D&D General D&D Editions: Anybody Else Feel Like They Don't Fit In?

UngeheuerLich said:

I sometimes have the feeling I don't fit in. Because I am notreously optimistic. I don't see the sky falling like everybodey else.

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UngeheuerLich said:

Maybe it is because I don't see the world in black and white.

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UngeheuerLich said:

Probably being good at math helps me to bring things into context that others see as malicious intends.

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Micah Sweet said:

What's with the humble brag? This reads as an explanation of why you're better than other people.

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Reynard said:

Optimism is not inherently better or more accurate than pessimism.

There's no place for nuance on the internet.

That's... not really a math thing.

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UngeheuerLich said:

It is when it comes to bemoaning increasing costs of things. Or why preorders are good for companies. Or giving certain abilities to certain classes or not. And so on.

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mamba said:

optimism is still not inherently better

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Whizbang Dustyboots said:

You get to go to a lot of pessimists' funerals, though.

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mamba said:

maybe it shows that the pessimists had a reason to be pessimistic

"A study of 2,800 heart patients in the Journal Archives of Internal Medicine reported that those who were optimistic about their heart disease were more likely to live 15 years longer than those with a pessimistic outlook"

sounds a lot like the Placebo effect at work

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Whizbang Dustyboots said:

Or that pessimists are under constant stress, which we know has all sort of physiological effects.

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Whizbang Dustyboots said:

You get to go to a lot of pessimists' funerals, though.

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JohnSnow said:

So, this may feel like a strange thread, but I hope people will bear with me.

I have been playing and DM'ing "Dungeons & Dragons" since the early-80s, and I am feeling more and more like there is no place in the hobby where I truly "fit" anymore. I grew up with the mechanical simplicity of B/X D&D, starting with the 1980 B/X Boxed sets supplemented by an AD&D Monster Manual. We quickly abandoned "race as class" and cherry-picked rules from the hardcover books (I read them all, and still have my Dungeoneer and Wilderness Survival Guides, but that basic game continued. I had some enduring campaigns as 1st-Edition turned to 2nd, and I kept playing D&D, but I always longed for a better skill system; as the combination of "wing it" and Nonweapon Proficiencies never quite cut it for me.

When 3e dropped, I loved it at first, but the longer I played, the more something became clear to me. Dungeons & Dragons had become more "over-the-top fantastical" than I liked. Cook and Tweet basically had turned the default setting of Dungeons & Dragons into a high-magic Monty Haul campaign. The magic system still grated and the constant embrace of making characters MORE magical was taking it further from the kind of fantasy stories I want to tell.

I grew up on Arthurian legends, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Conan, and a bunch of other "Sword & Sorcery" stuff. I didn't want my fantasy game to let me play the medieval equivalent of the X-Men, where every character has magical powers. I've thought about going back to the OSR, but the truth is that I want a game that has more rules guidance than those games offer. I just don't want one where every character can teleport, cast spells, and all of the other high-magic shenanigans that D&D embraces from the get-go.

The 5.24e embrace of this flavor has me turned off more than anything else. But I don't see a home for myself. Part of me wants to go backwards, but OSR type games are usually either too lethal (or grim-dark), too enamored of outdated game mechanics (OSE), or they're overly enamored with tables and whacky subsystems (looking at you DCC). I want there to be more fun combat options, but I don't want a lot of fiddly rules that will slow the game down. I see promise in something like DCC's "Mighty Deeds of Arms," or DMScotty's "Luck Dice" (or Professor DM's "Deathbringer Dice") or whatever you want to call them. I see some fun sub-systems in DC20, but I also see it getting way too fiddly.

Shadowdark speaks to my tastes a little (I love "roll to cast"), but I'd have to houserule some additions and alterations to it to really get the game I want. There's some other heavily house-ruled versions of OSR or "simplified 5e" that work for me, but they aren't there. But while I love the d20 resolution mechanic, I may need to walk away from a D&D that is becoming increasingly fantastical. And I don't know where to go.

Sorry for the wall of text, but is anybody else in this boat?

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