The Turning of the Worm - Where are we with RPGs?

I am currently runnning a game of D&D Next and reading the Dungeon Crawl Classics Rules. Reading the Dungeon Crawl Classics Rules and thinking about D&D and my group's last session has rendered me philosophical about the culture of role-playing games and the way it haschanged over the years. I am interested in assessing where this "new" breed of game comes from and where it is headed.

 

The trouble with being close to something or someone is that you often dont notice changes that occur in them or it. It is only when you haven't seen someone for a few years and you bump into them that you are struck by how changed they are. Its been a bit like that for me with D&D. The progression from 1e to 2e to 3.0 to 3.5, to 4e with a whole lot of other games thrown in for seasoning has happened without me really noticing what I now believe to be a fundamental change in the philosophy of the game. Well, the philosophy is really still to have fun, but what has changed is the way the game delivers the fun. Fifth Edition or D&D Next (call it what you will) has come about in the midst of a new/old gaming movement called the Old School Renaissance (OSR). Started by older gamers, calling themselves Grognards (history buffs will get the reference) who wanted to play role-playing games again, but had been away and were not happy with the changes they saw in the new versions of the game, they began re-writing old versions of the D&D game. These rewrites are referred to as retro-clones and some of them even became succesful commercial products eg. OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord. Each one stressed slightly different aspects represented by the various early iterations of the D&D game. Why the OSR has become so popular is a matter of some conjecture and may have to do with various social factors and changes in (dare I say it) the Zeitgeist.

 D&D Next and DCC are attempts to bring "old school" gaming to a modern world. As someone who played "old-school" many years ago, and having now played the one and read the other I reckon they are doing it right. But what really is the difference? I think the difference lies in what equates to success in the game. It seems to me that in the old games success meant Survival, whereas in the newer version of D&D Success meant Accumulation.

A comparative analysis of the versions of D&D over the years shown very clear trends. The game became less dangerous for the characters. This is reflected in the rules for death and dying. With each iteration it became harder for characters to die. Also eroded, slowly at first, but then in great jumps were the so-called "save or die" effects. Character death came to be seen by the game's writers and publishers as something that would turn players off the game, and therefore a bad thing. Of course, character death also interrupted the other stream, which was gaining momentum through the versions, the character's ability to accumulate. Accumulation refers not only to material goods, the number of which are available to a character has also grown steadily. It also refers to the accumulation of skills, powers, ability score buffs, feats, gold and magical enhancements. A character's effectiveness came to be measured by the number of options available to him, through the accumulation of all these things. Characters have become commoditized. There may be many different sociological and psychological reasons for this, but there is also an obvious commercial reason. Commoditizing the game provides an almost unlimited opportunity for sales (or so it would seem). The more "options" there are the more books are needed to contain those options. This can be seen in the almost countless versions of additional books available for the D&D and Pathfinder games and the proliferation of so-called "Splat Books". One of the problems caused by this proliferation is that it perpetuates a falsity about the game itself. The untruth is that unless something is contained in a book or a rule somewhere, your character cannot do it. This is fundamentally wrong and bad for the hobby. This false representation will be particularly damaging to a new player picking up a role-playing game for the first time, but it is negative effects are not limited to novices. I am an experienced gamer and I am just as guilty of falling for it. Perhaps more guilty because I have proselytized the changes to newer and more commoditized versions of the game within my own gaming group.

 The commoditizing of the game is like the branches of a tree, breeding greater option complexity all the time. This also increases the potential for combinations that the game's producers did not consider and unforeseen synergies between distant option commodities. This process reached its height with D&D 3.5 and continues strongly in Pathfinder. Thus were born a breed of gamers known as the "min/maxers" who studied these things for uber powerful combos and broken options to exploit. This became so bad that the game's creator decided there was a problem. But they misidentified the problem either because they had lost track of the essence of the game or because they knew they were too far along a path of commoditization from which there was not turning back. The problem, they opined, was a lack of Balance. The game would be protected from the assaults of the hordes of the min/maxing munchkins if balance could be achieved. This meant that no single option could be more powerful than another. This great balancing exercise resulted in 4e. Unfortunately the effect was simply to make the vast commodity options more bland and similar to each other.

Another harmful effect of commoditizing player options has been rules bloat. Players gained vast lists of abilities, many of which needed rules to support them. One of the worst effects has been a power shift from the DM to the players. The rules have gradually neutered the DM, leaving him boxed in by text and unable to express himself and to create the type of fantasy adventure story that the game was intended for in the first place. Players too have not been immune, while their power to control the outcomes of events had increased, the rules have hampered them too. Their creative abilities to effect the collaborative adventure story have also been caged by rules and options.

Why I personally went along with this process is a bit of a mystery to me. Maybe I too was just another victim of a gradual shift in perceptions in modern society, or maybe I'm just a sucker for a box of shiny sweets. Anyway, the charm spell that I was under has been lifted, and I see with new eyes. (This metaphor seems to have been grafted unconsciously onto my current campaign in which eyes and blindness have become a very prominent theme)

D&D Next takes away more than ninety percent of the commodities. If that is perpetuated in the game that actually gets sold it is a very brave move for a company that earns profits from the game. There remains an apparent hangover fascination with balancing the character classes, but this is not front and centre. The game is more deadly and characters have fewer codified options. The weird irony of the game means that this results in more options not less. Play style has to change. Our most recent session of 5e was, in my mind, a result of a habitual approach to gaming brought about by previous versions of D&D. A party of characters playing D&D in 1980 would asses every creature they came across in order to determine whether they could survive an encounter with it. They would carefully consider the other options available to them outside of a straight-up fight and would very often take one of those options. The changes mentioned above have led to my players (controlling characters of second and thirs level) taking the attack option as a default. In a recent encounter with the purple worm very little thought was given to any option other than to attack it until it became clear (with three characters in its belly) that it was beyond the abilities of the party to kill. D&D is about survival again and I think it makes the game more fun.

Dungeon Crawl Classics takes a more aggressive approach to those who read the rules and want to play. Not having any sentimental or commercial ties to the later D&D version before 5e, it makes no attempt to promote their validity. The game forces players into an "old-school" mindset my impressing on them immediately that survival is the victory. Each player begins with two to four 0-level "mooks "on their first adventure, ominously referred to as a "funnel". In a funnel mortality rates are massive, and as the characters have almost no skills or abilities and less than 5 hit points they die in their droves. But the game does a clever thing it makes players root for one or more of their hapless goons, with terrible Ability scores. Also, to overcome challenges the players have to use more than the commodities available to the characters. They have to use ingenuity, role-playing and team work, mixed with a healthy dose of luck. Sounds like D&D to me. And what happens to the few who survive the funnel? Well, they come out with a few commodities scavenged from the corpses of their fallen comrades, a scar or two and tales of adventure, daring and excitement. They also have something else, a bond with the player controlling them who then selects their class and all the trappings normally associated with a first level character. Clever.

 DCC also stresses survival in the way it awards experience. Characters gain between two and five experience points for each encounter they survive. Any encounter, whether it be a social encounter, a battle or just a trap. I think thats clever. The game has other old-school elements but thats for another time.

Both games are, in my view, a breath of fresh air, or rather old air that has a familiar and well-loved odour. I am really enjoying playing 5e as I believe it gets back to what these sorts of games should be about.