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I'm curious would a person with all the old books basically be able to get the free basic rules and get 80% of the rules changes? I mean minus background and race changes.
 
*shrug* The people that run the company probably weren't even born when I started playing. All they owe anything to is their shareholders as part of a publicly traded company. As for the hobby? D&D might be a big chunk of it, but there's plenty of other games and people willing to play those games. D&D's success or failure doesn't mean shit to me, except that if people get drawn into the hobby and end up curious enough to branch out into other avenues of play, maybe they'll stumble on to interests that align with my own? I certaintly wouldn't have found BRP, CoC, Mythras, Dragon Warriors, or the OSR, without experiencing the ennui WotC D&D gave me, so I guess I owe them a bit of gratitude after all.
Yeah I but want to play D&D due to the huge amount of nostalgia and memories I have with the game. My friends and I back in high school were the stereotypical nerds and outcasts. We were useless to the status quo. For several of us, D&D probably saved us from taking a dangerous path in life. We were all dirt poor but none of that mattered because we had D&D. Specifically D&D. And what WotC has done over the past couple years with their design changes and their gross public statements have all but said that the D&D my friends and I survived off of was wrong. Hell, just look at the huge disclaimer on older D&D products on DMsguild. They feel so strongly that the older style of D&D is wrong that they feel the need to have a huge nasty disclaimer at the bottom of the description where they spread nothing but lies and nonsense.

Modern WotC and their decision make my blood boil because I refuse to be gaslit in to believing older D&D is in any way wrong.
 
There are a couple things that would make me interested in "One D&D:"
  • An integrated "hard mode" option with slower advancement (ideally based primarily on treasure accumulation), slower recovery of hp and spells, fewer at-will and "push-button" abilities, more dangerous (save or die, save or suck) effects, more emphasis on resource management, and other stuff that makes the game feel more like the old days - sure, the DM can already house rule all that stuff in, but I'd like to see it as a fully developed and officially sanctioned option that works in the VTT space with the flip of a switch
  • An optional "classical" skin for the VTT stuff (and ideally the printed books as well, but I assume that would never happen) where armor and weapons look more historical, characters and monsters have more realistic proportions, and so on, a la something like Angus McBride's art
If WotC did both of those I'd probably pick up the new edition. Without them, I'm pretty sure I'll give it a pass.
Dude I am certain that both of these would be money makers. I wouldn't call it mainstream but there is a fairly active "O5R" movement out there and it's not all old white dudes. I showed Bunny this video about the changing art direction and tone over the years and it instantly "clicked" for her. She prefers not only the old school art direction but the "pulp survivor horror" tone of old school D&D (but prefers 5e to B/X). Survival-horror video games are trending hard right now. Not everyone wants to play medieval Marvel Superhero power fantasies.

 
Modern WotC and their decision make my blood boil because I refuse to be gaslit in to believing older D&D is in any way wrong.

I feel you to some extent, but for your own peace you eventually have to let go, shrug, move on and explore new horizons.

At least being a D&D fan is safer than being a fan of various media properties going through the wringer right now - D&D can always be what you want it to be at the kitchen table with your trusted friends. Nothing they do can rescind rule 0.
 
Dude I am certain that both of these would be money makers. I wouldn't call it mainstream but there is a fairly active "O5R" movement out there and it's not all old white dudes. I showed Bunny this video about the changing art direction and tone over the years and it instantly "clicked" for her. She prefers not only the old school art direction but the "pulp survivor horror" tone of old school D&D (but prefers 5e to B/X). Survival-horror video games are trending hard right now. Not everyone wants to play medieval Marvel Superhero power fantasies.


5E would probably work pretty well for an OSR type game. It's not that "modern" imo and the rules are dead simple which is inline with some of the design goals for OSR.

I'd love to have an old school 5E game with awesome adult targeted artwork and a return to appealing to the core D&D audience that is responsible for getting us all here.
 
Yeah I but want to play D&D due to the huge amount of nostalgia and memories I have with the game. My friends and I back in high school were the stereotypical nerds and outcasts. We were useless to the status quo. For several of us, D&D probably saved us from taking a dangerous path in life. We were all dirt poor but none of that mattered because we had D&D. Specifically D&D. And what WotC has done over the past couple years with their design changes and their gross public statements have all but said that the D&D my friends and I survived off of was wrong. Hell, just look at the huge disclaimer on older D&D products on DMsguild. They feel so strongly that the older style of D&D is wrong that they feel the need to have a huge nasty disclaimer at the bottom of the description where they spread nothing but lies and nonsense.

Modern WotC and their decision make my blood boil because I refuse to be gaslit in to believing older D&D is in any way wrong.
They aren't though. They are saying society got it wrong. Sometimes it does. Pretty sure no one is going to debate owning other humans is wrong at this point. WotC also has to respond to the market they are in now. 2e did away with demons and devils because of the world it was in at the time. 5e is downplaying race because thats the world they are living in now. WotC isn't saying dungeoncrawling is wrong or hex exploration is wrong. It's saying our customers today by and large don't want race to be limiting stats. They are acknowledging that maybe a race in D&D has average stats but a player doesn't follow those rules. Just like you might say on average women can't lift as much as an average male. A PC doesn't need to play by that requirement. They are by intent exceptional.
 
Note that a disclaimer is almost the least they could have done. It admits that some people might not like some things but it does nothing to alter the original content.
 
Dude I am certain that both of these would be money makers. I wouldn't call it mainstream but there is a fairly active "O5R" movement out there and it's not all old white dudes. I showed Bunny this video about the changing art direction and tone over the years and it instantly "clicked" for her. She prefers not only the old school art direction but the "pulp survivor horror" tone of old school D&D (but prefers 5e to B/X). Survival-horror video games are trending hard right now. Not everyone wants to play medieval Marvel Superhero power fantasies.


That’s a great video (and a good channel, from what I’ve watched so far!)z
 
The demons and devils came back once the moral panic faded. Perhaps one day elves shall naturally be more graceful than dwarves again?
They are in pretty much every single RPG out there other than D&D, which, for some reason, was uniquely blasted over this.

Not a peep about Star Wars or Star Trek, oddly enough…
 
They are in pretty much every single RPG out there other than D&D, which, for some reason, was uniquely blasted over this.

Not a peep about Star Wars or Star Trek, oddly enough…
I think the biggest issue with D&D was the spells. If the “dark magic” section never existed I doubt that the hysteria would have gained much traction.
 
It's all well and good for the company to say that Edition Wars are over and 5E won, but the people who have been fighting the Edition Wars aren't the ones publishing the newest edition of the game. Look at Warhammer, for example, and see that pretty much everyone plays the new edition. For D&D they have made enough large changes that a lot of folks prefer pre-change rules sets over post-change. That's what started the Edition Wars in the first place.
It does strike me as foolish to declare that they have made the perfect edition of D&D, ending the editions wars forever. Also, we have a lot of upcoming rules changes...
I like ability increases from backgrounds better than the old increases from race, but I still prefer Tasha's "up to you" method; at least they're still in the player's hands, though, rather than the game designers.

But for everything else... I dunno, I just don't think I care.
That change to backgrounds does seem better than the current model. I can't remember the specifics as I haven't played 5E in a few years, but I didn't like backgrounds usually being redundant with the most closely-related background. If I recall, taking the Solider background gave you proficiencies that you got from being a Fighter. Taking Street Urchin was redundant with being a Rogue.

Sometimes you just want to play the most obvious archetype, and 5E punished you for it.

Anyway, my hope is that Hasbro is moving towards D&D away into the videogame space, and leaving the tabletop gaming scene to RPG companies.
 
The demons and devils came back once the moral panic faded. Perhaps one day elves shall naturally be more graceful than dwarves again?
Of course they will be. It's product development 101. By breaking the way races work in this "re-imagining" (I assume that is what they are called now that we don't have editions anymore), you can fix it in the next version.
 
We'd like to make MORE money, so we're going to make ONE MORE edition that gives you even MORE stuff you'll never have time to use in your games. Plus, we're going to include even MORE digital content that provides MORE menus and MORE features and MORE options that you can't find or that don't work because we can't be bothered with ensuring basic functionality.
Also, so you can spend even MORE time customizing your vision of your character and MORE time talking about how you got your hair just right online and less time playing. Also, we just might give you the option to spend MORE money on 3D prints of your designed character because that sort of self-indulgence is really what builds great collaborative storytelling experiences.

And by the way, we've made it possible to for you to play someone EXACTLY like you in the game, except that you have pointy ears and can cast spells, because we know so many of you lack the imagination to think that you can play anything else.

Ugh. At the moment, I'm not sure how I could feel more annoyed at the news. Dreading the peer pressure to pick up more DnD books, which are my lowest gaming priority, based on general innovation and narrative creativity.
 
Against the Darkmaster, Old School Essentials and Mythras Classic Fantasy are D&D to me now.

…again, just sticking around for the conversation and curiosity. If people still like this then that’s great! I’m just… bleurgh… not really interesting anymore
 
5E would probably work pretty well for an OSR type game. It's not that "modern" imo and the rules are dead simple which is inline with some of the design goals for OSR.

I'd love to have an old school 5E game with awesome adult targeted artwork and a return to appealing to the core D&D audience that is responsible for getting us all here.
Lots of people including myself have observed that the core 5e rules are actually pretty good and, if stripped down to basics, can do old school gaming pretty well. I highly recommend that you check out Into the Unknown. It's basically the 5e SRD stripped to the bone and married to the solid B/X rules for encounters, exploration, XP for gold, etc. Just like B/X it makes an excellent base on which to craft your own house rules.
 
Ardling is a silly name and I don't think they really do anything Aasimars don't; the name Aasimar also sounds distinctly different from Tiefling, which feels appropriate for clarifdying that they're different from Tieflings, rather than a variant thereof.
I feel increasingly nostalgic for the times when the hobby didn't include vacuous marketing videos.

The message they're sending is basically "this is a sterile corporate product stay away".
Make no mistake, if TSR had had the budget and technology to do them in the past, they would have done.

And TSR are also right up there with GW in publishing an advert magazine.
Also the idea that your species (it’s species, not race) shouldn’t impact your attributes is asinine. This implies that on average an Orc won’t be stronger than a gnome and the a halfling with his tiny little stubby legs has the same movement capabilities as a graceful elf.
But... races do still have things that make them slightly better in their area. Eladrin get a free teleport, wood elves get faster movement and sneak abilities. By doing it in a special rule, it means that a given race will always have an advantage, regardless of stats; that perk is always going to matter, whereas a halfling and an elf with the same stat under the old stat modifiers-type system would have been just as capable.
Hell, just look at the huge disclaimer on older D&D products on DMsguild.
It's literally just some text on the store page. They're not branding you or your account, they're not making you confess your sins in front of the council of vegans, the content hasn't been censored, it's just an acknowledgement it's a product from another time.
Oh you're right, they completely abandoned the people that were soley responsible for keeping the hobby alive, even when it was damn near social sucidie to admit you were one of those "nerds" that plays that 'satan worshipping' game.
What they've done for that audience is make that era of material more accessible than ever - it's (Almost) all available cheaply in PDF, and there are a lot of PoD's. The folk that want it, can get it.

What more could that audience even possibly even want? A lot of the criticism just seems down to "in addition to publishing products for me, they're publishing products for other people too".
D&D is going to be like a video game that gets a patch from now. One D&D version 5.5013267.
SLA1e books literally had system version numbers...
 
Yeah I’m totally in support of making this hobby more inclusive to different groups, more than ever.

The trade off, unfortunately, to me anyways, is that a certain je ne sais quoi has gotten watered-down in the process. The things that attracted me to the game initially, or even 10 years ago, have changed. I’ve found other games made now that are more compelling. Hell I still get more of a thrill reading Torchbearer and Beyond the Wall than D&D in it’s current state.

Not whining, just moving on, hopefully with some grace (and tongue-in-cheek chagrin).
 
Yeah I’m totally in support of making this hobby more inclusive to different groups, more than ever.

The trade off, unfortunately, to me anyways, is that a certain je ne sais quoi has gotten watered-down in the process. The things that attracted me to the game initially, or even 10 years ago, have changed. I’ve found other games made now that are more compelling. Hell I still get more of a thrill reading Torchbearer and Beyond the Wall than D&D in it’s current state.

Not whining, just moving on, hopefully with some grace (and tongue-in-cheek chagrin).
Yeah, 5e isn't my favorite trad fantasy game (AFF), or even my favorite D&D (That's the 1974 edition). It's no WFRP1e or L5R5e for giving me the feel of a setting. I like 5e, but compared to my favorite games it's just solidly... okay.
 
If I recall, taking the Solider background gave you proficiencies that you got from being a Fighter. Taking Street Urchin was redundant with being a Rogue.

Sometimes you just want to play the most obvious archetype, and 5E punished you for it.
If you get the same skill from a background that you got from class, you get to choose whichever new skill you like.
 
If you get the same skill from a background that you got from class, you get to choose whichever new skill you like.
That's better than I thought, but it's still kind of a kludge. Why not spend just say you get to pick two skills and a piece of equipment rather than making a long, space-wasting list of backgrounds that frequently break?
 
A disclaimer is a nice simple way to cover your ass. It’s like McDonald’s putting a warning on their coffee advising people that it may be too hot for their genitals.

I view the WotC disclaimers the same way I've always viewed warning labels on music, movies, etc. I don't care as long as I can still access the material.
 
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That's better than I thought, but it's still kind of a kludge. Why not spend just say you get to pick two skills and a piece of equipment rather than making a long, space-wasting list of backgrounds that frequently break?
The backgrounds list is explicitly just a list of examples, though - two skills, two proficiencies, and any background feature is the rule already. Replacing background features with explicitly level 1 feats is ultimately just changing the terminology.
 
The backgrounds list is explicitly just a list of examples, though - two skills, two proficiencies, and any background feature is the rule already. Replacing background features with explicitly level 1 feats is ultimately just changing the terminology.
Fair enough, I played 5E, but I have never run it. I was just going off what I was told when I played it. I'll admit I am not qualified to give a proper opinion on 5E.
 
Yes, it's not any different than the goofy disclaimers about magic not being real in '80s RPG books.
RPG companies have been reacting to cultural mores since at least the 80's. Back when the War on Drugs was in full swing drugs in RPGs were rarely portrayed as anything but destructive. Heh, I remember White Wolf "you are not a vampire" disclaimers well into the late 90s and maybe later!
 
A disclaimer is a nice simple way to cover your ass. It’s like McDonald’s putting a warning on their coffee advising people that it may be too hot for their genitals.
*long intake of breath*

Well Akshuuuuallllyyy… no wait, I’ll give you the benefit of doubt. Don’t make me bring out the Snopes article about the coffee-in-lap-media-fiasco!!
 
Well Akshuuuuallllyyy… no wait, I’ll give you the benefit of doubt. Don’t make me bring out the Snopes article about the coffee-in-lap-media-fiasco!!

I prefer the baby-bucket warning label for these situations.

UsAfbiU.gif
 
Yeah I but want to play D&D due to the huge amount of nostalgia and memories I have with the game. My friends and I back in high school were the stereotypical nerds and outcasts. We were useless to the status quo. For several of us, D&D probably saved us from taking a dangerous path in life. We were all dirt poor but none of that mattered because we had D&D. Specifically D&D. And what WotC has done over the past couple years with their design changes and their gross public statements have all but said that the D&D my friends and I survived off of was wrong. Hell, just look at the huge disclaimer on older D&D products on DMsguild. They feel so strongly that the older style of D&D is wrong that they feel the need to have a huge nasty disclaimer at the bottom of the description where they spread nothing but lies and nonsense.

Modern WotC and their decision make my blood boil because I refuse to be gaslit in to believing older D&D is in any way wrong.
Sorry, but this hyperbolic and silly. A bunch of people were complaining and WotC did the bare minimum by slapping a blanket disclaimer on the product page of all D&D products, not just the “old D&D“ stuff like you claim. It’s on the 4E Essentials products, too. And the 5E Elemental Evil Player’s Companion.

And that’s not even getting into the fact that the disclaimer isn’t even on the actual products, just on the page on DriveThru. It’s not on any of the PDFs I’ve purchased or downloaded.

I also simply don’t get the concept of a company “slapping me in the face” by changing a product. Maybe because I’m in my 50’s and have gamed for 40 years, and maybe it’s because I‘ve worked for some big companies and understand how product decisions are made at that level. But a company either puts out a product you want and you decide to purchase it, or they put out a product that doesn’t appeal to you and you don’t buy it. A company doesn’t owe you anything beyond what you paid them for.

And let’s face it, WotC is no worse than TSR was back in the day, and is a lot better in many ways. I remember the shovelware that was the Unearthed Arcana book (let’s put out a bunch of material you already bought in Dragon Magazine so that we can stay afloat a bit longer), and the lawsuits, etc.

The worst thing the internet has done is let people focus on the company as much as they focus on the game. When 2E came out and I bought those Monstrous Compendium binders, we snorted at those silly Baatezu and Tanar’ri names and kept calling them demons and devils. And we got on with the games.

Take what you want from what’s out there and ignore the rest. I’ve purchased most of the 5E books on DnDBeyond, I’ve PDF’d everything I’ve purchased for my personal use, and if the platform forces a bunch of system changes my group doesn’t agree with, I will cancel my subscription and we’ll switch to alternate methods of tracking character data. And we’ll continue to focus on having a fun game over anything else.

This probably comes across as angrier than I intend, but I get so tired of all the negativity at every announcement. I’m in this hobby to have fun, and I’ve found something valuable in every edition of D&D and have run an enjoyable campaign in just about every edition of D&D (depending on if you count Holmes Basic as its own edition). I’d much prefer to discuss how the rules changes we know about might affect the game in play rather than complain about how the company is pandering to young people.
 
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