I’ve spoken on a number of occasions about old school vs. new school D&D, the old school movement, the designs and theories behind classic and AD&D, but today I’m going to try to illustrate not so much why those movements exist, but what those movements complain about when it comes to modern versions of D&D. What their main beefs are with modern systems and why they continue to use the old systems despite considerable advancement in modern design of mechanics.
I think the conversation is appropriate because only a month ago we got yet another variation on modern version of D&D in Pathfinder 2.0. As I write this I’m only 1 day away from playing in my first session and I’m very excited to try out the new system. Unfortunately I also know what I’m walking into. Like most old school D&D players, while I can certainly enjoy modern versions of D&D (and I do very much so), I know that the experience will be lacking in certain areas and all of my complaints that I have about modern D&D will still be present in some capacity in this latest version of the game even from a courtesy reading.
What are the complaints of this old school gamer when it comes to modern versions of D&D? That’s what today’s article is all about.
Combat is dreadfully slow
Dungeons and Dragons has always been a game of heroic combat to a great degree. We make great fighters, powerful magic-users, stealthy back stabbing thieves and divine clerics and much more and all of these adventuring characters are built from the ground up to kick-ass and take monster names. D&D as a premise is about heroically taking our characters into danger, fighting monsters, finding treasure, exploring unique locations and living in the theatre of the mind through the eyes of our characters.
At its core it is a staple of D&D to fight, but it is not the point of the game as a whole. This rather odd discrepancy between “what the game is about” and “what you do often in the game” is a delicate formula that Dungeons and Dragons got right way back in AD&D and has been struggling with in every edition of the game ever since.
The simple fact is that a D&D combat should take about 10-20 minutes tops, maybe 30-45 if you are doing a big climatic boss battle. It should be fast, furious, dangerous, violent and over quickly. A 5 hour session of D&D could (not necessarily should) have 4-5 combats and the session should still be mostly role-playing. In other words, you do a lot of fighting and still the game is not focused on fighting.
This is a fundamental and important element of a game that is about exploration and that comes with 300+ page book of monsters.
My biggest complaint about modern D&D is that combat has been getting slower and more dissociated from the narrative (more on dissociation later) with each new edition up until about 5th edition (so between 2nd-4th edition including Pathfinder 1.0 it grew more and more sluggish).
4th edition Dungeons and Dragons was certainly the worst of the modern D&D games when it came to combat speed, an average fight being 2-4 hours, but Pathfinder, 5th edition D&D and certainly the new Pathfinder 2.0 are still fairly slow by comparison to classic versions of D&D like AD&D.
In our session 0 Pathfinder 2.0 game our GM ran a simulation combat. 5 players versus 6 goblins. It took the better part of of an hour and change, the average wait time for me between actions was 5-10 minutes. It suffices to say that comparatively this was certainly a huge improvement over say 3rd or 4th edition, or even Pathfinder 1.0, but still considerably slower then AD&D which would have wrapped up the entire fight in 10-15 minutes.
Now I will say this upfront. All of the modern D&D editions including 4th edition have very interesting, involved and well thought out mechanics. These aren’t bad games, or bad mechanics they are just slow and this lack of expediency is just one peg in the leg that holds the chair (game session) together.
It’s also important to note that as an old school gamer and I feel quite comfortable speaking on behalf of the OS movement that there is no opposition to making combat tactically interesting. In fact, most AD&D and Basic D&D players use either house rules or published material to enhance, improve and expand on the simplicity of the tactical elements of the core rules for their game. The balance between speed and interesting combat is a fragile one and will differ from group to group and DM to DM, but among old school gamers both simplicity and speed are typically more important to creating a deeper, more complex tactical game. Its a preference and a peg to the leg, but its certainly not the deal breaker.
The real issue most old school gamers have is that most of the rules weight added to make the tactical combat more interesting in modern games, comes in the form of dissociated mechanics and it’s here where modern and old school gamers really differ in what they want to see in the way of enhance tactical combat mechanics.
Dissociated Mechanics
To understand what Dissociated Mechanics are and really the RPG design theory behind it, you really have to do some research. This is a long, involved and complex subject which I won’t cover here beyond the sort of paraphrased version.
The short version is that in modern D&D (and many modern RPG’s), many mechanics (in some cases most mechanics) are there not as part of a role-playing mechanism, but as a game mechanic. In other words, the mechanic is not associated with the abstracted reality, from the perspective of the character. These mechanics are not associated with the decisions the character makes. They are dissociated, meaning, disconnected from the characters reality, in the hands of the player making decisions in a tactical mini game added for the purpose of creating tactical and character building options.
Disassociation of mechanics in RPG’s began about the same time PC versions of RPG’s and in particular MMORPG’s were born. The concept of balance, the concept of character progression and builds all triggered the shift in pencil and paper RPG’s. In a sense, modern RPG’s were designed for modern gamers which came to the table with PC and video game experiences. Their expectations were to have the same levers available in their pencil and paper RPG’s as they had in their PC and Video game equivalents. It may seem odd, since PC and Video game RPG’s were born from Pencil and Paper versions, but the digital versions of RPG’s evolved differently and then began to influence their ancestry, pushing their pencil and paper equivalents to adapt to them.
An example of a Dissociated Mechanic is the Combat Maneuvers mechanic for a 5th edition fighter. With this mechanic, the fighter gets “combat maneuver points” that can be spent on special combat actions. These points represent an abstraction of fatigue, concentration, knowledge and Will I suppose. You can do things like trip your enemy (causing them to go prone), rally an ally (giving them extra HP), or command another player (giving them an extra attack).
This mechanic is really not associated with the characters reality, aka, a dissociated mechanic. When the character rallies another character and gives them extra HP, it’s really such a heavy abstraction in on its own as it is, but on top of that, he can only do it 3 times before taking rest, or he can rally someone twice, but then only trip an enemy one time So to the character because he rallied someone, he can’t trip someone later.
If you start to see the picture here, you should realize that the combat maneuver points, the way they are applied, the abstracted mechanics they trigger are all disassociated from reality. It makes it more disassociated and really paints the picture when you start asking questions.
Why can’t a thief learn a combat maneuver? Is tripping someone that complicated? Is it not possible for a Paladin to rally his troops, or command fellow character to get an extra attack? Why does me rallying my team and commanding them, exhaust me and prevent me from tripping someone or getting a bonus attack. How are these things related to each other.
Now there is a term for this called suspension of disbelief that is often applied, I would argue incorrectly. Suspension of disbelief is to accept something as fact that is clearly invented fantasy. For example characters in a fantasy world know that orcs and dragons exist, that magic is real and gods actually come down from the heavens and influence mortal beings. These are facts for the fantasy world and require the players to have a suspension of disbelief to accept. It is not suspension of disbelief when we ask a player to accept that he is fatigued from commanding people, so he can’t make a riposte or a trip attack as a result. We are not asking their character to believe in magic or dragons, we are asking them to accept a mechanical construct applied to a game for the purposes of balance as real.
Modern D&D is full of dissociated mechanics and this is so because these mechanics were not created to represent character choices and decisions within the realm of a abstracted fantasy reality, they were added for classes to have interesting activatable abilities, for the purposes of balance and entertainment as part of a miniatures combat game. They are not only dissociated from the make believe reality of a fantasy world, but from the very premise of a role-playing game (aka, taking on a role of a character).
These disassociated mechanics are very disruptive to role-playing though modern players are not entirely aware of it because again, they are so accustomed to these mechanics existing in other games (namely PC and Video games) that it feels natural and normal to have them. Modern pencil and paper RPG players are more likely to discuss class builds, class balance and “what options are good picks or not”. To the modern gamer, this is part of the role-playing experience and though these mechanics are disassociated, modern gamers are not bothered by the disruption, though disrupt them it does.
To a modern player, choosing your race and class, your feats and skills and your spells are mechanical choices they expect to make. They expect progression, they expect balance, they expect lots and lots of options. In fact, the size of core rulebooks have grown substantially for many of these games. Pathfinder 2.0 for example weighs in at over 600+ pages, easily the largest RPG rulebook that has ever existed. This book is overflowing with character building options. One must ask the question why? Why do we need this many options for a game that is about playing a role in a game of collaborative storytelling?
Dissociated mechanics are partially the cause, or at least they compounded the issues that lead to increased length of combat. As more and more of a session is taken up by making tactical choices, with a plethora of activatable abilities, the slower the game is in combat and the more often the players are pulled out of their role in the role-playing game and pushed towards player centric top down decisions about which abilities to use, which resources to spend, what tactical choices they should make. None of which has anything to do with role-playing their character, thinking through their character or seeing the world through their character. These are, for all intents and purposes, mechanics designed for a game.
4th edition D&D for example was often accused in reviews of being too much like a board game or an MMORPG. This assessment while facetious, is not really that far from the truth as in many ways, because the game is built on so many dissociated mechanics (just like board games and PC games are), that its perfectly reasonable to get that sense from the game. In 4th edition D&D you spent most of your session using mechanics that would have no in game, in character logic to them.
Is it all bad?
The answer is no. While certainly things have changed a great deal since the AD&D days when associated mechanics were king, the RPG revolution has begun to revert from its PC game evolved roots back to the golden age thinking. This is happening very subtly, but slowly with each new iteration of D&D. We have seen the PC and Video game world have less and less influence and the old school world of RPG’s have more and more. Modern players have begun to evolve the pencil and paper RPG’s away from the digital rpg’s. and into their own thing. Now its not exactly an old school movement, but many ideas from old school games have found their way back into modern designs.
A good example in Pathfinder 2.0 is the skill system. Any AD&D player should find this system very familiar, it is almost an exact replica of Non-Weapon proficiencies.
Why has Pathfinder 2.0 brought back Non-Weapon Proficiencies? The answer is quite simple. The purpose of a skill system is to describe what your character can do, not necessary to define how the rules work. Its sort of like saying, here is a gauge, rather then, here is an applicable rule. Its to ensure that while a player runs his character, he understands what his abilities are from the perspective of his character.
For example if you are trained at swimming, you know you can swim. That is an in character understanding (an associated mechanic). Certainly there can be rules for swimming (Difficulties set for different conditions for example) but the important thing for the player and his character is to understand, hey I know how to do that and here is how good at it I am. Trained, expert etc..
The movement to more associated mechanics however isn’t just about reverting to old school mechanics, there are very modern versions of associated mechanics we have never seen in old school games, but still fit neatly into the ideology. This supports the idea that associated mechanics aren’t just an old school thing, modern gamers and designers are becoming very aware of it as well even if they don’t fully verbalize it.
For example the 2D20 Momentum and Threat mechanic is a great example. Here we have a very associated mechanic that is inspired by concepts of inspiration and stress, a gauge of a very relatable concept we have in our real lives. When a person is inspired, he becomes motivated and is more likely to succeed and ever exceed in tasks he is performing. Who hasn’t had that day at work when everything is falling into place, motivating you to push it further, that moment when we are on a roll.
Vice versus with threat, its a little like stress. We can feel our stress levels and they impact us negatively. The more stressed we are the less productive we are, the more mistakes we make, we lose sleep, we are less attentive when we drive. There is all sorts of impact on our lives from stress (aka threat).
This sort of mechanic is brilliant in representing something very relatable, yet it is very modern, an invention of an associated mechanic for the new age of role-playing games.
The move away from dissociated mechanics might not ever reach the same levels as AD&D which on a design level had a real aversion to it going so far as suggesting that even the use of dissociated house rules in your game is heresy. Still modern gamers are becoming more evolved role-players. More and more, players are becoming concerned with their stories, with their backgrounds, with the invention of character and the designers of these systems are responding by giving them the mechanical structure on which to base those inventions, which come in the form of associated mechanics.
In Pathfinder 2.0, I found it refreshing and far more natural to build a character, a really great sign that the system is moving in the right direction. The dissociations of choosing hyper abstract mechanical options have been minimized, replaced with mechanics designed to help match functionality to written backgrounds and give players narrative fuel. We already saw this greatly improved in 5th edition D&D and Pathfinder 2.0 has taken yet another step in that right direction. An almost full 180 from systems like 4th edition D&D which lived in the world of dissociated mechanics almost exclusively.
Conclusion
The conclusion is that while we still call the old school movement and game systems like AD&D old school, modern games are becoming more and more familiar to us old gonards. The distinction between new school and old school is becoming blurred, there are more and more commonalities between the two concepts and rules. I find some of us Gonards have a hard time making peace with that, as old school has other more mythical connotations, but I consider this sort of thing very judgy for the sake of being judgy. It’s just some hipster shit, that out of date “it was better in the olden days” mantra. The reality is that the bridge is being built and the question is if old school players can get their head out of their asses long enough to make the crossing. I have my doubts about that.
Role-playing has changed a great deal in the last 30 years, but in a way, its less a progression forward and more an evolution and refinement on the original material. Sure, there was a brief moment in time (about 10 years worth) when the influence of digital games on the pencil and paper games was disturbing, I will be the first to admit that I thought it was shit in, shit out at the time, but even from those periods of design some good came out of it. Perhaps it was a lesson on what not to do, but I like to think of it more along the lines of designers coming to grips about what was great about role-playing games at the table and how it differs from the digital experiences. It was an affirmation that us old Gonards were right all along, we fucking told you, you wouldn’t listen and so you spent 10 years getting your asses kicked. While I feel high and mighty, I welcome you back.
Mind you I love MMORPG’s and CRPG’s, Baldur’s Gate was one of my favorite games of all time and it was a very close approximation of the rules of AD&D. It just doesn’t work to run pencil and paper RPG’s in this manner and we shouldn’t try to make mechanics that allow you to so, its pointless and It just doesn’t work well.
Pencil and Paper RPG’s are also more than just one thing and the old school gonards like me have to really come to grips with that as well. There are a wider range of perfectly acceptable ways to play D&D and those players aren’t doing it wrong, they are doing it their way and doing it your own way IS always the right way. Designers are going to continue as they always have to cater to all walks of RPG life, which will include these ever widening styles of play.
I do however agree with the old school movement that D&D is its own thing, it is not to be fucked with. If you want to make a Forbidden Lands that has some unique spin on the RPG genre, go for it, but if you are going to put the D&D label on something, you will follow the rules, or we will make someone who does the king of RPG’s (like Paizo). There are sacred cows like associated mechanics that simply cannot be trifled with, else you will end up with commercial failures like 4th edition D&D. Note I said commercial failure, not design failure. 4e had its merits, it just wasn’t D&D because it failed to heed important lessons about what D&D should be, which includes a game about fast combat, associated mechanics and countless key tropes that are ingrained into the fan bases psyche If you want to include D&D players from all generations of the game, there are simply some design constructs that must be followed. Call them sacred cows if you will, but those are the terms, abide by them or suffer the consequences.
In my opinion the future looks bright for the old school movement and the modern gamers as well. Systems like Pathfinder 2.0 are clearly designed for a more seasoned group of players, but there is no mistaking its intention to include old school veteran’s of D&D and the old school movement within its walls. I look forward to this next edition of the game.
Exciting times ahead!