When Did D&D Lose its Way?
"Killing things and taking their stuff"
I read that a lot of message boards, posted by people trying to distill D&D down to it's basic essence. There's some truth to it, particularly when you look at published adventures or even at some of the literature that inspired the game. But I think D&D has always had a conceit to be something more than that.
When Dave Arneson's players started portraying individual figures going on missions to support the miniature fantasy armies, sparking the genesis of D&D as a distinct activity from miniature wargaming, I think the game immediately took on the ambition of being more than a combat game. And I think that ambition got stronger as D&D went into AD&D and then 2nd edition AD&D. More and more options arose to support the non-combat side of D&D. Whole campaigns arose with more nuanced characterizations and hooks for non-combat roles to play including some really brilliant ones like Al-Qadim, Kara-Tur, and Planescape (if you could get past the latter's annoying patois).
Then 3rd edition came along. I wouldn't say that non-combat options diminished. In fact, interpersonal skills were reasonably well defined and feats appeared that could promote use of them or character specialization in them. But then again, feats appeared and most of them were focuses around combat applications. I don't think there was anything wrong with that, per se, because now characters could build up really distinctive styles of fighting in D&D, always a major showcase of the game. But I think the game's emphasis shifted, partly driven by marketing and partly by players.
When 3rd edition debuted, it came with the tag-line "Back to the dungeon!". The designers were deliberately trying to capture the mojo of AD&D's spirit of delving into dangerous dungeons for gold and glory - fighting things, yes - but also using your wits to overcome obstacles that weren't necessarily violent like finding secret chambers, foiling devious traps, and investigating mysterious places left behind by mad wizards and their ilk. That thrust of WotC's pointed D&D back into more easily controlled environments and focused a bit more around combat than the trends we saw in 2nd edition AD&D.
WotC, through it's fan club arm the RPGA, also started up the biggest (and probably most successful) organized play program at the time - Living Greyhawk. Groups of designers would write adventures for DMs to use at home for playing with their standard groups but that also could be used at gaming conventions with the same transportable characters. It was a pretty cool idea. But because of the standardization of the adventures, they tended to be pretty focused around combat - the part of the game best able to provide a "standard" experience to all players no matter whether they were playing in Wisconsin, California, or New Zealand. Before long, design seemed to cater more toward the interests generated by organized play and the style of combat-focused play it encouraged.
3rd edition was followed up by edition 3.5 (yes, a decimal version number) which fixed some gaps in 3.0's design and poor design decisions but also saw a lot of changes focused around standardizing spells and other effects for combat use rather than non-combat use. For example, spells used to boost a character's statistics (strength, dexterity, wisdom, etc) originally lasted for hours. They all got cut down to minutes of duration instead. That makes sense for designing the game for combat applications, but what if you want to boost your charisma to make a better impression on the Duke during an extended audience? Invisibility, a spell that used to last a whole day (or longer) in AD&D and was great for scouting large areas without being seen, saw its duration also cut to minutes - another change made to focus on combat rather than non-combat applications. And totally unnecessary because as soon as an invisible character made an attack, the spell was broken. Some arguments were made that this was actually done for niche protection. After all, if the wizard could be invisible all day long, who needed a character skilled in hiding in shadows like a rogue? But being unseen doesn't make you silent so move silently was still valuable and, let's be honest, back in the day, didn't most wizards cast their invisibility spells on the rogues anyway to improve their chances of being stealthy? We sure did.
The push toward combat-oriented balance finally culminated in 4th edition D&D, a game in which all characters have the same power structure, powers themselves are balanced by design formulae, and combat abilities are supposedly "siloed" away from non-combat abilities for more exacting balance. And, as I see it, a game that has given up the conceit of being more than a combat game. Complex social interaction or exploration tasks can even be modeled with combat-like structures of tasks called skill challenges. And when some of use who preferred a different flavor of D&D criticized 4e for its design direction, the players who bought into the idea of D&D as being fundamentally a combat game got really defensive, tossing out the phrase I used to open this post.
Well I don't agree that D&D is a combat game. I don't care that a large section of the rules are about combat. That just means it is intended to feature combat robustly and that more detail leads to a better and fairer game, not that combat is what it's about. If D&D were just about combat, we could all just play skirmish-based tabletop board games and not care about characterization, backstory, or anything else. That's a valid play style for individual groups. But the game system used to support much more than that. I think it still can even with 4e, but it takes work to keep the philosophy that D&D is more than combat alive. We have to fight against limiting its scope to miniature skirmishing on a contrived battlefield. If we don't, then how far will the game have progressed since its days of fantasy wargaming? Pretty much no where. The same old ideas disguised by shiny new mechanics.
I read that a lot of message boards, posted by people trying to distill D&D down to it's basic essence. There's some truth to it, particularly when you look at published adventures or even at some of the literature that inspired the game. But I think D&D has always had a conceit to be something more than that.
When Dave Arneson's players started portraying individual figures going on missions to support the miniature fantasy armies, sparking the genesis of D&D as a distinct activity from miniature wargaming, I think the game immediately took on the ambition of being more than a combat game. And I think that ambition got stronger as D&D went into AD&D and then 2nd edition AD&D. More and more options arose to support the non-combat side of D&D. Whole campaigns arose with more nuanced characterizations and hooks for non-combat roles to play including some really brilliant ones like Al-Qadim, Kara-Tur, and Planescape (if you could get past the latter's annoying patois).
Then 3rd edition came along. I wouldn't say that non-combat options diminished. In fact, interpersonal skills were reasonably well defined and feats appeared that could promote use of them or character specialization in them. But then again, feats appeared and most of them were focuses around combat applications. I don't think there was anything wrong with that, per se, because now characters could build up really distinctive styles of fighting in D&D, always a major showcase of the game. But I think the game's emphasis shifted, partly driven by marketing and partly by players.
When 3rd edition debuted, it came with the tag-line "Back to the dungeon!". The designers were deliberately trying to capture the mojo of AD&D's spirit of delving into dangerous dungeons for gold and glory - fighting things, yes - but also using your wits to overcome obstacles that weren't necessarily violent like finding secret chambers, foiling devious traps, and investigating mysterious places left behind by mad wizards and their ilk. That thrust of WotC's pointed D&D back into more easily controlled environments and focused a bit more around combat than the trends we saw in 2nd edition AD&D.
WotC, through it's fan club arm the RPGA, also started up the biggest (and probably most successful) organized play program at the time - Living Greyhawk. Groups of designers would write adventures for DMs to use at home for playing with their standard groups but that also could be used at gaming conventions with the same transportable characters. It was a pretty cool idea. But because of the standardization of the adventures, they tended to be pretty focused around combat - the part of the game best able to provide a "standard" experience to all players no matter whether they were playing in Wisconsin, California, or New Zealand. Before long, design seemed to cater more toward the interests generated by organized play and the style of combat-focused play it encouraged.
3rd edition was followed up by edition 3.5 (yes, a decimal version number) which fixed some gaps in 3.0's design and poor design decisions but also saw a lot of changes focused around standardizing spells and other effects for combat use rather than non-combat use. For example, spells used to boost a character's statistics (strength, dexterity, wisdom, etc) originally lasted for hours. They all got cut down to minutes of duration instead. That makes sense for designing the game for combat applications, but what if you want to boost your charisma to make a better impression on the Duke during an extended audience? Invisibility, a spell that used to last a whole day (or longer) in AD&D and was great for scouting large areas without being seen, saw its duration also cut to minutes - another change made to focus on combat rather than non-combat applications. And totally unnecessary because as soon as an invisible character made an attack, the spell was broken. Some arguments were made that this was actually done for niche protection. After all, if the wizard could be invisible all day long, who needed a character skilled in hiding in shadows like a rogue? But being unseen doesn't make you silent so move silently was still valuable and, let's be honest, back in the day, didn't most wizards cast their invisibility spells on the rogues anyway to improve their chances of being stealthy? We sure did.
The push toward combat-oriented balance finally culminated in 4th edition D&D, a game in which all characters have the same power structure, powers themselves are balanced by design formulae, and combat abilities are supposedly "siloed" away from non-combat abilities for more exacting balance. And, as I see it, a game that has given up the conceit of being more than a combat game. Complex social interaction or exploration tasks can even be modeled with combat-like structures of tasks called skill challenges. And when some of use who preferred a different flavor of D&D criticized 4e for its design direction, the players who bought into the idea of D&D as being fundamentally a combat game got really defensive, tossing out the phrase I used to open this post.
Well I don't agree that D&D is a combat game. I don't care that a large section of the rules are about combat. That just means it is intended to feature combat robustly and that more detail leads to a better and fairer game, not that combat is what it's about. If D&D were just about combat, we could all just play skirmish-based tabletop board games and not care about characterization, backstory, or anything else. That's a valid play style for individual groups. But the game system used to support much more than that. I think it still can even with 4e, but it takes work to keep the philosophy that D&D is more than combat alive. We have to fight against limiting its scope to miniature skirmishing on a contrived battlefield. If we don't, then how far will the game have progressed since its days of fantasy wargaming? Pretty much no where. The same old ideas disguised by shiny new mechanics.