Real D&D™ vs. DANDINO™

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MadPreacher

Real D&D™ vs. DANDINO™

Post by MadPreacher »

What is the difference between the two? It's quite simple. Real D&D™ is any D&D product that was produced and published by TSR before they were bought by Wizards of the Woke. It has its roots going all the way back to Chainmail written and published by E. Gary Gygax, may he rest in peace, until Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition.

DANDINO™ stands for D&D In Name Only. It shares nothing with what E. Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, and others at TSR created. This is exclusively written and published by Wizards of the Woke. It is shit due to many factors from ascending everything to the characters being superheroes in a video game.
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Cedric
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Post by Cedric »

I feel like this thread is a bit lacking in the concrete "why."

My perspective is simple enough: I enjoy lethality and scarcity. Gygax famously said that if resources are not tracked strictly, you might as well not play. I believe that. I think you should have to manage torches, food, and have few spells, just to make them more impactful when you use them.

The anti-thesis to this classic design is 5E (and also 4E) - systems in which adventurers are like Marvel super heroes and always have something to do every round of combat. This makes combat plodding, in addition to the already convoluted Free Action, Standard Action, Bonus Action, Reaction, Move Action system.

Personally, I prefer it when Wizards/Magic Users only have a single spell at level 1 (or 2 or 3, if their Intelligence is high and they specialize), and not the endless broken cantrips from modern editions. What's exciting about casting Acid Splash every round? Nothing. Yes, it 'gives you something to do' - but now you are doing something meaningless every turn, just for the sake of it. Yes, the old-fashioned magic user only has a single spell - but when he uses it, it makes a huge impact! Sleep can win many low level encounters all by itself, Ventriloquism can save the day, and so on.

So in summary, my problems with newer editions are:
* No resource tracking / scarcity
* No risk of death with the death saves travesty
* Overpowered heroes with the 4d6 drop 1 standard
* Boring casters / martials because when everyone is special, nobody is

These problems are not at all related to wokeness, except perhaps a zoomer desire to 'be special.' I am saying that, even if you removed all wokeness, it still would not be to my taste due to the underlying modern mechanics.

Thank God the old editions still exist, and OSE is growing in popularity as well. There's a kid's show called Bluey and in one episode, the kids play Pass the Parcel, a UK/Australian game in which you wrap a present or toy in many layers and kids pass it around in a circle. When the music stops, they open one layer. Well, in modern versions of this game, every layer has a present or toy, so all the kids win something. In one episode, the old-fashioned Boomer uncle suggests they play in the version he remembers, in which only one reward is given - but a big one. Well, at first the kids hate it and cry because there's only one winner, but as the year goes by they learn that it's far more exciting to win big than win small several times, and also learn to cheer for when other kids win big, rather than feeling envy.

So at least, the old ways are still strong and still have an appeal that, eventually, younger people will discover and are already discovering. B/X is currently a very popular system!
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rusty_shackleford
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

Something 3.x and later did away with was each class having separate XP tables. It added character to the classes and made sense, it should take much longer for a wizard to reach higher level than a bard.
MadPreacher

Post by MadPreacher »

A few comments here from my perspective.

4d6 drop lowest doesn't make a superhero. All it does is ensure that your character has a chance of being average in most attributes while being excellent in a few. In Real D&D™ there is no way of increasing your stats through leveling. The only way to do it is with magic items or wish spells. That's extremely rare and cost prohibitive.

In Real D&D™ it's a You Can Try System. If you think of how to do something, no matter how ridicules or cunning, the DM is required to let you try it. In DANDINO™ it's a If You Don't Have X You Can't Do Y and it shackles player creativity. I've been running into this problem with my current group of players. Some like JarlFrank are imaginative and create interesting ways of accomplishing things. Others they aren't so lucky. I had to tell mastroego that his thief could move silently to get around an ape to do a backstab against it. He never realized that he could do it. Backstab for thieves requires the thief to position themselves appropriately and use all of their skills to do so. The actual backstab can be done with any weapon from slings to daggers. As long as the thief is hidden from their target they can backstab. It can be hard to train players to think old school and to unleash their creativity.

DANDINO™ trains the players with the Skinner Box method of do x and get y reward. In Real D&D™ the reward is the attempt to do something. If you fail you fail and people laugh about it. Failure presents you with the best memories that you can tell people 20 years from now.
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Cedric
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Post by Cedric »

Actually, I am a large fan of the B/X variant homebrew rule that every level up, you roll 1d6 for each attribute, and on a 6, it increases by one. I find that this, combined with 3d6 rolls, makes character growth a lot more fun and interesting. A touch of Wizardry 1-5, if you will. And it won't typically result in crazy powerful characters either.
MadPreacher

Post by MadPreacher »

I wouldn't like that since it leads to the problem of superhero characters once you exceed level 20.
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Cedric
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Post by Cedric »

I tend to be of the position that the most interesting levels are 2-9, or at most 2-13 (especially if we play with D&D level caps.)
But yes, of course it depends on the situation.
MadPreacher

Post by MadPreacher »

Yeah, that's why in my campaign setting the max level of 12.
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rusty_shackleford
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

I recall Gygax saying something about how he never intended D&D to be played to such high levels and most of his campaigns ended at 9 or something. I'd have to dig around to find it.
MadPreacher

Post by MadPreacher »

Tim Kask said that the games he was in with Gary that they usually went up to level 12 in the AD&D 1E era.
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Lhynn
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Post by Lhynn »

Ive DMed up until level 15 in AD&D and its fine, though it becomes a lot less combat heavy. With every combat being more important but both the build up and the aftermath being more impactful in the world.

They start to become active players in the politics of the world, and it is a prime moment for character development, as things tend to slow down. I really recommend it if you enjoy doing more than dungeon crawls. As long as you dont give casters spells on level up but have them get those through research, its very well balanced.
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viata
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Post by viata »

I like low level characters. I never liked campaigns too, since back when I used to play it we had to rotate DMs(since no one wanted to be) so we mostly did single-session adventures and once in a while someone would want to do a little longer because he had "an amazing idea for long quest". The single-session adventures always implied we would create a new character every other session so we mostly played low-leveled characters.
It's probably one of the reasons I have low interest in many crpgs because instead of doing small adventures, you are always saving the world or some bullshit like that.
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