My
friends and I have been playing D&D since 1978. It was a totally new
experience at the time, breaking away from Avalon Hill wargames with hex maps
and cardboard counters into a world where we could try to do anything, imagine
anything. The world of RPGs expanded in the early ‘80s to include horror,
superheroes, and international espionage. All in the theater of the mind. It
could only get better.
Somewhere
along the line, I think we made a mistake. We bought little metal miniatures,
painted them, and placed them on a square grid. The setting was still exciting,
and we still felt the draw of character advancement and newfound abilites and magic
items, but sometimes it felt like we were playing the old wargames again,
counting out movement spaces and measuring for ranged attacks. We weren’t the heroes
anymore – those little metal figures were.
D&D
version 3.0, released in 2000, and 3.5 a few years later, were very successful
because they felt cleaner, more precise. They were also energized by the
release of the d20 Open Gaming License, which allowed any 3rd party publisher
to produce support materials for D&D without any licensing requirements.
The OGL sparked a renaissance in the RPG industry and dragged in a whole new
generation of gamers. But these releases also institutionalized the use of
miniatures and square grids. It was built right into the rules. The roleplaying
game became a board game whenever the players got into combat. The rules
required it.
Don’t
misunderstand me. I loved D&D 3.5.
I wrote for Dungeon Magazine during the 3.5 era and was part of an esoteric
priesthood that could calculate proper challenge ratings for encounters and correctly
generate all the modifiers for a new monster stat block. But it did feel like
we had lost something.
In
2008, Wizards of the Coast released the core books for the 4th edition of
D&D. The regression back to a tabletop combat game had taken 30 years, but
it had come full circle. Gone were any monster abilities that didn’t apply to
combat. Skills and character abilities were all focused on fighting using
miniatures on a square grid. All roleplaying aspects of the game had been
removed, leaving only a tabletop combat game (albeit a good one). We tried 4th
edition briefly, but it just made me sad. I missed D&D. We found some
refuge in Pathfinder, a very well-produced lifeboat for everyone who wanted to
stay with the 3.5 system. But I still preferred games where we could “go off
the grid.”
My
first exposure to D&D 5th edition was at Gen Con 2013. Some friends were
playing it in organized sessions and said they liked it. I really got
interested when I heard that none of the organized event Dungeon Masters had used
square grid maps or miniatures. Everything happened through dialog, with maybe
a few hand drawn maps thrown in to set the stage. I picked up the Players Handbook
and found myself reading a cleaned up version of the old school D&D rules,
but including many of the best parts of the editions that had come between. No
mention of squares, or precise line of sight, or drawings of how a cone-shaped
spell maps onto a square grid. I bought the Monster Manual and found that my
favorite creatures once again had their non-combat backgrounds and abilities.
D&D had been fixed. Congrats to lead designers Mike Mearls and Jeremey
Crawford for giving us back one of our favorite RPGs.
Now
I have to get back to preparing an adventure. I have a 5e group starting up
tomorrow. Good thing I don’t have to dig out all the right miniatures and
pre-draw a bunch of maps. I’ll spend that time concentrating on the story.
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