DnD's Metamorphosis

Xathan · August 11, 2006, 10:14:59 AM

One thing I have been noticing lately is a large change in the flavor of dungeons and dragons. Looking at just Core, you see a clear game: excluding the monk, it is a game of medieval western fantasy. Sure, you can use the core rules to express a different flavor, but it requires a conscious effort and often reflavoring certain things (Calling the Paladin something else, for example, or changing druid flavor.)

However, take a look at non-Core DnD. Tome of Battle is the most blatant change, and they even say as much inside the book:

Quote from: Tome of Battle, Page 6Is Tome of Battle martial arts for the Dungeons & Dragons game? Is it good only for an Oriental Adventures-style game? Does it challenge your conception of a Western European fantasy world? In short: Sort of, no, and we certainly hope soÃ¢,¬Â¦Tome of Battle isnÃ¢,¬,,¢t your parentsÃ¢,¬,,¢ D&D Ã¢,¬' itÃ¢,¬,,¢s bigger, bolder, and even more fantastic than ever before.

Ki Blast[/i]. If a game uses the rules as a widespread part of their world, the entire feel of the game changes. Even just going back to the PHBII, Tome of Magic, and Magic of Incarnum, you see a shift Ã¢,¬' all of them give the game a much less Western feel (although you can argue Tome of Magic can be used to reinforce the Western idea, with some very little reworking of the BinderÃ¢,¬,,¢s flavor to make it more evil).

The point of all this: DnD seems to be going through a metamorphosis, changing from a mostly pure Western flavor to something else. I was wondering what everyone though of this metamorphosis, and what they think the DnD of the future will be like. I would not be at all surprised to see maneuvers and stances in the 4e PHB, or at least in a Ã¢,¬Å"coreÃ¢,¬Â supplement like the XPH Ã¢,¬' and I, for one, think that is a good thing.

EDIT: More thoughts:

Something I forgot to mentione, ToB still manages to bring DnD along with it. The artwork contains hobgoblins, githyanki, frost giants, Devils, and other DnD iconic monsters, and the whole thing feels like DnD while at the same time changing the feel of DnD.

SDragon · August 11, 2006, 11:11:36 AM

diversity, in my opinion, is always a great thing.
d&d strays from european influence? if youve seen Xiluh, im sure you already know my opinion on that.

SA · August 11, 2006, 11:28:14 AM

I've never been a big fan of "Western" fantasy anyway, but, even disregarding that, it's great to see the game expanding its focus.

I suppose it also helps that I'm obsessed with Asian/Middle-Eastern culture...

SilvercatMoonpaw · August 11, 2006, 01:33:12 PM

It's not quite enough. While I admit that it sounds as if D&D is expanding away from its core, it still holds to alignment on classes, races, monsters, etc. I'd like to see alignment dropped. But read the description of Dragon Magic: it proposes that maybe dragons don't have to be the alloof creatures of traditional D&D. I certainly applaud Wizards for stepping away from some of their stereotypes, but I don't see it as a huge departure. Until they move away from their game of moral chess with every class being grounded around fighting they'll still be D&D.

Numinous · August 11, 2006, 01:35:26 PM

I personally like the alignment system as-is. It just takes a good DM, a looser handling of it, and a real understanding of what each alignment is in order to function.

SilvercatMoonpaw · August 11, 2006, 01:56:32 PM

But it pre-defines alignment and makes it based on a force outside the person. If you don't want to play a Good person the way D&D says is a Good person, then you're screwed.

Also the spells that have alignment descriptors or that affect certain alignments offend me. Why should undead-making spells be evil? If you want making undead to be evil than make that a consequence of the action and not the spell. And why is protection from good and Evil spell? Sometimes you might need to protect yourself from a Good creature. Of course, in core D&D thinking Good creatures never attack you unless you're Evil. Oh, wait, what about detect evil? Not only does it make things too easy, but what about getting the reading wrong? It could happen (maybe the PC is carrying around an artifact that radiates Evil so strong it overwhelms the PC's own reading).

I don't like the idea that Good and Evil are unambiguous, nor the idea that certain creatures are too often Evil. And I absolutely hate the idea that there are creatures that aren't allowed to be free to make their own decisions about morals.

Edit: I used the word "are" when I meant "aren't".

Epic Meepo · August 11, 2006, 02:31:31 PM

For a few alignment-related options and a lot of alignment-related arguments, feel free to visit my old Astrological Alignment thread. (I haven't broken that bad boy out in months.)

SilvercatMoonpaw · August 11, 2006, 04:21:18 PM

@Epic Meepo: I think the response to your system illustrates that the system of alignment is useless, unless one really wants to be a b*tch about what's good and what's evil. I agree that if you are too lazy to go through and cut out all the alignment-related stuff than you need to keep some system, but I don't think it needs to be good/evil.

Xeviat · August 11, 2006, 06:45:38 PM

Wow, I hadn't known that the alignment discussions had become so concentrated that they were leaking over into our boards. I've never had a problem with alignment rules as written; the only people I personally know who really complain about the alignment system are boarderline anarchists themselves (the humor in that is in noting how a definably chaotic person objects to ridged classification systems).

Seriously dude, just figure out how you want to play your character, then look at the nine alignments and determine where they are. If you want to play a "good" character but the alignment "Good" doesn't fit your character, then you're not playing a "Good" aligned character; a neutral or even evil character can be a nice person, but their morals and motivations are different.

Back to the topic on hand, I agree with you Xanthan: D&D is changing. It is becoming something more, leaving the sacred cows out to pasture, but not destroying what it once was. The Crusader is entirely western-influenced; it would take some effort to bring the crusader into an eastern setting. The Warblade could fit as either, though some of the higher level maneuvers break the "realism" requirement some people place on western settings.

What I'd like to see, though, is less "regional" class differentiation; for example, both the Paladin and the Samurai fill the same role in their own cultures, so I feel they should be the same class (and in my setting, my Knight class fills the role of both Knight and Samurai).

Tome of Battle has amazed me, and I'm currently trying to decide what other classes to allow in a mini-setting I'm building around it. I can't decide if I want spellcasters and throw out the paladin, fighter/barbarian, and monk in favor of the crusader, warblade, and swordsage, or if I want to throw out the spellcasters and introduce the ToB classes. My main dillema is trying to decide if I think heroic characters should be without blade-magic (the only real role that is left in the dark is the trap-finding/thief rogue, but such a role can easily be left out of such a genre).

Epic Meepo · August 11, 2006, 07:01:57 PM

Quote from: SilvercatMoonpawI agree that if you are too lazy to go through and cut out all the alignment-related stuff than you need to keep some system, but I don't think it needs to be good/evil.

Dungeons and Dragons[/i] boxed set I played with a few decades ago. If you remove the good/evil alignment axis, you are not playing the Dungeons and Dragons game I grew up with; you're just playing a generic d20 System fantasy game that happens - by virtue of assorted legal matters - to have the same name. There's nothing wrong with generic d20 System fantasy (it's my prefered RPG system in many respects), but that hardly makes me lazy for enjoying a good, old-fashioned D&D campaign.

CYMRO · August 12, 2006, 02:36:11 AM

D&D is not changing any more or less than it has in any other incarnation of the rules, it is just that the internet has allowed Hasbro more immediate feedback into what the DMs and players are actually doing than TSR ever had. This allows them to market smartly.
I know that my friends and I gave up on the Medieval Tolkienesque D&D back in 1st edition, insisting in our games on a little more in-game "logic" where magic and technology were concerned.
Eastern games were around before 1st edition.

How people are playing is not changing, only how the game companies are able to keep up with gamer trends.

Soup Nazi · August 13, 2006, 06:53:21 AM

If I recall correctly back in Greyhawk we had a bunch of very non-western themes like the Scarlet Brotherhood, The Suel Empire, and numerous other places that never fit into the European fantasy mold. Basic D&D had desert sultans and a hollow core filled with a Aztec/Egyptian modeled theme, and that predates 1st edition. Heck the monsters in D&D have always had mythological diversity with sphinxes, frost giants, yaun-ti, illithids, couatl, nagas, sirens, and so on.

In second edition settings like Al'Qadim, Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravenloft, Mazitica and others explored concepts far outside the normal Tolkein-esque fantasy setting.

The thematic changes are nothing new at all. The thing that is new, is the fact that WotC has finally realized that magic is more powerful than swords and armor. It has always been this way, but WotC is actually looking to promote fair play and mechanical balance within the rule system itself; in my opinion, it's about time somebody actually looked at the game through a designer's eyes instead through a novelist's eyes.

Magic wielding characters may be the most powerful people in novels (Merlin, Gandalf, Elric, and Raistlin, Elminster, Mordenkainen), but in a game designed for multiple people, the wizard, cleric, or druid PC should not have any mechanical advantage over the other players. Every character type should have an equal oportunity to contribute to the game at ALL levels of play.

What the Tome of Battle does, is put raw power in the hands of warrior classes, so that at high levels he isn't relagated to a role of water boy, bench warmer, or meat shield, while the wizards, clerics, and druids handle the bulk of the work both in combat (with dominate, forcecage, finger of death, holy word, and so on) and in utility situations outside of combat (with spells like passwall, detect thoughts, charm person, scrying, teleport, and so on). The 9 disciplines give the fighter options in combat that make him competative at what he is supposed to be doing...fighting. It gives him options that help him resist being neutered by a single spell (like boosts to saving throws, the ability to break free from various conditions, and a means to actually pursuit a mobile spellcaster so he can't just fly and dimension door away from him).

Basically, I'm agreeing with Cymro here. Thematic changes are nothing new to this game at all. The changes ToB brings to the table are mechanical in nature, but at least it's a change for the better.

-Peace-

CYMRO · August 13, 2006, 07:03:32 PM

QuoteBasically, I'm agreeing with Cymro here.

I think this is the third sign of the Apocralypse. ;)

beejazz · August 21, 2006, 11:08:36 AM

older editions had some pretty 'radical' changes in flavor way back when, too... remember 'spelljammer' and 'dark sun'? this is not such a radical shift... it is simply a matter of the age of pulp sci-fi setting in favor of the rising sun of the east.

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News:

DnD's Metamorphosis

Xathan

SDragon

SA

SilvercatMoonpaw

Numinous

SilvercatMoonpaw

Epic Meepo

SilvercatMoonpaw

Xeviat

Epic Meepo

CYMRO

Soup Nazi

CYMRO

beejazz