I feel like there's a lot of weird anachronisms in D&D from a design standpoint...

I feel like there's a lot of weird anachronisms in D&D from a design standpoint. And how the game has progressed and changed has left a lot of people confused and bitter over what's different and why some things are the way they are. But I think I can sum up the MAJOR factor that goes into "old school" D&D and the primary rule/playstyle that defines it and explains a lot of the arguments that occur in D&D because of it.

Simply put: in old school D&D you were not meant to roll. What I mean by that isn't that rolling was IMPOSSIBLE (because it wasn't obviously) but that rolling was meant to be something entirely optional for your character. You didn't have skills or abilities for things like "diplomacy" or "spot" or "disabling traps" (well theifs did but it was like 25% chance at best and it was more of a last resort kind of thing). You were mostly expected to just freeform for the majoirty of the game and get through dungeons and obstacles via thorough roleplaying.

If you assumed a room had a secret door/passageway you needed to ask the DM questions and inspect everything. If you needed to convince the guard you weren't a bunch of theives and criminals you had to actually present an argument. Combat was incredibly light and had nothing like "maneuvers" or "actions" because combat was something you got into when you fucked up and accidentally stumbled into a goblin ambush or had no other option but to just barge in and kill everything.

Rolling wasn't only a completely optional thing in old school D&D it was also usually not the best option. Because the d20 has flat probability curves and most proficiencies or quirks offered you a +1 or +2 bonus at most (a +4 bonus to an action would be considered phenominal) they mostly existed to give you a very slight edge when you were doing something risky and dangerous. In a game where you only roll 2-4 times a session (ideally) then a +2 can feel like a godsend.

This is also where Stormwind Fallacy most likely reared its head because in a game that emphasizes freeforming and making narrative decisions to overcome in-game obstacles, rolling skills or dice was meant to be a risky but straightforward affair. If you failed, you failed hard, but if you succeeded, you'd just succeed without much description. Considering how TSR began releasing more and more broken content as they attempted to stay alive via shotgunning books out again and again it's easy to see how a generation of players could see these increasingly bonkers rules that give them 50-70% success on a skill and, rather than stopping to describe their search for the secret passageway as DM's were accustomed to: they'd just roll dice and be done with it. Hence: "Roll Player". Now whether or not the act of spending 5 minutes discussing whether or not this room has a secret passageway is fun and interesting for all players is a different tale but lets not get into that now.

Instead lets get into how D&D has changed. Because 3.X changed D&D in some major ways and probably the most major way was: rolling. Again in older D&D's rolling was a risky affair and only one class had 'skills' and they were mostly for dungeoneering. But now 3.X is here and... suddenly there's a lot more rolling now. You roll diplomacy to convince people of your argument. You roll bluff to fool people. You roll spot to notice traps. You roll search to find hidden passageways. The only classes in the game that DON'T rely on rolling is spellcasters and... it shows. And it's particularly aggrivating in 3.X because before where you may have only been rolling 2 or 3 times a session, the flat probability curve and low bonuses felt like you were really pressing your luck. But in 3.X with the game expecting you to be rolling much more consistently the flat probability curve and low bonuses just feel... annoying. Like you're not being the hero you designed yourself to be.

But again in older editions: everyone had roughly equivolent "skills". Or at least, abilities they could use to interact with people and things. Since it all relied on freeforming until someone messed up or did something really risky it somewhat helped in making fighters and rogues feeling like they had more to contribute.

Then we get to 4th edition and now rolling is more prioritized than ever! With it practically being a combat-focused minature skirmish game. Although at the very least it can be argued it did that well. And (again arguably) the emphasis on combat and lack of overt utility features and spotty skill-challenge system seemed to open up for more old school style "freeform until something happens then just roll" style of play.

And I haven't played 5e so I can't comment on that. But what I can comment on is simply this: if you want to play an Old School D&D game? Like a REALLY OLD SCHOOL D&D GAME? Simple: just don't roll! Kill that little niggling part of your brain that wants to see how this event progresses. Just... freeform really! And if a player does something that is undenyably risky? Then roll, and emphasize the chancey nature of it all. Restraint in the mechanics and when you implement them is the most important factor that goes into old school D&D.

And if you find yourself or your players getting bored or annoyed at this style of play? Well hey, it's not for everyone. And it shouldn't BE for everyone.

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Well said stranger.

You just made up my mind about my own homebrew skill system to BFRPG, im going to keep it but only use it when we absolute need it. I have been conflicted about adding a skill system because i don't want to take away the old school element/feeling from the game.

I was on the wikipedia page for various dice shapes and found a bit that mentioned that d4s are best flipped into the air like a coin rather than rolled.

I then felt very stupid.

>someone's personal thoughts, described as such, require citation

What's it like being one of those dumb millennials I keep hearing about

It's literally called OSR, there's a general for it on this board almost every day.

That summarizes it too well. I think the real problem with 4e is that it reduced the game to just a beat em up. Thinking creatively, especially with things like the 10 foot pole, is always what seperated RPGs from just a strategy game.

Read the 4th edition DMG, ya spack cunt. 4e was fine; people were just asshurt it wasn't 3.75e.

It's more that combat because a focus of the game rather than something you want to avoid, rather than anything, in lieu of what OP said. For the average person you are correct.

So... there are people who roll for everything and don't roleplay? I thought it was just natural to roleplay what you could, and roll what you couldn't.

I don't even remember the last time my party's face rolled his face skills; he's good enough talker to smooth talk his way past most NPCs.

Having consistent rules for combat only means it's a "focus" if you can't figure out how to make a non-combat encounter.

Sure, but if you don't care about combat or what it de-emphasized, you should just use any OSR system for the much simpler and quicker combat rules.

4e DID very much focus on combat.

And that's not a bad thing.

Fact I'd argue 4e and 1e are both the best editions for simply knowing what to focus on and staying with it.

1e focused heavily on dungeon crawling and exploration by (again) making rolling a chancey affair that you only did as a last resort.

4e focused heavily on combat by making each class have a unique role in the fight and having the game focus on strategy and maneuvering.

From a pure design perspective of "This is what our intent is and we're going to do it" I think that probably makes those two editions the strongest conceptually.

And just so I'm clear here: I have nothing against modern roleplaying or how it's done at all.

A lot of modern games have built upon the idea of "roll often roll a lot roll roll roll and use the results to see how things progress" and I think those games are certainly well designed in their own way. My point isn't necessarily to discuss the superiority of one "way" of roleplaying over another, simply that knowing what really emphasizes this and putting them into plain-jane speaking words any idiot can understand is necessary to prevent nerd tribalism.

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You've never actually played any of these old school games have you? Actually, I'm quite certain you've never even casually perused a player's handbook written before 3e if you think dice weren't meant to be rolled. Thieves got shitty chances to discover traps because traps don't really get harder to find as the game goes on (baring the very rare trap that applies some sort of modifier to its detection or disarming roll, I cannot overstate how rare these are) and so the primary method of progression is to make them get better at that thing. They START with very low chances to find things but by mid levels they find a fair amount and as they approach the highest levels of the game nothing can escape their eye.

Yes, the game requires a lot of "mother may I" adjudication by the DM and prodding things with ten foot poles but this isn't diceless by design. D&D wasn't designed as a roleplaying experience and for many decades it wasn't widely PLAYED as one in the modern sense. It's a war game that's adapted for skirmish level combat with a magic system tacked on the side and in later iterations (here I am referring to stuff like AD&D and 2e) proficiencies (read: skills), by popular demand.

It's not that you weren't expected to be rolling save or dies all the time. It's that people were okay with losing a character when they failed. I'm not saying modern players are babies or something, we now tend to invest a lot more time and characterization into those characters so it's natural that we feel worse when they are killed, but assuming the same level of player/character investment leads you to some inaccurate conclusions.

Well friend I tried not to infer it was superior or anything to any other style of roleplay. Most baitish thing you got me on is my dislike of 3.x which ok GUILTY AS CHARGED but I tried to avoid commenting on the objective qualities of much else.

What's the problem exactly?

I realize I doesn't back itself up so here's some extra proof in case you are skeptical:

When you say that editions before 3e didn't have a way to roll for stuff that's completely incorrect. If you look at the descriptions of all the basic attributes (strength, dexterity, charisma, etc), they contain all manner of mechanical bits that you might readily recognize as skills. Strength has percentages for opening doors and feats of strength (which are just lumped under the oddly named "Bend Bars/Lift Gates") and charisma contains the reaction adjustment which pairs with a table in the DMG to provide a primitive approximation of diplomacy.

For all miscellaneous interactions the game prescribes making ability score checks (so instead of a knowledge skill roll you would simply roll against your Intelligence, which, entirely coincidentally, falls nicely within a range on a d20 where success is never impossible or assured, at least for player characters).

That's the thing that really must be stressed here. These early games are primitive. I want to be clear that that doesn't make them bad (in full disclosure AD&D 2e is my favorite edition), but a lot of the ways the game is are not that way because Gary Gygax is all knowing. They are just that way because game designers of the time didn't know a better way to do it.

>it's another "flat probability curve is bad" thread

Veeky Forums is so fucking awful these days.

>scrawny player can play a musclebound fighter
>fat neckbeard can play a sneaky rogue
>socially awkward player isn't allowed to play someone charming
>only super smart players are allowed to play wizards

Yeah, I don't play your game, user. If you can call what you do a "game."

The problem with 4e was that it retained 3e's shitty skill system even as it finally fixed and balanced combat. And the bulk of roleplay is found in the situations where the skill system most heavily comes into play.

Hence why the D20 derived systems as a whole tend to markedly de-emphasise and indeed tend to actively condition new players away from focusing on roleplay as the main element

It's why most so called "narrative" systems can be accurately described in D&D terms as a skill system first, which can then be used to have highly descriptive fights using a set of side rules.

I played 1e and 2e, and I get your point, but you must be excluding combat from that. Sure, we would handle locked and possibly trapped chests without a thief by saying, "I pry the hinges off the back" or whatever. But the DM never let us roleplay our way through a fight.