Yeah, thinking back on those early modules — or, for that matter, a lot of the early games I played (coughCollegecough), there was a lot of "Is this a village of non-humans? Kill them! Is it a village of humans? Wait for any sign they are going to attack us, then kill them!" And we were playing generally "good" characters. It was tribalistic Darwinism at its extreme, and nobody every batted an eyelash about it.
(Though today it's at least roundly parodied by comics like "Knights of the Dinner Table.")
Reshared post from +Yonatan Zunger
D&D holds a special place in my heart: it was my very first exposure to the idea of role-playing games, many long years ago. But as time went by, it became clearer and clearer that this was a game of Fridge Horror (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeHorror): if you back away from the game's conceits for a moment, you realize that it's all about playing roving bandits and murderers, with lots of heroic tropes stacked on top of it. (Which is to say, it's surprisingly similar to the Middle Ages. Seriously, knights are something you run away from.) I'm glad to see that the upcoming 5th Edition — of which a sample below — is keeping up the tradition.
The fucked-upedness of this was driven home to me several years ago, when my group of friends decided that it would be fun to pull out an actual D&D module — an adventure-in-a-box — and play it, as a lark. The effect of pointing some fairly Narrativist players at Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil was kind of amusing. I can tell you, for example, that the authors of this module pretty much assumed that if you came across a village of hobgoblins — large, muscular, hairy humanoids — you would simply wipe them out, and so the module gave you plenty of information about combat — including in their nursery — the loot you would find afterwards, and so on. It turns out that if you simply think "hey, there's a village of people here, maybe we can talk to them and figure out what's been going on" then the storyline starts to break considerably, and when the adventuring party starts to make peace treaties with them and get regular intelligence updates, a lot of later "OMG SURPRISE MONSTERS!" moments become less surprising. That's a good illustration of Fucked Up Trope #1: everyone you encounter, if they don't have a Special Plot Helmet, is presumed to be someone you're going to murder and rob, probably in that order.
Consider, for example, the illustration from the upcoming 5.0PH that you see below, demonstrating the "cloudkill" spell. This spell, which dates back a few editions, "generates a bank of fog, similar to a fog cloud, except that its vapors are yellowish green and poisonous." (Technical details of its effects follow) You may be more familiar with this spell if you know the history of World War I: it has the distinctive color of a 50/50 chlorine/phosgene mix, first used by Germany against the British at Wieltje in 1915. Chemical weapons FTW!
Some of the weirdness is more subtle, e.g. in the description of the new "Warlock" class, this being the type of spell-caster who learns their magic by apprenticing to some kind of powerful, but non-divine, being. (AFAICT they decided to take Jack Chick tracts literally in 5.0) Consider this quote:
"Stories of warlocks binding themselves to fiends are widely known. But many warlocks serve patrons that are not fiendish. Sometimes, a traveler in the wilds comes to a strangely beautiful tower, meets its fey lord or lady, and stumbles into a pact without being fully aware of it. And sometimes, while poring over tomes of forbidden lore, a brilliant but crazed student's mind is opened to realities beyond the material world and to the alien beings that dwell in the outer void."
Yes, that's right. D&D5.0 has decided to write Call of Cthulhu crossover straight into the canon.
Now, don't get me wrong: this isn't actually a criticism of D&D. It's batshit insane, and it's a solid mass of fridge horror, but once you realize and accept that horror, you actually have an opening to play a fantastic game — either straight, or with deconstruction. You just have to realize that a standard adventuring party, no matter how lawful or good it claims to be, is basically a force of chaos and destruction in the world which would cause the army to be called out under ordinary circumstances. In fact, the party which is convinced of their dedication to the ideals of Truth, Justice, and the False Medieval Way can actually be quite a fascinating study, especially if the consequences of their morals start to show. When you GM these games, by all means, let the horror shine through.
And when there's a natural, or even unnatural, opportunity to deconstruct with a bit of genre crossover, don't fear it. I've run a great game where it turned out that the world of D&D was a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and the players gradually started to find the fallout shelters and so on of the ancient civilization which their world supplanted. I've played in a game where one of my characters was killed — and then the GM called me aside, and my character's next clone was activated and sent back into the simulation. 5.0, apparently, is basically calling out to be played with +Charlie Stross' The Laundry Files in mind.
So don't fear the madness: embrace it, extend it, deconstruct it. Because the complete lunacy of the tropes many of us grew up with is kind of fascinating, if you step back and look at it for a bit.
An exclusive look at the new D&D Player’s Handbook—and The Warlock
Ethan Gilsdorf gets a first-look at some incredible high-res art from the latest edition of the classic pen-and-paper role-playing game.
Interesting. I don't think I or my friends were ever smart enough when we were younger to bother to think too much about our AD&D games in this way. We were very much of the hack and slash/munchkin vein of D&D players and there wasn't a whole lot of role playing in our "role playing."
+Les Jenkins Exactly. And that hack-and-slash style of D&D — encouraged by the game — is just the point. The Chick's tract sort of critique of the game is poppycock, but that doesn't mean that certain lessons weren't being taught.
D&D has been and it seems will forever be about a game of murderhobos so ignorant and amoral they don't even realize the atrocities they are committing.
And Goblins (the webcomic) puts it on end, and puts you in the shoes of the series most common cannon fodder (besides kobolds).