[HN Gopher] Dungeon Magazine
___________________________________________________________________
Dungeon Magazine
Author : kleiba
Score : 239 points
Date : 2021-01-14 12:57 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (archive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (archive.org)
| [deleted]
| Paul_S wrote:
| The history of Dungeon and AD&D is an interesting lesson in
| licensing and IP ownership. Also a lesson in power of brands and
| marketing.
|
| Pathfinder is the real successor to AD&D and Paizo had the
| subscribers communication channels to fans and yet people
| remained with WotC and moved on to the new WotC system whose only
| connection with AD&D was the name. Back when I was a more active
| DM this puzzled me to no end.
| mcv wrote:
| Pathfinder 1st edition was a direct successor (near-clone,
| even) of D&D 3, which was created by WotC. That's where the big
| break from AD&D happened. D&D 5 has about as much in common
| with AD&D as D&D 3 and Pathfinder have. Perhaps more, because
| D&D 5 was in some ways (though not all) an explicit attempt to
| go back to earlier, less complex editions of D&D.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Pathfinder 1st edition was a direct successor (near-clone,
| even) of D&D 3
|
| Without going back and checking, wasn't PF a fork of the open
| core of D&D/3.5e?
|
| > Perhaps more, because D&D 5 was in some ways (though not
| all) an explicit attempt to go back to earlier, less complex
| editions of D&D.
|
| D&D/4e and 5e are pretty clearly the most simple versions
| outside of the simplified versions after OD&D and in parallel
| with AD&D (B/X, BECMI, Black Box, Rules Cyclopedia), and in
| many ways both newer versions are simpler so long as you only
| consider similar similar scope, though they have broader (but
| not a superset, because neither has domain management or
| divine ascension as a first-party subsystem, while BECMI has
| both and the Cyclopedia retains BECMI's coverage of the
| former) scope.
|
| 5e seemed to be more an effort to restore flavor elements
| many perceived as lost from the very complex AD&D/1e through
| D&D/3e than to revert to simplicity lost (since the opposite
| was true) in 4e.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > Without going back and checking, wasn't PF a fork of the
| open core of D&D/3.5e?
|
| Yes, this is why it was often referred to (at the time at
| least) as 3.75. Mechanically, if you knew 3/3.5 you could
| almost jump in without looking at any rules in Pathfinder.
| It did change things around spells and classes (having its
| own being the biggest issue more than changes to the
| standard/common ones with 3/3.5).
| cwyers wrote:
| "Near clone" undersells it, even. Most of the rules come from
| the D&D 3.5th Edition System Reference Document, under the
| terms of the Open Gaming License (basically the GPL of
| tabletop game systems). It's basically a hard fork.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > less complex
|
| I see someone's forgotten about weapon speed factors, weights
| measured in gold pieces, modifiers based on opponent's armor
| class, nonweapon proficiencies with different numbers of
| slots required, ranged being measured differently based on
| environment, round vs turn distinctions, and any number of
| other things.
| 131012 wrote:
| To me, d&d 5 is like python3: never gonna look back! Just
| better in almost all, but don't expect it to support all your
| niche needs, but you can still try anyway.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> earlier, less complex editions of D &D_
|
| I'm not sure I would characterize 1st Edition AD&D as "less
| complex". In many ways the evolution of the D&D ruleset has
| consisted of _removing_ unnecessary complexity to make the
| game easier to manage. For example: a standardized simple
| formula for computing attack rolls instead of pages and pages
| of "to hit" tables (I remember when bootleg copies of the
| tables in the 1st Edition DMG were passed around in my school
| because the book had just come out and not everyone had it
| yet); standardized experience points to gain each level
| instead of class-specific; a more standardized pattern to
| class progressions instead of a hodgepodge of ad hoc rules;
| standardized mechanics like skills and feats instead of
| class-specific ones.
| cwyers wrote:
| This isn't really accurate.
|
| So, a brief history: Once Upon A Time there was TSR, which
| published two lines of D&D books, based on the original D&D:
| Dungeons and Dragons (which started with the Basic Set and
| added other sets over time) and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons,
| which got two editions. TSR went bankrupt and was bought by
| Wizards Of The Coast, which was flush with cash from the
| success of Magic: The Gathering. They put out a Third Edition
| for D&D, which unified both lines but kept the AD&D numbering,
| hence Third Edition. It was a rather thorough reworking of the
| rules to D&D -- everthing is unified around a central mechanic
| using d20 (20-sided dice, which is why the underlying rules are
| called the "d20 System"), which eliminates a bunch of tables
| and complexity. The game removed restrictions around what races
| could use what classes and got rid of a lot of the vestiges of
| old D&D, where "elf" was a character class in the same way that
| "thief" was. It introduced feats... essentially, D&D 3rd
| Edition was a new game compared to AD&D 2nd Edition. They
| bundled up a bunch of errata into what was awkardly called the
| "3.5th Edition" at some point down the line, and most books
| published for 3rd Edition were really 3.5th Edition books.
|
| At the time, Wizards of the Coast did two things that are
| notable here:
|
| 1) They licensed a third-party company, Paizo, to publish the
| Dungeon and Dragon magazines. Paizo did a brisk business in
| these, driven in part by their popular "adventure paths." 2)
| They released a stripped down version of the core rulebooks,
| removing some "product identity" and some of the rules around
| character creation, as the System Reference Document, which was
| released under the Open Gaming License, basically an open
| source license for RPG materials. The point of the OGL/SRD was
| to allow people to publish third-party supplements for D&D.
| This _mostly_ went very well, but there were some releases that
| WotC was unhappy with, either because they were controversial
| (like the Book of Erotic Fantasy) or because they were not
| supplements for D&D but competing games using the d20 System
| that Wizards had built for D&D.
|
| At the end of 3rd Edition, they announced a Fourth Edition,
| which was roughly as radical a departure from 3rd Edition as
| 3rd Edition was from AD&D 2nd Edition. They also revoked
| Paizo's license to publish material for D&D, and they decided
| that 4th Edition wouldn't be released under the OGL, and they
| released a much less useful "System Reference Document" under a
| much more restrictive license. Paizo's entire business at the
| time was D&D 3.5th Edition supplements, so this left them out
| in the cold. So what they did was release a new game,
| Pathfinder, based on the 3.5th Edition SRD, published under the
| OGL. The changes from 3.5th Edition to Pathfinder First Edition
| were pretty small, which led it to be nicknamed "3.75th
| Edition" by D&D players around the time of its release.
|
| And, despite WoTC owning the rights to all of the trademarks --
| all of the popular settings, NPCs, what have you -- Pathfinder
| outsold D&D 4th Edition. Because it was a lot more comfortable
| with what 3rd Edition players wanted from the game.
|
| D&D 5th Edition basically throws out most of the changes from
| 4th Edition and goes back to a 3rd Edition base. It is
| streamlined from 3rd Edition, but if you have played 3rd
| Edition or Pathfinder and you want to play a 5th Edition game
| someone can teach you enough to start playing in about seven
| minutes.
|
| The tradeoff is that 5th Edition has far fewer options to
| customize characters than 3rd Edition did, but is more
| streamlined and easier to adjudicate at the table. Pathfinder
| has retained much more of the spirit of 3rd Edition in the
| sense of giving a lot of options to customize characters. But
| neither of them is, in a rules sense, closer to AD&D than the
| other.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| on the US West Coast, at the early D&D time, there were a dozen
| other systems in varying states of completion, required
| learning skills and lots of other differences. Without trying
| to enumerate all the pithy distinctions, I preferred the Arduin
| Grimoires.. all hand-typed photocopies as they were.. D&D
| proper was always viewed with some scepticism by most of the
| intellectuals involved, whatever the age.
|
| Thanks Internet Archive once again!
| sillyquiet wrote:
| This was briefly not true during the 4th edition years. A LOT
| of people moved to Pathfinder as a kind of 3.75th edition,
| rather than picking up 4th edition.
|
| It was only when 5th edition came out and it became popularized
| in the mainstream that WotC regained its seeming ascendency.
|
| And I get it, 5th edition is much more streamlined and
| accessible than its predecessors (not that they were Fate-level
| challenging or anything).
|
| Tangentially, I think 4th edition and now 5th edition lost a
| lot of the creative soul of earlier editions - the lore is much
| more heavily integrated with the rule set and feels a lot more
| prescriptive. but that could just be nostalgic bias as I grew
| up with 2ed.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Tangentially, I think 4th edition and now 5th edition lost
| a lot of the creative soul of earlier editions - the lore is
| much more heavily integrated with the rule set and feels a
| lot more prescriptive. but that could just be nostalgic bias
| as I grew up with 2ed.
|
| I think that's true in a superficial way that helps people
| new to it get into it, but I also think the core is more
| streamlined and easily adaptable than the earlier versions
| (particularly the pre-3e versions), and there's quite a
| diversity of different-setting-and-flavor options in the core
| (primarily, in the DMG), and a good diversity of both generic
| tools and specific built settings and reusable setting
| elements, both first- and third-party, so even if the core
| doesn't push as hard for "build it yourself", the support for
| that is as good as earlier editions.
| VonGuard wrote:
| I hear you, I grew up playing 2nd edition, and somehow the
| 5th stuff started off feeling empty for me, though I have to
| admit the rules are so much better and rolling is so much
| easier. Pathfinder is like doing math homework, every roll...
|
| 5th is finally starting to get some better flavor, however,
| now taht 3rd parties, and WotC seem to be filling in the
| gaps. Goodman Games has a line of reissued classic
| adventures, like Castle Amder and Barrier Peaks, and these
| books are fabulous. They're updated for 5e, so they offer
| that old school charm in 5e rules.
|
| Additionally, 5e has so little in the way of specializations
| and customizations for characters, but that's being cleared
| up in the newest official D&D book, Tasha's Caldron of
| Everything. It's got a bunch of specialized subclasses, like
| the Bladesinger, and a lot of more flavorful text and items
| to go with your campaigns.
|
| I feel like 5e started off kinda bland, but has been becoming
| significantly more fleshed out and living over time. And that
| makes sense: it takes time to add to these worlds.
|
| Oh, also, Kobold Press' Tome of Beasts 1 & 2 are also
| fantastic 5e books. Great monsters.
| FeloniousHam wrote:
| I can't put my finger on why I dislike 5e, other just
| having a "corporate polish". Maybe the rules are too
| articulated, over-specified, or maybe it's just too clean
| and modern.
|
| In any case, Dungeon Crawl Classics[1] is like a mainlining
| RPG nostalgia. It's the one product that put me in the back
| of the bus with my 4th grade buddies working their way
| through the Caves of Chaos. The art, rules and just general
| vibe are so Old School metal, you can practically hear
| Zeppelin playing in the background.
|
| Magic is uncertain and rare, and death in DCC is the
| natural result of real danger. Encounters are not gradually
| scaled to fit the current Challenge Rating of the party.
| Can't say enough about how much fun this game is. Great
| community too.
|
| [1] https://goodman-games.com/dungeon-crawl-classics-rpg/
| setr wrote:
| > I can't put my finger on why I dislike 5e, other just
| having a "corporate polish". Maybe the rules are too
| articulated, over-specified, or maybe it's just too clean
| and modern.
|
| IMO 5e isn't engaging in the right ways -- characters,
| and combat, become the primary context everything
| revolves around, and the dungeon itself falls to the
| wayside. Both because it's fairly easy, and encourages
| the DM to _not_ kill you (even subtly, like the absurdly
| time-consuming character generation), so there 's little
| reason to see the dungeon itself as a threat, and a tool.
| Skills get so minutely defined that even if you have a
| novel strategy, your character background strongly
| defines whether you can execute it (to the point that
| it's much easier to fall into standard patterns, and the
| dungeon is so nonthreatening that you can continue to do
| so indefinitely).
|
| There's simply too little freedom and leeway in how you
| approach things, defining so many rules and contexts its
| _not worth the trouble_ to continuously do novel things,
| but at the same time so expansive that it takes ages to
| get anything done. And the rules largely slow down the
| most uninteresting parts of the game -- standard combat,
| basic activities (leaping caverns and such), standard
| communication with NPCs, etc.
|
| I mean its slow. The ruleset is fundamentally and
| ridiculously slow.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > the absurdly time-consuming character generation
|
| Pick a target background, race, and class, and race,
| spend a few seconds rolling or assigning stats, pick a
| handful of options from your race, class, and background,
| and maybe buy a little custom gear (though the default
| for class and background often has you covered).
|
| 5e chargen is usually lightning fast, even with a non-
| first-level start, unless you are creating your character
| by doing something like original optimized level 20
| theorycraft. Which is probably a waste of time, even if
| you are dedicated to min/maxing, because someone's
| probably done the theorycraft you want online and you can
| just look it up.
| eterm wrote:
| I think lethality is extremely DM dependent and it's hard
| to generalise across different games.
|
| The DM my group plays with has no issue killing off PCs,
| we're level 4 and have had 3 deaths across our party of 4
| so far. (Two for the same player!).
| sillyquiet wrote:
| I think part of it is the corporate nature of the owners
| of D&D now, and part of it is that the D&D 1st and 2nd
| editions and to a lesser extent the 3rd edition, were
| designed to appeal to the sensibilities and tastes of the
| Dave Arnesons and Gary Gygaxes of the world, i.e.,
| middle-class western European or North American, mostly
| white and mostly male nerds.
|
| The later editions have much more general audiences from
| much different generations than those early ones, and so
| the game changes - and that's not a _bad_ thing. Buuuut,
| combine that with the impetus of a corporation to make
| their product sanitary and palatable to that wide range
| of tastes, you end up with something bland and
| inoffensive.
|
| edit: none of that is to say that I think 5ed is a bad
| game, it's not, it's just different in kind and in
| philosophy to the earlier editions.
| FeloniousHam wrote:
| Just to be clear, I don't think 5e is a bad product, it's
| just not for me. My friend's kids are all into it, and in
| forty years they'll probably be griping about whatever
| new fangled trash 10e has become.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| My group gave up on 5e because it (subjective) felt like
| the PCs were overpowered early on (especially the healing
| rules). It's a different style of play for people who
| came out of AD&D or who took to the OSR style games.
|
| DCC, which I've been playing and running for a while, is
| _lethal_ in comparison. Which is a mark against it for
| many people, but my group loves it. We don 't have a
| death a week, but we had several deaths over the past
| year. The threat changes the play style versus what we
| saw with 5e where it just felt like PCs couldn't die
| unless the DM went out of their way to create an
| excessive challenge that bordered on a forced TPK
| scenario.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> My group gave up on 5e because it (subjective) felt
| like the PCs were overpowered early on (especially the
| healing rules)._
|
| I felt the same way about 4e: overpowered early on, but
| underpowered (compared to earlier editions) at higher
| levels. It basically felt like playing a party of 30th-
| level characters wasn't all that different from playing a
| party of 1st-level characters.
| FeloniousHam wrote:
| > it (subjective) felt like the PCs were overpowered
| early on
|
| I think that's it: the stakes are too low. You don't have
| to ration your spells, there are few constraints, and
| your investment in your character is so great it's
| customer abuse to write them out of the story. Which is
| not say I don't get attached to my DCC guys.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > your investment in your character is so great it's
| customer abuse to write them out of the story
|
| This is the biggest issue I've run into with some
| individuals/groups, and one thing DCC really helped with
| (for them). Character creation in DCC take about 5
| minutes, if that. 6x3d6, assign to stats in order, roll
| on a few more tables, spend your starting coin, ok let's
| go. It got several people over their hatred/fear of PC
| death even in our non-DCC games. I'm starting up a Call
| of Cthulhu game (which is very rough on PC health, both
| physical and mental) and there's more effort needed to
| create characters and _much_ more invested in each
| character, but now that their fear is gone the game
| should be more enjoyable. Even with the possibility of
| characters disappearing in the night or losing their
| minds and becoming useless.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > My group gave up on 5e because it (subjective) felt
| like the PCs were overpowered early on (especially the
| healing rules).
|
| Well, compared to the "classic" versions (through, oh,
| AD&D/2e), 5e's handling of cantrips and assignment of hit
| dice to classes make the primary casters more active and
| less like eggshells at low levels, and healing outside of
| "healer" character abilities is much more generous by
| default (but there is also, in the books, a simple option
| that makes it grittier reverses all of that except the
| not-eggshells parts, by increasing the time for "short
| rests" and "long rests" which are key for both healing
| and spell recovery.) Also, I feel like lots of tables by
| people who come from older versions underuse exhaustion.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| People do ignore encumbrance/exhaustion a lot, kind of
| annoys me when I have to remind my players: You can't
| carry a battle axe, longsword, longbow, crossbow, two
| fishing nets, and a boulder. I don't care that you have
| 18 strength and it's technically something you can _lift_
| , it makes no sense to be able to _run_ with all of that,
| let alone expecting to keep up with unencumbered
| opponent.
|
| But this is one of the great things of this hobby:
|
| 1. There are thousands of systems to select from.
|
| 2. No one forces you to play it RAW.
|
| 3. If you do want RAW, you can probably find a system
| that works for you.
|
| The most important parts are: what's fun and conveys the
| sense you want for the game; agreeing on the rules
| (either RAW or house) with some consistency (What do you
| mean I can't jump down 10'? You let him jump off a 50'
| cliff without getting hurt just last week!).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Yeah, and I have no problem with people using what they
| want and ignoring what they want at their tables. I just
| think that a lot of the people who complain that 5e
| boosts PC power more than they like are underusing new
| core features and options that counter that effect, and
| in the core exhaustion seems to be a common piece that
| gets overlooked or underused (avoiding encumbrance has
| been common, AFAICT, from the earliest days of D&D, and I
| don't think 5e substantially alters the impact of
| ignoring that.)
| vharuck wrote:
| >My group gave up on 5e because it (subjective) felt like
| the PCs were overpowered early on (especially the healing
| rules).
|
| You might just be too good at the game for usually
| appropriate encounters. My group's having a blast, and
| we've come to rely on all that healing to push our luck:
| jumping into more dangerous encounters, building our
| characters more for story and less for optimization,
| being able to play even when two of the five can't make
| it (usually the healer). If imagine newer players also
| need that healing, even when they're trying their
| hardest.
|
| That's not to say you're wrong for not liking 5e. If it's
| too easy for you, then it's too easy. You could try to
| account for that by using tougher or more monsters, but
| that makes balancing encounters harder for the DM.
| natural20s wrote:
| mathfinder
| smogcutter wrote:
| Personally I like 5e, but I know what you mean.
|
| I think part of it is just us getting older. DnD is one thing
| when you're a bunch of 12 year olds eating cheetos in a
| basement, and it's something else when you're a bunch of
| 30-somethings with families and jobs carving 4 hours out of a
| Sunday afternoon. It helps to have a more well-defined and
| approachable game.
|
| That said, the 5e material does feel much more narrowly
| focused on creating "adventures" rather than creating a
| world. Like the 3e books had rules for buying a castle and
| hiring guards for it. Even if no one really did that, just
| its presence in the book indicated possibilities outside of
| "run this printed campaign set in the forgotten realms".
| sillyquiet wrote:
| Yeah, I feel like the creators have already created the
| world for you and are just giving you a rule set to have
| adventures in that world. Which, like you mention, is fine.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Like the 3e books had rules for buying a castle and
| hiring guards for it. Even if no one really did that, just
| its presence in the book indicated possibilities outside of
| "run this printed campaign set in the forgotten realms".
|
| 3e was the first open core version (and the first version
| designed from the ground up at WotC, rather than pre-WotC
| TSR), and WotC learned a lot about the first/third-part
| split and what worked well in core/supplement split between
| 3e and 5e.
|
| What they had for this in the core in 3e wasn't really
| adequate for people who wanted rules for it (and there was
| a first-party supplement for it). By 5e, this kind of
| subsystem isn't the kind of thing that they really do much
| in first-party supplements, but there is prominent third-
| party support leveraging the open-core nature of 5e (a
| feature it shares with 3e):
|
| https://shop.mcdmproductions.com/products/strongholds-
| follow...
| smogcutter wrote:
| That's a good point about the 1st/3rd part split, I
| hadn't really considered that.
|
| I know that it's not that you can't buy a castle in 5e,
| and a big part of the game is grokking that the rules
| aren't a list of _what_ you can do, but _how_. But
| finding that section of the book as a kid was a real
| imagination kickstarter. Having it in there was just
| _fun_ , even if the actual rule was clumsy and would've
| been better as a fleshed out supplement.
|
| I really am a fan of 5e, and have been having a lot of
| fun running it. I wouldn't go back to 3e (or AD&D for
| that matter, which was a little bit before my time), but
| the kitchen sink approach in 3e had a kind of charm that
| I could see people missing in the new, more coherent
| material.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> the 5e material does feel much more narrowly focused on
| creating "adventures" rather than creating a world._
|
| I have the same feeling; I had it with 4e as well. I can
| see why, given that the target audience is much wider and,
| as you point out, often has much tighter time constraints.
| I can't even begin to estimate how many hours I spent as a
| teenager doing world building for our D&D campaign (which
| started with 1st Edition Advanced D&D), hours I couldn't
| possibly spend today.
| smrq wrote:
| Strange; I grew up with 3rd and I have the impression that
| 5th is much less prescriptive than its predecessor (I'm
| ignoring 4th entirely as an anomaly; I never played more than
| two sessions of it so I don't have any insight about it). 3rd
| had oodles of rules, prestige classes, feats, etc. whereas
| 5th to me has more of a "make stuff up for flavor" intent
| behind it. I think this is a direct result of 5th edition's
| focus on streamlining.
|
| This could be because I was involved with Living Greyhawk in
| 3rd edition, which was by its nature bound pretty strictly to
| RAW; or because I came into 5th edition when it was brand new
| and rules-barren. But I feel like they lifted a lot of
| restrictions in 5th edition. Example: alignment restrictions
| on classes. These days I don't even play with alignments at
| all, but the chaotic good paladin of freedom that I rolled in
| 5th edition would explicitly contradict the 3rd edition
| rules. And spells that used to interact with alignments have
| now been rewritten to target more objective things like
| creature type instead.
| lakkal wrote:
| WotC has been dead to me since 4.0. I stayed on 3.5 and
| switched to Pathfinder for some new games.
|
| I don't particularly want to learn 5.0, but I'm feeling I
| might be forced to if I want to join/start any current
| games...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| As someone who played and liked BECMI, AD&D/1e, AD&D/2e,
| D&D/3e, D&D/3.5e - and thought each had their strong and
| weak points, and wouldn't mind playing any of them again
| though the gratuitous mechanical complexity of AD&D/1e is a
| bit over the top - but rejected 4e, I find that 5e is
| (while incorporating and furthering in some areas the
| mechanical simplifications of 4e) much more in the spirit
| of the pre-4e versions than it is like 4e, and it fairly
| quickly became my clear favorite version.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| One of the awesome things about published content is that
| you are never forced to do anything if you can form your
| own group. And even then, there are lots of people in many
| cities and online willing to play just about any system out
| there.
|
| My friends and I still play AD&D (run by a couple of the
| guys), or OSR systems if run by myself and the other guys.
| I've _played_ 5e and 4e, but never felt like it was forced
| on me, because, you know, I own books for other systems and
| so do my friends. And since I didn 't enjoy 4e, I just
| dropped that game. I haven't played 5e since the playtest
| days, but with OSR systems out there that already covered
| the same terrain, it held no appeal to me or my group.
| lakkal wrote:
| Yeah - and I get the impression that 5.0 isn't anything
| like 4.0, so maybe it wouldn't be as unpleasant as I've
| been fearing. I had been with two very long-lasting
| gaming groups (~35 years each) which both dissolved in
| the last couple of years, so maybe it's time to
| modernize.
| cwyers wrote:
| D&D 5e basically acts like 4th Edition never existed, and
| you will find it very familiar as someone who ahs played
| 3rd Edition.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Mechanically at its core, 5e is has a very close
| similarity to 4e with encounter powers becoming recharge
| on short or long rest and daily powers becoming recharge
| on long rest, and a few similar translations; it's much
| closer to 4e in that regard than to any earlier edition.
| And the catalog of classes, and other options, and their
| design doesn't throw out 4e heritage entirely, either.
|
| But it manages to avoid, IMO, the super-metagamey feel of
| 4e.
| cwyers wrote:
| I get where you're coming from here, but the basic crunch
| of it is delivered on a 3rd Edition base. If you look at
| a 4th Edition Wizard, they have at-will, encounter and
| daily powers, just like any other 4e class. If you look
| at a 5th Edition wizard, they have... spells, broken down
| by spell level, in a way that feels very familiar to 3rd
| Edition players. Some of the spells feel like they
| haven't changed at all from 3rd Edition.
|
| Here's 3.5th Edition magic missile:
| https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/magicMissile.htm
|
| Here's the same spell in 5th Edition:
| http://5e.d20srd.org/srd/spells/magicMissile.htm
|
| Very similar. The 5th Edition version is a bit simpler to
| read/understand, but frankly if you sit there at the
| table and think you're casting the 3rd Edition magic
| missile you will get it right 8 times out of 10.
|
| And then on page 20 of this quickstart rules, you can see
| the 4e magic missile, which is a very different spell
| altogether:
| https://issuu.com/biggerstaffhosting/docs/quickstartrules
| ajross wrote:
| Hah, I love when HN strays into obscure RPG industry flame war.
|
| See, I think this is wrong. People didn't, in fact, stick with
| D&D at the point where Pathfinder launched. Pathfinder was
| (relative to the third party RPG market) a huge success. And 4e
| D&D was objectively a failure in the market (though sure, it
| sold more than Pathfinder).
|
| Where Wizards won was with the 5e rules. And the 5e rules are
| better than Pathfinder in fundamental ways that lead to higher
| sales and more player satisfaction.
|
| And the reason is that 5e is, really for the first time since
| the Holmes Basic Set of 1978, _accessible to the mass market_.
| Kids like D &D again! Prior to covid, I ran a 2-year campaign
| for my 10-12 year old son and a bunch of his friends and they
| _loved_ it. Some of them are hooked hard now. Likewise, couples
| play 5e; random groups in offices. You can watch people play it
| on the internet, and apparently that 's a big thing too. There
| are communities of women and queer folks plugging a game that
| used to be associated mostly with unwashed cloistered incels.
|
| It's a straightforward, easy game that gets out of the way and
| exposes the actual fun part of in-person RPGs to people who
| would never have had the patience to read through the tomes
| full of prestige classes and feats that 3.x/Pathfinder require.
|
| Basically: with 5e WotC finally got back to the promise we all
| saw in the early 80's. Pathfinder is a fine game, but it's
| really just trying to hang on to a player culture from 2004
| that doesn't have a lot of growth in it.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _a game that used to be associated mostly with unwashed
| cloistered incels._
|
| In the same way that "pro-life" does not literally mean
| anyone who is in favor of life generally, I think you're
| misusing that term, which refers to a particular culture that
| did not exist in 1978 or even 2004.
| crooked-v wrote:
| I'd personally attribute far more of that to the cultural
| zeitgeist of (a) name brand power and (b) a variety of
| streamers using 5e for streams of real games, than to any
| inherent property of the actual rules.
| tiahura wrote:
| Awesome, but I wish people would scan black-and-white documents
| in black-and-white, not color.
| arbitrage wrote:
| I'm going to try and not got excited here, in spite of myself.
|
| Archive.org has an honestly fascinating recent history with this
| type of collection. They create a repository of something
| obviously copyright(ed)(able), make a really big release, I enjoy
| it for a week, then it gets cleaned out once the first C&D hits.
|
| If this is still up and complete at the end of the month, I'll be
| surprised.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| I assume that this stuff is being uploaded by random users, not
| Archive.org themselves. The difference compared to any other
| online host that gets DMCA takedown requests is that they're
| allowed to store the content for preservation purposes (being a
| library) and will make it generally available when the rights
| on it expire.
| nevster wrote:
| That was my first thought as well. However the About page shows
| this was created in 2016!
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The Internet Archive is treated as a library by many
| jurisdictions, and that comes with some latitude with regards
| to copyright.
|
| Any legitimate DMCA takedown requests would be honored with the
| content being made unavailable, but still stored on disk, for a
| later date (copyright runs out eventually for all works).
| aksss wrote:
| Yeah I saw the headline and (cuz I'm an adult nerd now?) the
| copyright issue was first thing to come to my mind. I also grew
| up playing AD&D 2nd Ed., loved it, glad others are keeping the
| fun alive. But I'm aware of a few niche hobbyist publications
| that are relatively rare and will be lost to time unless
| someone steps forward to sacrifice their own and digitize them.
| The copyright is not expired but the holders are not easily
| identifiable after bankruptcies, deaths, etc. This might be a
| good avenue, but I'm skeptical that they're as resilient to
| claims if a quilt work of state-level status recognitions are
| the only defense.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| Dungeon magazine (and Dragon Magazine) were nerd nirvana in the
| age of the satanic panic.
|
| Geek stuff was NOT mainstream, it wasn't cool, and it wasn't a
| big component of everyday life.
|
| Lord of the Rings, Star Trek (and Star Wars, but less so), D&D...
| these were practically underground interests, especially in more
| conservative areas of America.
|
| So the first time I went to a Waldenbooks in the shopping mall
| and saw a magazine with a freaking' dragon on the cover, well, it
| blew my mind. I had stacks and stacks of them. Still have many.
| The short stories, the comic strips, the short adventures, even
| the advertisement for miniatures and dice - it was amazing to me
| SO MANY people shared my interest.
| ilamont wrote:
| The short stories were fantastic. And they really were
| underground: mainstream youth culture had no idea and no
| interest and in some cases were even hostile toward the small
| group of believers. Like you I still have a stack of these
| magazines somewhere in my basement. My kids are not into RPG's,
| so I may have to get rid of them or connect with a buyer if
| people really like to collect these things.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| Yep, playing D&D was not something to admit to in a general
| audience.
|
| to this day I have difficulty talking about D&D with people
| in public.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| WoW and D&D 4e pretty much changed public perception, at
| least for people under a certain age (now 40ish), with
| regard to RPGs in general. That was when the frat guys at
| universities started playing D&D. That would be the
| equivalent of the high school jocks slinging dice between
| drills. Paired with the explosion in tabletop board gaming
| in the US (thanks Settlers of Catan) that's happened this
| century, it's become cool/normal to be into these kinds of
| things.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| It think the shift into acceptance of D&D is part of a
| general mainstreaming of geek stuff (the so-called geek
| wave) rather than just tabletop games and the like. Other
| 'geek' interests fell into the same category - Star Trek,
| etc.
|
| Those also have reached 'ok, I can talk about it in wider
| social circles without getting squinted at or handed a
| copy of The Watchtower' levels in the new millennium
| where they were not previously.
|
| This is _definitely_ a better state of affairs and it
| really really please me to see new audiences play D &D or
| discover TNG, but sadly, as such (again, maybe just my
| nostalgic bias) such things have been so marketable-sized
| by the corps taking advantage of the geek wave as to be
| bland and soulless.
| ketzo wrote:
| I guess it's just the natural course for anything popular
| and marketable, really -- although thankfully, Wizards of
| the Coast has continued to publish some really excellent
| (at least in my opinion) D&D content. Plus, if you're
| willing to sift through a lot of so-so stuff, there's a
| lot of really great free or low-cost amateur homebrew
| stuff out there. That kind of thing is definitely a
| result D&D's popularity explosion.
| FeloniousHam wrote:
| The game which dare not speak its name.
| zentiggr wrote:
| Jumanji?
| jtms wrote:
| Walden books! Oh man..thank you for that dose of nerd
| nostalgia!
| doyouevensunbro wrote:
| My parents were caught up in that and assumed that Satan was
| coming for my soul through D&D and Judas Priest. I didn't even
| know who they were at the time, the tracts I had to read told
| me all about them. Now I am an adult that enjoys D&D and Judas
| Priest, so mission accomplished Mom!
| zentiggr wrote:
| I love that some of the mini games have been written up as
| VASSAL modules so we can still play them :)
|
| And I still have my handmade pieces for Lord of the Tabletop in
| a ziploc bag somewhere around here...
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| This is amazing work, I'm very happy that this was uploaded!
| fuball63 wrote:
| Two thoughts: First, these magazines are surprisingly content
| dense. From the few I flipped through there weren't many ads.
| Other beloved vintage magazines, like Skateboarder Magazine, are
| very ad heavy to support their industry.
|
| Second, I feel like a magazine like this, that has good content,
| might actually be popular with a niche audience as a bonus with a
| "premium subscription" of another product. Personally I prefer
| physical medium still, and I'm sure diehard fans of any niche
| would be interested in something to hold and collect.
| doyouevensunbro wrote:
| Agreed, I would have a subscription in a heartbeat.
| vnxli wrote:
| Matt Colville, dungeon master and DnD 5th Edition video maker
| on youtube, is launching exactly the kind of magazine you're
| talking about. The magazines are free to his patreon
| subscribers (of a certain level and above) and will be for sale
| in the MCDM (his DnD content business) store.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oid4QMMXjfs
|
| https://www.geeknative.com/82321/arcadia-matt-colville-annou...
|
| This would be worth checking out - I'm going to buy them to
| support more cool content like this.
| cwyers wrote:
| Kobold Press has a PDF 'zine on their Patreon for 5E content
| as well:
|
| https://www.patreon.com/koboldpress
| sigmaprimus wrote:
| I was a person who bought skateboarding magazines in my youth
| and unlike Playboy's which everyone knows were bought for the
| articles, I bought skate mags for the pictures.
|
| I had my walls covered with cut outs from magazines and a few
| large print posters, infact at the time I was buying these most
| came with a centerfold poster.
| fuball63 wrote:
| I'm too young for the glory days of the mags, but from what I
| understand the ads themselves were even fun to look at,
| because at least they were extremely relevant...
| skateboarders like skate products.
| ygjb wrote:
| The later reincarnation of Dungeon and Dragon magazines that
| coincided with the release of D&D 4th edition were exactly
| this, you could purchase a D&D Insider (iirc) subscription that
| included these two magazines and some online tools for things
| like character creation.
|
| Sadly those both ended with 4th edition, but just yesterday
| Arcadia magazine was launched through Patreon -
| https://www.patreon.com/mcdm (I'm not involved, just a fan!)
| lakkal wrote:
| There was some advertising, especially toward the back of the
| magazine, but since Dragon was published by TSR, they probably
| weren't relying on the ads for financial support.
| fuball63 wrote:
| I mentioned this in another comment, but another difference
| is the ads are super relevant because the target audience is
| so niche. Like, people that are interested in RPGS that buy
| the mag are going to be interested in product specifically
| related to that interest. Ads become interesting when there's
| actually value behind them.
| lakkal wrote:
| I agree - I _hate_ advertising in general, but that in
| niche magazines (as long as it isn 't too obtrusive)
| servers a very useful purpose and I'm ok with it.
| jdkee wrote:
| I was a big fan of Gygax magazine that came out a few years
| back. Unfortunately it was shut down due to a trademark
| dispute.
|
| http://gygaxmagazine.com/who-we-are/
| msie wrote:
| The covers are so amazing. I can imagine a story with each one.
| I'd love to see an anthology series on Netflix based on the
| covers alone.
| njharman wrote:
| Dragon magazine covers
| https://friendorfoe.com/g/Dragon%20Covers/
|
| disclosure, that is my website.
| ndiscussion wrote:
| thanks for sharing, these are awesome, and glad to see people
| running websites like this
| lameiam wrote:
| this is so cool; i see that there's a way to dl individual
| issues, but I was wondering if there was a way to bulk dl them?
| thanks in advance.
| lameiam wrote:
| answering my question
|
| this works:
|
| wget
| https://archive.org/download/Dungeon_Magazine_006/Dungeon_Ma...
|
| I just wrote a quick scrip to increment the issues
|
| mobi = "wget https://archive.org/download/Dungeon_Magazine_{cou
| nt}/Dungeo..." pdf = "wget https://archive.org/download/Dungeon
| _Magazine_{count}/Dungeo..."
|
| with open("grab_dragon.sh", "w") as file1: for index in
| range(200): str_index = str(index)
| if len(str_index) != 3: str_index =
| str_index.zfill(3) pdf_format =
| pdf.format(count=str_index) mobi_format =
| mobi.format(count=str_index)
| file1.write(pdf_format + "\n")
| file1.write(mobi_format + "\n")
| einpoklum wrote:
| The script's redering by HN is off. Maybe you should change
| the indentation somehow?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Throw in two spaces before each code line and that will be
| formatted much better: with
| open("grab_dragon.sh", "w") as file1: for index in
| range(200): ...
| dspearson wrote:
| Or similarly: for i in `seq -w 001 221`; do wget https://arch
| ive.org/download/Dungeon_Magazine_$i/Dungeon_Mag... done;
| wget https://archive.org/download/Dungeon_Magazine_Annual_201
| 0/Du...
| msla wrote:
| I posted an example using the Internet Archive's official
| Python library and command line program:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25780123
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| What you might be looking for in this thread. Just also download
| the 2010 annual manually to get everything.
| https://ia800204.us.archive.org/29/items/Dungeon_Magazine_An...
| #!/bin/bash i=1 until [ $i -gt 221 ] do
| printf -v j "%03d" $i wget "https://archive.org/download/
| Dungeon_Magazine_$j/Dungeon_Magazine_$j.pdf" ((i=i+1))
| done
| msla wrote:
| There's a Python library:
|
| https://archive.org/services/docs/api/internetarchive/
|
| And script:
|
| https://archive.org/services/docs/api/internetarchive/cli.ht...
|
| Which really helps you automate stuff.
|
| https://pypi.org/project/internetarchive/
|
| It turns your script into: for i in $(seq 1
| 221) do ia download
| Dungeon_Magazine_$(printf "%03d" $i) --glob='*.pdf'
| done
|
| Try 'ia help download' for more information.
| lameiam wrote:
| FWIW, I just donated $5 monthly to archive.org because of
| this....whoever did it, thank you!
| [deleted]
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| Reading the first letter from the Editor led me to strain my
| memory for my introduction to AD&D. Would have been in 1980. I
| was playing Centipede at the student lounge at the local
| community college and when I lost, an unexpected voice behind me
| said, "You failed your saving throw".
| Red_Tarsius wrote:
| [deleted]
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > Edit: Not sure why users downvoted my cheeky comment since
| that's the main drill costantly repeated by the big players in
| the industry like Paizo and WotC.
|
| Probably because it's:
|
| 1. A tired complaint/comment/"joke"
|
| 2. Adds nothing to the discussion
|
| 3. Seems like an attempt at flamebait
|
| 4. Seems like it was made in anticipation of being downvoted so
| you could complain about being downvoted
|
| Also, see the guidelines [0]:
|
| > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never
| does any good, and it makes boring reading.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| novok wrote:
| It's really interesting how you see a tone shift around issue #70
| in 1998 where they add text and a lot more scantily clad women
| (and some very buff shirtless demihumans) on the covers. Before
| that the covers mostly stood on their own as art pieces without
| any extra text and scantily clad women weren't really there.
| Kototama wrote:
| How much work is it to port an AD&D adventure to DnD 4th or 5th
| edition?
| kop316 wrote:
| As just a straight 1:1 translation to 5e, it isn't really hard.
| The monsters are roughly the same, so it isn't hard to run an
| AD&D adventure on 5e. I would argue a "novice" DM could read
| through an AD&D adventure and do the translation on the fly.
| (EDIT: When I wrote this I meant look at the monster in the
| adventure, and find the analogous one in the 5e monster manual,
| and use that. Don't use the original stats!)
|
| HOWEVER, I would offer that from the TSR AD&D adventures I have
| run, AD&D is a) much more "hack and slash"/murder hobo like,
| and b) much more deadly/much more "random", as compared to a
| WotC 5e campaign. Not to say that is bad, but I find that if
| you want to do it, you will want to tell your players this so
| they have the right expectations going into an AD&D style
| campaign.
|
| I personally (as a DM) prefer having (some amount of) plot line
| in my adventures, so I find myself filling in a lot of gaps
| myself if there needs to be a plot line (which I personally
| enjoy). I also prefer not to kill my players characters
| (granted, I also level set that doing things you expect to get
| you killed will in fact get you killed), so I tend to tune back
| a lot more of the "deadly" traps (i.e. in some of the really
| deadly dungeons, just a bad roll of dice on a failed trap will
| kill you. I am not a fan of that, so I tune it back that it
| will eventually kill you, but you have a chance of reacting and
| your teammates can save you).
|
| But I will also offer, I have had players who want to run it
| "old school", so I don't do any of that and run it as a 1:1
| translation, and we have had a lot of fun with it too!
| retro64 wrote:
| _As just a straight 1:1 translation to 5e, it isn 't really
| hard. The monsters are roughly the same, so it isn't hard to
| run an AD&D adventure on 5e. I would argue a "novice" DM
| could read through an AD&D adventure and do the translation
| on the fly._
|
| I would agree you should be able to run the module as-is and
| insert a monster of the same type from the 5e monster manual,
| but certainly not use the 1e stats straight up.
|
| 1e monsters wouldn't stand a chance against a 5e party
| otherwise.
| kop316 wrote:
| Sorry, that was what was in my mind when I wrote that, you
| are correct on that! You want to use the 5e monster manual,
| not the original stats.
| ygjb wrote:
| That's certainly one perspective, but OTOH if you play 1e
| or 2e monsters straight, there are alot of instant death
| effects that are much higher risk and far more debilitating
| impacts :) If the players are comfortable with it, it can
| bring back some of the old-school feel of D&D where death
| is behind every door...
| kop316 wrote:
| > If the players are comfortable with it,
|
| I think that is the bigyest thing DMing. I don't mind
| playing some of the very deadly dungeons, but you do
| really have to work with the players to set expectations
| on it. Same with how you DM, play style, etc.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| "A slime mold was above the door you entered, roll a d20
| and add your dex mod."
|
| "I got a 19"
|
| "OK, well, it's on you. Roll a d6"
|
| "I got a 5"
|
| "Well, you're going to die quickly then."
|
| "What did I need to live?"
|
| "To look up."
| pdonis wrote:
| _> in some of the really deadly dungeons, just a bad roll of
| dice on a failed trap will kill you_
|
| The all-time classic of this genre was the Tomb of Horrors.
| As a player, you basically have to be ultra paranoid about
| _every single action_ you take. And even playing in that
| mode, you 're likely to lose a significant portion of the
| party. And yes, you definitely want _all_ of the players to
| buy in to that style of play up front before trying to run an
| adventure like that.
| tjakab wrote:
| I never tried AD&D to 4th edition, but to 5th edition you can
| pretty much just do it on the fly. 5e characters are more
| powerful than their 1e/2e counterparts, so you'll want to
| increase HD and damage for monsters or just swap in the
| equivalent from the 5e Monster Manual. You also won't get
| direct indicators for skill checks or DCs, but those are
| usually simple enough to figure out.
| Hortinstein wrote:
| man, i would love this if they had it for Magic the Gathering
| Duelist Magazine. I would pay money for a PDF copy of all of
| those
| james-skemp wrote:
| That and the old InQuest Magazine. I've still got a couple
| physical copies, but I really wish I hadn't recycled all the
| old issues I used to have.
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