I believe the decline is everywhere, and not just in CRPGs, but also music, television, writing, politics, law, and numerous other points in our culture. So if I believe such a fact it probably won’t seem odd to you that I also believe that 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons (both 3.0 and 3.5) was part of the decline. I say this even though 3rd edition not only saved the brand, but also tabletop roleplaying in general.
I have have been playing pen and paper RPGs (BECMI D&D) and computer RPGs (Temple of Apshai) for 29 straight years, and so I’m a large fan of the genre and the literature in which the earlier versions were inspired. Gary Gygax wrote his Appendix N listing his favorite fantasy and science fiction works, and if you read those books you can see the direct connections with his game. Original and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons were very different, but they both had simplistic character creation and complex resolution tables. Events outside of the tables could be resolved quickly per the dungeon master, who often would declare something arbitrary such as “well, that pit is pretty wide. If you roll below your Dexterity score on a D20, I’ll rule that you make the leap. Else you’ll fall the 60 feet and take 6d6 points of damage. Up to you.”
The resolution tables and dungeon master fiat allowed the game to progress at a reasonable clip, because there was a dungeon to explore, and what was in that dungeon was greatly influenced by pulp literature. You were discovering the weird and the dangerous, filled with hostile denizens which stabbed and poisoned and permanently level drained, devious traps of all kinds that awaited adventurers foolhardy enough to stomp into a room without prodding for potential triggers, and hordes of treasure that gave the most experience points of the adventure just by pocketing such since the gold was the goal.
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons second edition came along, and some people would say that this unpopular version was the start of the decline of the brand name. And they have some valid points with how corporate and clean the feel of the books were compared with the 1st edition books and their Gygaxian prose and Erol Otus art. And although the 2nd edition rule books were boring, the campaign settings that were pushed along with the edition were not. This is the edition that brought us Planescape and its alien city of Sigil and Lady of Pain, Spelljammer and its magical sailing ships and miniaturized giant space hamsters flying though space, and Dark Sun with its dying, ruined planet, Bron artwork and cannibalistic Halflings. Despite the flaws of both TSR and 2nd edition, the game was still about exploring the strange.
Then 3rd edition came out, and the abandonment of imagination. Dungeons and Dragons gave way to Characters and Classes. Dungeon master fiat was discouraged and with it dungeons that did not follow well established and codified rules. We had the rise of the player character as the focal point of the game rather than the dungeon. Character creation and leveling went from a simplified format to the major effort of the game. Now players mapped exactly how they wanted to advance each character so that in a few levels they could have a rogue who could phase through shadows or a sorcerer that could grow wings. Characters were now unique butterflies to develop and grow into a beautiful vision of fantastic escapism, and because of this new focus anything that might harm this blooming flower had to be avoided. Players might roll a poor character and feel bad about playing next to the guy with better luck, so a point buy system was introduced to avoid feelings of inferiority. After all, the low level character deaths went from being fairly common to quite rare, so we wouldn’t want someone to play their subpar character all the way to the epic levels. Treasure no longer gave experience points, but encounters now did instead, meaning that there were specific rules developed on what made an allowable encounter for a dungeon master to create and combat became the goal rather than having characters find clever ways around monsters and obstacles to get the treasure if they wished to embark upon an alternate way to play.
Because of the emphasis on character creation and leveling, Wizards of the Coast decided that it would use the OGL licensing concept to offload the burden of developing adventure modules to 3rd party publishers and instead focus on splat books where they could throw in new character classes, character races and magic spells. But with some notable exceptions, the 3rd party developers shunned creating dungeons and also starting putting out splat books. And I admit there is a lot of fun in creating a character in Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition (and Pathfinder) along with mapping out future progression. The dungeons themselves are not as fun as the magic items have to follow specific rules and are scaled to my level in the same way as monster encounters. Combat takes longer and there are a lot more sections to read over because dungeon master fiat was discouraged and there is a section of rules for any odd combat maneuver one may attempt. The NPC monsters may have templates added to them, such as demonic or fay, because the dungeon master should be allowed to have fun spending hours designing characters too, but this adds to the amount of time looking up rules instead of resolving combat.
3rd edition gave way to 4th edition, which was influenced by video games such as World of Warcraft. Again, you play a unique butterfly, but now your butterfly has even more advanced powers at first level, which is the result of edition power creep. 4th edition is giving way to D&D Next, and I have no idea what it is and I don’t care, but a part of me is curious whether or not the paladin will be able to have arrows bounce off his chest while shooting laser beams from his eyes.
But what 3rd edition did was give us the OGL and with it a revival of the old school RPGs. Because of the OGL there are now free, downloadable games that emulate the earlier editions such as OSRIC and Dark Dungeons. The D&D grognard site called Dragonsfoot also houses fan-made adventure modules based on these clones of older editions. Castles and Crusades and Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG are purchasable newer games which put welcome twists on the older editions and are also made possible because of the Open Game License of D&D 3rd edition. In fact, the goal of the originator of the OGL was to make the game more easily available to the public so that Dungeons and Dragons would never die.
But despite the OGL, 3rd edition has a lot that to answer for. It got away from the idea of exploring the dangerous and unknown, shirking it in order to make the player feel as if his character was a destined hero and I do enjoy it for what it is. But I prefer the feeling of dread and anticipation that occurs when my low-ability score adventurer is hanging out with his injured fellows midway through the giant mushroom dungeon and wondering whether they should push on for a chance for the big score, or try to escape with the few coppers and silver pieces they were able to swipe from the nest of blood-sucking stirges.
I have have been playing pen and paper RPGs (BECMI D&D) and computer RPGs (Temple of Apshai) for 29 straight years, and so I’m a large fan of the genre and the literature in which the earlier versions were inspired. Gary Gygax wrote his Appendix N listing his favorite fantasy and science fiction works, and if you read those books you can see the direct connections with his game. Original and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons were very different, but they both had simplistic character creation and complex resolution tables. Events outside of the tables could be resolved quickly per the dungeon master, who often would declare something arbitrary such as “well, that pit is pretty wide. If you roll below your Dexterity score on a D20, I’ll rule that you make the leap. Else you’ll fall the 60 feet and take 6d6 points of damage. Up to you.”
The resolution tables and dungeon master fiat allowed the game to progress at a reasonable clip, because there was a dungeon to explore, and what was in that dungeon was greatly influenced by pulp literature. You were discovering the weird and the dangerous, filled with hostile denizens which stabbed and poisoned and permanently level drained, devious traps of all kinds that awaited adventurers foolhardy enough to stomp into a room without prodding for potential triggers, and hordes of treasure that gave the most experience points of the adventure just by pocketing such since the gold was the goal.
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons second edition came along, and some people would say that this unpopular version was the start of the decline of the brand name. And they have some valid points with how corporate and clean the feel of the books were compared with the 1st edition books and their Gygaxian prose and Erol Otus art. And although the 2nd edition rule books were boring, the campaign settings that were pushed along with the edition were not. This is the edition that brought us Planescape and its alien city of Sigil and Lady of Pain, Spelljammer and its magical sailing ships and miniaturized giant space hamsters flying though space, and Dark Sun with its dying, ruined planet, Bron artwork and cannibalistic Halflings. Despite the flaws of both TSR and 2nd edition, the game was still about exploring the strange.
Then 3rd edition came out, and the abandonment of imagination. Dungeons and Dragons gave way to Characters and Classes. Dungeon master fiat was discouraged and with it dungeons that did not follow well established and codified rules. We had the rise of the player character as the focal point of the game rather than the dungeon. Character creation and leveling went from a simplified format to the major effort of the game. Now players mapped exactly how they wanted to advance each character so that in a few levels they could have a rogue who could phase through shadows or a sorcerer that could grow wings. Characters were now unique butterflies to develop and grow into a beautiful vision of fantastic escapism, and because of this new focus anything that might harm this blooming flower had to be avoided. Players might roll a poor character and feel bad about playing next to the guy with better luck, so a point buy system was introduced to avoid feelings of inferiority. After all, the low level character deaths went from being fairly common to quite rare, so we wouldn’t want someone to play their subpar character all the way to the epic levels. Treasure no longer gave experience points, but encounters now did instead, meaning that there were specific rules developed on what made an allowable encounter for a dungeon master to create and combat became the goal rather than having characters find clever ways around monsters and obstacles to get the treasure if they wished to embark upon an alternate way to play.
Because of the emphasis on character creation and leveling, Wizards of the Coast decided that it would use the OGL licensing concept to offload the burden of developing adventure modules to 3rd party publishers and instead focus on splat books where they could throw in new character classes, character races and magic spells. But with some notable exceptions, the 3rd party developers shunned creating dungeons and also starting putting out splat books. And I admit there is a lot of fun in creating a character in Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition (and Pathfinder) along with mapping out future progression. The dungeons themselves are not as fun as the magic items have to follow specific rules and are scaled to my level in the same way as monster encounters. Combat takes longer and there are a lot more sections to read over because dungeon master fiat was discouraged and there is a section of rules for any odd combat maneuver one may attempt. The NPC monsters may have templates added to them, such as demonic or fay, because the dungeon master should be allowed to have fun spending hours designing characters too, but this adds to the amount of time looking up rules instead of resolving combat.
3rd edition gave way to 4th edition, which was influenced by video games such as World of Warcraft. Again, you play a unique butterfly, but now your butterfly has even more advanced powers at first level, which is the result of edition power creep. 4th edition is giving way to D&D Next, and I have no idea what it is and I don’t care, but a part of me is curious whether or not the paladin will be able to have arrows bounce off his chest while shooting laser beams from his eyes.
But what 3rd edition did was give us the OGL and with it a revival of the old school RPGs. Because of the OGL there are now free, downloadable games that emulate the earlier editions such as OSRIC and Dark Dungeons. The D&D grognard site called Dragonsfoot also houses fan-made adventure modules based on these clones of older editions. Castles and Crusades and Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG are purchasable newer games which put welcome twists on the older editions and are also made possible because of the Open Game License of D&D 3rd edition. In fact, the goal of the originator of the OGL was to make the game more easily available to the public so that Dungeons and Dragons would never die.
But despite the OGL, 3rd edition has a lot that to answer for. It got away from the idea of exploring the dangerous and unknown, shirking it in order to make the player feel as if his character was a destined hero and I do enjoy it for what it is. But I prefer the feeling of dread and anticipation that occurs when my low-ability score adventurer is hanging out with his injured fellows midway through the giant mushroom dungeon and wondering whether they should push on for a chance for the big score, or try to escape with the few coppers and silver pieces they were able to swipe from the nest of blood-sucking stirges.
Not a giant or monstrous housecat - just ye plain old cat that commoners keep as pets. Of my cats, one is a pretty mean son-of-a-bitch who quickly established himself as the dominant cat in the neighbourhood, and yet my 2 yr old kid can smack it down, so having ANY adventurer having only a 50% chance of beating a housecat means that they really did overdo the early vulnerability of mages. Also, playing an individual character is very different to playing a party - you don't want there to be any time when a player's character has become superflous because the party mage has reached the stage of being able to negate the need for a tank via immunity and 'protection from...' spells whilst also becoming an 'obliterate everything' machine. In that sense, the greater diversity of roles and character builds was very welcome in the P&P version, while weakening the strategic elements of the crpg version.
