Advanced Dungeons & Dragons forces players to think of their characters as vulnerable; encouraging players to be inherently creative. This concept is missing from most Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition players. Buy the AD&D Players Handbook: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/17003/players-handbook-1e?affiliate_id=50797
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Transcript
You would be a better player if you played this game.
Intro
Welcome to another DragonLance Saga episode. My name is Adam and today we are going to discuss how Advanced Dungeons & Dragons makes you a better player. I would like to take a moment and thank the DLSaga members, and invite you to consider becoming a member by visiting the link in the description below. You can even pick up Dragonlance gaming materials using my affiliate links. I am referencing my thirty-four years of dungeon mastering and playing tabletop role-playing games in every edition of Dungeons & Dragons. If your opinion differs from mine, that’s great, leave your thoughts in the comments below!
Discussion
When modern players who started playing Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition because of popular culture series like Stranger Things, or actual play online shows like Critical Role, they were presented with a game that on its face tried to be balanced, but as with any game which has continually added character options for a decade, the system is anything but. It does, however, provide players with heroic characters whose only struggle is to keep their players interested in playing them after six to ten levels. Why would a player grow bored playing a character after that long? Well there are a plethora of reasons, but at the top of the list would be homogeneity. With few exceptions, you could strip away specifics and all characters can melee, fire off some form of magical attack, heal themselves with a short rest and excel at skills whose ability score can go up to twenty or more! The whole premise of encounters seems to be based on an action game like God of War. Run into combat, kill as quickly as possible, rinse and repeat.
You can make a fair argument that player and dungeon master styles are what encourage that style of playing, but when the game presents player characters in this light, it’s hard to see anyone playing them any different without a background in role-playing or playing older versions of the game like Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. This could easily be tracked back to Original Dungeons and Dragons, but I prefer AD&D because Dragonlance was designed for it originally, and seeing as I am writing, performing and producing this video, you’re stuck with it. Now, before you throw your hands in the air and repeat the mindless drone like phrase of OK boomer or dismiss my thoughts as nothing but a grognard’s constipated complaints, I would initially ask you to stop giving into obvious and trite internet culture’s witless banter, and then give me a few minutes. I am running a 5th edition game right now, and I have run past 5th edition games. I play tabletop role-playing games, not a single edition of a role-playing game. This gives me something called perspective, a concept that seems to be lacking in social media and our culture at large.
Perspective is also something that is integral to being a good role-player in general. It allows you to immerse yourself into a character. To understand the motivations and drives of a given character based on their race and class. Another way of saying that is that your choices on behalf of the character are informed by their culture and experiences, not your own. How does one immerse themselves into a fantasy culture? Game mechanics and imagination. In 5th edition there is a brief paragraph on Alignment, then a sentence dismissing the entire concept. They present races but the only thing that truly separates them is game statistics, rather than cultural identities. When players are not presented structural reasons for choosing one race over another, it’s no wonder every race is treated the same.
But the true reasons for players’ mindless rinse and repeat actions are not simply due to their character builds, but the fundamental game structure. It’s an overly simple game. And there is nothing wrong with simple games, it's just that when every encounter is presented as a hack-and-slash solution, you lose the role-playing aspect and degrade to action video game tactics...