, but it's mostly the type of game and the genre - I don't like level/class games as much anymore; and I don't really care about high fantasy. So here I am. This is not enough to stop me from playing the game, when I am in a game; and probably won't last forever - but there it is. 

But D&D has been a big deal - for me, as well as the world. I don't write blogs very much anymore, and have not said anything all year - though I thought about it off and on. But I have time to fix it. So - happy birthday D&D! and - before I go - here is how I would rank the versions of the game I have actually played. That would be a bit of Moldvay basic, ADD, a bit of 2E. 3E, 4E and 5E. I have in fact played the 2024 version of 5E, though not enough to see how to distinguish it from 2014 5. So I will leave it alone for now. and so? here they are, ranked.

1. Fifth Edition - this is, in the end, the best they have ever done. A rare instance of an upgrade that really is better than whan came before. Rare for D&D, as you'll see in this little list. But even if I have soured a bit on D&D generally, and even if in getting huge it has engendered a lot of backlash - this is still the best version of the game there is. Easy enough to play, especially easy if you're used to the older versions, and - to me - gives the sense of playing those early versions, but done right. No more weird charts and tables - simple math. In truth, for us, 5E feels like how 1E felt - it plays like we played at the table. We dropped most of the oddball war game stuff - we played ADD like 5E. 5E just makes it all core to the game. It really is a good game.

2. AD&D, First Edition - Gary Gygax unfiltered! It's what I learned on - whatever the difficulties fo the game, we played it easily enough - we were more than happy to fill in anything we were missing or change what we didn't like - I am always shocked to learn that critical hits and fumbles were not in ADD, because we always played with hem from the beginning. Things like that. As a game - 5E is a simpler, more elegant version of this. As a publication, on the other hand, this eclipses everything else by miles. Sure, it's what I learned on, but it really did have the best books, as books, the best art, the best ideas - everything. I can still leaf through those early books - the core books, obviously, but even later additions like Deities & Demigods or the Fiend Folio - just to look at the art. Just to look for the jokes. It was a great edition. 

3. Third Edition - truth is, I barely played this thing, but this was the great solitaire edition. It's publication drew us back to D&D; we never quite figured out how to play it, but I bought most of the books (3 and 3.5 both), read them, used them - and made up characters. This is maybe the only version fo D&D where making up characters is in itself a satisfying game - it's got a bit of that Traveller vibe, where building a character is a game in itself. Doesn't have the dice, but it has the options and the ability to craft someone you can believe in. If you divide games into games as games and games as models - this is the model version of the game. You could use it to make up people you could imagine being alive in a world. Even the best other versions don't quite make up characters that have all the details of a character from a book. You can almost get there with 3. I liked it, even if I didn't really play it.

4. Fourth Edition - the exact opposite. We played this a lot - because this is a really good board game. Is it D&D? I don't really think so - even in the broad sense that Pathfinder or Shadowdark or whatever are really D&D - this is something else. That kind of hrumphing probably needs some definitions - this might not be the time, but at it's core: D&D requires a fantasy setting (swords and sorcery, magic and monsters, etc), a D20 system - and role playing. And role playing for me means that you imagine yourself as a real actual person in a real actual world. And 4th edition did not deliver that. I could not imagine 4E characters as people; could not imagine 4E fights and encounters as something actual people were doing. PCs were pieces on a board. Now - you could imagine them as people, and you could go through the motions of a D&D game - but you can imagine the shoe as a real character in Monopoly - it doesn't make it an RPG. All told - 4E was a pretty good game, fun, easy to play - but it did not scratch the itch D&D scratched, and when 5E came out we dropped it on the spot.

5. Second Edition - these last two aren't really being ranked the same way. I barely played 2E - when I did play it, I took ADD character sheets, added THACO and a couple non-weapon proficiencies and played - ADD, as far as I could tell. So - all there is to distinguish the versions is THACO, significantly less interesting core products, a line of fantastic supplements (arms and Equipment, Castles and Strongholds, or whatever that thing was called, etc) - and some great settings, I never really played with. Very much an afterthought.

6. Moldvay Basic - the only basic I played, and this, again, barely, and as an adjunct to ADD. I had played ADD; my brothers had played Basic/Expert and had the books. WE ended up playing a ocuple dungeons using the basic books, and a hodge podge of basic and ADD characters. Then got the ADD books and that was all. I have no feel for what any of the basic games played like. If I had found them first, I might have loved htem - though not necessarily. I was more a war gamer than RPG gamer in college - my joy was in things like Squad Leader and Kingmaker and War and Peace - I liked big complicated things. ADD hit me square; I am not sure if a simpler version of the game would have. Still - this is just to say I have played something with these rules, nothing at all like a real assessment. 

And there it is. That's what I have played; that is what I think of them. I could add things like - favorite book - ADD Dungeon Master's Guide. Best art - I mean, again - ADD - especially the PHB cover, which is so fantastic. Favorite monster - shoot: drow? githyanki? might be. They were right there. Favorite character? Probably Theresa, my 4E ranger, who was a force of nature. Honorable mention to Josef, the Tempest cleric, as well as Violet, the 5E version of Theresa. Favorite scenario? I only played about half of it, but Curse of Strahd - that is fantastic stuff. Biggest missed opportunity? Denis, my 5E paladin with the 7 Dex who got wiped out along with the rest of the party in the cultist's lair in Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Next character? Honoria, a ranger, the first character made for 2024 rules - hopefully they've fixed the ranger, and given me room to play a ranger without her turning into dear old Theresa. We shall see. 

It's been a good 50 years for the game; a good 42 years for me playing it. 

Dawn of a New Age?

Well, I might have had ambitions about posting on this blog, but it's been almost 9 months, and not a word. That is how it goes, but it is time to get in here. D&D is coming out with a new edition! or - revision to the current edition! or - what is this thing?

They have new books coming out: Player's Handbook due in a couple weeks, DMG later, Monster Manuel sometime next year. Is this a new edition? They say not; the 2024 - something - to D&D 5th edition. I guess. I don't really mean with make a lot of this - this has become something of a trend in the industry. Mongoose did it with Traveller - their 2nd edition rules came out I'm 2016, and they put out a revision in 2022 - a revision that was in fact pretty much the same book. Better art, better layout, some clean up here and there, a few changes to tables here and there, but nothing that changed the game. Transparently easy to play a game with both books at the table - the revision really is a revision top the look of the book, more than anything. And Paizo did something similar with Pathfinder 2nd Edition - their 2E came out in 2018, and a "remastered" edition came out in 2023. This had more changes than Traveller - including removing anything that could tie the books to WOTC's old OGL - but it's a similar idea. New books, same game.

That's what WOTC claims we will have. They tout its backward compatibility - they tout its improved look. Things like that. Will it be true? Have to have the things in hand, I suppose, to say. Now - there are a lot of the things out in the wild; people have been reviewing them. I have not seen one - I have watched some of the reviews, but not obsessively. This post is very definitely about the anticipation, and expectations. When the thing itself arrives (and I've put in a word at my FLGS for one) I will come back and see what I have to say about it. (I promise that post, is nothing else; hopefully before 7th edition comes out.) For now? What do I think is going to happen?

First: I will buy one. I would no matter what - I am a completist, I have the rest of the D&D versions (not true: I don't have ODD, Holmes Basic, Cook basic, or most of the 2E core books; I have access to most of them though), and would get this no matter what. I am curious, as well - what is in there? is it worth the hype? is there anything better in it? I want to know. I will probably get the DMG on those grounds alone - with curiosity maybe overcoming the completeness: can they make something of the DMG? the current one is a bit of a flop, I think. I want to see these books. There is that. And I have put in a word for one - the alt cover, specifically, since the alt PHB cover is just fantastic. I want to have one of these things.

Will I use it? I will certainly play around with it - make up characters, play some fights - try to play a couple adventures maybe - a starter set or something like the old adventures in the Infinite Staircase or Yawning Portal books. I expect the D&D games I am in will start using it - at least next year, or whenever we get out of the adventures we're in now - maybe sooner depending on what people think of it. So I will use them. 

On the other hand, I doubt I will run anything with them. That doesn't have a lot to do with the editions - that has to do with D&D. I have kind of gotten tired of D&D. Again - not really because of anything wrong with D&D - because I am tired of level/class based games. I like skill based systems. I would much rather devote my time to something like Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, maybe Cyberpunk or try out Pendragon or Vaesen or something instead. But this is taste, and doesn't have much to do with the editions, and isn't enough to make me stop playing D&D if someone else is willing to run - so - just keep it in mind.

So - still anticipating this new version - what do I think, based on what I have seen so far? I think - it looks like it will be more or less easy to switch. I don't think it is exactly compatible with the 2014 version, the way Mongoose 22 is compatible with Mongoose 16. There are twists in character creation, in classes and subclasses, in abilities, attributes and so on that I think will make blending the systems a bit off. But it looks easy to switch, without wrecking what you have. (Unless you are playing a swashbuckler.) 

From what I have seen - I like character creation - I think the redistribution of decision points among races, backgrounds and the like makes sense - makes the whole process easier, more rational, more modular. I like most of the specifics and I like the general al shape of it. Classes? seem fine - close enough to what they are to not require relearning anything; maybe simpler to explain to newbies - I think they have something in there warning new players about what classes are more work than others. Sounds good. The subclasses also seem fine - though a lot of the changes seem kind of fiddly. Just shifting things around in a maybe pointless effort to make everything sort of work the same. Most of the specifics seem fine - though there are a couple completely unexplainable decisions. Going from 567.5 cleric domains to 4 is going to be painful, especially since at least 6 of the 2014 cleric domains were absolute bangers, and only 2 of those bangers made the cut. (Light and Life; but Tempest might have been the best subclass in the game, and Grave, Forge, and Twilights are all monsters and - so are a bunch of others. Clerics were the boss class in 5e 2014.) 

Worse: in 10 years of playing, I have seen people play 2 subclasses of rogue (other than a couple random thieves and multi class scouts and the like). Arcane Triocksters made the cut, as they should. But there is no excuse for not making the Swashbuckler a core rogue subclass. They gave us a psionic thief over the swashbuckler? they tried to fix the assassin, rather than just give us the swashbuckler? This is a failure off the worst kind. Swashbucklers are as fundamental to the class as it comes. It is certainly what people want to play. Just unbelievable.

The rest? Rangers still seem to suck. They've done a bunch of stuff with weapons and fighters to make them more complicated. They've allegedly improved monks and maybe warlocks, tried to gimp paladins, etc. The overall impression I get though is that things are roughly the same - but a lot more fiddly. In fac fiddly is the word I would use to describe almost all the changes I have seen. Fiddly in two senses. First - they've just fiddled around with all these things. Nothing is really different - but it is full of little differences that are mostly just going to confuse people who can't keep their editions straight. And second - they've added a lot of things - like weapon properties and masteries - that are fiddly in the sense of adding a bunch of little stuff to think about. Things to remember in a fight; things to keep track of; new ways of keeping track of things. Will it matter? I don't know, until we get it - maybe not in practice - but who knows? It does sound, from a lot of the online comments I've seen, that they have added a lot of fodder for the min-maxers among us. Is that good? if you're a min-maxer, I suppose. I don't know.

So - that is all I have for now. We're getting close: I do look forward to seeing this and playing with it. I hope it works, I hope it doesn't annoy me (and worse than not putting swashbucklers in the core book.) I do look forward to seeing the thing itself - the art looks - gorgeous, if maybe a bit off. Their recent pastel color palette is not encouraging - though all the art I have seen is really great looking. Who knows. I am looking forward to it, even if I am kind of sour on D&D.