Here's some homework for anyone looking for more. Warning! Read at your own risk! A Farewell to Hexes by Greg Costikyan www.costik.com/spisins.html Death to the Minotaur by John Tynes www.salon.com/2001/03/23/wizards/
Great stuff! I do have a question though: In A Farewell to Hexes, Games Workshop and their runaway success isn't mentioned at all. Am I being thick? Is Warhammer not considered a wargame? Or is it just not as relevant as I think it is?
The sex-for-all goblin-first era of WotC as described in the Salon article sounds horrible. I’d hate to work there. I just want thicker lines between my work and my relationships. Those parts of life move at different speeds.
I want to thank all the folks who, within 90 seconds of a 60min long video, were racing to the comments to shit on different editions, extoll their favorite edition as the only one that matters, and otherwise be humorless weirdos. :D I was worried the Edition War talk was going to seem esoteric and not relevant to modern players, but I didn't need to worry. I know my hobby. :D
I play 3.5 and after 60 seconds I was thinking that maybe buying the new 5e humble bundle would be useful after all. I'm too inexperienced to draw comparisons. Gold Star.
That's what bugged me about the D&D movie. D&D isn't an IP, you can get rid of owlbears and mimics, even orcs and elves, and still be more D&D than the D&D movie. This video put it so well
@@juliamedina3322 I havent seen it, I've heard it's great, my point is that D&D isn't a specific setting or set of narrative tropes, it's an activity that you do with your friends.
@@joshuawinestock9998 Yeah, but if you call the movie anything to do with "The Forgotten Realms" then nobody knows what you're talking about and nobody will go and see it.
There are some Serious Important Things in this video but mostly I just love talking about the history of this hobby I love and I hope folks can see that. This video is mostly fun, it's not that serious. :D People should not interpret this as me being down on the hobby, in fact the opposite!
I found it fascinating and I really liked that bit about consumers winking out of existence for 9 months when they discover WoW. I've often resented the stranglehold DnD has on trpgs in the public consciousness, but I shouldn't, and one thing I think 5.5e might do, in addition to the OGL debacle, is introduce this newest generation of players to the idea that there are other games. I've said before that there are essentially two completely unrelated hobbies, DnD 5e players, and trpg players. You'll get some trpg players that play 5e, but the majority of 5e players have never played anything else in their life. And I think that might start to change. Really looking forward to your game. Talent is basically custom made for me. I'll miss the d20 because its my favourite dice to roll, but if the rest of the game is anything like the Talent, I'll have an absolute blast. I'd love to work on something for it some day. I imagine you're not hiring at the moment, but maybe I can try and make a third party class or something. But hey, if you ever need an artist or a complete novice designer, I'm here.
You also have to understand how “being a gamer” was, and probably still is, a huge part of our self identity. Often bullied, and ridiculed by society for decades, it was like a secret club us nerds could use to relate to each other, and seperate ourselves from the normies. Us gen exers who experienced this, plus lived through the satanic panic would make an interesting study for you anthropolists.
@@ericaltmann5711 leading to the parodied and subverted so many times that I can no longer tell where anyone falls on it meme "gamers: the most oppressed minority". Though that was mostly for videogames.
@@thegreatandterrible4508 yeah, but what he's talking about was a real thing in the 80's and 90's. Not so much in the decades after that. That poster NEVER said that people who played D&D were the most oppressed minority, that's a strawman. The meme refers to young people these days, who usually play video games, not D&D, and are far less bullied for these things than people were in the past decades.
@@robinmohamedally7587 I wasn't disagreeing with him, I was saying that the ostracization created a very insular community which is also what bred some unhealthy attitudes in a small minority of that minority. Ttrpgs have it far better off than videogames, as they've always had some aspect of letting in other marginalized groups. I mean, over 60% of the people I know who play D&D are LGBT+
Because of your videos, I started a D&D club at my middle school last year. It has grown to the point where I need a bigger room. Thank you for motivating me.
This is spot on about the anger toward WoW - in hindsight I realize how utterly true this was. I saw longtime groups stop playing D&D in favor of WoW. Was a very strange era in the hobby. Also, totally geeked to see you mention Shadowdark! 🤘
Mind you, this same thing happened during 2e, when this funny little card game called "Magic: The Gathering" came out, and people jumped to start playing it so fast the dice didn't have time to hit the floor.
In my group it was the DM who became hooked on WoW. He would heroically run D&D games all sleep deprived from playing WoW right through the night before.
We had a guy in our group, the oldest and had been playing since the 70s. He HATED video games, not just WoW. He also hated MTG and D&D was basically his only beloved game. He was such a great DM and made fun worlds and adventures. I am just glad our group didn't have the tabletop fallout from WoW and similar games over the years. I play video games regularly but am glad I rode out the campaigns. He passed away 2 years ago and I miss his games and the times we had. I am ever grateful to have spent those games with him while I could and hope everyone realizes they can have time for both if you manage your time. Keep making memories with your friends playing things you love.
That last part about money...The whole reason I got into D&D in the 80s was because I was a teen that didn't have a lot of money and it was cheap when compared to movies all it took was a little money for dice and a couple of books up front and gas money to get to your friends house to play and you could play all day Saturday and Sunday before going back to school. As much as a VTT is probably inevitable, I like the Idea of getting together with people face to face drinking a few beers and socializing with flesh and blood people....it's one of the things that drew me to the game when I was an awkward outsider kid and it still appeals to me as an awkward outsider adult.
I also enjoy sitting around a table with a group. But most of my games these days are in a virtual tabletop with people I know. But not with loot crates. Loot crates are why I'm looking for the Pathfinder of 5e. An exit ramp from the official path. Not because of rules but because the business model is not something I'm trusting my time and money investment in.
VTT isn't inevitable; you can continue to play just like you do today 🙂 We have played for decades and intend on continuing meeting up, no matter if we have to keep playing 5e (or an earlier version for that matter).
I'm only 10 minutes into this hour-long D&D video so there's a decent chance this will be surpassed in another twenty or so minutes but "the cynics are usually right, but not in useful ways" is possibly the most wise statement about humankind I've ever heard and I may need to go take a break to think about it.
@@spaincrack4934 OMG THIS! Such poignant commentary! The writers really just absolutely knocked it out of the park and the acting is just superb! My favorite scene of my favorite movie of all time! Gosh I just can't stop exaggerating with all this gushing I'm doing over whatever the current content is we're watching! I'm gonna have to sit back and really ponder the deeper meaning... What was the topic about again?
@@lordmew5 It means, thats just because you can tell that something IS wrong, that doesn't mean you know what the cause of it really is. Even moreso for someone coming from a cynical perspective. They can tell somethings wrong, but they are looking for a specific type of anwser and are often blinded to the full reality of a situation because of that.
Only some of them. I've fought in my share of edition wars (cue Luke Skywalker "you fought in the clone wars?" gif), and I don't think I've ever been on the side arguing against change. Of course, I've been a game designer for nearly a decade now, so maybe that's why I'm like that.
@@N0-1_H3r3 So what you're saying is you fight against changing into stagnancy. We just need to take an obi-wan and pull a certain point of view. Though, honestly, I agree with you. If I don't like whatever is coming next, oh well, I still have all my 5e books and a ton of other games I want to play. Not to mention both the MCDM RPG and Daggerheart both look like interesting twists on the old formula and should be coming out around the time WotC is making the big push for the new core books beyond initial release.
@Deliriumend I like to see things improve and grow, though I don't always think that means throwing out the old. Sometimes, remixing and reevaluating older ideas, looking at them from new perspectives, can be just as valuable as coming up with new ideas, but I never want to be doing something just because it's traditional or expected or the way it's always been. But, the RPG industry and community alike have vocal corners that lean towards doing things because that's how they've always been, or because they're familiar. A lot of RPGs do things because D&D has always done them, rather than questioning if a given idea has merit for that game. In my more bitter and cynical moods, I've called this Cargo Cult game design.
I am proud of my gold star ⭐️ and grateful for this history lesson. I came into D&D only since the pandemic. I watched a little CR and while it was a piece of media I loved, it was overwhelming to imagine trying. The voices, the role playing, the long campaigns seemed insurmountable. Then I was introduced to Dimension 20, and especially Aabriya Iyengar. I understood how D&D could be applied to many settings (regency era, watership down, cyberspace, the brain as a city, etc.) and how I could make it my own. Her “rule of cool” gave me permission not to know or understand all the rules. I started DMing for three best friends and various guest friends running A Christmas Carol one shot we kickstartered, and now my own Agatha-Christie-inspired stuff. We can only meet once a month usually. We use Lego dudes as miniatures. We knit and snack and laugh at the table. I have no idea how many 5e rules I have forgotten let alone not even learned yet. In the end, a video like this is both a reminder and affirmation that the point is to have fun at the table with your friends, and not to moralize rules and editions as eternal expectations. 56:54
Wow, as an electronic musician, when you started the tangent about east vs west coast synthesis, I felt like laughing because I already knew exactly what you were about to say! It's amazing how knowledge that niche can randomly come up, huh?
I think video games cannot be underestimated in how people are introduced to D&D. Baldur's Gate 3 is a stellar example. I was introduced to D&D by Neverwinter Nights back in the day.
@@thomascheckie2394 It was BG1 for me. At the time I had no idea what a TTRPG even was. At some point I learned the Baldur's Gate was the video game adaptation of this weird talky board game thing. It wasn't until covid lockdowns that I ever even played my first (virtual) tabletop D&D game. I've spoken to a bunch of people who have played BG3 and loved it, but have never played tabletop. Most of them already know what D&D is, and that it's a TT thing, but they never would have thought about joining a group. Playing BG3 is giving them enough of a taste that some of them are now thinking about it.
My partner and I were jonesing for a co-op RPG, and while waiting for BG3 we played through several campaigns in Solasta: Crown of the Magister. Was her first introduction to D&D specifically, and we both had a good time.
Yeah, it really is tragic that we never got a 4e-based video game. Don't get me wrong, I hated 4e at the table as much as everybody else, but it would have made an AMAZING video game. It may have been a poor tool for creating imaginary worlds and characters, but it was a great, well-balanced game.
I just finished their first ever campaign. To be clear, this was a WEEKLY game where I was a first Time DM when I put it together, it was a homebrew world coz I knew NONE of the forgotten realms lore and was played from lvl 1-20. We started 7 YEARS AGO and it had always been on VTT because it was a mixture of rural, interstate and international players (Australia, New Zealand, Finland and USA). Basically, we made a pact that we would end the game in person and see it through to the end together. We spent two weeks together here in my hometown in Sydney Australia and completed the last sessions over three days and to say that having everyone who had become family to me in the same room finishing that journey together was one of the most memorable and fulfilling moments of my life would be an extremely large understatement to the value it had to me. The only reason this game could have succeeded was because of people like Matt Colville, Penny Arcade, Critical Role and Tabletop Champions who basically were all my mentors in how to truly understand the magic that could come from this game. I love VTTs because it makes it so easy to make snap decisions and just make things happen in a way you can't do in person unless everyone is in a homebase somewhere so you can just whip out what you need; but I truly hope that IRL gaming never truly becomes obsolete as this hobby grows. The energy and atmosphere is irreplaceable. Sure, we could have completed the game online and it would have been epic and fun and everything, but it wouldn't have had that same "moment in Time" feel to it, that having the custom minis and battlemaps and props and everything. I'm all for VTT expansion and integration, i just hope they never truly take away that in person experience from the next generation of TTRPG players. Then again, I'm sure people will always find a way to make it work....TV battlemap DMs already exists with roll20 app integration, who knows? EDIT: As soon as we finished our epilogues, the gang was like "so, wanna start rolling for new characters now?" 😂😂😂 The next campaign starts in the new year😊
I'm so glad you got this experience. Nothing like it in the world. I love VTT but it is nice to once and a while at least roll some real bones in a room with the gang.
I got a gold star! I like these "History of D&D" videos, they're fun! Besides, it's been a while since we got a properly LONG video from Uncle Matt. I look forward to trying MCDM's Endeavor when it comes out next year.
33:22 "You can't have some people playing one addition" I actually used that for a character in my campaign for one of my players. She played an "ancient hero" type of character, and to make her really feel ancient, she wanted to play with Ad&d rules. It really made her feel like the old knowledge she had was incompatible with the modern 4th characters, and it actually went really well... with a lot of faith and wiggling the rules.. Edit: It was extremely fun... but you are right. I wouldn't recommend trying it unless you have too much time on your hands.
@@martinMARTIN244 I don't remember the exact details, but the other 3 at the table ran with the 4th rules and powers, but she ran with Ad&d rules and spells. It wasn't like a groundbreaking way of playing, more so just different terms for her (that sounded alien to the other 3) made her feel completely different. We explained that she didn't know these "modern" powers, but still had some old "ancient" spells from her time.
@Flintkarson Omfg I'm so doing this now. My GF and I are in the middle of buying a bunch of DnD books so her and I can play DnD for the first time together. I'm gonna the the DM for her [I love reading and writing anyway]. We're gonna be playing in our own version of FR and I'll be RPing a very old [think Erendel from LotR] and passive companion so she ain't alone. I actually have both Dave Arneson's Blackmoor setting and players handbooks, and I already had the idea that her companion is from Blackmoor.. he's so gonna play by the rules [loosely] of the Blackmoor setting now lol
There's an anecdotal story about Dave Arneson (co-author of the original D&D) running a convention game in the 2000's. He hands out a bunch of pre-generated characters and as the players are settling in, they notice the character sheets are from every single edition of the game up until that point. One of them asked "So what edition are we playing today?" and he just laughed and said "Hey. I'm Dave Arneson."
i thought this was gonna be a video about the philosophy and rationale behind releasing different editions of a game, which it is, but I did not also expect a full detailed retrospective on the entire history of dungeons and dragons lol
"You don't know me, but I know you," sounds like a line you'd hear in an action-adventure movie. It's usually followed up with, "If you want to live, come with me."
Obscure reference incoming. It brought me straight to the intro of the video for "Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground)" by Mike + The Mechanics. "You don't know me, but I knew your father. He wanted me to give you this."
@@DirkMcThermot That is an obscure reference. But then again, it's not the Mike + The Mechanics song I recall. ;) I'll have to go and listen to it again.
It's strange. Ever since you said that MCDM was releasing a new game, I've felt kinda "Well, okay, but I don't know if I'll end up getting it". But now, somehow, after listening to you extoll the mores and folkways of old editions for the better part of an hour, after hearing about the tradition of some picking up a new edition and some leaving it behind, I think I'm 100% on board for the new game. You're a good salesman, Matt. Keep it up.
I used to love how, when there was an edition change, the novel writers would come up with some cool story lines to bring the mechanics out, I.E the Avatar Trilogy, etc so cool
Can only speak for myself, but I think lots of us are actually relatively new to D&D, and our formative TTRPG experience is being "on-boarded" by Uncle Matt. I've only ever known 5th edition. So silly things like edition wars is actually very alien to me. This video was super useful in putting things in perspective.
I was a middle schooler in the 3.5-4 edition wars. I remember spending all my money on the core books for 4e and then getting mocked by the people I was going to play with. Cause they all meant 3.5…. So I found some players and we played 1-30 and slayed orcus and thwarted his plans to overthrow the raven queen. Good times.
I watched the acid trap in the Briarwood Castle in S1 of Critical Role with no context and I ran a mock combat a week later with my friends as level 1 characters in an open field against Mephits. I still remember feeling absolutely sure by the end of that combat that this was going to be my favorite hobby and I've been DMing ever since!
I also want to thank MCDM for my passion for this hobby, I watched the first Running the Game video while searching "How to run DnD" and within a month I was running a level 1-3 adventure with my friends on a weekly basis.
I’ve been around for a while, but the worst experience I had was when 3.5e transitioned to 4e I liked 4e I liked a lot of what it did, I liked a lot of what was changed, and I appreciated the way it made it easier for DMs (me) to do what I loved Unfortunately, that meant that I was a pariah in my own hobby: If I talked about 4e, I was told I was a fool - if I was vocal about my appreciation, I was shouted down - if I posted a discussion about all the things 4e does well, I got literal, actual *death threats* I have experienced the edition war, and they are a fools game Thankfully the idea of what 4e is and what people *think* it is… is slowly changing - people are finally realizing what elements made it good I wish I would have been wise enough to just enjoy the game rather than even involve myself in the wars
4e did some things well. It also did some things _very_ poorly. While the same can be said of pretty much every edition, the problem was that the things 4e did poorly were things that 3.x did well. It didn't help that the marketing and hype around the new edition focused on the meme "the math just works", which was false (demonstrably so) because they literally kicked the guy with the math degree off the design team. By the end of the edition, they _still_ hadn't figured out how to fix skill challenges, for instance.
Several people who crafted Pathfinder Second Edition actually worked on 4th as well. I never got to play 4th edition, but I've seen people talk about how PF2 actually borrowed a lot from it and how they feel that PF2 is its spiritual successor. I've wanted to look into 4e since I learned that. It's always good to reflect on how we got to where we are today.
THIS. People who weren't there have NO IDEA what it was like being a fan of 4e around these parts when it came out. Imagine that at the height of the latest OGL fiasco you'd been like "I'm glad Wizards is doing this, I see nothing wrong here," how people would respond, how your upvotes and comments would look. This is what it was like being in online spaces at the launch of 4e and thinking it was better, or more fun, than 3e.
@@PedanticTwit I don't have much experience with Skill Challenges in 4e, but I hear people say they were "broken" very often, and I'm not sure what is meant by this. What exactly was it about them that was broken?
Hello, this is my first introduction to you, and it's weird seeing all these assumptions about things. It's exciting, and I can't wait to go back and see what you've had to say for apparently a very long time. I started with 3e, bought the core 3 books, but never found a group to play. When I did, they were playing 3.5, but told me the "3.0" PHB was good enough to start at level 1 and they'll just tell me if something big changed. I fell out, but was still interested. I eventually found a new group, and bought a whole bunch of 3.5 books. I played games, I ran games, it was super great fun. I even got ahold of old modules and adapted them for 3.5 in exactly the way you described, though I had no previous edition experience to easier determine what was supposed to be easy vs challenging so I just winged it more. I enjoy the homebrew scene, especially how easy it is to create new player character options, classes, spells, feats, all that, and make some of my own. I enjoy the technical side so much that when Eberron came out, I was in awe of how tightly integrated the mechanics were to the subtle cracks and semi-flaws of 3e, and that's something that just can't be replicated when they took the flavor forward. Anyway, 4e comes out, and I'm not a basher or edition warrior. I loved the system for its tactical skirmish mini-wargaming side. Though I had and still have criticisms of it, which I'm rarely able to talk about, because it's hard to find someone who isn't an edition warrior and thus won't entertain the idea that I appreciate multiple systems, or find someone who doesn't just assume I'm an edition warrior and don't care to listen because they're just tired of arguments. Mainly that complexity was unified, which don't get me wrong was a good option, but it removed the "choose your own character creation difficulty" that made fighters and wizards so different to build. And I didn't like how complex classes were from the perspective of homebrew, meaning it took a lot more design to make a new class or modify an existing one that I kinda gave up trying. Also, it was more work to run older adventures, as not just monster replacement was needed, but whole new tactical maps with interesting features and terrain were so integral to 4e that "30 kobolds in the middle of a cave" wouldn't do the game justice. Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate a lot of the under-the-hood stuff that went into 4e's design and implementation that actually underpins 5e and more modern gaming, and it doesn't get enough credit for that. For various reasons, I switch "back" to the 3e ruleset with Pathfinder. I still had a lot of old 3e/3.5e books after all, and pf1 let me straight up run all those "old" adventures and modules written for it right out of the box with very very little modifications. This is also where I first started toying with Ravenloft, taking cues from the 3e Expedition adventure but also previous versions. 4e never had a fully contained Ravenloft adventure the way 2e, 3e, and 5e had. Plus, pf1 was just as easy to homebrew for as 3e, with classes especially being easy to modify or create. I also could take the lessons learned from 4e about interesting tactical maps and terrain and move them into my games. I kinda missed Eberron though, because while it still existed, and I now had two whole series of books to pull from for flavor, the tight integration with the cracks in 3e was missing. Like how you can appreciate a car for its good suspension over a bumpy road, but it feels less special when the road is smoothed out? The car never got less good, but it still felt that way. But eventually Pathfinder got long in the tooth, *because* it was so complex and got tons of material out for it, plus all the content being accessible in the OGL made new character builds brought me panic attacks from analysis paralysis with having five million feats to sift through when making an otherwise simple character at level 1-3. 5e comes along, and it's an instant switch. Just as easy to homebrew for as 3e/pf1, a lot of under the hood changes that made it a unified gaming system (thanks, 4e!), and I still appreciate that the supplement churn hasn't gotten out of hand. I wouldn't be surprised if there are fewer mechanical character option books produced over its lifetime than there were 3e/4e/pf books released in six months during their respective heydays. Again, it's easy to dig through old material for adventures and flavor. Tactical combat is nice, but for simpler encounters it feels like a breath of fresh air to not have to pull out a map and engage people into heavy thinking mode for optimal play, while still having that big setpiece battle with all kinds of interesting terrain and positioning. Currently I'm personally invested in Pathfinder 2e, especially since it's now easier to handle all their free online content, and the refresh with the new (as of time of commenting) Remaster making things exciting. I find I don't have as much enthusiasm for homebrew or creating my own stuff as I used to (two jobs and declining health can do that). I feel like I'm being left behind the newer generation of tabletop RPG players though as I have hangups about online play, and the explosion of performative gaming like Critical Role. It's harder to find in-person games than it used to. I know that shouldn't be a complaint, because really it's increasing the accessibility of gaming, from people who just find it more convenient, to bringing in people who would've had problems trying to meet in person, plus bypassing being limited to your local area for finding fun people to play with. I'm keeping a critical eye on WotC, having not liked a lot of the things they've done as a company lately, and have been open to other alternatives. The biggest problem is finding other people who are open to other systems and able to meet in-person, since I have such anxiety about online play. Sorry for the huge wall of text, but since you shared some of your stories, I thought I could share some of mine.
Not related to the video at all, but I want to thank you Mr Colville for inspiring me to run my first campaign after being a player for many years, It's going well with 7 players (help) and I'm on my 46th session this Sunday with the party just turning level 5 from level 1. In February of 2024 It'll be running 2 years strong. This hobby has brought me so much joy and I enjoy your creative monsters, rules, and stories / insight. Thank you again for what you've provided for this hobby and for this amazing game.
Since he has worked a lot in game design I would love to hear him discuss these other rpg games. From what they try to do and how the rules lean towards a certain playstyle to interesting mechanics you can steal for other games
Matt. I’m a longtime pathfinder GM. This video, like all your videos, continues to perfectly apply to me and my group. We’re transitioning slowly into PF2.5 now and taking a “that’s a great new rule, let’s use it” approach. We will probably be fully moved over by the end of next year. Keep doing your awesome work!
Yes, Mr. Colville. Generation X does not exist. And that is exactly the way we like it. :) As another second generation gamer, I feel you are very much spot on in your history and your analysis.
I think the reason Gen X 'doesn't exist', is because boomer has become, at least in popular media, a synonym for old. I don't know if you're gonna like it, but while the original meaning of the term doesn't apply to gen x at all (as in the result of the baby boom), you've become a boomer.
Copy that mate. I have noticed that people seem to have forgotten us gen x ers, and I also like it that way. However, I find it absolutely hilarious when I am called a “boomer” because I have grey hair. I think the word have a different meaning now, and simply mean “old dude”.
Great vid. Honestly, you could add a Part 2 and go for another hour. Maybe after 5.5 or 6e happens you could make a, "So, You're Tying Really Hard Not to be a Grognard Now" video.
I watched the stream VOD version of this so I’ll say this here when I couldn’t say it there: this is a great bookend the D&D content era on this channel. Looking forward to the future!
You start off using the jankiest old rules as a party of devs. Every time you defeat a board member (boss fight) you get to upgrade to a less janky version of the rule 😂
The tavern your party found itself in is being ambushed by the goons of the local investors. One of the local grognards say "These were the stakeholders.. it´s been forever like this. These ambushers are the best type of montization the village can afford. An endless cycle of destruction and reinvention". Assemble your team of excited players and devs for a search of The Ultimate Rule Book, bring the battle to castle Stakehold and take the money Dindi village so desperately needs!
Player and DM since 1982. Game store owner covering the period of 3.5 to 4e. Your description of the events, mood, and business of the 3 to 4 transition is spot on.
I can't believe those "running the game" videos are that old already. I re-watch these often; your enthusiasm for dnd and gaming in general is contagious and when I hit a wall in my dming I just watch those for inspiration. Your contribution to d&d is just as big to some as Critical Role and Stranger Things... because you are a river to your people.
Critical Role and Stranger Things might be responsible for the most new players in the 5e era, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Matt was responsible for more new dungeon masters than anyone else.
As one of the many contemporary classical composers who also runs D&D (no, really, there's a shockingly large crossover), I was so delighted by the tangent veering into early tape music history. Phenomenal stuff.
Some of my favorite supplements for D&D were the Complete Handbook series for 2E. There are so many cool, weird, and interesting things in those books that I still pull from them today for my homebrew games. The best thing about D&D is there is almost 40yrs of material to pull from. I have always viewed editions as guidelines and ran my own thing for my friends.
Definitely. I've went back to the Complete Book of Elves (for the elven messenger arrow) and the Psionics Handbook (for what matter agitation does at each temperature point).
2e Complete Handbook series, such as Kits working as a character class sub class with cultural backgrounds. ( Players Options: Skills & Powers, also know as AD&D 2.75 revised Psionic class powers.) Complete Humanoid handbook, ever wanted to play a pixie or ogre mage ? Or an orc cleric/ranger that deals in viper venom ? Lizardmen rogue/rangers that stealth hunt people from the waterline and lasso drag their target prey into a watery drowning. DMG section option " Create Your Own Character Class, which we just use those rules to modify premade current classes. I had a bard with the kit: Riddle Master, I hate riddles and refuse to deal with them. So I modify my bard to reach 2nd-level as fighter 2,000xp with a few extra non-weapon profs. And took Engineer and thief skill Find/Remove Traps. Also took Dance/weapon kata knife dance/ pick pocket to do stage magic tricks with small blade intimidation. Most other players' PC took my Riddle Master as a Blade Dance. I only played with Riddle Master kit bonuses and not with the Blade Dancer spinning blade bonuses. Since I had a good Bluff, no one really wanted to test him. b.) Had in one game a party of a wood elf ranger not happy to be in an underground dwarven city. My Riddle Master human started small talk with the couple of dwarven guides with a charisma check to get them talking about the construction/ Engineer check and another charisma check to make the talk lively and egging the dwarves on about the stonework. The wood elf wasn't happy, and the grey elf bard/Lore Master got into the talk enough where the dwarves were starting to have a polite tone with her. The grey elf roll charisma/, .. " Dwarves only live a few centuries compare to elves. I will sing about you and this place for 800years and gods willing for a thousand years." She roll well enough the dwarves didn't take the life span deference as a haughty insult, and they though she singing proper enough for an elf. So they shared more of their history with her. c.) The player that PC the wood elf ranger normal plays a dwarf, so to Stay In Character he acts annoyed while everyone else starts singing really bad out of tune dwarf songs. 2.) 2e weapon speed initiative factors. House rule .. IF .. you beat your target init by half then your PC gets a second attack with a -1 atk/-2 Ac. If atks land flip a coin heads does normal dmg or tails does x2 dmg. If your atks fail the target gets an extra action atk against the attacking PC with x2dmg. Want to risk it ? In one game the rogue beat the fighter with a great sword by 4. meaning knight init divided 4x into the fighter's Gs roll. Counter roll of dex/str vs dex/str. Fighter got stabbed 4x in the face through the helmet face slit opening, losing a couple of teeth and a stab sinus cavity. The rogue fail dex roll and received a left elbow and cross guard to his ribs. Due to other game system such as TMNT and Vampire, rogue had to roll con to keep from getting broken ribs. b.) WEG west end games Star Wars d6 dice pool system. Double action for stander combat or using force powers requires halfing the dice pool. Just like Whitewolf/World of Darkness (WoD) vampire copied. My location got in WotC 3e d20 Star Wars in before D&D came to town. So carry over from WEG into our D&D/Star Wars to make a double action without a feat, just half the PC skill ranks. So a PC with 12 ranks as an 8th-level n/Pc instead of making a single skill roll at +12 they could make two rolls at +6. Or roll Panic and roll 12 rolls with a +1 modifer. Whatever feeds the drama of a given story.
ahhh the complete left handed albino dwarfs handbook.... This was TSR trying to compete with GURPS, by providing so many classes that it 'might' be able to compete with a classless system.
Every time i watch a Matt video, my love for the game reignites. Matt, you have such an infectious love for the game, and i hope i can have the same effect on my players
Stranger things is what got my daughter into d&d she saw them playing it and says "Daddy I wish I could play that game" which I responded with " Oh yeah I got all the books (3.5) in the attic!" Grinning ear to ear 😃
I wish you and you daighter the happiest of true D&D role playing times. If I were near you, I would want to join. I have a bunch of AD&D/2e as well as 3.5 myself.
This video really gave me a different perspective on gaming. I was one who grew up in the 80s dealing with the Nintendo to Super Nintendo evolution where you invested in so many games under one system and now the new Wow game system is coming out and the old ones are now obsolete. Your video put D&D into a very different perspective that opens my mind and attitude to the new changes. Thank you Matt. Keep making videos like this. We need it. We need more Running the Game too.
Ryan Dancey, former Wizards VP and the dude who brokered the deal between WotC and TSR, talks about the Hasbro Board and the idea of Core Brands and the path to $100m a year. www.enworld.org/threads/wotc-ddi-4e-and-hasbro-some-history.661470/
While I am genuinely thankful and acknowledge Ryan Dancey greater role in furthering our beloved hobby, his Pathfinder Online was a irksome misstep. It’s been awhile since I saw the Running the Game with the sample PC’s from the begging of this video, anyone kindly remember which episode it was on ?
@@imissnewspapers many younger or casual gamers will not be aware that Ryan Dancey was the architect and advocate of the OGL some two decades ago. The third party industry, Pathfinder & MCDM included, owe their genesis to that bit of gaming history/providence.
6:35 I disagree a bit - I don't particularly like 5e and don't play it, HOWEVER what they did with the rules system was very clever from a design point of view imo. They essentially simplified 3e, and with the universal proficiency modifier made the system much easier for new players to comprehend. Also the Subclass system was brilliant as they were really the legacy of the old Prestige classes, but asigning them directly to classes made it a lot easier for players to 'get'. The result is those first few levels of 5e, 1 to 5 lets say, are very exciting for new players to experience. So they did do a lot of good design stuff. Are they as creative as other editions of the game? Not even close, but they did research and altered the product to make it more widely available and it worked!
@ollieknoxx And of course Prestige Classes themselves were the hand me down / remastered Kits from 2nd Edition’s The Complete Handbook series. Just as the Bard class was the OG Prestige Class from 1st Edition.
You're totally right with most people won't notice much of a change between 5e to 5.5, I was interested in a more radical change when OD&D was announced but now I'm not sure if I have another 10 years of the 5.x framework left in me. I am enjoying the wide variety of other games on the market and I hope everyone who is in a similar boat to me begins to explore the rest of the RPG market, there's so much great stuff.
Yeah man. The earlier ODnD tests were basically a partial revert to 4e - a lot of standardization and clean up of system elements. It played way better. It had some neat ideas in it. Class-specific powers (coded as spells, but let's be honest), unified spell lists, standardized progression, daily powers (sorry. PB/day abilities). People hated it. Grognard is after all derived from the French "to complain."
@@SeanBoyce-gp Totally, my group and I are in our early-mid 20s so none of my friends have played previous editions but I have slowly accrued a great collection of books from previous editions from used book stores, book fairs and the like. I steal so much stuff from 4e, the monsters are actually interesting other than bags of hit points, and the abilities that players get are actually really great, I compare them to the cavalier from Xanathar's. Seeing OD&D dipping back into that 4e style rather then just streamlined 3.5 got me excited, 4e is something I really want to run but it seems monolithic to break into, but I made my players play 3.5 so possibly 4e next. Give them some perspective. But you're right, seeing the D&D Next fighter was so close to a combination of 3.5 and 4e fighters but WotC listened to Grognards who just wanted to swing their swords, my favourite fantasy heroes are men at arms, I play a lot of fighters and they are always easily dead last in usefulness in the party, hopefully we can come back to classes being interesting. We are never going back to first edition where you got magic items instead of class abilities, despite how interesting it would have been.
Found the red box Basic D&D in my best friend's closet in 1981, and have been DMing ever since. I'm now using 5e, though I still usually run in Greyhawk.
I may be one of the few people who found Matt Colville because of Critical Role, but didn’t actually watch Critical Role until Colville convinced me to. Specifically: my teen daughter started watching CR in early 2019, and wanted to play, so she persuaded me to run a game for our family. Well, of course I had to first figure out how to do that, so I searched for DM tips, found Colville’s Running the Game series. CR itself seemed daunting to start watching - but when I saw Colville’s video about the Vox Machina finale (ignoring the spoiler alert because I was never planning to watch CR anyway), I was so impressed that I decided it was worth it to dive into watching CR from the beginning. It was, and was still extremely emotional when I finally saw that finale in context.
Matt, just hope you know I spent all video trying to figure out the words here but you bring that 'Excited to go watch cartoons on a Saturday morning as a kid' feeling to dnd.
I appreciate that this video is not only a history of the hobby, but also the history of THIS channel. With a side of the future of MCDM to boot. Thanks for giving back to the community all these years, and here’s to many more.
As someone who's only ever played 5e, but always wondered about the previous editions, this video answered a lot of my questions and put it in exactly the type of context I was looking for. So, thank you for the explanations and sharing your experience - it was delightful. It's funny to look back 10 years, when someone tried to get me into D&D, but at the time I wasn't as interested. I only really got into it some 4-5 years ago, and weirdly enough not because of anything like Stranger Things or Critical Role, but simply because of curiosity about roleplaying as an activity. I didn't know anything about any editions or anything, I simply got dragged to a discord server and given a PHB. A few days later, I was on my Blue Dragonborn Druid, playing a battle theme on my flute to inspire my allies, on my first turn in my first combat ever. Fast forward to today, I'm working on a massive project, making an entirely homebrew setting, content and rules for a unique D&D game, using 5e as a basis. It's been a ride.
Matt, this is the first one of your videos I've watched in quite a while. No insult here, I just kind of dropped out of most things ttrpg for a while. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this. At the 35 minute mark, I got disappointed that I was over halfway through it. It should have been 2 hours! 😉Anyway, keep up the good work, my friend. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go back and watch everything I've missed...
Look up his “History of D&D, One Fighter at a Time”. It’s his best stuff. That, and “The Railroad versus the Sandbox video”. I see that he linked the “History” videos in the description box.
I started with 4e and the digital tools were amazing. I used them to make characters for any new players and the encounter tools made improvising combat a breeze and a blast. Never got past level 3 though. In 5e I've had a group going for years, rotating who DMs. They're all up for trying the MCDM RPG, and I have high hopes for it.
The digital tools you were using weren't there ones 4e was supposed to have. There was going to be a full virtual tabletop and stuff. That was already turning out to be harder than it looked, and then the guy in charge killed his wife and then himself. The replacement character builder was the best a new software company could do in a short timeframe. VTTs were then left to open source and then third party companies.
45:22 I lost all my original D&D group over 4th Ed. I’m with you. I felt like they really made D&D more accessible to new players and it was so easy to run games and not get bogged down into arguing about rules. I love 5e as the new shiny but 4th Ed made it simple to just play. 3.5 was great but man did it get tedious sometimes.
I think a huge factor that helped people find 5E and consider playing wasn't just that Critical Role happened, but also that there were women at the table. I know so many people who tried to play dnd in highschool but were the only woman at the table, and didn't have a great time. I was lucky that I did have a good time playing with a group of all guys. Seeing a group with woman playing, having fun, and being welcome probably made a LOT of people go, "oh maybe this could be for me too!"
True, and part of that is fed by or feeds into how different nerd culture is these days. It's not the AV club loser stereotypes anymore (if it ever truly was). The slider for what's nerdy has moved a lot, especially when nerd franchises started getting movies, and pop culture became nerd culture (or at least a major flavor of it). So now nerd stuff is mostly just normal stuff for "normal" people. I don't know which way that feedback loop goes, but regardless, it means women play the heck out of the game and love it, and that's awesome.
We had a girl at the table in Middle School/HS in the late 80's early 90's and it was amazing. Very rare. But she eventually discovered boys and popularity and well...she stopped playing.
For sure. We abused the hell out of those Kits. Cool new abilities at the “cost” of a social reaction modifier? Ha! And IIRC the fighter book had new rules to abuse beyond just the Kits. 2E Kits were the genesis of today’s subclasses I’d say. I really liked how 3E did prestige classes. 5e subclasses are hit or miss IMO.
Precisely. For me, 1.5 was the introduction of Unearthed Arcana in '85, 2.5 was the Player's Option and DM's Option black books in '96, 3.5 was 3.5 in 2003 a mere three years after 3rd edition came out which pissed off Monte Cook enough to form his own company, 4.5 was Essentials, and now... this.
@@Interfect727 Right on with UA as 1.5. Although that’s when I was first getting into it, so I didn’t notice. However the Wilderness Survival Guide def changed how my friends and I played the game, so maybe that’s my 1.5.
I honestly love these videos. As an art history major and 5e dnd player, any opportunity I have to learn about what came before, why it’s important, and how it’s happening again right now is so appreciated.
Hey Matt, just wanted to comment and thank you for making your videos. I have been DMing a group for the past 3 years online, started during COVID, but just did our first in person session a few days ago and it went really well. I think your point that DnD sessions are "full of memes" definitely has helped its popularity among the younger generations, myself included. Something about the spontaneity of failure in a genre that is usually quite serious creates comedy that feels very relatable and resembles day to day stories. Sure in real life we don't slay dragons or save royalty but we all have a time we slipped and fell or did something incredibly stupid and can laugh about. Its part of what makes the game so human. I think we often get caught up in the rules, when ultimately that is what we are looking for; A reason to hang out and tell stories to each other. Would love for you to talk more about this topic, your passion is plain to see. Keep making great stories.
I started in 2014 when on active duty. Critical Role and Stranger Things weren't really a thing yet. I feel like I got an organic upbringing just before it became super popular to play the game, I only played with people who were willing to try it out or had already played. Me and my coworkers were the weirdos on deployment but it's some of the most fun I've ever had in all of gaming.
I got a similar thing. My stepdad was an old dnd nerd, and he still had all his 3.5 stuff just before 5e was hitting shelves, so I got brought in on that. Nothing else existed to me as far as dnd was concerned, and I had a fantastic time. 3.5e is still my favorite just due to nostalgia, but I've come to have a lot of respect for every other game and edition I've messed with since. What a cool hobby
I got in just as crit roll started and didn't discover it till a year and half later Had my 3.5 books and some ad&D 2nd ed books from friends parents My head of maths at school / college is why i started being able to get into it. Even covered old naval combat amd long turns for making it playable with reloading canons Thank you Toddy
I think that whatever comes, we can not discount the OGL debacle's influence. It stoked much more resentment toward the money people and the C-suite suits than there would have been normally, and has put a lasting distrust into some people's minds. It is all too recent, only happening this year (2023) it has not "blown over" like the Corpos had hoped. I think because of this, any effects we normally would have seen, will be amplified.
I think the attitude of management towards the fans plays a big part of the game's success, and its downfall. Which is one thing this history lesson failed to point out. T$R wasn't just "clever". For many people it stood for "They $ue Regularly", which was exactly how Lorraine Williams treated the superfans who published supplimentry rules for 2nd Ed. 3E brought the original OGL with it, and a host of 3rd party publishers sprang up creating content for it and giving it free advertising. It helped the game remain popular, and it's why groups like Critical Role could create content without (much) fear of being sued (as almost certainly would have happened back in the T$R days). 4E had other issues, but I've always argued that the GSL was one of the big contributors to why that edition essentially failed. With 5E, the old OGL was reinstated, and the game's popularity surged even though I personally don't think it's a real improvement on 3E or 4E. Then Hasbro/WotC got greedy yet again, and we had the latest OGL debacle. They've now placed the SRD under two licences - OGL and Creative Commons 4. That should settle the problems for that SRD, but this issue shows that the suits are still looking to either shut down or at least monetize the work of the 3rd party publishers (superfans). A lot of those 3rd party publishers are still spooked. As I think they should be, because one of the long term goals of the VTT is probably to shut them out of the system.
I've never been an edition warrior, but I've been around since AD&D 2e, so I've seen plenty of it. I've always been amused at how many 4e mechanics are in 5e, just disguised with non-4e terms (i.e. Healing Surges into Hit Dice).
This is the first video of your's that I've ever watched, I think RUclips auto played me here while I was sleeping because it was 9 mins into playing when I woke up this morning. What a cool piece of history with breakfast.
Another thing that I think brought players into D&D was the video game Neverwinter Nights in the 2002 area. The online part of that game was magic and taught me about 3rd edition rules.
Yes, absolutely! Neverwinter Nights' online capabilities is what introduced me and my friends to playing d&d together. We had experienced d&d before with Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, but never as a co-operative experience. After a few months (perhaps a year) of "Adventure Fridays" we became aware of the tabletop game and decided to try it out.
That's what it was for me for sure. Back in that time, wrapping my head around DnD rules was nigh impossible but NWN made it digestible to my soft, smooth brain.
💫 Yay, gold star! Thank you for this, btw. It makes me realize how our own game group is so split on trying something new at times, because we have Gen Xers who grew up with AD&D and Millennials with 3.5 and Gen Z kids who have only known a single edition.
I love all the editions of D&D. I've borrowed from every edition and have played AD&D 1/2e, 3.0/3.5, Pathfinder, 4e, 5e and now BX in the form of OSE. I have to say my favorite is OSE just because its so easy to run, it also frees people up from looking at their character sheet for answers and instead they use their imagination describing what they can do. This helps with the shared narrative, even the characters that prefer to sit in the background end up getting sucked in to the story telling aspect simply because they have to describe what they're doing instead of just saying I roll for insight or perception etc.
I shared this with my D&D group after discussing the idea of changing versions, interestingly because at some point if I remember correctly my dm plans to use your system once it releases. This is something that I feel like we all need to see so we can come to the table and discuss everything before a change does happen.
For me, I invested a lot into 2e and so did my friends. We loved the edition and there were so many varied worlds to play in. This is why we all stayed in 2e because there is so much variety.
Classic Matt hooked me in Gold Star ⭐️ certified. Played from ‘81 to today. Working on a pirate themed campaign with my 25 year old son and his buddies that I’ve DM’d for since they could roll dice. Joy is the gaming table. Thank you for all you do.
Great video. I know MC is a busy dude, but damn I miss these long form video essays. Also, dope to see Shadowdark get a nice little shout out. Can confirm it's the survival horror style dungeon game with wonderful modern (3rd Ed+) style mechanics. Chefs kiss to this video and to Matt doing what he does. Also, this feels like the "end" of the history of D&D series, which never covered 4e and 5e, so ... yeah that would be cool too. :) (with a cherry on top)
Dude, if you made a two hour video where you just read the ingredients lists on shampoo bottles I would still listen to all of it. Such an amazing storyteller voice.
⭐ I lived through all the editions you did, though I probably didn't play them as much as you, and this is a great history of the game. Who needs Joe Manganiello's documentary, I'll just point people here. Looking forward to the MCDM RPG!
i think it's probably fair to say that 4E is and always will be my favorite D&D edition because i can't see wizards ever doing an edition like it again... ever just because of how everything went down, and also how labor intensive 4E was to make compared to editions that are more aligned with how the Red Box looked & played whatever anyone wants to say or think about 4E, it was definitely the one edition that was capital-D different in ways that no other edition has been, or probably will be
I'm starting to learn lancer, since everyone I talk to tells me it's mechanically very similar to 4e, tactical, crunchy, movement based, etc. I enjoyed 4e too much to even start playing 5e
4E was my favourite edition to DM. And played in some great campaigns. But I can see why many people found it deviated too far from the assumptions and optics of D&D.
I love the positivity Matt has for everyone in the community. Between Matt and MCDM, Ginny Di, Dungeon Dudes, Colby from D4, Chris from Treantmonk, Will from DnDshorts, and tons of others, we are just lucky to have kind, funny, knowledgeable people leading the content community for TTRPGs and D&D.
Really fascinating video, Matt. I especially liked the parts regarding D&D 4e; your experiences were different from mine and I liked hearing that perspective. My TTRPG group abhorred 4e. WoW didn't take players away from our table though. There was just something about 4e that felt less like a TTRPG and more like someone tried translating an MMORPG into a boardgame. While there were definitely some things 4e did right - I still think per turn, per encounter, per day abilities are a wonderful way of giving players Cool Stuff™ to do in every scenario - but to my group it felt sterile and designed by committee. Meanwhile, Paizo's Pathfinder was so damn crunchy, fun, and seemed made with intense passion for the hobby. It was familiar enough to 3.0/3.5e D&D to easily teach everyone at the table the differences in session or two but polished the existing rules... which led to my group and I investing truly irresponsibly amounts of money into Paizo's books for years to come. We tried calculating how much we spent on Pathfinder supplemental books and APs, plus PDFs of course, and it was over $2k. We tried D&D 5e but bounced off it. To this day we mainly stick to Pathfinder 1and 2e and Starfinder 1e (soon to be 2e). D&D lost us completely with 4e. We preordered MCDM RPG btw. Looking forward to giving that a try.
I am from Czech Republic and playing RPGs since mid 90s. It is amazing to look back now for how long we lived with RPGs that were made in our country. We played mainly two different games. And one of them for many years and several editions. Yes, we also had editions like you with your shiny D&D :-D But internet and unofficial translation of D&D 3 (or 3.5?) happened and I think that made many people to switch to "the original" :-) Our group then switched from 3e to 5e several years ago and skipped 4e entirely. So I never played it and never had time to read the rules. What is funny with 3e rules for everything is that I still miss some of them in 5e thinking "You want to do *this*? There will probably be rule here somewhere... You would like to do *that*? OK, let me check the rules..." and I can't find any. So it takes maybe more time than if they keep the rules there.
I loved the digital tools that accompanied 4e - made things so easy to build and run. The downside was when support for 4e dried up, all those resources existed in a digital form, and couldn't be easily ported out - kind of ended our groups ability to keep playing that edition. I can see that being an issue with this new digital model of 5.5e. The advantages of modern digital tools is amazing, but I don't like not actually owning the purchased resources. Looking forward to seeing how things progress, and I hope for a renaissance of diversified RPGs to enjoy! Thanks for telling tales and adding context to this wacky hobby of ours. Keep up the great work.
As Matt was geeking out, I remembered a snippet of an interview with David Bowie where he talked about buying a synthesizer in the early 70’s. He said the first thing he and one of his band mates did was to throw away the manual that came with it. They then proceeded to play around with it and enjoy what he called “all the crackles and farts” that came out of the machine.
So, a couple of things about Edition Wars (TM). First edition (AD&D) and 2nd edition were, as you stated, basically the same thing. Problems arose when some of the broken things that were "fixed" or "Nerfed" were played within the 2nd edition campaign. I would submit the example of a 1st edition Assassin being in the 2nd edition group, and owning it. 3rd edition was, is, and will be the bases for a lot of other RPG's with the "D20 system" and the Open Gaming License that was part and parcel to 3rd edition being as successful as it was. This is in addition to the promotional efforts WotC did and the positive word of mouth for the system. What is good about everything for D&D is centered around this edition completely rebuilding the rules from the ground up. From Non-Weapon Proficiencies to the introduction of Spontaneous casting, it is a capstone to the brand yet to be realized in the newer iterations. Then the bottom dropped out. I tried to get my group to work with and play 4th edition for two years. I liked some of the concepts that have since been abandoned and hoped that a good session would turn things around. Then Pathfinder happened. Or, I should say, Pathfinder Organized Play. Get your character, play the old rules (with needed adjustments) and drop in a table for a four hour self contained session. It was breathtakingly simple and I dropped 4th edition and the D&D brand as I worked with Archtypes, newer Prestige classes and various races to make interesting characters for others to meet. Essentials killed D&D. There is just no other way to put it. Psionics was bad enough, but the clash of various rules systems being shoved into a "balanced" broken rule set just set fire to the whole thing. This is where the Edition Wars went into high gear, and part of it was the new license for 4th edition (separated from the old OGL) and the cutting off of third party support to bring everything inhouse. Etools lost their license, Paizo, as you mention, made their own game, starting with Adventure paths and 3.5 content before they could release Pathfinder Core. And nothing ever replaced the things lost. So this 5th edition came out from the dying embers of Essentials 4.75. It promised to be everything that D&D was before it burned down in 4th edition hell, and came out with a skeleton of a system that the GM needed to parse and put together and try to house rule things that were not in the final product. I do not like the concept of Bonded Accuracy. 5th edition works right up until you get past 7th level, or you get a nice magical item. Yeah, the new errata is coming, Pathfinder already did theirs. It is giving the rest of the rules the GM needs while nerfing a lot of things to be a bit more... like 4th edition. Oh, and to be more sensitive to modern sensibilities.
As someone who came into the hobby of tabletop rpgs via pathfinder groups among fans of single player CRPGs & strategy games - I dont know how prevalent it was among the wider populace, but my observation (complete with its inherent sampling bias from the communities I participated in) was that D&D 4e did very poorly among that crowd. And my experience was that it was indeed because we hated World of Warcraft - but this was not because it stole away the time of our friends or because the game mechanics and rules were different... but because... it was subscription based, and it looked like thats where D&D was headed. Paizo meanwhile offered a more open & consumer-friendly alternative, and hey look, theres all these 3.5e people ready and waiting to build new communities around this game! It wasn't any surprise which way I went, when a disgruntled former 3.5e DM came in looking to build a new pf group on a forum I frequented. Fun fact: despite D&D being the one to make the big vtt push, us online pathfinder players still got together online to play: our 'vtt' was just google sheets.
I'm so happy you started talking about synths. I am deep into electronic music production and I will now look at my buchla easel and mini Moog (plugins) very differently. Edit: seeing one of my favorite ttrpg youtuber being a gear nerd gives me the wiggles. Edit 2: huh, so editing removes the creator's like, makes sense now that I think about it. Good to know for next time ^^' Damn me and my urge to correct typos.
Same. I laughed out loud when he pulled out the modular rack. My entire apartment is just a tangled mess of rpg books, synths/drum machines/effects processors and empty beer bottles.
My god, I am such a DnD nerd that I knew the story of the hobby and rhe big movements already. But I really liked your version of events, especially regarding personal situations, and I agree with your message, we need more positivity in the world. Stay well!
I like D&D. But i LOVE the hobby. I'll be happy to play a new edition, I'm happy to play other tabletop games. I'm just happy to play something fun with my players who are my best friends.
I love the hobby. There is nothing like face to face table top role playing games. I don’t care what game or what system. I’ll even give 4e another shot with the right group and GM. Grab your ketchup and crunch away my friends.
While I think the hobby's best days are ahead of it, I think D&D's best days might actually be behind it, for real this time. The thing that I really most hope for is that we can eventually make a world where when someone is clueless and excited about the hobby there's a good chance that their first introduction will be something like FATE or Spell, but that it's expected that some of those people might move on to things like Blades in the Dark or Cinematic and Tactical (until I get a proper name that is how I will call it).
Great video, I love these longer form videos that exposite the history and culture of dungeons and dragons as well as the hobby in general. Your passion for this hobby shines through every time!
I really enjoy listening to you. You are concise, well-spoken, and I always learn something. That last part is so valuable! I appreciate your sharing your knowledge with us. Oh, and I purchased your books "Strongholds & Followers," and "Kingdoms & Warfare." I absolutely love how your brain works because the books are so well-written and make so much sense to me. Thank you for helping enrich my gaming life.
Here's some homework for anyone looking for more. Warning! Read at your own risk!
A Farewell to Hexes by Greg Costikyan
www.costik.com/spisins.html
Death to the Minotaur by John Tynes
www.salon.com/2001/03/23/wizards/
A+ Recommendations, I could not believe what years they were written in!
Thank you boss. This whole video was fascinating
Great stuff! I do have a question though: In A Farewell to Hexes, Games Workshop and their runaway success isn't mentioned at all. Am I being thick? Is Warhammer not considered a wargame? Or is it just not as relevant as I think it is?
@@pancakewizard1533games workshop didn't get started until the events after that article. Many years after.
The sex-for-all goblin-first era of WotC as described in the Salon article sounds horrible. I’d hate to work there. I just want thicker lines between my work and my relationships. Those parts of life move at different speeds.
I want to thank all the folks who, within 90 seconds of a 60min long video, were racing to the comments to shit on different editions, extoll their favorite edition as the only one that matters, and otherwise be humorless weirdos. :D
I was worried the Edition War talk was going to seem esoteric and not relevant to modern players, but I didn't need to worry. I know my hobby. :D
I feel personally attacked within 20 seconds of the video.
😂
As a time traveler, 11.4.2e is drastically superior.
There's no point engaging in edition wars! Different editions will suit and speak to different people and groups, and that's ok!
I play 3.5 and after 60 seconds I was thinking that maybe buying the new 5e humble bundle would be useful after all. I'm too inexperienced to draw comparisons. Gold Star.
"Hasbro wants to invest in the BRAND, not the game"
well put. :)
That's what bugged me about the D&D movie. D&D isn't an IP, you can get rid of owlbears and mimics, even orcs and elves, and still be more D&D than the D&D movie.
This video put it so well
@@joshuawinestock9998 I liked the movie. It felt very D&D to me.
@@juliamedina3322 I havent seen it, I've heard it's great, my point is that D&D isn't a specific setting or set of narrative tropes, it's an activity that you do with your friends.
@@joshuawinestock9998well there is DND specific settings and lore. The "activity" is tabletop roleplay gaming
@@joshuawinestock9998 Yeah, but if you call the movie anything to do with "The Forgotten Realms" then nobody knows what you're talking about and nobody will go and see it.
This video is the DnD equivalent of "You are going through puberty here is what is going to happen with your body"
😂😂😂
Hahaha!
There are some Serious Important Things in this video but mostly I just love talking about the history of this hobby I love and I hope folks can see that. This video is mostly fun, it's not that serious. :D
People should not interpret this as me being down on the hobby, in fact the opposite!
This makes me want to rewatch the One Fighter At A Time videos. My friends WOULD NOT believe me that women had different class titles and powers.
My only question was how much of that 58 mins ended up being extemporaneous passion. Great either way.
@@kossowankenobi Seemed like quite a bit of it, actually! And it was great!
I found it fascinating and I really liked that bit about consumers winking out of existence for 9 months when they discover WoW. I've often resented the stranglehold DnD has on trpgs in the public consciousness, but I shouldn't, and one thing I think 5.5e might do, in addition to the OGL debacle, is introduce this newest generation of players to the idea that there are other games. I've said before that there are essentially two completely unrelated hobbies, DnD 5e players, and trpg players. You'll get some trpg players that play 5e, but the majority of 5e players have never played anything else in their life. And I think that might start to change.
Really looking forward to your game. Talent is basically custom made for me. I'll miss the d20 because its my favourite dice to roll, but if the rest of the game is anything like the Talent, I'll have an absolute blast. I'd love to work on something for it some day. I imagine you're not hiring at the moment, but maybe I can try and make a third party class or something. But hey, if you ever need an artist or a complete novice designer, I'm here.
I'm very glad that you like to talk about the history of this hobbie! ❤
As an anthropologist, I never get tired of hearing how this hobby and culture was shaped over time. Killer vid, Matt!
You also have to understand how “being a gamer” was, and probably still is, a huge part of our self identity. Often bullied, and ridiculed by society for decades, it was like a secret club us nerds could use to relate to each other, and seperate ourselves from the normies. Us gen exers who experienced this, plus lived through the satanic panic would make an interesting study for you anthropolists.
As a (relatively) recent anthropology grad, looking at how D&D and mainstream culture interact is highly fascinating. There's a lot to dig through.
@@ericaltmann5711 leading to the parodied and subverted so many times that I can no longer tell where anyone falls on it meme "gamers: the most oppressed minority". Though that was mostly for videogames.
@@thegreatandterrible4508 yeah, but what he's talking about was a real thing in the 80's and 90's. Not so much in the decades after that. That poster NEVER said that people who played D&D were the most oppressed minority, that's a strawman. The meme refers to young people these days, who usually play video games, not D&D, and are far less bullied for these things than people were in the past decades.
@@robinmohamedally7587 I wasn't disagreeing with him, I was saying that the ostracization created a very insular community which is also what bred some unhealthy attitudes in a small minority of that minority.
Ttrpgs have it far better off than videogames, as they've always had some aspect of letting in other marginalized groups. I mean, over 60% of the people I know who play D&D are LGBT+
Because of your videos, I started a D&D club at my middle school last year. It has grown to the point where I need a bigger room. Thank you for motivating me.
Good work!
Make sure you train new GM's
why would you train new GMs, just let nature do its thing
they pop out of the ground @@jeremyszpicki491
Gosh I’m so jealous
This is spot on about the anger toward WoW - in hindsight I realize how utterly true this was. I saw longtime groups stop playing D&D in favor of WoW. Was a very strange era in the hobby.
Also, totally geeked to see you mention Shadowdark! 🤘
People love Shadowdark!
I was in college at the time and witnessed more than a couple of classmates flunk classes because of how addicted they were to that game.
Mind you, this same thing happened during 2e, when this funny little card game called "Magic: The Gathering" came out, and people jumped to start playing it so fast the dice didn't have time to hit the floor.
In my group it was the DM who became hooked on WoW. He would heroically run D&D games all sleep deprived from playing WoW right through the night before.
Im waiting for the shadowboat! 😁
We had a guy in our group, the oldest and had been playing since the 70s. He HATED video games, not just WoW. He also hated MTG and D&D was basically his only beloved game. He was such a great DM and made fun worlds and adventures. I am just glad our group didn't have the tabletop fallout from WoW and similar games over the years. I play video games regularly but am glad I rode out the campaigns. He passed away 2 years ago and I miss his games and the times we had. I am ever grateful to have spent those games with him while I could and hope everyone realizes they can have time for both if you manage your time. Keep making memories with your friends playing things you love.
That last part about money...The whole reason I got into D&D in the 80s was because I was a teen that didn't have a lot of money and it was cheap when compared to movies all it took was a little money for dice and a couple of books up front and gas money to get to your friends house to play and you could play all day Saturday and Sunday before going back to school. As much as a VTT is probably inevitable, I like the Idea of getting together with people face to face drinking a few beers and socializing with flesh and blood people....it's one of the things that drew me to the game when I was an awkward outsider kid and it still appeals to me as an awkward outsider adult.
I also enjoy sitting around a table with a group. But most of my games these days are in a virtual tabletop with people I know. But not with loot crates.
Loot crates are why I'm looking for the Pathfinder of 5e. An exit ramp from the official path. Not because of rules but because the business model is not something I'm trusting my time and money investment in.
VTT isn't inevitable; you can continue to play just like you do today 🙂 We have played for decades and intend on continuing meeting up, no matter if we have to keep playing 5e (or an earlier version for that matter).
That's one of the main reasons I struggle getting into the VTT era, besides money. Nothing beats the in person approach.
I'm only 10 minutes into this hour-long D&D video so there's a decent chance this will be surpassed in another twenty or so minutes but "the cynics are usually right, but not in useful ways" is possibly the most wise statement about humankind I've ever heard and I may need to go take a break to think about it.
Exaggeration is the defining aspect of RUclips commentary.
+2 to wisdom.
@@spaincrack4934 OMG THIS! Such poignant commentary! The writers really just absolutely knocked it out of the park and the acting is just superb! My favorite scene of my favorite movie of all time! Gosh I just can't stop exaggerating with all this gushing I'm doing over whatever the current content is we're watching! I'm gonna have to sit back and really ponder the deeper meaning...
What was the topic about again?
What does that quote even mean?
@@lordmew5 It means, thats just because you can tell that something IS wrong, that doesn't mean you know what the cause of it really is.
Even moreso for someone coming from a cynical perspective. They can tell somethings wrong, but they are looking for a specific type of anwser and are often blinded to the full reality of a situation because of that.
The ironic thing about the new players hating the old players is that once a new edition comes out, they're going to be ABSOLUTE grognards.
100%! :D
time is a flat circle ever repeating, one day what was cool will be lame, or for the younger folks what's lit now will soon be cringe
Only some of them. I've fought in my share of edition wars (cue Luke Skywalker "you fought in the clone wars?" gif), and I don't think I've ever been on the side arguing against change.
Of course, I've been a game designer for nearly a decade now, so maybe that's why I'm like that.
@@N0-1_H3r3 So what you're saying is you fight against changing into stagnancy. We just need to take an obi-wan and pull a certain point of view. Though, honestly, I agree with you. If I don't like whatever is coming next, oh well, I still have all my 5e books and a ton of other games I want to play. Not to mention both the MCDM RPG and Daggerheart both look like interesting twists on the old formula and should be coming out around the time WotC is making the big push for the new core books beyond initial release.
@Deliriumend I like to see things improve and grow, though I don't always think that means throwing out the old. Sometimes, remixing and reevaluating older ideas, looking at them from new perspectives, can be just as valuable as coming up with new ideas, but I never want to be doing something just because it's traditional or expected or the way it's always been.
But, the RPG industry and community alike have vocal corners that lean towards doing things because that's how they've always been, or because they're familiar. A lot of RPGs do things because D&D has always done them, rather than questioning if a given idea has merit for that game. In my more bitter and cynical moods, I've called this Cargo Cult game design.
I am proud of my gold star ⭐️ and grateful for this history lesson.
I came into D&D only since the pandemic. I watched a little CR and while it was a piece of media I loved, it was overwhelming to imagine trying. The voices, the role playing, the long campaigns seemed insurmountable. Then I was introduced to Dimension 20, and especially Aabriya Iyengar. I understood how D&D could be applied to many settings (regency era, watership down, cyberspace, the brain as a city, etc.) and how I could make it my own. Her “rule of cool” gave me permission not to know or understand all the rules. I started DMing for three best friends and various guest friends running A Christmas Carol one shot we kickstartered, and now my own Agatha-Christie-inspired stuff. We can only meet once a month usually. We use Lego dudes as miniatures. We knit and snack and laugh at the table. I have no idea how many 5e rules I have forgotten let alone not even learned yet.
In the end, a video like this is both a reminder and affirmation that the point is to have fun at the table with your friends, and not to moralize rules and editions as eternal expectations.
56:54
Wow, as an electronic musician, when you started the tangent about east vs west coast synthesis, I felt like laughing because I already knew exactly what you were about to say! It's amazing how knowledge that niche can randomly come up, huh?
I think video games cannot be underestimated in how people are introduced to D&D. Baldur's Gate 3 is a stellar example. I was introduced to D&D by Neverwinter Nights back in the day.
It was Icewind Dale for me
@@thomascheckie2394 It was BG1 for me. At the time I had no idea what a TTRPG even was. At some point I learned the Baldur's Gate was the video game adaptation of this weird talky board game thing. It wasn't until covid lockdowns that I ever even played my first (virtual) tabletop D&D game.
I've spoken to a bunch of people who have played BG3 and loved it, but have never played tabletop. Most of them already know what D&D is, and that it's a TT thing, but they never would have thought about joining a group. Playing BG3 is giving them enough of a taste that some of them are now thinking about it.
Neverwinter nights with dm client for me
My partner and I were jonesing for a co-op RPG, and while waiting for BG3 we played through several campaigns in Solasta: Crown of the Magister. Was her first introduction to D&D specifically, and we both had a good time.
Yeah, it really is tragic that we never got a 4e-based video game.
Don't get me wrong, I hated 4e at the table as much as everybody else, but it would have made an AMAZING video game. It may have been a poor tool for creating imaginary worlds and characters, but it was a great, well-balanced game.
I just finished their first ever campaign. To be clear, this was a WEEKLY game where I was a first Time DM when I put it together, it was a homebrew world coz I knew NONE of the forgotten realms lore and was played from lvl 1-20.
We started 7 YEARS AGO and it had always been on VTT because it was a mixture of rural, interstate and international players (Australia, New Zealand, Finland and USA). Basically, we made a pact that we would end the game in person and see it through to the end together.
We spent two weeks together here in my hometown in Sydney Australia and completed the last sessions over three days and to say that having everyone who had become family to me in the same room finishing that journey together was one of the most memorable and fulfilling moments of my life would be an extremely large understatement to the value it had to me.
The only reason this game could have succeeded was because of people like Matt Colville, Penny Arcade, Critical Role and Tabletop Champions who basically were all my mentors in how to truly understand the magic that could come from this game.
I love VTTs because it makes it so easy to make snap decisions and just make things happen in a way you can't do in person unless everyone is in a homebase somewhere so you can just whip out what you need; but I truly hope that IRL gaming never truly becomes obsolete as this hobby grows. The energy and atmosphere is irreplaceable.
Sure, we could have completed the game online and it would have been epic and fun and everything, but it wouldn't have had that same "moment in Time" feel to it, that having the custom minis and battlemaps and props and everything.
I'm all for VTT expansion and integration, i just hope they never truly take away that in person experience from the next generation of TTRPG players.
Then again, I'm sure people will always find a way to make it work....TV battlemap DMs already exists with roll20 app integration, who knows?
EDIT: As soon as we finished our epilogues, the gang was like "so, wanna start rolling for new characters now?" 😂😂😂
The next campaign starts in the new year😊
That’s great! I’m happy for all of you!
I'm so glad you got this experience. Nothing like it in the world. I love VTT but it is nice to once and a while at least roll some real bones in a room with the gang.
That is an incredibly heartwarming story.
It's a beautiful and inspiring story :D
@stuprime1126 How did you deal with time zones? Who had to play in the middle of the night? Also hope your new campaign has started off well!
I got a gold star! I like these "History of D&D" videos, they're fun! Besides, it's been a while since we got a properly LONG video from Uncle Matt.
I look forward to trying MCDM's Endeavor when it comes out next year.
33:22 "You can't have some people playing one addition" I actually used that for a character in my campaign for one of my players. She played an "ancient hero" type of character, and to make her really feel ancient, she wanted to play with Ad&d rules. It really made her feel like the old knowledge she had was incompatible with the modern 4th characters, and it actually went really well... with a lot of faith and wiggling the rules..
Edit: It was extremely fun... but you are right. I wouldn't recommend trying it unless you have too much time on your hands.
this is actually really interesting to me, can you elaborate a bit? (Coming from someone who has played AD&D and 5th)
@@martinMARTIN244 I don't remember the exact details, but the other 3 at the table ran with the 4th rules and powers, but she ran with Ad&d rules and spells. It wasn't like a groundbreaking way of playing, more so just different terms for her (that sounded alien to the other 3) made her feel completely different. We explained that she didn't know these "modern" powers, but still had some old "ancient" spells from her time.
@Flintkarson Omfg I'm so doing this now.
My GF and I are in the middle of buying a bunch of DnD books so her and I can play DnD for the first time together. I'm gonna the the DM for her [I love reading and writing anyway].
We're gonna be playing in our own version of FR and I'll be RPing a very old [think Erendel from LotR] and passive companion so she ain't alone.
I actually have both Dave Arneson's Blackmoor setting and players handbooks, and I already had the idea that her companion is from Blackmoor.. he's so gonna play by the rules [loosely] of the Blackmoor setting now lol
Love it. Well done.
There's an anecdotal story about Dave Arneson (co-author of the original D&D) running a convention game in the 2000's. He hands out a bunch of pre-generated characters and as the players are settling in, they notice the character sheets are from every single edition of the game up until that point. One of them asked "So what edition are we playing today?" and he just laughed and said "Hey. I'm Dave Arneson."
i thought this was gonna be a video about the philosophy and rationale behind releasing different editions of a game, which it is, but I did not also expect a full detailed retrospective on the entire history of dungeons and dragons lol
"You don't know me, but I know you," sounds like a line you'd hear in an action-adventure movie. It's usually followed up with, "If you want to live, come with me."
Or the backstory of why they are trying to kill you. Lol
Obscure reference incoming. It brought me straight to the intro of the video for "Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground)" by Mike + The Mechanics.
"You don't know me, but I knew your father. He wanted me to give you this."
@@DirkMcThermot That is an obscure reference. But then again, it's not the Mike + The Mechanics song I recall. ;) I'll have to go and listen to it again.
It's strange. Ever since you said that MCDM was releasing a new game, I've felt kinda "Well, okay, but I don't know if I'll end up getting it". But now, somehow, after listening to you extoll the mores and folkways of old editions for the better part of an hour, after hearing about the tradition of some picking up a new edition and some leaving it behind, I think I'm 100% on board for the new game. You're a good salesman, Matt. Keep it up.
I used to love how, when there was an edition change, the novel writers would come up with some cool story lines to bring the mechanics out, I.E the Avatar Trilogy, etc so cool
Can only speak for myself, but I think lots of us are actually relatively new to D&D, and our formative TTRPG experience is being "on-boarded" by Uncle Matt. I've only ever known 5th edition. So silly things like edition wars is actually very alien to me. This video was super useful in putting things in perspective.
I was a middle schooler in the 3.5-4 edition wars.
I remember spending all my money on the core books for 4e and then getting mocked by the people I was going to play with. Cause they all meant 3.5….
So I found some players and we played 1-30 and slayed orcus and thwarted his plans to overthrow the raven queen.
Good times.
This is how you win DND. 🎉
4e still my favorite edition
Fucking radical
Hell yeah! Sounds awesome.
I watched the acid trap in the Briarwood Castle in S1 of Critical Role with no context and I ran a mock combat a week later with my friends as level 1 characters in an open field against Mephits. I still remember feeling absolutely sure by the end of that combat that this was going to be my favorite hobby and I've been DMing ever since!
I also want to thank MCDM for my passion for this hobby, I watched the first Running the Game video while searching "How to run DnD" and within a month I was running a level 1-3 adventure with my friends on a weekly basis.
Me: "sweet! A video about the history of d&d! That's one of my favorite things, next to the history of synthesizers"
Matt: "hold my potion"
I’ve been around for a while, but the worst experience I had was when 3.5e transitioned to 4e
I liked 4e
I liked a lot of what it did, I liked a lot of what was changed, and I appreciated the way it made it easier for DMs (me) to do what I loved
Unfortunately, that meant that I was a pariah in my own hobby:
If I talked about 4e, I was told I was a fool - if I was vocal about my appreciation, I was shouted down - if I posted a discussion about all the things 4e does well, I got literal, actual *death threats*
I have experienced the edition war, and they are a fools game
Thankfully the idea of what 4e is and what people *think* it is… is slowly changing - people are finally realizing what elements made it good
I wish I would have been wise enough to just enjoy the game rather than even involve myself in the wars
4e did some things well. It also did some things _very_ poorly. While the same can be said of pretty much every edition, the problem was that the things 4e did poorly were things that 3.x did well. It didn't help that the marketing and hype around the new edition focused on the meme "the math just works", which was false (demonstrably so) because they literally kicked the guy with the math degree off the design team. By the end of the edition, they _still_ hadn't figured out how to fix skill challenges, for instance.
Check out 13th age! It's awesome! If you liked 4e you'll love it.
Several people who crafted Pathfinder Second Edition actually worked on 4th as well. I never got to play 4th edition, but I've seen people talk about how PF2 actually borrowed a lot from it and how they feel that PF2 is its spiritual successor. I've wanted to look into 4e since I learned that. It's always good to reflect on how we got to where we are today.
THIS. People who weren't there have NO IDEA what it was like being a fan of 4e around these parts when it came out. Imagine that at the height of the latest OGL fiasco you'd been like "I'm glad Wizards is doing this, I see nothing wrong here," how people would respond, how your upvotes and comments would look. This is what it was like being in online spaces at the launch of 4e and thinking it was better, or more fun, than 3e.
@@PedanticTwit I don't have much experience with Skill Challenges in 4e, but I hear people say they were "broken" very often, and I'm not sure what is meant by this. What exactly was it about them that was broken?
Hello, this is my first introduction to you, and it's weird seeing all these assumptions about things. It's exciting, and I can't wait to go back and see what you've had to say for apparently a very long time.
I started with 3e, bought the core 3 books, but never found a group to play. When I did, they were playing 3.5, but told me the "3.0" PHB was good enough to start at level 1 and they'll just tell me if something big changed. I fell out, but was still interested. I eventually found a new group, and bought a whole bunch of 3.5 books. I played games, I ran games, it was super great fun. I even got ahold of old modules and adapted them for 3.5 in exactly the way you described, though I had no previous edition experience to easier determine what was supposed to be easy vs challenging so I just winged it more. I enjoy the homebrew scene, especially how easy it is to create new player character options, classes, spells, feats, all that, and make some of my own. I enjoy the technical side so much that when Eberron came out, I was in awe of how tightly integrated the mechanics were to the subtle cracks and semi-flaws of 3e, and that's something that just can't be replicated when they took the flavor forward.
Anyway, 4e comes out, and I'm not a basher or edition warrior. I loved the system for its tactical skirmish mini-wargaming side. Though I had and still have criticisms of it, which I'm rarely able to talk about, because it's hard to find someone who isn't an edition warrior and thus won't entertain the idea that I appreciate multiple systems, or find someone who doesn't just assume I'm an edition warrior and don't care to listen because they're just tired of arguments. Mainly that complexity was unified, which don't get me wrong was a good option, but it removed the "choose your own character creation difficulty" that made fighters and wizards so different to build. And I didn't like how complex classes were from the perspective of homebrew, meaning it took a lot more design to make a new class or modify an existing one that I kinda gave up trying. Also, it was more work to run older adventures, as not just monster replacement was needed, but whole new tactical maps with interesting features and terrain were so integral to 4e that "30 kobolds in the middle of a cave" wouldn't do the game justice. Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate a lot of the under-the-hood stuff that went into 4e's design and implementation that actually underpins 5e and more modern gaming, and it doesn't get enough credit for that.
For various reasons, I switch "back" to the 3e ruleset with Pathfinder. I still had a lot of old 3e/3.5e books after all, and pf1 let me straight up run all those "old" adventures and modules written for it right out of the box with very very little modifications. This is also where I first started toying with Ravenloft, taking cues from the 3e Expedition adventure but also previous versions. 4e never had a fully contained Ravenloft adventure the way 2e, 3e, and 5e had. Plus, pf1 was just as easy to homebrew for as 3e, with classes especially being easy to modify or create. I also could take the lessons learned from 4e about interesting tactical maps and terrain and move them into my games. I kinda missed Eberron though, because while it still existed, and I now had two whole series of books to pull from for flavor, the tight integration with the cracks in 3e was missing. Like how you can appreciate a car for its good suspension over a bumpy road, but it feels less special when the road is smoothed out? The car never got less good, but it still felt that way. But eventually Pathfinder got long in the tooth, *because* it was so complex and got tons of material out for it, plus all the content being accessible in the OGL made new character builds brought me panic attacks from analysis paralysis with having five million feats to sift through when making an otherwise simple character at level 1-3.
5e comes along, and it's an instant switch. Just as easy to homebrew for as 3e/pf1, a lot of under the hood changes that made it a unified gaming system (thanks, 4e!), and I still appreciate that the supplement churn hasn't gotten out of hand. I wouldn't be surprised if there are fewer mechanical character option books produced over its lifetime than there were 3e/4e/pf books released in six months during their respective heydays. Again, it's easy to dig through old material for adventures and flavor. Tactical combat is nice, but for simpler encounters it feels like a breath of fresh air to not have to pull out a map and engage people into heavy thinking mode for optimal play, while still having that big setpiece battle with all kinds of interesting terrain and positioning.
Currently I'm personally invested in Pathfinder 2e, especially since it's now easier to handle all their free online content, and the refresh with the new (as of time of commenting) Remaster making things exciting. I find I don't have as much enthusiasm for homebrew or creating my own stuff as I used to (two jobs and declining health can do that). I feel like I'm being left behind the newer generation of tabletop RPG players though as I have hangups about online play, and the explosion of performative gaming like Critical Role. It's harder to find in-person games than it used to. I know that shouldn't be a complaint, because really it's increasing the accessibility of gaming, from people who just find it more convenient, to bringing in people who would've had problems trying to meet in person, plus bypassing being limited to your local area for finding fun people to play with.
I'm keeping a critical eye on WotC, having not liked a lot of the things they've done as a company lately, and have been open to other alternatives. The biggest problem is finding other people who are open to other systems and able to meet in-person, since I have such anxiety about online play.
Sorry for the huge wall of text, but since you shared some of your stories, I thought I could share some of mine.
Not related to the video at all, but I want to thank you Mr Colville for inspiring me to run my first campaign after being a player for many years, It's going well with 7 players (help) and I'm on my 46th session this Sunday with the party just turning level 5 from level 1. In February of 2024 It'll be running 2 years strong.
This hobby has brought me so much joy and I enjoy your creative monsters, rules, and stories / insight. Thank you again for what you've provided for this hobby and for this amazing game.
46 sessions and you're only hitting level 5? Thats glacial progression.
Congratulations! That's awesome!!!
@@LoveProWrestling players arent complaining and neither am I.
@@danacoleman4007 indeed!
I would love to watch a series where Matt plays all kinds of games especially if it helps out those rpgs with small audiences right now.
He does have a board game series, they did digital overlays so you can see the table.
Since he has worked a lot in game design I would love to hear him discuss these other rpg games. From what they try to do and how the rules lean towards a certain playstyle to interesting mechanics you can steal for other games
Matt. I’m a longtime pathfinder GM. This video, like all your videos, continues to perfectly apply to me and my group. We’re transitioning slowly into PF2.5 now and taking a “that’s a great new rule, let’s use it” approach. We will probably be fully moved over by the end of next year.
Keep doing your awesome work!
Yes, Mr. Colville. Generation X does not exist. And that is exactly the way we like it. :)
As another second generation gamer, I feel you are very much spot on in your history and your analysis.
O Captain my Captain.
That is a very Generation X thing to say.
I think the reason Gen X 'doesn't exist', is because boomer has become, at least in popular media, a synonym for old. I don't know if you're gonna like it, but while the original meaning of the term doesn't apply to gen x at all (as in the result of the baby boom), you've become a boomer.
Give me THAC0 or give me death!
Copy that mate. I have noticed that people seem to have forgotten us gen x ers, and I also like it that way. However, I find it absolutely hilarious when I am called a “boomer” because I have grey hair. I think the word have a different meaning now, and simply mean “old dude”.
Great vid. Honestly, you could add a Part 2 and go for another hour. Maybe after 5.5 or 6e happens you could make a, "So, You're Tying Really Hard Not to be a Grognard Now" video.
That'd be great! :D
lol, indeed!
I gave up trying not to be a grognard and embraced my internal old grumbler.
Man, the section where Matt talks about companies making a product and then firing all their employees seems unfortunately well timed.
I watched the stream VOD version of this so I’ll say this here when I couldn’t say it there: this is a great bookend the D&D content era on this channel. Looking forward to the future!
Truly the greatest of all central conflicts - the money people, vs the devs, vs the grognards, vs the excited players - I'd play that campaign!
You start off using the jankiest old rules as a party of devs. Every time you defeat a board member (boss fight) you get to upgrade to a less janky version of the rule 😂
The tavern your party found itself in is being ambushed by the goons of the local investors. One of the local grognards say "These were the stakeholders.. it´s been forever like this. These ambushers are the best type of montization the village can afford. An endless cycle of destruction and reinvention". Assemble your team of excited players and devs for a search of The Ultimate Rule Book, bring the battle to castle Stakehold and take the money Dindi village so desperately needs!
We ARE playing that campaign irl
@@D_A_D_Ha, a literal „boss“ fight, nice
Tag your alignment; I'm excited-money
Player and DM since 1982. Game store owner covering the period of 3.5 to 4e. Your description of the events, mood, and business of the 3 to 4 transition is spot on.
I can't believe those "running the game" videos are that old already. I re-watch these often; your enthusiasm for dnd and gaming in general is contagious and when I hit a wall in my dming I just watch those for inspiration. Your contribution to d&d is just as big to some as Critical Role and Stranger Things... because you are a river to your people.
Same here man. Hit the lows, succumb to a bit of burn out, or just lose the love and a few old episodes of Running the Game brings me back to life.
Critical Role and Stranger Things might be responsible for the most new players in the 5e era, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Matt was responsible for more new dungeon masters than anyone else.
As one of the many contemporary classical composers who also runs D&D (no, really, there's a shockingly large crossover), I was so delighted by the tangent veering into early tape music history. Phenomenal stuff.
Cool!
Some of my favorite supplements for D&D were the Complete Handbook series for 2E. There are so many cool, weird, and interesting things in those books that I still pull from them today for my homebrew games. The best thing about D&D is there is almost 40yrs of material to pull from. I have always viewed editions as guidelines and ran my own thing for my friends.
Definitely. I've went back to the Complete Book of Elves (for the elven messenger arrow) and the Psionics Handbook (for what matter agitation does at each temperature point).
2e Complete Handbook series, such as Kits working as a character class sub class with cultural backgrounds. ( Players Options: Skills & Powers, also know as AD&D 2.75 revised Psionic class powers.)
Complete Humanoid handbook, ever wanted to play a pixie or ogre mage ? Or an orc cleric/ranger that deals in viper venom ? Lizardmen rogue/rangers that stealth hunt people from the waterline and lasso drag their target prey into a watery drowning.
DMG section option " Create Your Own Character Class, which we just use those rules to modify premade current classes.
I had a bard with the kit: Riddle Master, I hate riddles and refuse to deal with them. So I modify my bard to reach 2nd-level as fighter 2,000xp with a few extra non-weapon profs. And took Engineer and thief skill Find/Remove Traps. Also took Dance/weapon kata knife dance/ pick pocket to do stage magic tricks with small blade intimidation. Most other players' PC took my Riddle Master as a Blade Dance.
I only played with Riddle Master kit bonuses and not with the Blade Dancer spinning blade bonuses. Since I had a good Bluff, no one really wanted to test him.
b.) Had in one game a party of a wood elf ranger not happy to be in an underground dwarven city. My Riddle Master human started small talk with the couple of dwarven guides with a charisma check to get them talking about the construction/ Engineer check and another charisma check to make the talk lively and egging the dwarves on about the stonework.
The wood elf wasn't happy, and the grey elf bard/Lore Master got into the talk enough where the dwarves were starting to have a polite tone with her.
The grey elf roll charisma/, .. " Dwarves only live a few centuries compare to elves. I will sing about you and this place for 800years and gods willing for a thousand years."
She roll well enough the dwarves didn't take the life span deference as a haughty insult, and they though she singing proper enough for an elf. So they shared more of their history with her.
c.) The player that PC the wood elf ranger normal plays a dwarf, so to Stay In Character he acts annoyed while everyone else starts singing really bad out of tune dwarf songs.
2.) 2e weapon speed initiative factors. House rule .. IF .. you beat your target init by half then your PC gets a second attack with a -1 atk/-2 Ac. If atks land flip a coin heads does normal dmg or tails does x2 dmg. If your atks fail the target gets an extra action atk against the attacking PC with x2dmg. Want to risk it ?
In one game the rogue beat the fighter with a great sword by 4. meaning knight init divided 4x into the fighter's Gs roll.
Counter roll of dex/str vs dex/str.
Fighter got stabbed 4x in the face through the helmet face slit opening, losing a couple of teeth and a stab sinus cavity. The rogue fail dex roll and received a left elbow and cross guard to his ribs.
Due to other game system such as TMNT and Vampire, rogue had to roll con to keep from getting broken ribs.
b.) WEG west end games Star Wars d6 dice pool system. Double action for stander combat or using force powers requires halfing the dice pool. Just like Whitewolf/World of Darkness (WoD) vampire copied.
My location got in WotC 3e d20 Star Wars in before D&D came to town. So carry over from WEG into our D&D/Star Wars to make a double action without a feat, just half the PC skill ranks. So a PC with 12 ranks as an 8th-level n/Pc instead of making a single skill roll at +12 they could make two rolls at +6.
Or roll Panic and roll 12 rolls with a +1 modifer.
Whatever feeds the drama of a given story.
ahhh the complete left handed albino dwarfs handbook....
This was TSR trying to compete with GURPS, by providing so many classes that it 'might' be able to compete with a classless system.
Every time i watch a Matt video, my love for the game reignites. Matt, you have such an infectious love for the game, and i hope i can have the same effect on my players
Stranger things is what got my daughter into d&d she saw them playing it and says "Daddy I wish I could play that game" which I responded with " Oh yeah I got all the books (3.5) in the attic!" Grinning ear to ear 😃
I wish you and you daighter the happiest of true D&D role playing times. If I were near you, I would want to join. I have a bunch of AD&D/2e as well as 3.5 myself.
And.......?
This video really gave me a different perspective on gaming. I was one who grew up in the 80s dealing with the Nintendo to Super Nintendo evolution where you invested in so many games under one system and now the new Wow game system is coming out and the old ones are now obsolete. Your video put D&D into a very different perspective that opens my mind and attitude to the new changes. Thank you Matt. Keep making videos like this. We need it. We need more Running the Game too.
Ryan Dancey, former Wizards VP and the dude who brokered the deal between WotC and TSR, talks about the Hasbro Board and the idea of Core Brands and the path to $100m a year.
www.enworld.org/threads/wotc-ddi-4e-and-hasbro-some-history.661470/
While I am genuinely thankful and acknowledge Ryan Dancey greater role in furthering our beloved hobby, his Pathfinder Online was a irksome misstep. It’s been awhile since I saw the Running the Game with the sample PC’s from the begging of this video, anyone kindly remember which episode it was on ?
@@imissnewspapers many younger or casual gamers will not be aware that Ryan Dancey was the architect and advocate of the OGL some two decades ago. The third party industry, Pathfinder & MCDM included, owe their genesis to that bit of gaming history/providence.
6:35 I disagree a bit - I don't particularly like 5e and don't play it, HOWEVER what they did with the rules system was very clever from a design point of view imo. They essentially simplified 3e, and with the universal proficiency modifier made the system much easier for new players to comprehend.
Also the Subclass system was brilliant as they were really the legacy of the old Prestige classes, but asigning them directly to classes made it a lot easier for players to 'get'. The result is those first few levels of 5e, 1 to 5 lets say, are very exciting for new players to experience.
So they did do a lot of good design stuff. Are they as creative as other editions of the game? Not even close, but they did research and altered the product to make it more widely available and it worked!
I still love 4e.
The monsters were too tanky but the player balance and ease of explanation was like no other.
@ollieknoxx And of course Prestige Classes themselves were the hand me down / remastered Kits from 2nd Edition’s The Complete Handbook series. Just as the Bard class was the OG Prestige Class from 1st Edition.
You're totally right with most people won't notice much of a change between 5e to 5.5, I was interested in a more radical change when OD&D was announced but now I'm not sure if I have another 10 years of the 5.x framework left in me. I am enjoying the wide variety of other games on the market and I hope everyone who is in a similar boat to me begins to explore the rest of the RPG market, there's so much great stuff.
Yeah man. The earlier ODnD tests were basically a partial revert to 4e - a lot of standardization and clean up of system elements. It played way better. It had some neat ideas in it. Class-specific powers (coded as spells, but let's be honest), unified spell lists, standardized progression, daily powers (sorry. PB/day abilities).
People hated it. Grognard is after all derived from the French "to complain."
@@SeanBoyce-gp Totally, my group and I are in our early-mid 20s so none of my friends have played previous editions but I have slowly accrued a great collection of books from previous editions from used book stores, book fairs and the like. I steal so much stuff from 4e, the monsters are actually interesting other than bags of hit points, and the abilities that players get are actually really great, I compare them to the cavalier from Xanathar's. Seeing OD&D dipping back into that 4e style rather then just streamlined 3.5 got me excited, 4e is something I really want to run but it seems monolithic to break into, but I made my players play 3.5 so possibly 4e next. Give them some perspective.
But you're right, seeing the D&D Next fighter was so close to a combination of 3.5 and 4e fighters but WotC listened to Grognards who just wanted to swing their swords, my favourite fantasy heroes are men at arms, I play a lot of fighters and they are always easily dead last in usefulness in the party, hopefully we can come back to classes being interesting. We are never going back to first edition where you got magic items instead of class abilities, despite how interesting it would have been.
Found the red box Basic D&D in my best friend's closet in 1981, and have been DMing ever since. I'm now using 5e, though I still usually run in Greyhawk.
I may be one of the few people who found Matt Colville because of Critical Role, but didn’t actually watch Critical Role until Colville convinced me to. Specifically: my teen daughter started watching CR in early 2019, and wanted to play, so she persuaded me to run a game for our family. Well, of course I had to first figure out how to do that, so I searched for DM tips, found Colville’s Running the Game series. CR itself seemed daunting to start watching - but when I saw Colville’s video about the Vox Machina finale (ignoring the spoiler alert because I was never planning to watch CR anyway), I was so impressed that I decided it was worth it to dive into watching CR from the beginning. It was, and was still extremely emotional when I finally saw that finale in context.
I got so excited when I got the gold star! This was a great video.
Me too! XD
+
25:54 wow - having worked in IT for about 25 years and also been a gamer that term just instantly transported me back to the early 2000's in my mind.
Matt, just hope you know I spent all video trying to figure out the words here but you bring that 'Excited to go watch cartoons on a Saturday morning as a kid' feeling to dnd.
That’s a great way to put it!
I appreciate that this video is not only a history of the hobby, but also the history of THIS channel. With a side of the future of MCDM to boot. Thanks for giving back to the community all these years, and here’s to many more.
As someone who's only ever played 5e, but always wondered about the previous editions, this video answered a lot of my questions and put it in exactly the type of context I was looking for. So, thank you for the explanations and sharing your experience - it was delightful.
It's funny to look back 10 years, when someone tried to get me into D&D, but at the time I wasn't as interested. I only really got into it some 4-5 years ago, and weirdly enough not because of anything like Stranger Things or Critical Role, but simply because of curiosity about roleplaying as an activity. I didn't know anything about any editions or anything, I simply got dragged to a discord server and given a PHB. A few days later, I was on my Blue Dragonborn Druid, playing a battle theme on my flute to inspire my allies, on my first turn in my first combat ever.
Fast forward to today, I'm working on a massive project, making an entirely homebrew setting, content and rules for a unique D&D game, using 5e as a basis. It's been a ride.
I have some thoughts on the new edition already, but I'll be damned if I ignore an hour long video from Matt.❤
I legitimately didn't look at the time right up until the second he said "...we go as long as I say." Gave me a good chuckle.
In Aliens Hudson, "Fucking A."
Matt, this is the first one of your videos I've watched in quite a while. No insult here, I just kind of dropped out of most things ttrpg for a while. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this. At the 35 minute mark, I got disappointed that I was over halfway through it. It should have been 2 hours! 😉Anyway, keep up the good work, my friend. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go back and watch everything I've missed...
You can listen to Matt for 2 hours, if you visit his twitch channel. :D
Look up his “History of D&D, One Fighter at a Time”.
It’s his best stuff. That, and “The Railroad versus the Sandbox video”.
I see that he linked the “History” videos in the description box.
@@cavalier973 I still use his Diplomacy series in discussions amongst my sci pol/writer colleagues. What a masterclass.
I love how Matt speaks from experience and the heart about things like this. It makes his voice all the more valuable in the sea of noise
Matt: “Who doesn’t like Loot Crates?”
Everyone: Raises their hand
Thankfully, it's illegal in my country :)
I started with 4e and the digital tools were amazing. I used them to make characters for any new players and the encounter tools made improvising combat a breeze and a blast. Never got past level 3 though. In 5e I've had a group going for years, rotating who DMs. They're all up for trying the MCDM RPG, and I have high hopes for it.
The digital tools you were using weren't there ones 4e was supposed to have. There was going to be a full virtual tabletop and stuff. That was already turning out to be harder than it looked, and then the guy in charge killed his wife and then himself. The replacement character builder was the best a new software company could do in a short timeframe. VTTs were then left to open source and then third party companies.
45:22 I lost all my original D&D group over 4th Ed. I’m with you. I felt like they really made D&D more accessible to new players and it was so easy to run games and not get bogged down into arguing about rules. I love 5e as the new shiny but 4th Ed made it simple to just play. 3.5 was great but man did it get tedious sometimes.
I think a huge factor that helped people find 5E and consider playing wasn't just that Critical Role happened, but also that there were women at the table.
I know so many people who tried to play dnd in highschool but were the only woman at the table, and didn't have a great time. I was lucky that I did have a good time playing with a group of all guys. Seeing a group with woman playing, having fun, and being welcome probably made a LOT of people go, "oh maybe this could be for me too!"
True, and part of that is fed by or feeds into how different nerd culture is these days. It's not the AV club loser stereotypes anymore (if it ever truly was). The slider for what's nerdy has moved a lot, especially when nerd franchises started getting movies, and pop culture became nerd culture (or at least a major flavor of it). So now nerd stuff is mostly just normal stuff for "normal" people. I don't know which way that feedback loop goes, but regardless, it means women play the heck out of the game and love it, and that's awesome.
We had a girl at the table in Middle School/HS in the late 80's early 90's and it was amazing. Very rare. But she eventually discovered boys and popularity and well...she stopped playing.
That's a good poinnnt. Feminism making DnD bigger and better woo
YES.
As well as visible members of the global majority and LGBTQ+
I think it's worth noting that 2nd Edition had it's own "x.5" iteration in the "Player's Option" era that happened during TSR's deathbed years.
For sure. We abused the hell out of those Kits. Cool new abilities at the “cost” of a social reaction modifier? Ha! And IIRC the fighter book had new rules to abuse beyond just the Kits.
2E Kits were the genesis of today’s subclasses I’d say. I really liked how 3E did prestige classes. 5e subclasses are hit or miss IMO.
Precisely. For me, 1.5 was the introduction of Unearthed Arcana in '85, 2.5 was the Player's Option and DM's Option black books in '96, 3.5 was 3.5 in 2003 a mere three years after 3rd edition came out which pissed off Monte Cook enough to form his own company, 4.5 was Essentials, and now... this.
@@Interfect727 Right on with UA as 1.5. Although that’s when I was first getting into it, so I didn’t notice. However the Wilderness Survival Guide def changed how my friends and I played the game, so maybe that’s my 1.5.
I honestly love these videos. As an art history major and 5e dnd player, any opportunity I have to learn about what came before, why it’s important, and how it’s happening again right now is so appreciated.
Hey Matt, just wanted to comment and thank you for making your videos. I have been DMing a group for the past 3 years online, started during COVID, but just did our first in person session a few days ago and it went really well. I think your point that DnD sessions are "full of memes" definitely has helped its popularity among the younger generations, myself included. Something about the spontaneity of failure in a genre that is usually quite serious creates comedy that feels very relatable and resembles day to day stories. Sure in real life we don't slay dragons or save royalty but we all have a time we slipped and fell or did something incredibly stupid and can laugh about. Its part of what makes the game so human. I think we often get caught up in the rules, when ultimately that is what we are looking for; A reason to hang out and tell stories to each other. Would love for you to talk more about this topic, your passion is plain to see. Keep making great stories.
I started in 2014 when on active duty. Critical Role and Stranger Things weren't really a thing yet. I feel like I got an organic upbringing just before it became super popular to play the game, I only played with people who were willing to try it out or had already played. Me and my coworkers were the weirdos on deployment but it's some of the most fun I've ever had in all of gaming.
I got a similar thing. My stepdad was an old dnd nerd, and he still had all his 3.5 stuff just before 5e was hitting shelves, so I got brought in on that. Nothing else existed to me as far as dnd was concerned, and I had a fantastic time. 3.5e is still my favorite just due to nostalgia, but I've come to have a lot of respect for every other game and edition I've messed with since. What a cool hobby
I got in just as crit roll started and didn't discover it till a year and half later
Had my 3.5 books and some ad&D 2nd ed books from friends parents
My head of maths at school / college is why i started being able to get into it. Even covered old naval combat amd long turns for making it playable with reloading canons
Thank you Toddy
I think that whatever comes, we can not discount the OGL debacle's influence. It stoked much more resentment toward the money people and the C-suite suits than there would have been normally, and has put a lasting distrust into some people's minds. It is all too recent, only happening this year (2023) it has not "blown over" like the Corpos had hoped. I think because of this, any effects we normally would have seen, will be amplified.
I think the attitude of management towards the fans plays a big part of the game's success, and its downfall. Which is one thing this history lesson failed to point out. T$R wasn't just "clever". For many people it stood for "They $ue Regularly", which was exactly how Lorraine Williams treated the superfans who published supplimentry rules for 2nd Ed.
3E brought the original OGL with it, and a host of 3rd party publishers sprang up creating content for it and giving it free advertising. It helped the game remain popular, and it's why groups like Critical Role could create content without (much) fear of being sued (as almost certainly would have happened back in the T$R days). 4E had other issues, but I've always argued that the GSL was one of the big contributors to why that edition essentially failed. With 5E, the old OGL was reinstated, and the game's popularity surged even though I personally don't think it's a real improvement on 3E or 4E.
Then Hasbro/WotC got greedy yet again, and we had the latest OGL debacle. They've now placed the SRD under two licences - OGL and Creative Commons 4. That should settle the problems for that SRD, but this issue shows that the suits are still looking to either shut down or at least monetize the work of the 3rd party publishers (superfans). A lot of those 3rd party publishers are still spooked. As I think they should be, because one of the long term goals of the VTT is probably to shut them out of the system.
I've never been an edition warrior, but I've been around since AD&D 2e, so I've seen plenty of it. I've always been amused at how many 4e mechanics are in 5e, just disguised with non-4e terms (i.e. Healing Surges into Hit Dice).
Good idea's, not good design. (in general)
A great distillation of all of the History of D&D videos with the current context. A+ work Matt
This is the first video of your's that I've ever watched, I think RUclips auto played me here while I was sleeping because it was 9 mins into playing when I woke up this morning. What a cool piece of history with breakfast.
Spoken like a veteran of a thousand edition wars. I appreciate your measured response, loving send up to the history, and optimism for the future.
Another thing that I think brought players into D&D was the video game Neverwinter Nights in the 2002 area. The online part of that game was magic and taught me about 3rd edition rules.
Yes, absolutely! Neverwinter Nights' online capabilities is what introduced me and my friends to playing d&d together. We had experienced d&d before with Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, but never as a co-operative experience.
After a few months (perhaps a year) of "Adventure Fridays" we became aware of the tabletop game and decided to try it out.
That's what it was for me for sure. Back in that time, wrapping my head around DnD rules was nigh impossible but NWN made it digestible to my soft, smooth brain.
💫 Yay, gold star! Thank you for this, btw. It makes me realize how our own game group is so split on trying something new at times, because we have Gen Xers who grew up with AD&D and Millennials with 3.5 and Gen Z kids who have only known a single edition.
I love all the editions of D&D. I've borrowed from every edition and have played AD&D 1/2e, 3.0/3.5, Pathfinder, 4e, 5e and now BX in the form of OSE. I have to say my favorite is OSE just because its so easy to run, it also frees people up from looking at their character sheet for answers and instead they use their imagination describing what they can do. This helps with the shared narrative, even the characters that prefer to sit in the background end up getting sucked in to the story telling aspect simply because they have to describe what they're doing instead of just saying I roll for insight or perception etc.
Wait what is is OSE? And BX?
I'm absolutely here for a discussion of East Coast vs. West Coast synthesis.
I shared this with my D&D group after discussing the idea of changing versions, interestingly because at some point if I remember correctly my dm plans to use your system once it releases. This is something that I feel like we all need to see so we can come to the table and discuss everything before a change does happen.
Acquisitions incorporated with Chris Perkins was my Critical Role but you're the reason I've become a DM, thanks Matt
For me, I invested a lot into 2e and so did my friends. We loved the edition and there were so many varied worlds to play in. This is why we all stayed in 2e because there is so much variety.
Classic Matt hooked me in Gold Star ⭐️ certified. Played from ‘81 to today. Working on a pirate themed campaign with my 25 year old son and his buddies that I’ve DM’d for since they could roll dice. Joy is the gaming table. Thank you for all you do.
This is like the Hardcore History of DnD. I love it
ITS RPG... THE EVENTS... THE FIGURES.... THE DRAMA... THE DEEP QUESTIONS... ITS HARDCORE RPG
QUOTE *HEY EVERYBODY MATT COLVILLE HERE* END QUOTE
@@oliverbaunach4395I can hear his voice lololol.
That's the vibes I get from this. This was a quality podcast :P
@@alalalala57 "... to everyone else.. welcome to the fifth installment of... 'blueprint for how to make a fighter in every edition'..."
Great video. I know MC is a busy dude, but damn I miss these long form video essays. Also, dope to see Shadowdark get a nice little shout out. Can confirm it's the survival horror style dungeon game with wonderful modern (3rd Ed+) style mechanics. Chefs kiss to this video and to Matt doing what he does. Also, this feels like the "end" of the history of D&D series, which never covered 4e and 5e, so ... yeah that would be cool too. :) (with a cherry on top)
Dude, if you made a two hour video where you just read the ingredients lists on shampoo bottles I would still listen to all of it. Such an amazing storyteller voice.
⭐ I lived through all the editions you did, though I probably didn't play them as much as you, and this is a great history of the game. Who needs Joe Manganiello's documentary, I'll just point people here.
Looking forward to the MCDM RPG!
i think it's probably fair to say that 4E is and always will be my favorite D&D edition because i can't see wizards ever doing an edition like it again... ever
just because of how everything went down, and also how labor intensive 4E was to make compared to editions that are more aligned with how the Red Box looked & played
whatever anyone wants to say or think about 4E, it was definitely the one edition that was capital-D different in ways that no other edition has been, or probably will be
Mine too brother, mine too
4e was a great edition for supplements. I was peak Highsxhool when products came out. Minis, the pogs and tokens and maps came out so much for it.
I'm starting to learn lancer, since everyone I talk to tells me it's mechanically very similar to 4e, tactical, crunchy, movement based, etc.
I enjoyed 4e too much to even start playing 5e
4E was my favourite edition to DM. And played in some great campaigns.
But I can see why many people found it deviated too far from the assumptions and optics of D&D.
Love this history lesson… and that’s at least in part because of the quality of the professor’s storytelling
I love the positivity Matt has for everyone in the community. Between Matt and MCDM, Ginny Di, Dungeon Dudes, Colby from D4, Chris from Treantmonk, Will from DnDshorts, and tons of others, we are just lucky to have kind, funny, knowledgeable people leading the content community for TTRPGs and D&D.
Really fascinating video, Matt. I especially liked the parts regarding D&D 4e; your experiences were different from mine and I liked hearing that perspective. My TTRPG group abhorred 4e. WoW didn't take players away from our table though. There was just something about 4e that felt less like a TTRPG and more like someone tried translating an MMORPG into a boardgame. While there were definitely some things 4e did right - I still think per turn, per encounter, per day abilities are a wonderful way of giving players Cool Stuff™ to do in every scenario - but to my group it felt sterile and designed by committee.
Meanwhile, Paizo's Pathfinder was so damn crunchy, fun, and seemed made with intense passion for the hobby. It was familiar enough to 3.0/3.5e D&D to easily teach everyone at the table the differences in session or two but polished the existing rules... which led to my group and I investing truly irresponsibly amounts of money into Paizo's books for years to come. We tried calculating how much we spent on Pathfinder supplemental books and APs, plus PDFs of course, and it was over $2k.
We tried D&D 5e but bounced off it. To this day we mainly stick to Pathfinder 1and 2e and Starfinder 1e (soon to be 2e). D&D lost us completely with 4e.
We preordered MCDM RPG btw. Looking forward to giving that a try.
I am from Czech Republic and playing RPGs since mid 90s. It is amazing to look back now for how long we lived with RPGs that were made in our country. We played mainly two different games. And one of them for many years and several editions. Yes, we also had editions like you with your shiny D&D :-D
But internet and unofficial translation of D&D 3 (or 3.5?) happened and I think that made many people to switch to "the original" :-)
Our group then switched from 3e to 5e several years ago and skipped 4e entirely. So I never played it and never had time to read the rules. What is funny with 3e rules for everything is that I still miss some of them in 5e thinking "You want to do *this*? There will probably be rule here somewhere... You would like to do *that*? OK, let me check the rules..." and I can't find any. So it takes maybe more time than if they keep the rules there.
What brought me to D&D was a friend who told me about it and watching the Running the Game Series resulting in me falling in love with running games.
I got a gold star! Thanks Mat. I thought I was pretty knowledgeable about edition history, but this taught me a ton of new tidbits.
I loved the digital tools that accompanied 4e - made things so easy to build and run. The downside was when support for 4e dried up, all those resources existed in a digital form, and couldn't be easily ported out - kind of ended our groups ability to keep playing that edition. I can see that being an issue with this new digital model of 5.5e. The advantages of modern digital tools is amazing, but I don't like not actually owning the purchased resources. Looking forward to seeing how things progress, and I hope for a renaissance of diversified RPGs to enjoy! Thanks for telling tales and adding context to this wacky hobby of ours. Keep up the great work.
May i just say, the glee you told the history of synths was just glorious. I love seeing someone geeking out about their knowledge base.
🤩 Same here! Had no idea Matt was a synth geek too. Respect!
As Matt was geeking out, I remembered a snippet of an interview with David Bowie where he talked about buying a synthesizer in the early 70’s. He said the first thing he and one of his band mates did was to throw away the manual that came with it. They then proceeded to play around with it and enjoy what he called “all the crackles and farts” that came out of the machine.
So, a couple of things about Edition Wars (TM). First edition (AD&D) and 2nd edition were, as you stated, basically the same thing. Problems arose when some of the broken things that were "fixed" or "Nerfed" were played within the 2nd edition campaign. I would submit the example of a 1st edition Assassin being in the 2nd edition group, and owning it.
3rd edition was, is, and will be the bases for a lot of other RPG's with the "D20 system" and the Open Gaming License that was part and parcel to 3rd edition being as successful as it was. This is in addition to the promotional efforts WotC did and the positive word of mouth for the system. What is good about everything for D&D is centered around this edition completely rebuilding the rules from the ground up. From Non-Weapon Proficiencies to the introduction of Spontaneous casting, it is a capstone to the brand yet to be realized in the newer iterations.
Then the bottom dropped out. I tried to get my group to work with and play 4th edition for two years. I liked some of the concepts that have since been abandoned and hoped that a good session would turn things around.
Then Pathfinder happened. Or, I should say, Pathfinder Organized Play. Get your character, play the old rules (with needed adjustments) and drop in a table for a four hour self contained session. It was breathtakingly simple and I dropped 4th edition and the D&D brand as I worked with Archtypes, newer Prestige classes and various races to make interesting characters for others to meet.
Essentials killed D&D. There is just no other way to put it. Psionics was bad enough, but the clash of various rules systems being shoved into a "balanced" broken rule set just set fire to the whole thing. This is where the Edition Wars went into high gear, and part of it was the new license for 4th edition (separated from the old OGL) and the cutting off of third party support to bring everything inhouse. Etools lost their license, Paizo, as you mention, made their own game, starting with Adventure paths and 3.5 content before they could release Pathfinder Core. And nothing ever replaced the things lost.
So this 5th edition came out from the dying embers of Essentials 4.75. It promised to be everything that D&D was before it burned down in 4th edition hell, and came out with a skeleton of a system that the GM needed to parse and put together and try to house rule things that were not in the final product. I do not like the concept of Bonded Accuracy. 5th edition works right up until you get past 7th level, or you get a nice magical item.
Yeah, the new errata is coming, Pathfinder already did theirs. It is giving the rest of the rules the GM needs while nerfing a lot of things to be a bit more... like 4th edition.
Oh, and to be more sensitive to modern sensibilities.
As someone who came into the hobby of tabletop rpgs via pathfinder groups among fans of single player CRPGs & strategy games - I dont know how prevalent it was among the wider populace, but my observation (complete with its inherent sampling bias from the communities I participated in) was that D&D 4e did very poorly among that crowd. And my experience was that it was indeed because we hated World of Warcraft - but this was not because it stole away the time of our friends or because the game mechanics and rules were different... but because... it was subscription based, and it looked like thats where D&D was headed. Paizo meanwhile offered a more open & consumer-friendly alternative, and hey look, theres all these 3.5e people ready and waiting to build new communities around this game! It wasn't any surprise which way I went, when a disgruntled former 3.5e DM came in looking to build a new pf group on a forum I frequented. Fun fact: despite D&D being the one to make the big vtt push, us online pathfinder players still got together online to play: our 'vtt' was just google sheets.
I'm so happy you started talking about synths. I am deep into electronic music production and I will now look at my buchla easel and mini Moog (plugins) very differently.
Edit: seeing one of my favorite ttrpg youtuber being a gear nerd gives me the wiggles.
Edit 2: huh, so editing removes the creator's like, makes sense now that I think about it. Good to know for next time ^^' Damn me and my urge to correct typos.
Same. I laughed out loud when he pulled out the modular rack. My entire apartment is just a tangled mess of rpg books, synths/drum machines/effects processors and empty beer bottles.
Wrobgveltric bedt
My god, I am such a DnD nerd that I knew the story of the hobby and rhe big movements already. But I really liked your version of events, especially regarding personal situations, and I agree with your message, we need more positivity in the world. Stay well!
I like D&D. But i LOVE the hobby. I'll be happy to play a new edition, I'm happy to play other tabletop games. I'm just happy to play something fun with my players who are my best friends.
I think I feel the same way. I love D&D but I love the hobby more.
I love the hobby. There is nothing like face to face table top role playing games. I don’t care what game or what system. I’ll even give 4e another shot with the right group and GM.
Grab your ketchup and crunch away my friends.
While I think the hobby's best days are ahead of it, I think D&D's best days might actually be behind it, for real this time. The thing that I really most hope for is that we can eventually make a world where when someone is clueless and excited about the hobby there's a good chance that their first introduction will be something like FATE or Spell, but that it's expected that some of those people might move on to things like Blades in the Dark or Cinematic and Tactical (until I get a proper name that is how I will call it).
As long as it’s FATE, not FATAL!
@Ellebeeby what do you mean? FATAL is a great game for perfectly well-adjusted humans
/s
Great video, I love these longer form videos that exposite the history and culture of dungeons and dragons as well as the hobby in general. Your passion for this hobby shines through every time!
Would love more history videos, not just for dnd
I really enjoy listening to you. You are concise, well-spoken, and I always learn something. That last part is so valuable! I appreciate your sharing your knowledge with us. Oh, and I purchased your books "Strongholds & Followers," and "Kingdoms & Warfare." I absolutely love how your brain works because the books are so well-written and make so much sense to me. Thank you for helping enrich my gaming life.
I laughed outloud when Matt started talking about the grappling rules of 3.0 /3.5, ---oh brother, Im right there with ya!!!!!
Great video! I love the long ones!!! Looking forward to MCDM's new game!
Me too!