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I find it's two different sets of expectations. For one group, the fun is rolling up a character and finding out who he is and what he can do and exploring his world and risk comes with the territory. For the other, the fun is playing a hero, often a very particular hero, and though there may be complications, it's expected that the hero will ultimately prevail.

Heroism is not an entitlement, you have to earn it.

Unless your B/X, BECMI, or 1e AD&D fighter makes it to level:4 beforehand, then that's his official title. :shade:
 
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Meh. I started trying to do the survey, but my tastes are so niche that they'll disappear into the margin of error. And if they're using it to determine what setting to pursue, the Critical Role stuff will win, so it doesn't matter what I answer there.
 
They will love me no end. I played D &D white box and 1st edition AD&D but then discovered Chivalry and Sorcery and Call of Cthulhu when those first came out and have never looked back.
 
It's pretty tricky for me to do that survey since I've only ever played D&D once, and only 5E.
 
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I filled out the new survey. I too will be part of the outlier club! :thumbsup: If we join forces we might end up a voluble faction.:evil:
 
I filled it out. I was amused. I nudged Birthright, Planescape, and Dark Sun. They've billions of FR books--and plenty of Eberron ones now (yes from past editions, but still.)
 
Yeah interesting to see it there, I wonder if the hugely successful domain book by Matt Colville caught their attention as an untapped rule set for 5e.

Might have something to do with it!
 
Just did it. Lump me in with the edge cases that will likely get trimmed out of the data. I just don’t care about social media participation: no motivation or energy at all with that channel. I know it’s the future and all the cool kids are tweeting, instagramming, selfie-taking roll20 brand-o-philes, but I can’t be bothered!!

edit: i have nothing against the hippest RPG influencers (eg, Colville), they seem like decent folks. I just hate celebrity worship.
 
Just did it. Lump me in with the edge cases that will likely get trimmed out of the data. I just don’t care about social media participation: no motivation or energy at all with that channel. I know it’s the future and all the cool kids are tweeting, instagramming, selfie-taking roll20 brand-o-philes, but I can’t be bothered!!

edit: i have nothing against the hippest RPG influencers (eg, Colville), they seem like decent folks. I just hate celebrity worship.
Huhn. I don't think I'm an edge case. I don't really care for the heartbreakers that people call 'OSR' in general, I've played most versions of D&D post Red Box/Rules Cyclopedia, happily play D&D based video games, I enjoy Dark Sun, wish Eberron had some pulp rules and I'm fine with playing/running Forgotten Realms, but I also don't care about social media stuff and listed it.
 
Yeah, when Star Frontiers Knight Hawks is one of the games I'm currently playing.

Still, maybe this would be a good time to mobilize the Star Frontiers fans and load the survey up with demand.
 
Yeah, when Star Frontiers Knight Hawks is one of the games I'm currently playing.

Still, maybe this would be a good time to mobilize the Star Frontiers fans and load the survey up with demand.


Knight Hawks is hands down my favourite space fighting/travel system. So much so, one of the first "houseruling" I ever did as a new GM was fusing it onto WEG's Star Wars 1e for a very early campaign I ran.
 
I really dislike it but that may be because my friend has house ruled it extensively and ported in stuff from SFB and other sources.
 
He's got all this stuff he added over the years. Back in high school the Federation was using veritech fighters.

So his ships have +10 to hit, twice as many weapons as mine, many of which are cannons, which my 'Gorn' don't get. He ditched the -10 per hex to hit for beam weapons which renders rockets and missiles virtually useless. And he can teleport his ships. Also, while only 1/3 of his ships are armed he can use his greater numbers to break the turn sequence by moving the unarmed vessels first and thus move the armed ships after my ships have moved. I get that its an asymmetrical narrative scenario but it's also the kind of bs I've come to expect from him when he's running games.
 
I can understand the desire to use a game system to run a setting you love or to integrate setting elements into the sparse setting details of Star Frontiers. I can understand wanting to use cool ideas from another game and introduce them. Thinking yourself a tactical genius because you can beat yourself in solitaire play or deliberately loaded scenarios, not so much.
 
:hehe: Yesss! Together, like snowflakes, we outliers shall gather upon WotC's roof and bring the house crashing down with the likes of Spelljammer love! :heart::clown::drink:
 
From the questions asked I suspect the result they're looking for is that us outliers don't buy their products and new players want character optimization, powerful characters, and super duper kewl art werk.
 
I'm not sure it's that, more they'd like to know how big the market they're not currently reaching is. They'd love to know a way to get your money, if it's economically viable of course :grin:

I don't follow their streams, but for "Where do you discuss D&D" I selected Reddit and also added the Pub as a write-in. Gotta represent!
 
I will fill this out after work. Ironically, D&D is low on my list of preferred systems to play, but is the only choice to me right now if I want to play anything at all.
I wonder if that will factor into the survey.
 
Heroism is not an entitlement, you have to earn it.

Unless your B/X, BECMI, or 1e AD&D fighter makes it to level:4 beforehand, then that's his official title. :shade:
I only earn things in real life. In make believe I simply bitch and whine until the DM relents and gives me what I want... JK!
 
I will fill this out after work. Ironically, D&D is low on my list of preferred systems to play, but is the only choice to me right now if I want to play anything at all.

Yes, that's how they seduce us. "There's no other game this week, so why not sit in on this D&D adventure. " It turns out ok if you look it in in the right angle. But your character felt restricted. Maybe you should remake it. Before you know it, you have bought a stack of books to optimize your build and are searching threads for ways to abuse RAW.
 
Yes, that's how they seduce us. "There's no other game this week, so why not sit in on this D&D adventure. " It turns out ok if you look it in in the right angle. But your character felt restricted. Maybe you should remake it. Before you know it, you have bought a stack of books to optimize your build and are searching threads for ways to abuse RAW.
The biggest problem I have found with current D&D is that the players are new and all want their sessions to go like Youtube sessions. When they don't they get disillusioned and hyper critical of those at the table. If you played older editions or not doesn't matter, they simply want you to fit an archetype, player skill is irrelevant.
It really does seem to be that way. The players seem to encourage min maxing and then slap you down when you succeed.
I need to find a group of 30-40 something gamers, but most of us are similarly disillusioned and no longer interested in playing.
 
Yes, that's how they seduce us. "There's no other game this week, so why not sit in on this D&D adventure. " It turns out ok if you look it in in the right angle. But your character felt restricted. Maybe you should remake it. Before you know it, you have bought a stack of books to optimize your build and are searching threads for ways to abuse RAW.
Honestly, unless you enjoy doing that for it’s own sake, 5e isn’t very optimisation friendly. It’s hard to really exploit and even if you do, you don’t gain that much; the “Core +1” rule from their organised play (And the low amount of mechanical supplements...) has led to the line being reasonably well internally balanced.
 
Honestly, unless you enjoy doing that for it’s own sake, 5e isn’t very optimisation friendly. It’s hard to really exploit and even if you do, you don’t gain that much; the “Core +1” rule from their organised play (And the low amount of mechanical supplements...) has led to the line being reasonably well internally balanced.
Core +1 is a great idea. I suspect they took that from Savage Worlds, as the WotC staff have praised the game over the years. It lets a game have variety without getting bloated.
 
Honestly, unless you enjoy doing that for it’s own sake, 5e isn’t very optimisation friendly. It’s hard to really exploit and even if you do, you don’t gain that much; the “Core +1” rule from their organised play (And the low amount of mechanical supplements...) has led to the line being reasonably well internally balanced.

Actually, I was partially kidding. 5e is my main game right now. Though I've always felt bad by the somewhat sum zero aspects of rpg popularity. I have nothing against D&D, but its popularity has meant that other great games have had trouble finding an audience. It's like if a fast food chain that you like contributed to making other restaurants go out of business.

If you go to places like giants in the playground forums, build discussion dominates. I don't see core +1 in use much outside of AL. But 5e is far more balanced and less bloated than 3e and Pathfinder. In 3e, an optimized build could easily be 3x more powerful than a noob just picking things that look cool. In 5e, an optimized build is probably like 40% more powerful.
 
5e is pretty resistant to ‘builds’ (both in the power gaming way and in the ‘I just want play some slightly different character because I’m bored with vanilla D&D’ way).

Doesn’t seem to stop people trying and writing optimisation guides and the like.

But then there was the guy on the Symbaroum subtreddit who wanted to know how to build an archer. To which the reply basically was ‘there’s two or three powers for archers in the book - you take those ones.’
 
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5e is well balanced but has very little room for mastery. Your build is decided by level 3 and from that point on, unless you get some special item, you are on a boring stretch to the end of a campaign.

I appreciate much about 5e, but instead of a 6e, I would rather see an AD&D version of 5e, where they add more options and some of the good stuff from 3e back in.

5e as it is, is one of the best D&D editions put out... it just gets boring after a few sessions in my experience. I miss continuous options and customization. It feels like it is the core book and I am still waiting for the supplement books.
 
So, I recently figured out why I dislike 5e so much. I mean it could be PTSD from the countless hours of it that I've run for the kids at the store but no, it came to me when I read the description of the Find Familiar spell in 5e. So, your familiar doesn't have hit points, it doesn't add to your hit points, you don't lose hit points when it dies and it's easy to re-summon, you don't have to wait a year. What's wrong with this? It's not treating the familiar like something that is real within the game world, it's treating it as an mechanically functional object in the game. Fifth edition pretty much does this with everything. The entire game breaks the illusion of the world it describes. In doing so, it degenerates into merely being a game and the world it describes becomes pale and shallow.
 
For my lifestyle branding, I want to be seduced by officially licensed D&D Etsy crafts... :goof:
 
it came to me when I read the description of the Find Familiar spell in 5e. So, your familiar doesn't have hit points, it doesn't add to your hit points, you don't lose hit points when it dies and it's easy to re-summon, you don't have to wait a year. What's wrong with this? It's not treating the familiar like something that is real within the game world, it's treating it as an mechanically functional object in the game.

It has hit points; it's very likely to die often, given that the HP are not much. Following 1e (and maybe later editions?) as you suggest would make the spell worthless and ignored, and is certainly not the only way something can be real within the game world. Familiars can be fiends, and being resummonable after dying seems to be how (some, at least) fiends work in 5e.
 
I quite like the core mechanics for D&D 5E, it seems smooth, consistent, and generally logical; like a more sleek version of D&D 3E.
I enjoy playing in D&D 5E, which is better than it's been for the last 20yrs. So yeah, I think D&D 5E is finally a decent set of game mechanics for D&D.

Despite that, the flavour of the contemporary D&D game just doesn't capture the classic fantasy vibe that I love when I have GM'd stuff like D&D B/X, MERP, RM, T&T, RQ2, RQG, WFRP, etc.

I'm looking at Forbidden Lands in front of me, and it's much more appealing than my D&D 5E books.
This is what I'm talking about:



Not sure what it is with the current WotC D&D, but it feels more sanitised or commercialised or something.
Hard to put my finger on, but it's got not much magic for me.
It's kinda like the CGI Disney Classics reboots we see every year - they look great, but somehow lack the soul of the originals :sad:

So WotC are probably not over-enthused by my opinion, which is too contary to be of use to them...

Not to say I dislike D&D 5E, but in it's current form from WotC it just doesn't do it for me.

I love what Cubicle 7 have done with it for their AiME line, so the core chassis is reasonably sound, it's the WotC padding that doesn't seem to float the boat for me.

I've crowdfunded Fateforge in the hope that I will use D&D 5E much more:

 
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I quite like the core mechanics for D&D 5E, it seems smooth, consistent, and generally logical; like a more sleek version of D&D 3E.
I enjoy playing in D&D 5E, which is better than it's been for the last 20yrs. So yeah, I think D&D 5E is finally a decent set of game mechanics for D&D....

Not sure what it is, but it feels more sanitised or commercialised or something.

I feel similarly. I think a lot of people felt that way about 2e when it came, when it was afraid to use the word demon, and things like that. In both cases, it didn't have too much effect on me as I care more about the mechanics and don't use published adventures much.

I am somewhat disappointed that they have mostly followed Paizo's lead with adventure paths. Most of their adventures are hardbacks supposed to take characters from levels 1 to 15. They can be hard to use - trying to find key info during play in a big book that doesn't want to stay open. If your characters don't do what's expected, the rest of the adventure is over.
 
D&D just feels too crowded for me these days.

It feels like too much effort to make a setting and find a place for Tieflings and Warlocks and a variety of Paladins and Elves and...

Sure you can rule them out. But at a certain point you start wondering why you would then use D&D.
 
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