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I did read somewhere that they've apparently given up on trying to get folk to remember that Dragonborn don't have tails, and are just accepting that the community has decided tails are canon now.
When will they decide that different colors are canon too?
 
I know this is the kinda corporate and kiddie thing that drives a certain segment batty but I just think of how awesome 10-year-old me would have dug it.





WotC seems to be really going after the younger crowd which I think is great, how many of us discovered D&D through the Red Box and the crappy cartoon?
 
I know this is the kinda corporate and kiddie thing that drives a certain segment batty but I just think of how awesome 10-year-old me would have dug it.



Young me would have been concerned what flavor I’d have to buy to get the adventures.
 
A couple of months ago, I ran a game with a format that went off well so I plan on using it again. As part of a Kickstarter, Goodman Games released free rules for funnel characters in 5e. I used this for a two session adventure though it could have been one long session. I made a bunch of funnel characters in Excel, with one tab per player so all their characters fit on a page. It played out like a horror or disaster movie.

Session 1, players get 4 characters and pick 3 to play. Then shit hits the fan and they get overwhelmed by monsters. Between sessions, they have a training montage, picking a character to level up to level 1, and rolling on tables to scrounge for gear. Session 2, they go after the villain. After playing the 0 level characters, the level 1 characters feel like heroes, being able to survive multiple hits and cast magic spells.

If you're interested, here's the handout for the players that includes the equipment tables. Here's the Excel file with 20 pregen characters - on the first tab, hit F9 to reroll all the stats to start 4 more characters.
 
Just got back from spying the gaming section at Barnes and Noble. Flipping through the 5e D&D books, and I'm just struck by homogenized and WalMart-ized they are.

I realize every generation gets different things from gaming and has different tastes, but is it possible that 5e just objectively sucks compared to 1e?
 
Just got back from spying the gaming section at Barnes and Noble. Flipping through the 5e D&D books, and I'm just struck by homogenized and WalMart-ized they are.

I realize every generation gets different things from gaming and has different tastes, but is it possible that 5e just objectively sucks compared to 1e?
In matters of taste? No, I don't think there's anyway to get to there from here. Big corporate products that are geared to sell to lots and lots of people are always going to be a crafted to appeal to the broadest spectrum possible, so that usually means less idiosyncrasies, and less of a "bespoke" hobbyist feel to things.

Am I wrong in assuming you are talking about art direction and aesthetics here and not the actual content? Because for as much as D&D doesn't do a whole lot to blow my skirt up (and hasn't really for decades) I think it's fair to say that D&D 5th ed. is a more polished, better organized rules set compared to 1e -- presumably a newbie could pick up the 5e PHB (or free basic rules) and actually figure out how to play the game with just that one book. You certainly would have a helluva time doing that with the 1e PHB.
 
Just got back from spying the gaming section at Barnes and Noble. Flipping through the 5e D&D books, and I'm just struck by homogenized and WalMart-ized they are.

I realize every generation gets different things from gaming and has different tastes, but is it possible that 5e just objectively sucks compared to 1e?
I don't care for the art or default setting but the 5e system is quite solid. Why do you think 5e objectively sucks? It's kind of funny you compare it to 1e because in comparison the AD&D system is a pile of unrelated fiddly subsystems kludged together into an unwieldy whole. I imagine you say 5e sucks because of the marketing and art direction with an eye towards mass appeal.
 
This is what I meant. Almost nothing about the art, fancy hardcovers, and slick page paper evokes any kind of positive feeling from me.
If that's your reaction then that's totally valid (for what it's worth, I don't like its aesthetics either) but I'm guessing old farts like us aren't really the target demo for Hasbro? They're trying to bring in the teen and early-twenties set, and I'm guessing their market research tells them that this approach is the one to take. Fortunately we appear to live in a golden age of RPGs where there seems to be something on the market for everyone. Whether it's art and art style as big selling points, of if variety of systems and settings are your thing.
 
Where is the support for D&D for old farts? Not at the chain bookstore.
Why is support at big chain bookstores important? Kickstarter, POD, DrivethruRPG, FLGS stores, word of mouth on forums and blogs; that's where the RPG community and creative content is thriving. Read tenfootpole.org, take a look at Necrotic Gnome and the adventures they are making for Old-School Essentials (basically B/X D&D), Goodman Games' 5e stuff (and DCC RPG more broadly). There's dozens, (hell maybe even hundreds?) of quality small press publishers out there trying to cater to old-school D&D and non-D&D games.
 
Why is support at big chain bookstores important? Kickstarter, POD, DrivethruRPG, FLGS stores, word of mouth on forums and blogs; that's where the RPG community and creative content is thriving. Read tenfootpole.org, take a look at Necrotic Gnome and the adventures they are making for Old-School Essentials (basically B/X D&D), Goodman Games' 5e stuff (and DCC RPG more broadly). There's dozens, (hell maybe even hundreds?) of quality small press publishers out there trying to cater to old-school D&D and non-D&D games.

I get that the gaming community is rich and complex. I'm talking about what D&D is today in the public sphere. And what I see is a bland product in slick wrapping that has little of the beauty of its original design. It's WalMart, it's Target. It's "come to the megastore to get your cookie-cutter, cheaply made product."

Games are not immune from the economic forces that have objectively driven down the quality of American production.
 
objectively
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Just got back from spying the gaming section at Barnes and Noble. Flipping through the 5e D&D books, and I'm just struck by homogenized and WalMart-ized they are.

I realize every generation gets different things from gaming and has different tastes, but is it possible that 5e just objectively sucks compared to 1e?
No, it's just not for you and that's okay. You do not have to be the target market for everything.

Where is the support for D&D for old farts? Not at the chain bookstore.
It's not, but that's rather like me wandering into PC World and asking where the support for my Atari STe is. As folk have pointed out, the actual support for older editions is large, varied, and online, and the barrier to get in on it, as a consumer or a creator, is negligible.
 
Personally I think the above is a good thing. We are in the midst of a situation where D&D and roleplaying has grown to the point where merchandising outfits are trying to cash in. Like the below which is a fancy notebook of graph paper.

1626698367173.png

1626698385848.png
 
So back in 2014 I realized that nearly every day at least one copy of the free Blackmarsh PDF was downloaded from RPGNow. That as a result I could use the order number to get a sense of how fast DriveThru was growing.

I wrote a post about it.


In 2007 the total number of order numbers used was 313,895

In 2015 the total number of order numbers used was 1,261,849

In 2020, the total number of order numbers used was 6,599,058
 
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In 40 years of gaming, I can confidently say that I have never, not once, gone to a big chain bookstore for an RPG product.

That’s just not the kind of place that would cater to the wildly varying gaming I’ve done, and I wouldn’t expect it to.

As for 5E, it’s by no means my favourite edition of D&D, but it works and I find it pretty damn easy to run it in the style of older editions (hence my current Majestic Wilderlands campaign that is almost identical to what I would have run in AD&D).
 
Pretty sure the last RPG I bought in a mass-market bookstore was MongTrav 1E, years ago.

While 5E doesn't do much for me personally (though I do play it), I think it's great that it has gotten so popular and accessible. D&D was my gateway into the hobby, and it's continuing to be that for many people.
 
No, it's just not for you and that's okay. You do not have to be the target market for everything.

That assumes subjectivity, though. Why isn't it possible that 5e, aesthetically and in terms of its artistic quality (not in terms of how it "works" mechanically as a game), is just simply inferior? After having been away from gaming for 30 years, what I see in many games, even in the ones that I adore, are some of the same forces at work that I've seen in retail, or in automobiles, or any other area of modern consumerism where "let's make it slick and/or cheap and sell it at a big box store so we can throw it away" reigns. Yes, that helps bring these cultural products to lots more people than ever before, but in the process you lose something fundamental to what made them so good to begin with.

Yes, it's possible that I'm just an old ass who is yelling at kids on his lawn. But sometimes those guys are right about something.
 
That assumes subjectivity, though. Why isn't it possible that 5e, aesthetically and in terms of its artistic quality (not in terms of how it "works" mechanically as a game), is just simply inferior? After having been away from gaming for 30 years, what I see in many games, even in the ones that I adore, are some of the same forces at work that I've seen in retail, or in automobiles, or any other area of modern consumerism where "let's make it slick and/or cheap and sell it at a big box store so we can throw it away" reigns. Yes, that helps bring these cultural products to lots more people than ever before, but in the process you lose something fundamental to what made them so good to begin with.

Yes, it's possible that I'm just an old ass who is yelling at kids on his lawn. But sometimes those guys are right about something.

My kid has never looked at my old black and white D&D books, or retroclone stuff aping that aesthetic, and went "ooooooh, what's that??"

He does my 5e books. I suspect that if that older aesthetic were objectively better, he - and some of those other young whippersnappers ruining our hobby - would have embraced the old stuff over the new stuff.

And sure, some do, once exposed to it. And some don't.

Kind of like it's a subjective preference.
 
Having made the threat I have to follow through. Hmm. Something about elderberries. Wait, let me go look up the quote...
 
I first got into TTRPG's due to seeing and buying a copy of D&D 3.5E at a Barnes & Noble. If it hadn't been for that book at that place I would have never discovered stuff like Kult and Mythras.
More people is always better for a hobby, lest we end up worshiping the ashes instead of tending to the flame.
 
My kid has never looked at my old black and white D&D books, or retroclone stuff aping that aesthetic, and went "ooooooh, what's that??"

He does my 5e books. I suspect that if that older aesthetic were objectively better, he - and some of those other young whippersnappers ruining our hobby - would have embraced the old stuff over the new stuff.

And sure, some do, once exposed to it. And some don't.

Kind of like it's a subjective preference.

Objective beauty isn't necessarily apparent to every observer in the same way that fire is hot. Sometimes it takes cultivation and training, in the same way that your kid might look at Renaissance art and think it's old timey and fuddy-duddy prior to taking an art appreciation course.
 
Personally I think the above is a good thing. We are in the midst of a situation where D&D and roleplaying has grown to the point where merchandising outfits are trying to cash in. Like the below which is a fancy notebook of graph paper.

View attachment 33031

View attachment 33032
Literally my only complaint is that I'd like to see more than just 5e on the shelves, so people can see there's more to roleplaying. But honestly, given the choice between "all 5e" or "nothing", I'll take "all 5e" every time.

That assumes subjectivity, though. Why isn't it possible that 5e, aesthetically and in terms of its artistic quality (not in terms of how it "works" mechanically as a game), is just simply inferior? After having been away from gaming for 30 years, what I see in many games, even in the ones that I adore, are some of the same forces at work that I've seen in retail, or in automobiles, or any other area of modern consumerism where "let's make it slick and/or cheap and sell it at a big box store so we can throw it away" reigns. Yes, that helps bring these cultural products to lots more people than ever before, but in the process you lose something fundamental to what made them so good to begin with.
Looks like a few subjective judgements there.

But hey, maybe you're right, so find a way to objectively measure 5e and your favourite D&D and come back to us with your results. But remember: only objective measurements. No subjectivity. If you want to say "5e contains x examples of a given thing while other edition contains y and thus wins this comparison", then you'd better have an objective reason why having more (Or less) of whatever thing is better (Or worse).
Yes, it's possible that I'm just an old ass who is yelling at kids on his lawn. But sometimes those guys are right about something.
Maybe they are. Or maybe they just liked different things.
 
Objective beauty also isn't something you get to gatekeep behind things like training or credentials

Indeed, one doesn't need a degree to get Michelangelo.

But hey, maybe you're right, so find a way to objectively measure 5e and your favourite D&D and come back to us with your results. But remember: only objective measurements.

What about those who have already agreed with me that 5e is aesthetically inferior?
 
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