# I think we are on the cusp of a sea change.



## Reynard

I think that we are looking at as big a change in D&D "culture" as we saw in the fall of TSR and rise of WotC era. I'm confident we aren't like to see huge rules changes in 5.5 (I think backwards compatibility will be a thing, for example) but I think there are a lot of thing lining up for WotC to look at, and treat, D&D as a different thing in the very near future.

Now, just because I know some folks are going to make this argument: I don't think that was true of either the 4E or 5E transition.

4E was very much a mechanical sea change but the explicitly stated goal at the time was to "still play D&D." And 5E was a course correction, the exact opposite of a sea change. It drew heavily on GenX nostalgia and was working very hard to say "D&D is still D&D!" 

I don't think that is true going forward. I think the intent is to very much alter the way the game is played (story first, etc..) and aimed at a new generation -- and that generation's values -- in a way it hasn't been since Basic and D&D cartoon days.

And just to be clear, this is not a rant by a grumpy old goat. I mean, I am an old goat, but I'm not grumpy. I don't actually care much. I play D&D in general and 5E in particular largely because it has an accessible player base. I mean, I like D&D and 5E, but I like other games more that don't put bottoms in chairs around a table the way D&D does.

Anyway, what are your thoughts? Am I off my rocking chair? Is D&D changing again, or is this just 3.5 in a 5E skin?

Thanks!


----------



## Oofta

Whether your guess is correct or not doesn't have any correlation as to whether you're off your rocker.  Even a broken old school clocks that you remember fondly are right twice a day.  

That, and I disagree.  Next version is supposed to be backwards compatible.  With 5E being as successful as it is I see an evolution being more likely than a revolution.  Of course as Yogi Berra supposedly said: predicting the future is difficult, especially when it hasn't happened yet.


----------



## darjr

I won’t comment on the rules changes, cause I’m tired of arguing at walls.

As far as the community? It already changed and continues to.


----------



## Ancalagon

Ok

So you think a big change is coming.  

But you don't tell us _what_ that change is going to be, and you don't tell us _why_ you think a big change is coming.  

How am I supposed to respond to that?


----------



## Reynard

Oofta said:


> Whether you're guess is correct or not doesn't have any correlation as to whether you're off your rocker.  Even a broken old school clocks that you remember fondly are right twice a day.
> 
> That, and I disagree.  Next version is supposed to be backwards compatible.  With 5E being as successful as it is I see an evolution being more likely than a revolution.  Of course as Yogi Berra supposedly said: predicting the future is difficult, especially when it hasn't happened yet.



Backward compatibility doesn't mean that the intent can't change or the assumed modes of play can be revised in a way that is really, really significant at the table. Change how rests work, for example, or what assumed encounter balance is, and you go from a game about 5-8 fights a day to a game about stories and set piece battles (not that a lot of people don't do that anyway; it's just an example). Plus, I agree with you on the word "evolution" but evolution can still be a sea change. Ask Mr mudskipper.


----------



## Scribe

I think they will do everything in their power to straddle the fence, and offend as few people as possible, providing a mechanically direct, easy to pick up experience that isnt 'filling', but passes the time inoffensively, and is forgettable from a game design perspective leaving it up to the players and DM to do all the heavy lifting in providing a rich experience.

Backwards compatibility will be a stated goal, and will be 'true' in the strictest sense, but the game will continue to diverge wildly from any nostalgic attempt at reminding older players that its 'Still D&D!'


----------



## Reynard

Ancalagon said:


> Ok
> 
> So you think a big change is coming.
> 
> But you don't tell us _what_ that change is going to be, and you don't tell us _why_ you think a big change is coming.
> 
> How am I supposed to respond to that?



How would I know the answer to any of those questions? I mean, I made it pretty clear in the title that this is a feeling I have, and further that I am not even sure it's real in my "am I off my rocker" question. And surely I can't tell you how to respond.


----------



## Reynard

Scribe said:


> I think they will do everything in their power to straddle the fence, and offend as few people as possible, providing a mechanically direct, easy to pick up experience that isnt 'filling', but passes the time inoffensively, and is forgettable from a game design perspective leaving it up to the players and DM to do all the heavy lifting in providing a rich experience.
> 
> Backwards compatibility will be a stated goal, and will be 'true' in the strictest sense, but the game will continue to diverge wildly from any nostalgic attempt at reminding older players that its 'Still D&D!'



It doesn't feel like they are shying away from offending some portion of the fan base (NOTE: I am NOT one of those offended people; I am just saying they seem to know some rules and lore changes will rankle some and they seem fine with that).


----------



## Krachek

Sea change in a cup of water!


----------



## Scribe

Reynard said:


> It doesn't feel like they are shying away from offending some portion of the fan base (NOTE: I am NOT one of those offended people; I am just saying they seem to know some rules and lore changes will rankle some and they seem fine with that).



They dont care about those folks, because offending them, entices the other side.


----------



## Reynard

Scribe said:


> They dont care about those folks, because offending them, entices the other side.



Sure, I was just saying that it doesn't feel like they are aiming for an inoffensive compromise.


----------



## Malmuria

Reynard said:


> I don't think that is true going forward. I think the intent is to very much alter *the way the game is played (story first, etc..)* and aimed at a new generation -- and *that generation's values* -- in a way it hasn't been since Basic and D&D cartoon days.



Can you elaborate on the above?  
-- How are they going to make the game more "story first" without introducing new mechanics?  Do you just mean including non-combat options for encounters in their published adventures?
-- What are the new generation's "values" and how will aiming the game at those values be a sea change?  Do you mean non-auto-evil humanoids?  A multitude of playable humanoids?  Haven't we had that since the 2e humanoid book?


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Reynard said:


> I think that we are looking at as big a change in D&D "culture" as we saw in the fall of TSR and rise of WotC era. I'm confident we aren't like to see huge rules changes in 5.5 (I think backwards compatibility will be a thing, for example) but I think there are a lot of thing lining up for WotC to look at, and treat, D&D as a different thing in the very near future.



I think this is inevitable when the demographics of an RPG significantly change.

I feel like D&D's demographics have changed a number of times. The was at the very least:

1) The mass-market explosion of the '80s, which undoubtedly shaped 2E.

2) The shift to other RPGs in the '90s but which also brought in a slightly broader demographic.

3) The massive number of 20-somethings and late-teens that appeared in the early 2000s with 3.XE.

4) The outstandingly huge influx of 16-30 year-olds with 5E, especially 5E after about 2016/2017.

We know 4 is probably the biggest demographic shift D&D has ever seen, too.

Ironically I think this influx may actually like some things some people consider "passé", particular highly-specific/themed classes rather than generic classes, and are highly likely to prefer race/class/etc. to points-buy-based or classless/few-broad-classes systems.

(I note PtbA and FitD align with D&D here re: specificity to a significant degree.)


----------



## Reynard

Malmuria said:


> Can you elaborate on the above?
> -- How are they going to make the game more "story first" without introducing new mechanics?  Do you just mean including non-combat options for encounters in their published adventures?
> -- What are the new generation's "values" and how will aiming the game at those values be a sea change?  Do you mean non-auto-evil humanoids?  A multitude of playable humanoids?  Haven't we had that since the 2e humanoid book?



a) They can introduce relatively minor mechanics that can have big changes in the intended playstyle of the game. Think about the impact of the differences between Attacks of Opportunity in 3.x and Opportunity Attacks in 5E. They are "essentially" the same mechanic, but the relatively minor details between them has a big impact on the tactical game. They can make minor tweaks to the pacing elements of the game -- from rests to encounters per day and such -- that don't disrupt backward compatibility but can potentially have a big impact on play.

b) Yes, I mean those things, but I think it is short sighted to dismiss them as having been around forever. Sure, they have, but the core rule books in every edition has still focused on alignment, particularly inherent "always" alignments, and presented guilt-free stock enemies by race. These are just some examples (cultural representation and sensitivity are also definitely kore important to this generation that the previous ones) of elements in the culture of play that can represent a big shift while maintaining mechanical backward compatibility.


----------



## pming

Hiya!


Reynard said:


> I think that we are looking at as big a change in D&D "culture" as we saw in the fall of TSR and rise of WotC era. I'm confident we aren't like to see huge rules changes in 5.5 (I think backwards compatibility will be a thing, for example) but I think there are a lot of thing lining up for WotC to look at, and treat, D&D as a different thing in the very near future.
> 
> Now, just because I know some folks are going to make this argument: I don't think that was true of either the 4E or 5E transition.
> 
> 4E was very much a mechanical sea change but the explicitly stated goal at the time was to "still play D&D." And 5E was a course correction, the exact opposite of a sea change. It drew heavily on GenX nostalgia and was working very hard to say "D&D is still D&D!"
> 
> I don't think that is true going forward. I think the intent is to very much alter the way the game is played (story first, etc..) and aimed at a new generation -- and that generation's values -- in a way it hasn't been since Basic and D&D cartoon days.
> 
> And just to be clear, this is not a rant by a grumpy old goat. I mean, I am an old goat, but I'm not grumpy. I don't actually care much. I play D&D in general and 5E in particular largely because it has an accessible player base. I mean, I like D&D and 5E, but I like other games more that don't put bottoms in chairs around a table the way D&D does.
> 
> Anyway, what are your thoughts? Am I off my rocking chair? Is D&D changing again, or is this just 3.5 in a 5E skin?
> 
> Thanks!




I don't think this sort of thing is possible in a large company. (_EDIT: By that I mean Hasbro_)
I also think it would be a horrible mistake, at least in regards to D&D's potential for a 7e.

WotC changed the way the game played in a HUGE way with 4e. Look where that got them; knocked down to #2 on the list with Pathfinder/Paizo taking it for a while. I don't think the powers-that-be are going to make that sort of move again.

Either way, for me, I'm most happily not of this "new generation and it's values", so if they DO go this route...it won't be with me. I'll take the road less travelled, like I usually do.

I'm an "old goat" at 52 years old now. Started down this D&D road 42'ish years ago. I've taken a turn here or there, but have always maintained the general heading. They almost lost me at 3e and 4e, but I got back on the main road here at 5e. I've been in the slow lane, to be sure (only core 3 books and no MC/Feats), but still heading down the main road. If 6e DOES turn out to be vastly different in focus and 'attitude', I can always just shift it in to 4-wheel-drive and head off over the hill's I've been passing through. 

^_^

Paul L. Ming


----------



## Scribe

Reynard said:


> Sure, I was just saying that it doesn't feel like they are aiming for an inoffensive compromise.



Being inoffensive, offends the people you are talking about.


----------



## Umbran

Reynard said:


> I don't think that is true going forward. I think the intent is to very much alter the way the game is played (story first, etc..) and aimed at a new generation -- and that generation's values -- in a way it hasn't been since Basic and D&D cartoon days.




The problem I see with this assertion is that this has already happened, and folks didn't seem to notice.


----------



## Scribe

Umbran said:


> The problem I see with this assertion is that this has already happened, and folks didn't seem to notice.



Are you sure? I think people have noticed quite a bit.


----------



## Malmuria

Reynard said:


> a) They can introduce relatively minor mechanics that can have big changes in the intended playstyle of the game. Think about the impact of the differences between Attacks of Opportunity in 3.x and Opportunity Attacks in 5E. They are "essentially" the same mechanic, but the relatively minor details between them has a big impact on the tactical game. They can make minor tweaks to the pacing elements of the game -- from rests to encounters per day and such -- that don't disrupt backward compatibility but can potentially have a big impact on play.



Changing the CR model to make it more accurate and able to do 1-2 encounters per day would be a big change within the context of 5, and a much needed one, but not really a sea change.  Dungeon crawling procedures are already atrophied in wotc editions and adventures.  And arguably point to the success of trad style gaming from the 80s on, so not really anything new.



Reynard said:


> b) Yes, I mean those things, but I think it is short sighted to dismiss them as having been around forever. Sure, they have, but the core rule books in every edition has still focused on alignment, particularly inherent "always" alignments, and presented guilt-free stock enemies by race. These are just some examples (cultural representation and sensitivity are also definitely kore important to this generation that the previous ones) of elements in the culture of play that can represent a big shift while maintaining mechanical backward compatibility.



Not having auto-combat situations is a hallmark tenant of the OSR and recalls some of the earliest traditions in the hobby. PCs negotiating between multiple factions is evident in Jennell Jaquays's megadungeon designs, for example.  So this wouldn't be a sea change, but more of a return to form (and one already revisited in a decade's worth of osr products).

As is often the case, the play styles that appear to be new were there from the earliest days of the hobby.


----------



## darjr

Here’s the other thing. The “community” isn’t what you think it is. There is such a breadth of different ways people play, and probably always has been, that people seemed to always be kvetching over it.


----------



## Reynard

darjr said:


> Here’s the other thing. The “community” isn’t what you think it is. There is such a breadth of different ways people play, and probably always has been, that people seemed to always be kvetching over it.



This is true. Our best guesses of the community of players WotC cares about is the moves they make -- but that doesn't preclude them being just plain wrong, or chasing the wrong subgroup, or acting at the whim of corporate overlords, or whatever.


----------



## Reynard

Malmuria said:


> Changing the CR model to make it more accurate and able to do 1-2 encounters per day would be a big change within the context of 5, and a much needed one, but not really a sea change.  Dungeon crawling procedures are already atrophied in wotc editions and adventures.  And arguably point to the success of trad style gaming from the 80s on, so not really anything new.
> 
> 
> Not having auto-combat situations is a hallmark tenant of the OSR and recalls some of the earliest traditions in the hobby. PCs negotiating between multiple factions is evident in Jennell Jaquays's megadungeon designs, for example.  So this wouldn't be a sea change, but more of a return to form (and one already revisited in a decade's worth of osr products).
> 
> As is often the case, the play styles that appear to be new were there from the earliest days of the hobby.



It's not about it being novel, though, in this context. It's about it being official and predominant in official material. And that it certainly hasn't been.


----------



## TerraDave

I have played with younger and older players over the years, including with 5e, and boy do I wonder what this shift is? 

The two trends I see are "pay to play" and a rise of more casual, drop in type gaming. This is happening online, but could also be happening in game stores or places life game cafes as they reopen. 

So setting aside implied analogies...this just tells me that what WotC will want a game that works and wants to be pretty tight with the rules. It also means that lower levels remain more important, so we may not see a focus on fixing higher levels that we might want. 

Thats it. In terms of "demographics", at least. Now if this is about something else...


----------



## Malmuria

Reynard said:


> It's not about it being novel, though, in this context. It's about it being official and predominant in official material. And that it certainly hasn't been.



They are releasing a number of "classic" campaign settings in the next few years.  That doesn't suggest sea change to me.

It seems like the change that people are reacting to is the removal or deemphasis on racial alignment for humanoids creatures.  Whether this is an important or barely noticeable change depends on your game (5e from the start reduced the mechanical impact of alignment, so not really a new change either).


----------



## BookTenTiger

It will be interesting to see if streaming influences the writing of the next generation of core rulebooks.

Streaming D&D was rare before 5e (the group I play with was actually the first D&D stream on justin.tv, which later became Twitch), but now is a way that lots of people interact with D&D.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Malmuria said:


> They are releasing a number of "classic" campaign settings in the next few years.  That doesn't suggest sea change to me.
> 
> It seems like the change that people are reacting to is the removal or deemphasis on racial alignment for humanoids creatures.  Whether this is an important or barely noticeable change depends on your game (5e from the start reduced the mechanical impact of alignment, so not really a new change either).



I suspect very little of those setting releases will be "classic".


----------



## NaturalZero

The change already happened. 5e took off like a rocket and people looking for to play the game in a particular way have already been running it that way. 5.5e, or whatever WotC has planned going forward, is a slight course correction to align the game better with the sea change that has already taken place.


----------



## Faolyn

Reynard said:


> I don't think that is true going forward. I think the intent is to very much alter the way the game is played (story first, etc..) and aimed at a new generation -- and that generation's values -- in a way it hasn't been since Basic and D&D cartoon days.



What I don't get is, hasn't each edition focused on what that generation's values were, or perceived to be? And considering that there have _always _been players who wanted a story-first game--I've seen indications of this mentality even in Dragon Magazines dating from the early 80s and before--this is hardly a new way.



Malmuria said:


> -- What are the new generation's "values" and how will aiming the game at those values be a sea change?  Do you mean non-auto-evil humanoids?  A multitude of playable humanoids?  Haven't we had that since the 2e humanoid book?



Didn't Gygax say something once about a player playing a balor or balrog once in his game?


----------



## Retreater

I think I was watching a Matt Colville video recently, and he brought up a point that I agree with. 5e was designed and released before streaming really took off. The next iteration will address it in some capacity. It's the biggest shift in how the game is played and how it is viewed in society that we've ever seen. Bigger than AD&D 1e, bigger than WotC's purchase, bigger than Hasbro's purchase, bigger than the Satanic Panic.
How will that change it? I think it's going to be a lot less about rules and combat. More roleplaying to solve problems. Less dungeons and more urban/political intrigue. 
Of course, culture changes quicker than books can be re-written and printed. The change is already here, but WotC just needs to address it in their books to further capture that market.


----------



## Reynard

NaturalZero said:


> The change already happened. 5e took off like a rocket and people looking for to play the game in a particular way have already been running it that way. 5.5e, or whatever WotC has planned going forward, is a slight course correction to align the game better with the sea change that has already taken place.



I don't think 5E launched that way. As I stated earlier,  it launched as a corrective action focused on recapturing GenX players. Things have changed significantly since then.


----------



## darjr

Reynard said:


> This is true. Our best guesses of the community of players WotC cares about is the moves they make -- but that doesn't preclude them being just plain wrong, or chasing the wrong subgroup, or acting at the whim of corporate overlords, or whatever.



I think they are more likely to be right than any of us.


----------



## Levistus's_Leviathan

Retreater said:


> I think I was watching a Matt Colville video recently, and he brought up a point that I agree with. 5e was designed and released before streaming really took off. The next iteration will address it in some capacity. It's the biggest shift in how the game is played and how it is viewed in society that we've ever seen. Bigger than AD&D 1e, bigger than WotC's purchase, bigger than Hasbro's purchase, bigger than the Satanic Panic.
> How will that change it? I think it's going to be a lot less about rules and combat. More roleplaying to solve problems. Less dungeons and more urban/political intrigue.
> Of course, culture changes quicker than books can be re-written and printed. The change is already here, but WotC just needs to address it in their books to further capture that market.



Yep. He talks about it in his most recent (and hundredth) Running the Game video. D&D 5e was built primarily on the back of nostalgia, and when its popularity blew up (as did streaming D&D and other TTRPGs) the target audience shifted. The core rulebooks were designed in a completely different style than a more modern audience would prefer, which is almost definitely why we're getting the revised Core Rulebooks in 2024. 

The playstyle of D&D 5e has already shifted (and is still in the process of shifting, just as it always has been), and WotC is playing catch-up.


----------



## Umbran

Scribe said:


> Are you sure? I think people have noticed quite a bit.




Yeah, pretty much.  Because the real changes aren't about the details of rules, or how they write up races.  If folks cared about the change, they're arguing about the wrong things.


----------



## Parmandur

Ruin Explorer said:


> Ironically I think this influx may actually like some things some people consider "passé", particular highly-specific/themed classes rather than generic classes, and are highly likely to prefer race/class/etc. to points-buy-based or classless/few-broad-classes systems.



Change is never linear. Fashions are like a roller coaster (keeping things like Class vs. Point Buy at significant arms length from more social questions).


----------



## Parmandur

Retreater said:


> I think I was watching a Matt Colville video recently, and he brought up a point that I agree with. 5e was designed and released before streaming really took off. The next iteration will address it in some capacity. It's the biggest shift in how the game is played and how it is viewed in society that we've ever seen. Bigger than AD&D 1e, bigger than WotC's purchase, bigger than Hasbro's purchase, bigger than the Satanic Panic.
> How will that change it? I think it's going to be a lot less about rules and combat. More roleplaying to solve problems. Less dungeons and more urban/political intrigue.
> Of course, culture changes quicker than books can be re-written and printed. The change is already here, but WotC just needs to address it in their books to further capture that market.



I think they already have adapted, with how Adventures are formatted. 5E backed it's way into being optimized by streaming at the right time.


----------



## Malmuria

D&D's Lead Rule Designer Explains Why Actual Play Has Influenced the Game
					

The latest edition of Dungeons & Dragons has grown to accommodate the kind of play experiences that have catapulted it to renewed popularity.




					gizmodo.com
				






> “The short answer is yes, it does influence us the way every type of _D&D_ play influences us,” Jeremy Crawford, _D&D_’s principal rules designer, told press in a recent event for the reveals of the latest sourcebooks for _Dungeons & Dragons_’ fifth edition. “So we know that _D&D_ is a big tent. We’ve talked about this again, going back to the _D&D Next_ process [the playtesting experience that helped create Fifth Edition] that not only do people of many sorts play in the _D&D_, but also people of many tastes play _D&D_. We know some people really love heavy improvisational role-playing and other _D&D_ players, for them, that’s all about the tactical nuances of _D&D_ combat, and everything in between. We’re concerned about supporting traditional tabletop play well, but also the types of _D&D _experiences people have in streams.”


----------



## Umbran

AcererakTriple6 said:


> WotC is playing catch-up.




This is a thing that folks repeatedly fail to understand.  Generally speaking, while WotC is the market leader, economically, they accomplish this by _following_ what the people want, not by discovering something new and telling folks they want it.


----------



## J.Quondam

Malmuria said:


> D&D's Lead Rule Designer Explains Why Actual Play Has Influenced the Game
> 
> 
> The latest edition of Dungeons & Dragons has grown to accommodate the kind of play experiences that have catapulted it to renewed popularity.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> gizmodo.com




From that article:


> _“And so the more bite-sized we can make things, the easier we can make it so that you can take even an epic adventure like Rime of the Frostmaiden, or now The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, the more likely people are going to feel like ‘OK, even though I’ve had a busy week, I can still get a little bit of D&D in there with my friends and family.’ That, again, has been a very conscious choice on our part, not only because of what we observe in streams, but again to make it much easier for the brand new DM to get their feet wet in the wonderful pool of D&D.”_​



This aim right here has heavily influenced how I've approached gaming for 20ish years, just out of necessity. Streaming notwithstanding, for me it's just a nice way to keep a campaign manageable for groups that have limited time, per session and/or per campaign. So maybe this isn't really a sea change so much as return of the tide.

_Plus ça change...._


----------



## Umbran

J.Quondam said:


> From that article:
> 
> This aim right here has heavily influenced how I've approached gaming for 20ish years, just out of necessity. Streaming notwithstanding, for me it's just a nice way to keep a campaign manageable for groups that have limited time, per session and/or per campaign. So maybe this isn't really a sea change so much as return of the tide.
> 
> _Plus ça change...._




The recognition that most folks just don't sit down and play for 8 hours at a stretch seems to have been a boon both to the older folk (who have jobs, families, and busy lives) and the actual play streamers...

And, really, the teens as well - there's so much competition for their time these days, that the long-session model probably doesn't work for them either.


----------



## Stormonu

Grumpy Old Man Here (as if you couldn't tell by the avatar...).

Witchlight and Strixhaven do seem to point to a shift away from Conan/Fafnr & Grey Mouser and other "pulp"/LotR mercenary gaming and more towards more modern YA fictions.  Basically the stuff their target demographic has grown up and been influenced by, just as we were back in TSR days).  Not just in the subject matter, but tone.  I get a sense of less concentration on the "exciting fight" and more on the "interesting and unusual encounter/interaction", as well as "tell me a story" instead of "wander around this weird place and pull levers to see what happens".  Doesn't bother me and I do enjoy it so far, so long as they don't start trying to insinuate that strapping on armor and delving into the local dungeon to kill monsters is badwrongfun.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Parmandur said:


> Change is never linear. Fashions are like a roller coaster (keeping things like Class vs. Point Buy at significant arms length from more social questions).



I wouldn't say a roller-coaster because that loops. Likewise not like a pendulum, because that comes back to the same place. More like change is fashions are a large and highly irregular boulder rolling down a mountainside and sometimes things break off and permanently alter it.


----------



## Thomas Shey

Ruin Explorer said:


> Ironically I think this influx may actually like some things some people consider "passé", particular highly-specific/themed classes rather than generic classes, and are highly likely to prefer race/class/etc. to points-buy-based or classless/few-broad-classes systems.




So the same as its been for 40 years?  If a lot of people didn't like classes, presumably D&D wouldn't have been as successful this long even with the network effect.  Those who aren't that fond of that are used to being in the minority here.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Retreater said:


> How will that change it? I think it's going to be a lot less about rules and combat. More roleplaying to solve problems. Less dungeons and more urban/political intrigue.



This is kind of amazing because it's basically "More like how Ruin has been running things since 1989".

Also arguably - "More like every single other major TTRPG that wasn't D&D published after about 1990".


----------



## Thomas Shey

Ruin Explorer said:


> This is kind of amazing because it's basically "More like how Ruin has been running things since 1989".
> 
> Also arguably - "More like every single other major TTRPG that wasn't D&D published after about 1990".




I think you have to ignore the whole post-apocalyptic genre to say that, and at least its an incomplete statement when talking about plenty of SF games in general.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Thomas Shey said:


> So the same as its been for 40 years?  If a lot of people didn't like classes, presumably D&D wouldn't have been as successful this long even with the network effect.  Those who aren't that fond of that are used to being in the minority here.



Not really.

D&D did become far less successful in the 1990s, kind of tired of this new thing where people pretend the 1990s didn't happen. Classes were absolutely part of that problem.

And in the early 2000s, with 3.XE, it took a very different approach to classes, one which made classes very simplistic in a way that 4E and 5E didn't. It really felt like if Tweet had been completely off the leash we'd have seen the classes collapsed down and several deleted outright.

What people like now seems to be different - they come to TT RPGs with existing expectations about classes, which wasn't really the case in earlier eras. It makes narrow and specific classes and subclasses perhaps more palatable than in any previous era.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Thomas Shey said:


> I think you have to ignore the whole post-apocalyptic genre to say that, and at least its an incomplete statement when talking about plenty of SF games in general.



How so?

I'd also point out "ignoring the whole post-apocalyptic genre" in TT RPGs is um, pretty funny, because there have been remarkably few successful post-apocalyptic RPGs, much less influential ones. We're basically talking Apocalypse World, where the system was influential not the content, Gamma World, Twilight 2000 (kinda) and After The Bomb. Maybe RIFTS? But that's really something else.

EDIT - In fact apart from Apocalypse World, which is absolutely 100% "about those things" (talking and problem solving over fighting, particularly), and "major RPG" because of it's insane influence, has a major new post-apocalyptic RPG been published after 1990? Not an update, a new IP. Gamma World was 1978. Twilight 2000 was 1984. After The Bomb was 1986. I can't think of any major other ones. Legacy: Life Among The Ruins is lovely, but it's not major.

EDIT EDIT - I guess we could try Tribe 8 as major and post-apocalyptic? But again that's absolutely about what has been described. Indeed it's a particularly good exemplar.

Am I missing the point? Were you saying post-apocalyptic supported my point? Because it seemed not. What games are you thinking of?

And even those seem to fit the model you're saying they don't. They're typically more about problem-solving than combat. They don't typically feature dungeons. They often feature negotiation.


----------



## Malmuria

Stormonu said:


> Grumpy Old Man Here (as if you couldn't tell by the avatar...).
> 
> Witchlight and Strixhaven do seem to point to a shift away from Conan/Fafnr & Grey Mouser and other "pulp"/LotR mercenary gaming and more towards more modern YA fictions.  Basically the stuff their target demographic has grown up and been influenced by, just as we were back in TSR days).  Not just in the subject matter, but tone.  I get a sense of less concentration on the "exciting fight" and more on the "interesting and unusual encounter/interaction", as well as "tell me a story" instead of "wander around this weird place and pull levers to see what happens".  Doesn't bother me and I do enjoy it so far, so long as they don't start trying to insinuate that strapping on armor and delving into the local dungeon to kill monsters is badwrongfun.



A series of "interesting an unusual encounters" could easily describe all of the planescape modules from the 90s.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Malmuria said:


> A series of "interesting an unusual encounters" could easily describe all of the planescape modules from the 90s.



All of the _good_ Planescape modules maybe lol.

I played at least one which was more like a series of "dull and slightly off encounters"!


----------



## Reynard

Parmandur said:


> I think they already have adapted, with how Adventures are formatted. 5E backed it's way into being optimized by streaming at the right time.



I don't watch a lot of streams. Are people streaming WotC adventures, and if so how do those streams differ from homered streams?


----------



## Mercurius

darjr said:


> Here’s the other thing. The “community” isn’t what you think it is. There is such a breadth of different ways people play, and probably always has been, that people seemed to always be kvetching over it.



Yep. Which is why targeting for any specific set of "values" or trying to capture the "latest trends" leads to problems. I mean, it is one thing to broaden the scope of what D&D is, quite another to say "D&D is now about Y and no longer about X."

I'm reminded of some advice a literary agent gave, which is not to worry about trends, whether your work fits in with it or not (or worse still, trying to adjust your work to a certain trend that you have little or no interest in). In fantasy literature, new trends generally don't mean a sea change as much as they are a broadening of what fantasy means. The old stuff doesn't go away. So for instance, when "grimdark" became the thing, it wasn't like all of a sudden all other tones of fantasy stopped being published. There might have been a few years where grimdark took up a larger percentage of market share--at least apparently so--but then the wider genre adjusted and integrated grimdark as another thematic sub-genre. 

Furthermore, _people _change. A person's values and worldview at 30 or 40 is probably (hopefully!) not the same as it was when they were 16. This ties into another reason why going for the current trend is not recommended: by the time you get to publication, things might have moved on.

Or to put it another way, I think the best way forward is "both/and" not "either/or." Meaning, you can play traditional style D&D and kill things and take their stuff, or if you want to roleplay magic masquerade balls and academic politics, we'll provide that too. D&D is now big enough for a big umbrella approach.

But for that to be successful, two things have to happen:
1) WotC has to honor the big umbrella, and publish a range of thematic offerings.
2) The fan-base has to accept that not every product was written with them in mind.

I think the former is more likely than the latter.


----------



## Staffan

Ruin Explorer said:


> EDIT - In fact apart from Apocalypse World, which is absolutely 100% "about those things" (talking and problem solving over fighting, particularly), and "major RPG" because of it's insane influence, has a major new post-apocalyptic RPG been published after 1990? Not an update, a new IP. Gamma World was 1978. Twilight 2000 was 1984. After The Bomb was 1986. I can't think of any major other ones. Legacy: Life Among The Ruins is lovely, but it's not major.



Depending on your perspective, Mutant Year Zero. *Technically*, MYZ builds on the Swedish game Mutant from the early 80s (which in turn was a Gamma World ripoff with BRP-like rules, though MYZ uses a completely different system), but they really have very little in common other than post-apocalypse and mutants.

MYZ takes a different approach because of its intense local focus. The PCs come from an Ark, making them part of a settlement of 200 or so mutants whose society starts on the brink of collapse because their old resources are being depleted, and the Old One who previously guided and supported them is on the verge of death. Oh, and the mutants of the Ark are unable to reproduce. Adventures tend to either be about internal Ark stuff or exploring the outside world, and part of the game is deciding how to develop the Ark by building either specific places (like a pig farm to provide more food) or concepts (different forms of government are among the late-game things to "build"). PCs are built with a number of connections to other people in the Ark, and they are also bound to it because most of the surrounding area is filled with Rot (an abstraction of radioactivity as well as biochemical agents and other badness) that will accumulate if you're away too long, so you need to return to a safe area in order to get rid of it).


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Mercurius said:


> So for instance, when "grimdark" became the thing, it wasn't like all of a sudden all other tones of fantasy stopped being published.



It was like _new_ authors who didn't write in the grimdark style basically stopped being published for several years, though.

I remember it pretty distinctly. And the authors which were grimdark were promoted and marketed vastly more aggressively than older authors who weren't, for that period. It definitely had a significant and long-term impact on the fantasy landscape. There are authors successful today, who had the whole "grimdark" thing not happened and been pushed by publishers, might never have been successful. There are others who it impacted the career of.

And saying that "the old stuff doesn't go away" is totally wrong with fantasy particularly. Some stuff which was absolutely huge, earth-shatteringly influential, in the 1970s and earlier 1980s was basically close to forgotten by the 1990s, and is nearly completely forgotten now. Case in point, Michael Moorcock. He was a goddamn titan up into the early '80s, even non-fantasy critics and stuff were talking about him. Today? Most fantasy readers have never even heard of him, let alone read one of his books. He's a large part of the reason D&D and Warhammer are the way they are, but you'll hear 30-somethings who've never heard of him blithely asserting both were influenced more or less solely by Tolkien (which with Warhammer particularly is just completely insane nonsense of the most ignorant kind - but then other 20-something and 30-something people slap each other on the back and all agree about about). It's a travesty but it's a thing that's already happened.

Some fantasy stuff survives better (it's hard to predict which, it's certainly not related to how influential it is), but an awful lot of it absolutely does "go away". Hell, hardly anyone under about 35 seems to have actually read any pulp fantasy at all apart from maybe a few Conan short stories if you're very lucky.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Staffan said:


> Depending on your perspective, Mutant Year Zero. *Technically*, MYZ builds on the Swedish game Mutant from the early 80s (which in turn was a Gamma World ripoff with BRP-like rules, though MYZ uses a completely different system), but they really have very little in common other than post-apocalypse and mutants.
> 
> MYZ takes a different approach because of its intense local focus. The PCs come from an Ark, making them part of a settlement of 200 or so mutants whose society starts on the brink of collapse because their old resources are being depleted, and the Old One who previously guided and supported them is on the verge of death. Oh, and the mutants of the Ark are unable to reproduce. Adventures tend to either be about internal Ark stuff or exploring the outside world, and part of the game is deciding how to develop the Ark by building either specific places (like a pig farm to provide more food) or concepts (different forms of government are among the late-game things to "build"). PCs are built with a number of connections to other people in the Ark, and they are also bound to it because most of the surrounding area is filled with Rot (an abstraction of radioactivity as well as biochemical agents and other badness) that will accumulate if you're away too long, so you need to return to a safe area in order to get rid of it).



That sounds like it fits the "less combat, more problem-solving and negotiation" model though, no?


----------



## Staffan

Ruin Explorer said:


> That sounds like it fits the "less combat, more problem-solving and negotiation" model though, no?



Well, there's certainly combat in it. The Zone is a dangerous place.

But I mainly meant it as an example of a fairly major game that's both post-apocalyptic and post-1990.


----------



## darjr

Mercurius said:


> Yep. Which is why targeting for any specific set of "values" or trying to capture the "latest trends" leads to problems.



Latest trends to whom?

Corollary, just because it’s giving people future shock doesn’t mean it’s new or out of the blue, it might mean they are a tad bit lost.


----------



## Parmandur

Reynard said:


> I don't watch a lot of streams. Are people streaming WotC adventures, and if so how do those streams differ from homered streams?



They are, that's actually one of the major audiences for the Beadle & Grimm box sets, because the big advantage of streaming the official books is lots of art to use (which WotC likes, because it's advertising).


----------



## Thomas Shey

Ruin Explorer said:


> How so?
> 
> I'd also point out "ignoring the whole post-apocalyptic genre" in TT RPGs is um, pretty funny, because there have been remarkably few successful post-apocalyptic RPGs, much less influential ones. We're basically talking Apocalypse World, where the system was influential not the content, Gamma World, Twilight 2000 (kinda) and After The Bomb. Maybe RIFTS? But that's really something else.




If you take that argument far enough, there's been few games outside of D&D that are successful or influential at all.  It doesn't change the fact that you still have to ignore the whole genre for the most part for your statement to be true.



Ruin Explorer said:


> EDIT - In fact apart from Apocalypse World, which is absolutely 100% "about those things" (talking and problem solving over fighting, particularly), and "major RPG" because of it's insane influence, has a major new post-apocalyptic RPG been published after 1990? Not an update, a new IP. Gamma World was 1978. Twilight 2000 was 1984. After The Bomb was 1986. I can't think of any major other ones. Legacy: Life Among The Ruins is lovely, but it's not major.




How am I to answer that?  What's your definition of major?  No offense, but I'm really not interested in getting into a "no true Scotsman" argument here.  Frankly, for a lot of people I don't think any of the PbtA games would be classed as "major", so its going to be a term that's fraught.

Because I'd argue at least Mutant Year Zero applies, and it came out in the early 2000's.  






Ruin Explorer said:


> EDIT EDIT - I guess we could try Tribe 8 as major and post-apocalyptic? But again that's absolutely about what has been described. Indeed it's a particularly good exemplar.
> 
> Am I missing the point? Were you saying post-apocalyptic supported my point? Because it seemed not. What games are you thinking of?
> 
> And even those seem to fit the model you're saying they don't. They're typically more about problem-solving than combat. They don't typically feature dungeons. They often feature negotiation.




How narrowly do you define "dungeon"?  They certainly often involve exploring ruins, and they don't intrinsically involve negotiation any more than D&D does.  They certainly aren't "urban" which was part of your original post (neither, far as that goes is a lot of exploratory SF).


----------



## Mordhau

I think modern culture is weird.

We have a game with a fanbase that really wants to play a game that was made in the 70s and prefers to play that game instead of newer games but really wants that game to reflect the current times.

I think this means that the game can only really change radically as long as either everyone pretends not to notice, or everyone pretends it was ever thus.

So the majority of the fanbase may not play classical dungeoun based games, but it's unlikely the game will change much to reflect that because games that do reflect other play styles already exist and the fanbase has already rejected them.

Of course in a sense we already went through something similar in 2nd edition.


----------



## Thomas Shey

Ruin Explorer said:


> Not really.
> 
> D&D did become far less successful in the 1990s, kind of tired of this new thing where people pretend the 1990s didn't happen. Classes were absolutely part of that problem.




What standard are you using for "a lot less successful"?  There have been two times since the onset of D&D it wasn't the top dog (both of them arguable) and during both of those periods some of their competitors were class and level systems, too.

Again, some of that is market inertia and some of that is networking effect, but it still doesn't suggest more than a minority of the hobby had a significant issue with classes/races/levels as a model.



Ruin Explorer said:


> And in the early 2000s, with 3.XE, it took a very different approach to classes, one which made classes very simplistic in a way that 4E and 5E didn't. It really felt like if Tweet had been completely off the leash we'd have seen the classes collapsed down and several deleted outright.




Possibly, though I'm not sure 13th Age supports that.  3e era classes were certainly less rigid than earlier ones had been, but there was still a lot of hard lines drawn, especially as soon as you got to magic.  The really free and easy multiclassing might have confused this, but it still for the most part added up to a lot of special abilities and almost all spellcasting gated behind classes.



Ruin Explorer said:


> What people like now seems to be different - they come to TT RPGs with existing expectations about classes, which wasn't really the case in earlier eras. It makes narrow and specific classes and subclasses perhaps more palatable than in any previous era.




Eh.  Still not sure I buy it.  People have been fed into the hobby with that expectation the moment MMOs became a significant thing.


----------



## MGibster

Thomas Shey said:


> Eh. Still not sure I buy it. People have been fed into the hobby with that expectation the moment MMOs became a significant thing.



I think it's been longer than that.  Classes have been a part of the game for more than 40 years and even before MMORPGs were around plenty of video games were influenced by D&D.


----------



## Professor Murder

My gut feeling is a push for more and more online tools, with the goal of production values making DnD stand out from the general competition. Hell, I buy 3rd party materials semi-regularly for DnD but have reluctance incorporating it due to it being an extra step or three to incorporate it into DnDBeyond. People may have reservations about the game as a system, but if you give the game the best means of delivery, especially for the increasing reality of teleplay groups, you are going to dominate. It's just shocking that they haven't done more. But what you have to remember is that the market is still small when compared to nearly every other major commercialized self entertainment. Compared to Video Games, people are fighting over pennies. I'm a lifer, so I'm just hopeful that this surge of young people entering the hobby will produce some future lifers to play with.


----------



## Professor Murder

Also, perhaps it is just me, but I am liking the shift in priorities, the widening of playstyles. This is coming from someone who started with 1st ed ADnD. Dungeons are boring.


----------



## Mordhau

All I can say about the 90s rpg scence in Australia is that AD&D was viewed as an outdated primitive kind of system for kids and that just about everyone graduated to play games that didn't use stuff like classes and levels.

A lot of 2nd edition settings were well regarded, but you converted them to Stormbringer, or Gurps or Runequest or something like that.



Ruin Explorer said:


> And in the early 2000s, with 3.XE, it took a very different approach to classes, one which made classes very simplistic in a way that 4E and 5E didn't. It really felt like if Tweet had been completely off the leash we'd have seen the classes collapsed down and several deleted outright.
> 
> What people like now seems to be different - they come to TT RPGs with existing expectations about classes, which wasn't really the case in earlier eras. It makes narrow and specific classes and subclasses perhaps more palatable than in any previous era.



I've long felt that a lot of recurring problems in D&D have basically come about from the fact that it was a class and level system designed by people who really didn't want to be writing a class and level system.


----------



## Thomas Shey

MGibster said:


> I think it's been longer than that.  Classes have been a part of the game for more than 40 years and even before MMORPGs were around plenty of video games were influenced by D&D.




My point was that at one time people getting into RPGs had littler or no structural expectations, but computer games did change that, and MMOs upped the reach of those pretty vastly.


----------



## Thomas Shey

Mordhau said:


> All I can say about the 90s rpg scence in Australia is that AD&D was viewed as an outdated primitive kind of system for kids and that just about everyone graduated to play games that didn't use stuff like classes and levels.




I should have made it clear my statement was U.S.-centric.  Some countries were very heavily influenced very early by RQ, for example.


----------



## MGibster

Professor Murder said:


> Also, perhaps it is just me, but I am liking the shift in priorities, the widening of playstyles. This is coming from someone who started with 1st ed ADnD. Dungeons are boring.



I like the widening of playstyles as well.  I'm not sure D&D's current class system supports that very well.  If I want to make a character that's good at talking to people, I'm not going with a Fighter or Barbarian.  Sure, I could jump through some hoops to make them decent at talking but it's much easier to just go with Rogue, Bard, or Warlock.


----------



## Mordhau

Thomas Shey said:


> I should have made it clear my statement was U.S.-centric.  Some countries were very heavily influenced very early by RQ, for example.



I think the biggest influence at the time was Storyteller games.  At one point Vampire was outselling AD&D I believe.

Virtually everyone I knew had either graduated from AD&D (at high school) to Storyteller or had started (usually at University age) with Storyteller.   People tended to approach other systems for fantasy due to the perceived out-of-dateness of AD&D.

Virtually every new game being produced in the late 90s was some kind of Stat+Skill with Advantages/Disadvantages game.  For a while there the hobby seemed to have settled on a consensus in rpg design approach.


----------



## Professor Murder

MGibster said:


> I like the widening of playstyles as well.  I'm not sure D&D's current class system supports that very well.  If I want to make a character that's good at talking to people, I'm not going with a Fighter or Barbarian.  Sure, I could jump through some hoops to make them decent at talking but it's much easier to just go with Rogue, Bard, or Warlock.



I think a part of this will come down to how much you want there to be rules systems for roleplaying interactions. Me, I like having them, but I find in the heat of things they are often overlooked. I totally grok that DnD's largest and most developed system is combat and therefore that's what it points people towards.


----------



## Professor Murder

Mordhau said:


> I think the biggest influence at the time was Storyteller games.  At one point Vampire was outselling AD&D I believe.
> 
> Virtually everyone I knew had either graduated from AD&D (at high school) to Storyteller or had started (usually at University age) with Storyteller.   People tended to approach other systems for fantasy due to the perceived out-of-dateness of AD&D.
> 
> Virtually every new game being produced in the late 90s was some kind of Stat+Skill with Advantages/Disadvantages game.  For a while there the hobby seemed to have settled on a consensus in rpg design approach.



Yep.  Played a shitload of WoD. Still love it for LARP. RPG game design was widened even further. A lot of the design energy feels towards more minimalist design right now.


----------



## MGibster

Professor Murder said:


> I think a part of this will come down to how much you want there to be rules systems for roleplaying interactions. Me, I like having them, but I find in the heat of things they are often overlooked. I totally grok that DnD's largest and most developed system is combat and therefore that's what it points people towards.



I'm one of those weirdos who think that the rules influence how a game is played.  I have observed many times over the years D&D players avoiding engaging in conversation with NPCs because they weren't playing a "talky" character class.  I don't do that, I'll have my characters talk to everyone whether they're good at it or not.  I think anyone who wants D&D to expand into a more storyteller is going to have to address the problems with Charisma and communication oriented skills and the class system.


----------



## Mordhau

MGibster said:


> I'm one of those weirdos who think that the rules influence how a game is played.  I have observed many times over the years D&D players avoiding engaging in conversation with NPCs because they weren't playing a "talky" character class.  I don't do that, I'll have my characters talk to everyone whether they're good at it or not.  I think anyone who wants D&D to expand into a more storyteller is going to have to address the problems with Charisma and communication oriented skills and the class system.



Having (poor) rules which make certain people better at things, but which may or may not be used sort of seems like the worst of both worlds.


----------



## Oofta

I've almost always played story driven games, I haven't done a dungeon crawl since high school. Even then a lot of our adventures were city based or heists (stealing from crime lord's, of course  ).

So when I hear about this new style, it's still rock and roll to me.  Umm, still D&D to me.  Oh, and the streamed games I watch don't look all that different than my home game.


----------



## Professor Murder

Also, when it comes to social systems, I am looking to see what I can adapt from Stryxhaven.


----------



## Professor Murder

Also, what this is really about:
People who don't like the way DnD changes into something different then the way they played in the past aren't actually directly affected by shifts of focus. DnD isn't milk. The rules don't spoil over time. People still play older rules versions. The OSR movement is predicated on this. What upsets them is more people coming into the hobby, making up the numerical majority of the hobby according to all recent data, playing the game in ways that aren't to their liking, which I totally grok. They want people they can play with. It's what we all want. The thing is, one of the side effects of this golden age is its easier than ever to find people you can play with, your way. There is a table out there for you so long as you are someone who's bringing good to the table.


----------



## Mistwell

Retreater said:


> I think I was watching a Matt Colville video recently, and he brought up a point that I agree with. 5e was designed and released before streaming really took off. The next iteration will address it in some capacity. It's the biggest shift in how the game is played and how it is viewed in society that we've ever seen. Bigger than AD&D 1e, bigger than WotC's purchase, bigger than Hasbro's purchase, bigger than the Satanic Panic.
> How will that change it? I think it's going to be a lot less about rules and combat. More roleplaying to solve problems. Less dungeons and more urban/political intrigue.
> Of course, culture changes quicker than books can be re-written and printed. The change is already here, but WotC just needs to address it in their books to further capture that market.



Online gaming through platforms like Role20 and Fantasy Grounds favors tactical combat quite a bit, and that has grown more in terms of actual play than streaming (which is just one group playing and many watching it). In that respect, I strongly doubt we will see a big shift in terms of less rules and combat. Instead it will just be more optional rules I suspect.


----------



## Mordhau

Professor Murder said:


> Also, what this is really about:
> People who don't like the way DnD changes into something different then the way they played in the past aren't actually directly affected by shifts of focus. DnD isn't milk. The rules don't spoil over time. People still play older rules versions. The OSR movement is predicated on this. What upsets them is more people coming into the hobby, making up the numerical majority of the hobby according to all recent data, playing the game in ways that aren't to their liking, which I totally grok. They want people they can play with. It's what we all want. The thing is, one of the side effects of this golden age is its easier than ever to find people you can play with, your way. There is a table out there for you so long as you are someone who's bringing good to the table.



My experience.  If you don't want to play D&D the way most people expect it to be played you're better off playing a different game.

There's so many people out there looking for D&D that they'll "settle" for a game that isn't in the style they really want.  To some extent this is even true of OSR games which are D&D enough they get the 5e spillover.

Whereas if you advertise for something like Conan 2d20 you might find it harder to find players initially, but you'll have a better chance of finding players who want to actually play the game and will stick around.


----------



## Thomas Shey

Mordhau said:


> I think the biggest influence at the time was Storyteller games.  At one point Vampire was outselling AD&D I believe.




There's some debate about that, but yeah, that's one of the two cases I referred to earlier.

But some of the swing away from D&D structures in some countries well predates Storyteller.



Mordhau said:


> Virtually everyone I knew had either graduated from AD&D (at high school) to Storyteller or had started (usually at University age) with Storyteller.   People tended to approach other systems for fantasy due to the perceived out-of-dateness of AD&D.
> 
> Virtually every new game being produced in the late 90s was some kind of Stat+Skill with Advantages/Disadvantages game.  For a while there the hobby seemed to have settled on a consensus in rpg design approach.




Eh.  There's always a tendency to play follow-the-leader when something is successful and well-known, but I think "consensus" overstates it pretty severely.


----------



## cowpie

Mercurius said:


> Yep. Which is why targeting for any specific set of "values" or trying to capture the "latest trends" leads to problems. I mean, it is one thing to broaden the scope of what D&D is, quite another to say "D&D is now about Y and no longer about X."
> 
> I'm reminded of some advice a literary agent gave, which is not to worry about trends, whether your work fits in with it or not (or worse still, trying to adjust your work to a certain trend that you have little or no interest in). In fantasy literature, new trends generally don't mean a sea change as much as they are a broadening of what fantasy means. The old stuff doesn't go away. So for instance, when "grimdark" became the thing, it wasn't like all of a sudden all other tones of fantasy stopped being published. There might have been a few years where grimdark took up a larger percentage of market share--at least apparently so--but then the wider genre adjusted and integrated grimdark as another thematic sub-genre.
> 
> Furthermore, _people _change. A person's values and worldview at 30 or 40 is probably (hopefully!) not the same as it was when they were 16. This ties into another reason why going for the current trend is not recommended: by the time you get to publication, things might have moved on.
> 
> Or to put it another way, I think the best way forward is "both/and" not "either/or." Meaning, you can play traditional style D&D and kill things and take their stuff, or if you want to roleplay magic masquerade balls and academic politics, we'll provide that too. D&D is now big enough for a big umbrella approach.
> 
> But for that to be successful, two things have to happen:
> 1) WotC has to honor the big umbrella, and publish a range of thematic offerings.
> 2) The fan-base has to accept that not every product was written with them in mind.
> 
> I think the former is more likely than the latter.



Agreed with all of this--especially the point about how people's priorities change as they progress through life.  Supposedly we all go through a new life stage every seven years, so what the core audience values now, will likely shift over time. 

WOTC has produced tons of splatbooks expanding player options, but not a lot of expansion support for DMs.  This is probably because everybody buys the player options books, but more DMs than players will buy DMs Guides, resulting in less sales.

5th Edition is a pretty flexible game system.  I can't see why WOTC can just put out a book of "Game Modes" for D&D, with tutorials on multiple approaches to play.  Then, write up a chapter teaching how novice DMs could DIY their own setting, put together using templates provided in the book.

You could have a chapter on each genre or play style. This could serve to include your entire player base, encourage them to try out different kinds of play styles under the "D&D Umbrella", and capture all of the customers.  This would also increase interaction between groups of players, and introduce cross pollination of play styles and bring disparate players together as groups tried out each others' games.

There could be chapters on short term campaigns, and running very long campaigns.  You could also have an introductory rules set, intermediate and hard mode.  The hard mode could increase player mortality, and up the challenge in general, for players who are less casual and enjoy beating challenges as a team.  

Genre chapters could include: Gritty Swords & Sorcery play, Planetary Romance/Science Fantasy play, CW-style fantasy teen relationship play (which I think is what Strixhaven is), Epic Heroic Fantasy, Classic Dungeon crawls, Crit Role style comedy romp/set piece action sequence games, Mysteries (like Candlekeep), Historical Realism or Arthurian Romance.


----------



## Professor Murder

Mordhau said:


> My experience.  If you don't want to play D&D the way most people expect it to be played you're better off playing a different game.
> 
> There's so many people out there looking for D&D that they'll "settle" for a game that isn't in the style they really want.  To some extent this is even true of OSR games which are D&D enough they get the 5e spillover.
> 
> Whereas if you advertise for something like Conan 2d20 you might find it harder to find players initially, but you'll have a better chance of finding players who want to actually play the game and will stick around.



The lack of local games cons is killing me. Got soo many little one shots of indie games or just games that arent well suited for my regular gaming group and no one to play with.


----------



## Thomas Shey

Mordhau said:


> My experience.  If you don't want to play D&D the way most people expect it to be played you're better off playing a different game.
> 
> There's so many people out there looking for D&D that they'll "settle" for a game that isn't in the style they really want.  To some extent this is even true of OSR games which are D&D enough they get the 5e spillover.
> 
> Whereas if you advertise for something like Conan 2d20 you might find it harder to find players initially, but you'll have a better chance of finding players who want to actually play the game and will stick around.




And let's not forget there's a certain percentage of people who, bluntly, don't know what they want.  They'll project their expectations on the game at hand, whether its particularly good at what they're trying to do or not.  Its also why you see gaming groups where different people are pulling the campaign in different directions because they've got different expectations, sometime really incompatible ones.


----------



## Mordhau

Thomas Shey said:


> Eh.  There's always a tendency to play follow-the-leader when something is successful and well-known, but I think "consensus" overstates it pretty severely.



It certainly looked like one to me at the time.

In the late 90s we were playing.
Storyteller Games
Gurps
Fading Suns
Deadlands
Legends of the Five Rings
7th Sea
Silhouette games: Tribe 8, Heavy Gear
Unisystem games: All Flesh must be eaten

Am I missing any big games from the period that used a radically different design approach?

I can't remember when the Forge got started exactly, but that really seemed to be the green shoots of something new (but was pretty small for a long time).


----------



## Mercurius

Ruin Explorer said:


> It was like _new_ authors who didn't write in the grimdark style basically stopped being published for several years, though.
> 
> I remember it pretty distinctly. And the authors which were grimdark were promoted and marketed vastly more aggressively than older authors who weren't, for that period. It definitely had a significant and long-term impact on the fantasy landscape. There are authors successful today, who had the whole "grimdark" thing not happened and been pushed by publishers, might never have been successful. There are others who it impacted the career of.
> 
> And saying that "the old stuff doesn't go away" is totally wrong with fantasy particularly. Some stuff which was absolutely huge, earth-shatteringly influential, in the 1970s and earlier 1980s was basically close to forgotten by the 1990s, and is nearly completely forgotten now. Case in point, Michael Moorcock. He was a goddamn titan up into the early '80s, even non-fantasy critics and stuff were talking about him. Today? Most fantasy readers have never even heard of him, let alone read one of his books. He's a large part of the reason D&D and Warhammer are the way they are, but you'll hear 30-somethings who've never heard of him blithely asserting both were influenced more or less solely by Tolkien (which with Warhammer particularly is just completely insane nonsense of the most ignorant kind - but then other 20-something and 30-something people slap each other on the back and all agree about about). It's a travesty but it's a thing that's already happened.
> 
> Some fantasy stuff survives better (it's hard to predict which, it's certainly not related to how influential it is), but an awful lot of it absolutely does "go away". Hell, hardly anyone under about 35 seems to have actually read any pulp fantasy at all apart from maybe a few Conan short stories if you're very lucky.



Moorcock is an author, not a theme or sub-genre. That's what I was talking about. Oh yeah, and Moorcock is still publishing - he has a following. Maybe newer fans haven't heard of him, but he's known by everyone with anything more than a surface knowledge of fantasy.

Moorcock was instrumental in establishing sword & sorcery, or reviving it in the 60s. And it hasn't gone away. It may not be as prominent as other sub-genres of fantasy, but it still has a strong following, and has also influenced grimdark.

That said, I hear you about him being under-appreciated in terms of his influence. In my mind, and I think in the minds with scholars of the genre, he's a giant.

And I hear you about stuff fading, and younger folks not having a historical context. That's probably just due to casual fandom: most people read The Latest Thing, and only serious fans look back beyond stuff published more than 20 years ago or so. 

But my point is, even if things rise and fall, a lot of stuff comes back around. That's how the fashion world works (as far as I understand it).

We also live somewhat in a "post-genre era," where there is less room for new territory to be discovered, and a wealth of old stuff to sort through and re-vitalize in new ways. I mean, have you ever noticed how the cultural themes of the 20th century are more vivid than in the 21st century? Maybe it is "recency blindness," but I just don't see the 2000s or 2010s as having as vivid a "cultural signature" as the 1920s - 1990s. It is almost like we, or at least Western culture, tried everything out in the 20th century, and the 21st century is more about re-combining and integrating, with less new ideas coming in. Very postmodern of us! Just a hypothesis, though. 

p.s. Seeing as you're obviously a sword & sorcery fan, have you checked out the recent survey of the field, Flame and Crimson? A fun book.


----------



## MGibster

Professor Murder said:


> They want people they can play with. It's what we all want. The thing is, one of the side effects of this golden age is its easier than ever to find people you can play with, your way. There is a table out there for you so long as you are someone who's bringing good to the table.



Is this the problem though?  I'm in my mid-40s, and I'm not really interested in gaming with people in their 20s.  It's not that I have anything against younger players, I'm glad they're coming into gaming, but I don't have anything common with them and they probably don't want to hang out with me either.  I don't imagine that influx of new gamers are going to be the type of people the old guard are doing to want to game with for the most part.


----------



## CleverNickName

Did I miss something?  Has a "five point five" edition been announced?
(serious question, not trolling.)


----------



## Thomas Shey

Mordhau said:


> It certainly looked like one to me at the time.
> 
> In the late 90s we were playing.
> Storyteller Games
> Gurps
> Fading Suns
> Deadlands
> Legends of the Five Rings
> 7th Sea
> Silhouette games: Tribe 8, Heavy Gear
> Unisystem games: All Flesh must be eaten
> 
> Am I missing any big games from the period that used a radically different design approach?




Well, part of the problem is that I don't think a lot of the games you listed used a particularly similar design approach.  Just because they didn't use classes and levels doesn't make GURPS and Storyteller particularly similar.  I'm not familiar enough with LotFR or 7th Seas to judge, but among the ones you list that I am, only Silhouette and Storyteller seem at all similar to me (they're at least both die pool games that pay attention to individual die results) but even that's stretching it a bit.


----------



## Krachek

For what we know for now it’s a promise of full compatibility.
That’s not very sea change.
it will certainly be more rules of cool, less trap options and more versatile features.
Core mechanics will stay the same, and actual change on lineage and alignment are not sea change, but more a marketing adjustment for the game.
They can rewrite classes and align them with a shorten adventuring day without changing the overall power level of the PC.
The overall direction of the game is the rule of cool and the open options. 
Those who hope for harsh and tactical play style will be disappointed.


----------



## Mercurius

darjr said:


> Latest trends to whom?
> 
> Corollary, just because it’s giving people future shock doesn’t mean it’s new or out of the blue, it might mean they are a tad bit lost.



I'm talking about latest artistic and cultural trends, especially in the English-speaking world (which is most relevant to D&D).

As to the last, I'm not sure entirely what you're saying. I don't think all hesitation to leave behind the old and/or embrace the new is necessarily future shock, just as I don't think that whatever is new is inherently "better" than what is old.


----------



## cowpie

Thomas Shey said:


> There's some debate about that, but yeah, that's one of the two cases I referred to earlier.
> 
> But some of the swing away from D&D structures in some countries well predates Storyteller.
> 
> 
> 
> Eh.  There's always a tendency to play follow-the-leader when something is successful and well-known, but I think "consensus" overstates it pretty severely.



With 2nd Edition, TSR was also putting out some _meh_ products, mostly because of the mismanagement of their publishing agreement with Random House.  They got partially paid in advance by Random House for everything they published, but RH could return unsold books for a refund.  Every time TSR ran into debt, they would put out umpteen jillion paperback novels, and D&D splatbooks no one wanted.  RH would pay in advance for these, and then they'd use RH's own cash to pay RH their refund.  

When the new books got returned, they would publish even more books to get RH to give them more cash so they could pay off their debt to RH for the last books--yntil Random House got fed up with this practice, and sued TSR into bankruptcy.

To finance this death-spiral, TSR churned out lots of low quality product, at exactly the time that new RPGs (like WoD) were coming out and directly challenging TSR for control of a very limited market.


----------



## Mordhau

Thomas Shey said:


> Well, part of the problem is that I don't think a lot of the games you listed used a particularly similar design approach.  Just because they didn't use classes and levels doesn't make GURPS and Storyteller particularly similar.  I'm not familiar enough with LotFR or 7th Seas to judge, but among the ones you list that I am, only Silhouette and Storyteller seem at all similar to me (they're at least both die pool games that pay attention to individual die results) but even that's stretching it a bit.



I said how they're similar.  Stat +  Skill with Advantages and Disadvantages.

I didn't say they were similar in all ways.  I think the many ways they are different makes the points where they converged more striking.


----------



## Thomas Shey

MGibster said:


> Is this the problem though?  I'm in my mid-40s, and I'm not really interested in gaming with people in their 20s.  It's not that I have anything against younger players, I'm glad they're coming into gaming, but I don't have anything common with them and they probably don't want to hang out with me either.  I don't imagine that influx of new gamers are going to be the type of people the old guard are doing to want to game with for the most part.




Eh.  I'm absolutely an old fart, but I'm playing with people that cover at least a 20 year range in ages, and I wouldn't intrinsically object to a younger player than that.  I don't think age directly maps to gaming expectations in any solid way; there might be trends, but there are plenty of outliers (or you wouldn't see as much of the OSR resurgence).


----------



## Professor Murder

MGibster said:


> Is this the problem though?  I'm in my mid-40s, and I'm not really interested in gaming with people in their 20s.  It's not that I have anything against younger players, I'm glad they're coming into gaming, but I don't have anything common with them and they probably don't want to hang out with me either.  I don't imagine that influx of new gamers are going to be the type of people the old guard are doing to want to game with for the most part.



I think that will always come down to personal tastes. Im 46 and I'm happy to play with whomever age wise. Hell, teaching first time gamers is a sacred duty for any gaming vet.


----------



## Mercurius

cowpie said:


> Agreed with all of this--especially the point about how people's priorities change as they progress through life.  Supposedly we all go through a new life stage every seven years, so what the core audience values now, will likely shift over time.
> 
> WOTC has produced tons of splatbooks expanding player options, but not a lot of expansion support for DMs.  This is probably because everybody buys the player options books, but more DMs than players will buy DMs Guides, resulting in less sales.
> 
> 5th Edition is a pretty flexible game system.  I can't see why WOTC can just put out a book of "Game Modes" for D&D, with tutorials on multiple approaches to play.  Then, write up a chapter teaching how novice DMs could DIY their own setting, put together using templates provided in the book.
> 
> You could have a chapter on each genre or play style. This could serve to include your entire player base, encourage them to try out different kinds of play styles under the "D&D Umbrella", and capture all of the customers.  This would also increase interaction between groups of players, and introduce cross pollination of play styles and bring disparate players together as groups tried out each others' games.
> 
> There could be chapters on short term campaigns, and running very long campaigns.  You could also have an introductory rules set, intermediate and hard mode.  The hard mode could increase player mortality, and up the challenge in general, for players who are less casual and enjoy beating challenges as a team.
> 
> Genre chapters could include: Gritty Swords & Sorcery play, Planetary Romance/Science Fantasy play, CW-style fantasy teen relationship play (which I think is what Strixhaven is), Epic Heroic Fantasy, Classic Dungeon crawls, Crit Role style comedy romp/set piece action sequence games, Mysteries (like Candlekeep), Historical Realism or Arthurian Romance.



Good stuff. I think this is basically what they're doing through their settings, with each expanding the umbrella, or fleshing it out.

Now they might find that certain things are more popular and they could put extra focus on those, but everything shifts so quickly, so even if they produce, say, more books in the broad style of Strixhaven for a few years, there's no telling how long it lasts. 

What I find strange is when it seems some either want D&D to move away from certain things or avoid expanding into other things. Both extremes tend to exist as a sub-current in some of these discussions. 

Meaning, why not both/and? Why must it go in a certain direction and eschew others? I mean, within reason of course. But I imagine combat-heavy and adventure-focused products will always be part of D&D, while at the same time they try out other things and expand what D&D can be.


----------



## Mordhau

Mercurius said:


> Good stuff. I think this is basically what they're doing through their settings, with each expanding the umbrella, or fleshing it out.
> 
> Now they might find that certain things are more popular and they could put extra focus on those, but everything shifts so quickly, so even if they produce, say, more books in the broad style of Strixhaven for a few years, there's no telling how long it lasts.
> 
> What I find strange is when it seems some either want D&D to move away from certain things or avoid expanding into other things. Both extremes tend to exist as a sub-current in some of these discussions.
> 
> Meaning, why not both/and? Why must it go in a certain direction and eschew others? I mean, within reason of course. But I imagine combat-heavy and adventure-focused products will always be part of D&D, while at the same time they try out other things and expand what D&D can be.



As I said in another thread, the vast majority of people want D&D to be basically the same except for the few things they personally would really like to change.

...now if we could just somehow reach a consensus on those few things!


----------



## Scribe

Professor Murder said:


> Dungeons are boring.


----------



## Thomas Shey

Mordhau said:


> I said how they're similar.  Stat +  Skill with Advantages and Disadvantages.
> 
> I didn't say they were similar in all ways.  I think the many ways they are different makes the points where they converged more striking.




I'm not sure I even consider that a particularly good description of GURPS to be honest.  Unless Savage Worlds fell far from the tree, it shouldn't be one for Deadlands, either.


----------



## cowpie

Mordhau said:


> It certainly looked like one to me at the time.
> 
> In the late 90s we were playing.
> Storyteller Games
> Gurps
> Fading Suns
> Deadlands
> Legends of the Five Rings
> 7th Sea
> Silhouette games: Tribe 8, Heavy Gear
> Unisystem games: All Flesh must be eaten
> 
> Am I missing any big games from the period that used a radically different design approach?
> 
> I can't remember when the Forge got started exactly, but that really seemed to be the green shoots of something new (but was pretty small for a long time).



Here are some more that I played into the 2000s:
Whispering Vault,
Hero Wars

Continued with:
Champions 4th Edition
Call of Cthulhu
Traveller

I'm pretty sure the Forge started up around 2001 ish -- that's when I experimented with story gaming (specifically My Life With Master, Sorcerer, KPfS & Dogs in the Vineyard, later Trail of Cthulhu and Dread.


----------



## Mercurius

Mordhau said:


> As I said in another thread, the vast majority of people want D&D to be basically the same except for the few things they personally would really like to change.
> 
> ...now if we could just somehow reach a consensus on those few things!



Unless we single out what those things are, I can only comment so much. But again, I think part of this could be solved if people better understood that a "big umbrella" approach serves everyone and that D&D can facilitate a wide range...but people have to be OK with seeing stuff that doesn't directly appeal to them, or challenges their sensibilities in some way. Or as I said before, people need to be flexible and realize that the game isn't written just for them, but thankfully they can customize it to their heart's content.

That said, this approach is better served by a relatively "vanilla" core game. I personally like the idea of keeping the core game relatively simple and classic, and then offering variations through supplements and settings. But some folks seem intractable that certain things must change in the core rules_..._and WotC seems to be listening to them, at least to some extent. I don't think we'll get to the point where the _Lavender Elves of the Sparkling Spring Faction_ is part of the core rules.


----------



## Warpiglet-7

Mercurius said:


> Good stuff. I think this is basically what they're doing through their settings, with each expanding the umbrella, or fleshing it out.
> 
> Now they might find that certain things are more popular and they could put extra focus on those, but everything shifts so quickly, so even if they produce, say, more books in the broad style of Strixhaven for a few years, there's no telling how long it lasts.
> 
> What I find strange is when it seems some either want D&D to move away from certain things or avoid expanding into other things. Both extremes tend to exist as a sub-current in some of these discussions.
> 
> Meaning, why not both/and? Why must it go in a certain direction and eschew others? I mean, within reason of course. But I imagine combat-heavy and adventure-focused products will always be part of D&D, while at the same time they try out other things and expand what D&D can be.



Well yeah, why not?

they do Harry Potter stuff.  Whatever.  I buy out of the abyss.  They do x y z.  I don’t care.  I don’t like most of the new stuff but I still have my core books.

now they start screwing up its the basic ideas of the game and move away from traditional play.  They have my attention but will be hard pressed to get my dollars.

I was a whale—-probably some thousands in minis, lots of books.  How quickly they forget.  It’s ok I guess.  I can still explore dungeons and have wars with what I have.  But they are really discouraging me from adding to my collection.

I like situations to adapt to and overcome, not stories I write that the DM has to accommodate and cater to.

It’s cool you have a story line and some ideas that would be interesting, I appreciate that.  But we still want to kill monsters win teasures and conquer things to.

it they want to write divergent books for interested parties, fine.  But total shift?  Not down with all of this.


----------



## Mordhau

Mercurius said:


> Unless we single out what those things are, I can only comment so much. But again, I think part of this could be solved if people better understood that a "big umbrella" approach serves everyone and that D&D can facilitate a wide range...but people have to be OK with seeing stuff that doesn't directly appeal to them, or challenges their sensibilities in some way. Or as I said before, people need to be flexible and realize that the game isn't written just for them, but thankfully they can customize it to their heart's content.
> 
> That said, this approach is better served by a relatively "vanilla" core game. I personally like the idea of keeping the core game relatively simple and classic, and then offering variations through supplements and settings. But some folks seem intractable that certain things must change in the core rules_..._and WotC seems to be listening to them, at least to some extent. I don't think we'll get to the point where the _Lavender Elves of the Sparkling Spring Faction_ is part of the core rules.



D&D is not just a toolkit though.  It's also a fandom.


----------



## cowpie

Professor Murder said:


> Also, perhaps it is just me, but I am liking the shift in priorities, the widening of playstyles. This is coming from someone who started with 1st ed ADnD. Dungeons are boring.



Boring dungeons are boring--the ones with the smell of mildew on the wet dungeon walls.

Cool dungeons are cool--the ones with Heavy Metal music blaring, soul sucking Gems, and Elric swordfighting with Legolas' estranged brother "Deathseeker".


----------



## Mercurius

CleverNickName said:


> Did I miss something?  Has a "five point five" edition been announced?
> (serious question, not trolling.)



Evidently you did. A couple months back they announced 50th anniversary core rulebooks, which seem to be revised to some degree. More than "5.1" but probably less than "5.5."


----------



## Mercurius

Mordhau said:


> D&D is not just a toolkit though.  It's also a fandom.



Yes, but there's always going to be sub-groupings. I mean, not everyone loves Strixhaven, and not everyone is an Eberron fan.


----------



## cowpie

Mordhau said:


> As I said in another thread, the vast majority of people want D&D to be basically the same except for the few things they personally would really like to change.
> 
> ...now if we could just somehow reach a consensus on those few things!



I think in the US right now there's a lot of unhealthy polarization in society, and this is sadly, being reflected in the RPG hobby right now.  IMHO D&D is like fly fishing.  There is no one way to be a fly fisher--anybody can pick up some gear and do it.  If some of the fly fishers start fighting over the "one acceptable way" to be a fly fisher, it will damage the hobby.  The fly fishing industry would be well served to welcome everybody to the table, if only to survive as a business, and not take sides in the fighting.


----------



## Mercurius

Warpiglet-7 said:


> Well yeah, why not?
> 
> they do Harry Potter stuff.  Whatever.  I buy out of the abyss.  They do x y z.  I don’t care.  I don’t like most of the new stuff but I still have my core books.
> 
> now they start screwing up its the basic ideas of the game and move away from traditional play.  They have my attention but will be hard pressed to get my dollars.
> 
> I was a whale—-probably some thousands in minis, lots of books.  How quickly they forget.  It’s ok I guess.  I can still explore dungeons and have wars with what I have.  But they are really discouraging me from adding to my collection.
> 
> I like situations to adapt to and overcome, not stories I write that the DM has to accommodate and cater to.
> 
> It’s cool you have a story line and some ideas that would be interesting, I appreciate that.  But we still want to kill monsters win teasures and conquer things to.
> 
> it they want to write divergent books for interested parties, fine.  But total shift?  Not down with all of this.



Yes, I hear you - which is why I'm suggested that they should (and hopefully will) keep the core game still "traditional D&D," which is part of what made 5E so successful. They shouldn't forget that.


----------



## CleverNickName

Mercurius said:


> Evidently you did. A couple months back they announced 50th anniversary core rulebooks, which seem to be revised to some degree. More than "5.1" but probably less than "5.5."



Ah, right.  I remember that announcement; I was just curious if something a little more specific had been mentioned.

I'm sure there will be updates,  but I didn't get the impression that it would be a major rewrite,  let alone a new edition.


----------



## Thomas Shey

I do tend to think treating D&D like the all purpose power tool is, well, a take.  There are absolutely things that while, technically it can do, its like using a wrench as a hammer.


----------



## MGibster

I'll be frank, my biggest problems with D&D over the years has been with how boring I think player races are.  For the most part, it doesn't seem to matter whether that Wizard is an elf, gnome, or a human because it really isn't going to have as significant impact on the game.  And now they're working harder to make player races even more irrelevant.


----------



## Mercurius

CleverNickName said:


> Ah, right.  I remember that announcement; I was just curious if something a little more specific had been mentioned.
> 
> I'm sure there will be updates,  but I didn't get the impression that it would be a major rewrite,  let alone a new edition.



I've only been coming in and out of this forum and don't follow the meta-conversation closely, so it is hard to tell what is fan speculation and what is based on actual statements by WotC. But I think the actual statements imply that it is more than just a re-skinned 5E, but less than a "5.5." So the conversation is talking about what "5.2 to 5.4" means in light of recent stuff (e.g. Tasha's, racial ability bonuses, alternate approaches to races, etc).


----------



## Rune

I don’t think the mechanics are going to change much. But WotC likely are going to pursue (and frankly already have been for a while) a different demographic than when 5e was in development.

And that makes sense. Likely a huge chunk of their audience (players _and_ viewers) weren’t even around when 5e was in its open playtest.

Sure, we’re going to see changes that reflect a shifting society. And we’re also going to see changes that reflect what fantasy looks like these days.

But I think we’re seeing another thing, too. I think we’re seeing the transition of D&D from hobby to entertainment.


----------



## Mordhau

It will be interesting to see whether 5e or 5.5 look the more dated in another 10 or 15 years.


----------



## cowpie

Mercurius said:


> Yes, I hear you - which is why I'm suggested that they should (and hopefully will) keep the core game still "traditional D&D," which is part of what made 5E so successful. They shouldn't forget that.



In the old Champions 4th Edition, Aaron Allston included a campaign planning sheet for use in his version of a Session Zero.  It outlined how to construct a campaign from scratch by ticking boxes, since Champions was fully a construction kit that required the GM to make a custom setting every time.  These could be used as building blocks to emulate any subgenre of fiction.

Rated 1-5 they were:
Morality (1 = black and white... to 5 = morality is always in shades of grey)
Realism (1 = Very Romantic... to 5 = Extremely Realistic)
Outlook (1 = Very Optimistic, almost everything works out... to 5 = Very Pessimistic, almost nothing works out)
Seriousness/Tone (1 = Very Lighthearted - almost everything played for laughs... to 5 = Almost entirely serious)
Continuity (1 = Entirely Episodic...to 5 = Entirely Serial, everything must fit the story line)

A traditional four color comic campaign was modeled top to bottom: M2, R2, O2, S3, C4
A gritty street-level superhero campaign was: M4, R4, O4, S4, C5

It occurs to me that WOTC is favoring a play style of M1-2, R1-2, O1-2, S1-2, C variable, but mostly 1-2.  So, clear cut morality, focus away from realism/simulation, optimistic worldview, friendly/lighthearted/safe seriousness, & short term episodic play.

While there's nothing wrong with this, I wish they'd support different approaches to play. As we've mentioned earlier, people's tastes change, as do demographics.  By supporting different ways to play, they could more easily adapt to changes in player preference in the market place, and capture all of the players, instead of just some of the players.


----------



## JEB

Malmuria said:


> They are releasing a number of "classic" campaign settings in the next few years. That doesn't suggest sea change to me.



Considering that Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft was very different from the "classic" version of the setting, I think it's safe to assume that the other upcoming "classic" settings will be similarly reimagined.



Reynard said:


> I don't think 5E launched that way. As I stated earlier, it launched as a corrective action focused on recapturing GenX players.



That was definitely a large part of 5E's launch, but they also echoed ideas from a number of modern story-based RPGs as well, with new core mechanics like backgrounds and inspiration. IIRC, versions of that were even in the Next playtests.

What's interesting is that even if it was aimed mainly at Gen X, 5E was very successful with younger folks even in its original state, well before the design shifts of 2020 and 2021.


----------



## Professor Murder

Scribe said:


>


----------



## cowpie

So I do have one more observation about WOTC's embracing a particular play style to fit the current year zeitgeist. While I have no problem with playing D&D as a light-hearted, casual story, I'm not 100% sold on the idea that it's a good idea to go all-in favoring this over older play styles.  At least they shouldn't abandon older play styles.

The older versions of D&D embraced mythical heroic fantasy as a basis for game play.  All cultures on earth use mythological stories, loosely described in Campbell's 'Hero with a Thousand Faces', as 'The Hero's Journey'.
A young, inexperienced hero, who has an underdeveloped talent, is in a society faced with a problem.  The hero reluctantly embarks on a quest to seek a guide and find a solution to the problem.  They enter a supernatural world where normal rules don't apply, and face various trials and tribulations.  They grow as a person, and discover how to use their talent.  Eventually they find a treasure, which can solve the problem.  They bring the treasure back to society, and save the day.

The reason this exists in every society on earth, is that it taps deeply into the human psyche, and the fragility of the human condition.
Humans are mortal creatures, who for most of our history, had a life expectancy of 25.  The world was (and is) dangerous, with disease, starvation, predators, and bad luck all acting in concert to kill us off from the moment of birth.  

Human societies developed as a technology to let humans work together to protect each other, and find solutions to these problems.  This preserves the society, which protects us from extinction.

One reason Hero's Journey stories are repeated over the centuries because they model the path we need to take when our way of doing things isn't working.  We embark on a quest, suffer trials, find the solution, and keep our society going.  Over the centuries this has enabled our advanced technological society, freedom from severe want, and a life expectancy into the 70s.  If we abandon this knowledge, we risk damaging our societies, and losing our hard won gains.  Ultimately, our species could end up getting killed off.

The other reason these stories resonate, is that the Hero's Journey is a model for dealing with the personal challenges that all human beings face in life.  You start out not knowing much.  Bad things can happen to you which you can't ignore or you'll suffer.  You face your fears, develop your talents, and grow as a person.  The next time you face challenges, you're better at doing it, and you survive.

Traditional D&D is modeled after the Hero's Journey.  PCs start out as 1st level neophytes, embark on a quest, cross the threshold of adventure into a supernatural underworld, find the treasure (or other boon), bring it back home, and win the day.  They level up, grow as a character and survive.  Even the most basic dungeon crawl is based on this universal, mythic model.  I'd argue that this is a major reason why D&D has remained popular.  D&D journey = Hero's Journey = Mythical model of life's actual journey.

This is why WOTC devaluing this is concerning.  It's abandoning a focus on games that tap into stories resonating with the human experience, which have remained universally popular throughout most of recorded history.


----------



## BookTenTiger

cowpie said:


> So I do have one more observation about WOTC's embracing a particular play style to fit the current year zeitgeist. While I have no problem with playing D&D as a light-hearted, casual story, I'm not 100% sold on the idea that it's a good idea to go all-in favoring this over older play styles.  At least they shouldn't abandon older play styles.
> 
> The older versions of D&D embraced mythical heroic fantasy as a basis for game play.  All cultures on earth use mythological stories, loosely described in Campbell's 'Hero with a Thousand Faces', as 'The Hero's Journey'.
> A young, inexperienced hero, who has an underdeveloped talent, is in a society faced with a problem.  The hero reluctantly embarks on a quest to seek a guide and find a solution to the problem.  They enter a supernatural world where normal rules don't apply, and face various trials and tribulations.  They grow as a person, and discover how to use their talent.  Eventually they find a treasure, which can solve the problem.  They bring the treasure back to society, and save the day.
> 
> The reason this exists in every society on earth, is that it taps deeply into the human psyche, and the fragility of the human condition.
> Humans are mortal creatures, who for most of our history, had a life expectancy of 25.  The world was (and is) dangerous, with disease, starvation, predators, and bad luck all acting in concert to kill us off from the moment of birth.
> 
> Human societies developed as a technology to let humans work together to protect each other, and find solutions to these problems.  This preserves the society, which protects us from extinction.
> 
> One reason Hero's Journey stories are repeated over the centuries because they model the path we need to take when our way of doing things isn't working.  We embark on a quest, suffer trials, find the solution, and keep our society going.  Over the centuries this has enabled our advanced technological society, freedom from severe want, and a life expectancy into the 70s.  If we abandon this knowledge, we risk damaging our societies, and losing our hard won gains.  Ultimately, our species could end up getting killed off.
> 
> The other reason these stories resonate, is that the Hero's Journey is a model for dealing with the personal challenges that all human beings face in life.  You start out not knowing much.  Bad things can happen to you which you can't ignore or you'll suffer.  You face your fears, develop your talents, and grow as a person.  The next time you face challenges, you're better at doing it, and you survive.
> 
> Traditional D&D is modeled after the Hero's Journey.  PCs start out as 1st level neophytes, embark on a quest, cross the threshold of adventure into a supernatural underworld, find the treasure (or other boon), bring it back home, and win the day.  They level up, grow as a character and survive.  Even the most basic dungeon crawl is based on this universal, mythic model.  I'd argue that this is a major reason why D&D has remained popular.  D&D journey = Hero's Journey = Mythical model of life's actual journey.
> 
> This is why WOTC devaluing this is concerning.  It's abandoning a focus on games that tap into stories resonating with the human experience, which have remained universally popular throughout most of recorded history.



How is WotC devaluing the Hero's Journey? If anything, 5e really supports it, with most classes not get their subclasses until 3rd Level. In my experience, characters are defined equally by their background as their classes at 1st Level, then work up to subclasses, get a power boost at 5th level and another one at 10th.

WotC's last two adventures start characters at 1st Level.

I don't understand how what WotC has been doing with 5e supports this critique.


----------



## ECMO3

MGibster said:


> I'll be frank, my biggest problems with D&D over the years has been with how boring I think player races are.  For the most part, it doesn't seem to matter whether that Wizard is an elf, gnome, or a human because it really isn't going to have as significant impact on the game.  And now they're working harder to make player races even more irrelevant.



If you play a Goblin this will not be the case.

Frankly I think with most races you can come up with ways to make them very impactful considering the spells and unique racial abilities.   This is even more true if you play without multiclassing and feats.


----------



## cbwjm

Professor Murder said:


>


----------



## cowpie

BookTenTiger said:


> How is WotC devaluing the Hero's Journey? If anything, 5e really supports it, with most classes not get their subclasses until 3rd Level. In my experience, characters are defined equally by their background as their classes at 1st Level, then work up to subclasses, get a power boost at 5th level and another one at 10th.
> 
> WotC's last two adventures start characters at 1st Level.
> 
> I don't understand how what WotC has been doing with 5e supports this critique.



Correction -- I meant to say that they are contemplating doing this, which could result in this happening.  

To sum up a number of earlier responses to the OP's  "cusp of a sea change" post, it was proposed that there's a newer generation with newer values that WOTC is marketing to.  The gameplay will stay the same in 5.5 and 6.0, but the old "nostalgia-driven" Gen-X values of 5.0 will be superseded with newer values of the new generation.  They are the core demographic now, so WOTC is going to cater to what they like, and that's casual light hearted play.  

You can still mechanically do D&D stuff, but it's the content that will change.

Dungeon crawling and heroic adventure are still options, but because of the new content changes I'm concerned this will limit player options to casual play only.  The new material will remove some content seen as a problem, and focus more on characters that are friendly avatars representing the players, and not older fantasy tropes simulating older mythology or fantasy literature.  No more evil orcs evil Drow, grimdark Conan or picaresque Fafhrd and Grey Mouser content.  Also this negates a lot of themes players might want to reproduce from ancient mythology.

Case in point WOTC's recent errata release for all of their books, which feature lists of line-item removal of material, including removing alignment from the game entirely, to remove all references to good and evil, even as abstract concepts.  Since mythology incorporates concepts of good and evil, this potentially chips away and the narrative power of the mythical archetypes I'm talking about.  I think that those mythical archetypes are what draw people to the game, not nostalgia, so I'm leery about drastically changing the content.

In other words, you can still have the trappings of a hero's journey: quests, dungeon crawls, leveling up and power ups, etc, But, if the content is edited so there's no evil to fight against, then this could devalue the importance going on the quest in the first place.  If Emperor Palpatine or Sauron are no longer evil, then why bother fighting them?  If the Heroes aren't objectively good, are they still heroes? No good knights of King Arthur facing the evil knighs of Mordred, per the new values, Which is fine, if that's what you want, but if you want objectively evil or good mythical characters, I guess pick up a copy of Pendragon?


----------



## Scribe

cowpie said:


> Case in point WOTC's recent errata release for all of their books, which feature lists of line-item removal of material, including removing alignment from the game entirely, to remove all references to good and evil, even as abstract concepts.



I don't believe this happened?


----------



## Malmuria

cowpie said:


> So I do have one more observation about WOTC's embracing a particular play style to fit the current year zeitgeist. While I have no problem with playing D&D as a light-hearted, casual story, I'm not 100% sold on the idea that it's a good idea to go all-in favoring this over older play styles.  At least they shouldn't abandon older play styles.
> 
> The older versions of D&D embraced mythical heroic fantasy as a basis for game play.  All cultures on earth use mythological stories, loosely described in Campbell's 'Hero with a Thousand Faces', as 'The Hero's Journey'.
> A young, inexperienced hero, who has an underdeveloped talent, is in a society faced with a problem.  The hero reluctantly embarks on a quest to seek a guide and find a solution to the problem.  They enter a supernatural world where normal rules don't apply, and face various trials and tribulations.  They grow as a person, and discover how to use their talent.  Eventually they find a treasure, which can solve the problem.  They bring the treasure back to society, and save the day.
> 
> The reason this exists in every society on earth, is that it taps deeply into the human psyche, and the fragility of the human condition.
> Humans are mortal creatures, who for most of our history, had a life expectancy of 25.  The world was (and is) dangerous, with disease, starvation, predators, and bad luck all acting in concert to kill us off from the moment of birth.
> 
> Human societies developed as a technology to let humans work together to protect each other, and find solutions to these problems.  This preserves the society, which protects us from extinction.
> 
> One reason Hero's Journey stories are repeated over the centuries because they model the path we need to take when our way of doing things isn't working.  We embark on a quest, suffer trials, find the solution, and keep our society going.  Over the centuries this has enabled our advanced technological society, freedom from severe want, and a life expectancy into the 70s.  If we abandon this knowledge, we risk damaging our societies, and losing our hard won gains.  Ultimately, our species could end up getting killed off.
> 
> The other reason these stories resonate, is that the Hero's Journey is a model for dealing with the personal challenges that all human beings face in life.  You start out not knowing much.  Bad things can happen to you which you can't ignore or you'll suffer.  You face your fears, develop your talents, and grow as a person.  The next time you face challenges, you're better at doing it, and you survive.
> 
> Traditional D&D is modeled after the Hero's Journey.  PCs start out as 1st level neophytes, embark on a quest, cross the threshold of adventure into a supernatural underworld, find the treasure (or other boon), bring it back home, and win the day.  They level up, grow as a character and survive.  Even the most basic dungeon crawl is based on this universal, mythic model.  I'd argue that this is a major reason why D&D has remained popular.  D&D journey = Hero's Journey = Mythical model of life's actual journey.
> 
> This is why WOTC devaluing this is concerning.  It's abandoning a focus on games that tap into stories resonating with the human experience, which have remained universally popular throughout most of recorded history.



Early dnd was more influenced by sword and sorcery and pulp than by high fantasy. Adventurers were not chosen one heroes but people who risked their lives (and often died) to discover/steal a  bit of treasure.  Heroic fantasy was an influence, but not the only one or the primary one until dragon lance. And they just released a whole book on dragons, which is classic high fantasy.

I can’t help but feel that you are really reaching here. To the extent that dnd games were ever really about “themes of universal human experience” or whatever, they still will be going forward. There isn’t some monolithic tradition, either in the hobby or in…the entirety of human history…that is being replaced as the result of an errata


----------



## cowpie

Scribe said:


> I don't believe this happened?



Correction: all alignment suggestions for character races.  Alignment descriptions are still in the game, they're just generifying the lore.









						Book Updates | Sage Advice | Dungeons & Dragons
					

This Sage Advice provides updates and errata for a number of books, as well as answers to rules questions.




					dnd.wizards.com
				




Crawford says that they just are changing beholder and mind flayer descriptions to indicate they might have more than one personality type, but still "tend" to be evil.  They haven't released the MM yet, so we'll see what they do.  Didn't realize that subtlety was required describing these big baddies, but I guess giant alien eyeballs from a 50s monster movie are people too?  Personally, I'd like to play a beholder as a PC, but it might be OP...

In the PHB they've removed all racial references to alignment entirely, as of this past Monday.
This is repeated in the other books with races, like Volo's too.
The Drow elf sidebar detailing their lore as being evil Lolth worshipers has been rewritten.

Lots of controversial words removed or renamed in the DMG (and the adventure books) though many have long been in past editions (but I guess that's what people see as an issue).


----------



## cowpie

Malmuria said:


> Early dnd was more influenced by sword and sorcery and pulp than by high fantasy. Adventurers were not chosen one heroes but people who risked their lives (and often died) to discover/steal a  bit of treasure.  Heroic fantasy was an influence, but not the only one or the primary one until dragon lance. And they just released a whole book on dragons, which is classic high fantasy.
> 
> I can’t help but feel that you are really reaching here. To the extent that dnd games were ever really about “themes of universal human experience” or whatever, they still will be going forward. There isn’t some monolithic tradition, either in the hobby or in…the entirety of human history…that is being replaced as the result of an errata



I'm going to stick to my guns here -- the basic format of an adventure does fit the heroes journey, including mechanics of facing challenges, battling monsters, getting treasure, leveling up, and developing the character, getting kudos as a hero.

Good point about Conan and Swords & Sorcery.  Those follow the format of picaresque adventures, where the characters are placed in an episodic situation, often gritty or humorous, and the point of the story is to see "how are they going to get out of this one."  The characters often stay the same from episode to episode, kind of like James Bond movies.

However the traditional adventure format -- that's mythical questing all the way. 

Here are a couple of examples of how this format applies to real life situations, just to bolster my case.  Imaginary D&D adventures model these real life examples.

Society is threatened: There's a pandemic
Heroes have to urgently go on a quest to get a treasure: virologists work to develop a vaccine in record time
The Heroes bring the boon back to society: The vaccine is discovered and massively produced
Society is preserved: the effects of the virus are dramatically reduced, and social instability isn't as bad as it could have been.

People are in danger: a fire breaks out
Heroes go on a quest to deal with it: Fireman head into danger
Heroes face trials and tribulations: they put the fire out, and risk their lives to rescue people
Society is preserved: the fire is brought under control before it spreads, and people's lives are saved
Conclusion: The Firemen go to a tavern, have a beer together, and get praised as heroes (people like firefighters for a reason).

One more for the road:
Quest: my child is sick
trials: comforting the child, taking them to the doctor, getting medicine, keeping calm while being worried about their safety, taking care of them
Preservation: Sickness runs it's course, child recovers and is fine (because of the things I did)


----------



## Paul Farquhar

cowpie said:


> The new material will remove some content seen as a problem, and focus more on characters that are friendly avatars representing the players, and not older fantasy tropes simulating older mythology or fantasy literature. No more evil orcs evil Drow, grimdark Conan or picaresque Fafhrd and Grey Mouser content. Also this negates a lot of themes players might want to reproduce from ancient mythology.



This reads like someone who has failed to keep in touch with modern fantasy, and read Conan so long ago that they have forgotten what the original stories where like.

Conan wasn't Grimdark, he was a thoroughgoing hero who always put the smackdown on evil, just with the occasional show of reluctance, request for payment, and odd bit of petty larceny.

"Grimdark" is modern. Harry Potter is a classic hero's journey.


----------



## cowpie

Paul Farquhar said:


> This reads like someone who has failed to keep in touch with modern fantasy, and read Conan so long ago that they have forgotten what the original stories where like.



It's a good thing I'm not that person  .    Ok, so i'm clueless, and forgot the stories.  I'm more talking about Joseph Campbell and mythic fantasy, and how it taps into the human condition (I'm repeating a lot of Campbell's arguments). Do you disagree with my analysis of Joseph Campbell?

NOTE: someone else pointed out that I forgot about Conan and Swords and Sorcery, but I haven't -- I addressed it in another response.  Conan is full of grim dark survival of the fittest stuff that Howard based on the grim dark oil rig workers he knew in the Texas town where he grew up.  I've read modern fantasy too.  However, my original post was already TLDR, so I tried not to go into any more detail, otherwise no one would want to read any of it.


----------



## John R Davis

It's definitely losing my interest and I have given them no money since Candlekeep. This is fine for me as I have always had cycles where I play DND, and I don't, where I'm active here, and I'm not.
Lots other games out there so maybe resting my d20 I'd a good thing for a time


----------



## Paul Farquhar

cowpie said:


> It's a good thing I'm not that person  .    Ok, so i'm clueless, and forgot the stories.  I'm more talking about Joseph Campbell and mythic fantasy, and how it taps into the human condition (I'm repeating a lot of Campbell's arguments). Do you disagree with my analysis of Joseph Campbell?
> 
> NOTE: someone else pointed out that I forgot about Conan and Swords and Sorcery, but I haven't -- I addressed it in another response.  Conan is full of grim dark survival of the fittest stuff that Howard based on the grim dark oil rig workers he knew in the Texas town where he grew up.  I've read modern fantasy too.  However, my original post was already TLDR, so I tried not to go into any more detail, otherwise no one would want to read any of it.



Your analysis of Joseph Campbell is outdated and your failure to detect the motifs in modern fantasy like Harry Potter is just that - a failure. The whole point of the Monomyth is it's a natural part of human storytelling that humans constantly reinvent. The only way to remove it is to be aware of it and deliberately set out to subvert it.

The world Conan lives in is tough, but after Conan passes through it it is at least a little bit better. That's a classic heroic narrative. If the world wasn't tough there would be no need for heroes like Conan. In a grimdark narrative the protagonist fails to make things any better, and sometimes makes things worse.


----------



## cowpie

Dude, I got that you want to call me a failure the first time.  I understand the monomyth, but it's late at night and I'm tired right now.  Just because I'm not perfect doesn't make my arguments a complete failure, or that I don't make any valid points.

I also get the grimdark narrative of Conan -- I think you're dead on right!  

I didn't discuss Harry Potter because my post would be TLDRx10.  I get that part of what WOTC is supporting is Harry Potter, and that the Harry Potter does a great job incorporating the Monomyth.  I'm fine with WOTC doing this--there's nothing wrong with that.  I'm ultimately arguing that they should continue to support all the content enjoyed by their entire player base, and not favor one form over the other.


----------



## Paul Farquhar

cowpie said:


> Dude, I got that you want to call me a failure the first time.  I understand the monomyth, but it's late at night and I'm tired right now.  Just because I'm not perfect doesn't make my arguments a complete failure, or that I don't make any valid points.
> 
> I didn't discuss Harry Potter because my post would be TLDRx10.  I get that part of what WOTC is supporting is Harry Potter, and that the Harry Potter does a great job incorporating the Monomyth.  I'm fine with WOTC doing this--there's nothing wrong with that.  I'm ultimately arguing that they should continue to support all the content enjoyed by their entire player base, and not favor one form over the other.



And modern fantasy is more diverse than it has ever been. The shift that WotC are making (and it's an evolution, not a paradigm shift, the OP is wrong) is to de-emphasise some of the the 1970s tropes to help D&D support a wider variety of stories.


----------



## cowpie

In that case, I'm fine with that, but I've had other experiences outside of gaming with people who entered a hobby and changed it from within, and they were negative experiences so I tend to be cautious about all this.  That time the people said they were doing one thing, but some of them ended up doing something else.

be that as it may, D&D, even with the removal of 70s tropes, still mechanically supports a lot of those tropes.  It's chock full of action and combat rules--focusing on the exploration and combat pillars of play.  Levels, Hit Points, AC, etc.  If what WOTC wants to support is more story game focused, does that mean they'll need to change the system fundamentally then?

I guess I still want to play some of those 70s tropes, so if they change the core rules, I'm concerned the rules won't support them anymore, and the older customer base (which is still large) will leave.


----------



## Paul Farquhar

cowpie said:


> I guess I still want to play some of those 70s tropes, so if they change the core rules, I'm concerned the rules won't support them anymore, and the older customer base (which is still large) will leave.



Broad rules support whatever you want them to support. Just because Geralt has replaced Conan doesn't mean you can't play Conan.


----------



## Mordhau

5e does not do sword and sorcery well.  That has nothing to do with any recent changes; it never has.

It does do Geralt/Witcher tone a lot better, but that's more to do with the higher magic levels and omnipresence of Fae material throughout the edition.


----------



## Levistus's_Leviathan

Mordhau said:


> omnipresence of Fae material throughout the edition.



I'm sorry, what? You lost me here. I've found that Fey options in D&D 5e are severely lacking, even after the release of the Wild Beyond The Witchlight and the Domains of Delight "sourcebooks". It's especially lacking at higher levels, and most pre-written campaign books in D&D 5e don't have many (if any) fey creatures included.


----------



## Mordhau

AcererakTriple6 said:


> I'm sorry, what? You lost me here. I've found that Fey options in D&D 5e are severely lacking, even after the release of the Wild Beyond The Witchlight and the Domains of Delight "sourcebooks". It's especially lacking at higher levels, and most pre-written campaign books in D&D 5e don't have many (if any) fey creatures included.



I was talking about player options.  Monsters don't make Sword and Sorcery difficult because you just don't use monsters that don't fit.


----------



## Paul Farquhar

Mordhau said:


> 5e does not do sword and sorcery well.  That has nothing to do with any recent changes; it never has.
> 
> It does do Geralt/Witcher tone a lot better, but that's more to do with the higher magic levels and omnipresence of Fae material throughout the edition.



Do you mean tone, or mechanics? Because tonally, Witcher and Conan are pretty similar. The setting is different - Old West inspired ancient world versus pseudo-medieval central Europe, but they are both collections of short stories about an itinerant mercenary who goes around killing monsters and having sex. The Mandalorian would be the same if he could get his armour off.

Of course Geralt (much like Elric) uses magic and drugs, whereas Conan is into clean living, but D&D has never been much of a swordplay simulator.


----------



## Mordhau

Paul Farquhar said:


> Do you mean tone, or mechanics? Because tonally, Witcher and Conan are pretty similar. The setting is different - Old West inspired ancient world versus pseudo-medieval central Europe, but they are both collections of short stories about an itinerant mercenary who goes around killing monsters and having sex. The Mandalorian would be the same if he could get his armour off.
> 
> Of course Geralt (much like Elric) uses magic and drugs, whereas Conan is into clean living, but D&D has never been much of a swordplay simulator.



The setting is what matters.


----------



## Paul Farquhar

Mordhau said:


> The setting is what matters.



Setting is not tone. You said tone.


----------



## Minigiant

cowpie said:


> Case in point WOTC's recent errata release for all of their books, which feature lists of line-item removal of material, including removing alignment from the game entirely, to remove all references to good and evil, even as abstract concepts. Since mythology incorporates concepts of good and evil, this potentially chips away and the narrative power of the mythical archetypes I'm talking about. I think that those mythical archetypes are what draw people to the game, not nostalgia, so I'm leery about drastically changing the content.




It's not that good and evil is being stripped out the game. It's more that TSR & WOTC for decade have been only half stepping into the concepts. So the mythological and cosmic struggle of good and evil that D&D does looks weak, cartoony, amateurish, and ripe for offensive from new groups of fans and many Gen X, Y, and Z fans.

WOTC isn't willing to due settings of high ideological conflicts of faith, beliefs, and culture. The pantheon battles are few. Philosophical discussion of the differences of gods, old gods, dead gods devil's, and demons are for fans and not discussed in books. The setting effects and ramifications of multiple warring gods who create or claim mortals are rarely touched. 

It can get icky and easy to mess up. So they are nope-ing out of it completely. WOTC don't want none of our online discussion targeting them more.


----------



## Mordhau

Paul Farquhar said:


> Setting is not tone. You said tone.



The tone of the setting.


----------



## Paul Farquhar

Mordhau said:


> The tone of the setting.



And how exactly does the _tone_ of Hyboria differ from the tone of the Continent? I mean they differ significantly in terms of technology, climate, society etc, but the tone of the world is described by the stories that happen there.


----------



## Mordhau

Paul Farquhar said:


> And how exactly does the _tone_ of Hyboria differ from the tone of the Continent? I mean they differ significantly in terms of technology, climate, society etc, but the tone of the world is described by the stories that happen there.



Lots of magic, lots of D&D style monsters.  Dragons, dwarves, you know general D&D stuff.

Plus it has the whole dark fairytale vibe that 5e does very well.


----------



## Paul Farquhar

Mordhau said:


> Lots of magic, lots of D&D style monsters.  Dragons, dwarves, you know general D&D stuff.



There is lots of magic and monsters in Conan, it's just that Conan himself never uses it.  In both cases it is implied that magic and monsters are rare in the world in general, the protagonist has a job that makes it more likely that they will encounter them. The lack of short beardy people doesn't make a whole lot of difference that isn't made up for with snake people.


Mordhau said:


> Plus it has the whole dark fairytale vibe



The _stories_ have a dark fairy-tale vibe, not the setting.

I wouldn't say 5e does it especially well, I was thinking last night whilst playing _Land Beyond the Magic Mirror_ was better than _Witchlight_, but that's subjective.


----------



## Rune

cowpie said:


> Correction: all alignment suggestions for character races.  Alignment descriptions are still in the game, they're just generifying the lore.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Book Updates | Sage Advice | Dungeons & Dragons
> 
> 
> This Sage Advice provides updates and errata for a number of books, as well as answers to rules questions.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> dnd.wizards.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Crawford says that they just are changing beholder and mind flayer descriptions to indicate they might have more than one personality type, but still "tend" to be evil.  They haven't released the MM yet, so we'll see what they do.  Didn't realize that subtlety was required describing these big baddies, but I guess giant alien eyeballs from a 50s monster movie are people too?



I, for one, appreciate the subtlety. That’s the kind of thing I’ve been wanting in a monster description for at least twenty years. Bonus points if they give us a few examples for each monster.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Thomas Shey said:


> If you take that argument far enough, there's been few games outside of D&D that are successful or influential at all.  It doesn't change the fact that you still have to ignore the whole genre for the most part for your statement to be true.
> 
> How am I to answer that?  What's your definition of major?  No offense, but I'm really not interested in getting into a "no true Scotsman" argument here.  Frankly, for a lot of people I don't think any of the PbtA games would be classed as "major", so its going to be a term that's fraught.
> 
> Because I'd argue at least Mutant Year Zero applies, and it came out in the early 2000's.
> 
> How narrowly do you define "dungeon"?  They certainly often involve exploring ruins, and they don't intrinsically involve negotiation any more than D&D does.  They certainly aren't "urban" which was part of your original post (neither, far as that goes is a lot of exploratory SF).



"I don't want a no true Scotsman argument"
"How narrowly do you define "dungeon"".

Come on. You can't have it both ways.

For goodness sake. You know you're wrong and playing with semantics for the sake of it. And you still haven't explained why we have to "ignore" post-apocalyptic - Apocalypse World and MYZ support my point, and if you think Apocalypse World isn't "major" and MYZ is, well, that's just funny.


Thomas Shey said:


> There have been two times since the onset of D&D it wasn't the top dog (both of them arguable) and during both of those periods some of their competitors were class and level systems, too.



In the 1990s the number of competitors which had class/level was vanishingly small, and they were some of the less-successful competitors. The only major/successful one that lasted was RIFTS. There was Earthdawn in 1993 but I feel like it didn't really make much of an impact (though it was cool - and was basically the first attempt at what 3E was doing - genuinely "updating" D&D).


Thomas Shey said:


> Again, some of that is market inertia and some of that is networking effect, but it still doesn't suggest more than a minority of the hobby had a significant issue with classes/races/levels as a model.



A very large minority and one that was still growing and indeed possibly an outright majority by the late '90s. 3E turned it around.


Thomas Shey said:


> Possibly, though I'm not sure 13th Age supports that.



That was over 10 years later, and I think he'd changed his philosophy by then, or Heinsoo was the dominant influence, because very little of 13th Age jives with 3E approaches.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Thomas Shey said:


> My point was that at one time people getting into RPGs had littler or no structural expectations, but computer games did change that, and MMOs upped the reach of those pretty vastly.



That's precisely my point. But the reach of MMOs in the early-mid 2000s was nothing compared to the fact that virtually every game under the sun now uses progression systems, many of them derived distantly from D&D, most of them involving levels of some kind, many of them classes.

I mean, if you look at modern military shooters, games that are clearly FPSes, you see this - Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, for example, has XP and levels and classes (you change class but you have to level each separately IIRC). And it's not just them - I can't think of a single genre completely untouched by levels and classes now. Whereas, roll things back to 2010 (after 4E, before 5E) and the idea of having levels in a shooter seems really off to a lot of people and would have people classing it as an "RPG shooter" or something.

We're talking about a situation where the reach of MMOs is absolutely nothing in comparison.


----------



## HammerMan

Reynard said:


> I think that we are looking at as big a change in D&D "culture" as we saw in the fall of TSR and rise of WotC era. I'm confident we aren't like to see huge rules changes in 5.5 (I think backwards compatibility will be a thing, for example) but I think there are a lot of thing lining up for WotC to look at, and treat, D&D as a different thing in the very near future.
> 
> Now, just because I know some folks are going to make this argument: I don't think that was true of either the 4E or 5E transition.
> 
> 4E was very much a mechanical sea change but the explicitly stated goal at the time was to "still play D&D." And 5E was a course correction, the exact opposite of a sea change. It drew heavily on GenX nostalgia and was working very hard to say "D&D is still D&D!"
> 
> I don't think that is true going forward. I think the intent is to very much alter the way the game is played (story first, etc..) and aimed at a new generation -- and that generation's values -- in a way it hasn't been since Basic and D&D cartoon days.



I hope you are right. A closer to 4e meets 5e rule set with flavor and fluff no longer beholden to older editions but a more modern sensibility sounds GREAT


----------



## Paul Farquhar

Ruin Explorer said:


> "How narrowly do you define "dungeon"".



5 ft. passages.

Anything less than that is only fit for halflings.


----------



## HammerMan

Malmuria said:


> Can you elaborate on the above?
> -- How are they going to make the game more "story first" without introducing new mechanics?  Do you just mean including non-combat options for encounters in their published adventures?
> -- What are the new generation's "values" and how will aiming the game at those values be a sea change?  Do you mean non-auto-evil humanoids?  A multitude of playable humanoids?  Haven't we had that since the 2e humanoid book?



well I have already seen 2e-3e 3e-3.5 3.5-4e all take a more narrative stance and a more exploration/social interactions then what came before... 5e was weird because it stepped back in many ways from 4e to 3.5, but in others moved forward... I would love for 2024 to see more 4e stuff moving forward (Fleshed out playtested skill challenges please)

As for 'newer generations' inclusivity bigger, kill things for xp smaller is a big thing


----------



## HammerMan

Micah Sweet said:


> I suspect very little of those setting releases will be "classic".



I have pushed for an Ultimate Forgotten Realms (not ultimate like the best Ultimate like the marvel imprint, basically a restart with fresh takes but classic ideas) like the 4e darksun book.  Take the best parts of the setting, run them through a modern (both mechanic and story telling) eye set and redo from day 1... like back to the grey box.

I even had my own suggestions of player first by makeing NPCs like Elminster more in game friendly... (a 5th level bard chosen of mystra immortal could do all the story beats you need, and still need to hire the players without everyone asking whe he doesn't solo it... take some of the creepy old man out too)

I also suggested (remember this was 4e) adding in more movers and shakers that were martial to counter balance the high wizard stuff... in 5e I would do something like maybe make a Mystra pact warlock and have one of the big NPCs be that too...


----------



## HammerMan

Umbran said:


> The recognition that most folks just don't sit down and play for 8 hours at a stretch seems to have been a boon both to the older folk (who have jobs, families, and busy lives) and the actual play streamers...
> 
> And, really, the teens as well - there's so much competition for their time these days, that the long-session model probably doesn't work for them either.



man I remember 8-10 hour games...

If we can get togather for 4 hours now between kids,work, and stress it is amazing... so yeah cosigned...


----------



## 5atbu

Moorcock

Yup, it's amazing how his influencer hobby has been completely obscured and forgotten.

Oh well at least it means he can be rediscovered later.


----------



## Oofta

Mordhau said:


> My experience.  If you don't want to play D&D the way most people expect it to be played you're better off playing a different game.
> 
> There's so many people out there looking for D&D that they'll "settle" for a game that isn't in the style they really want.  To some extent this is even true of OSR games which are D&D enough they get the 5e spillover.
> 
> Whereas if you advertise for something like Conan 2d20 you might find it harder to find players initially, but you'll have a better chance of finding players who want to actually play the game and will stick around.




So because I think dungeon crawls are boring I've been doing it wrong for the past few decades?  Games where the main goal of the game is to break into monster's homes and steal their stuff hasn't worked for me for a long time.

I've also never had any issue finding or retaining players.  You just have to be clear on what type of game you run and accept that every once in a while I'm not the right DM for a person and vice versa.  Heck, one of the reasons I got back into DMing (long, long ago) was because I couldn't find a game that was working for me so I started a new group.


----------



## HammerMan

Ruin Explorer said:


> How so?
> 
> I'd also point out "ignoring the whole post-apocalyptic genre" in TT RPGs is um, pretty funny, because there have been remarkably few successful post-apocalyptic RPGs, much less influential ones. We're basically talking Apocalypse World, where the system was influential not the content, Gamma World, Twilight 2000 (kinda) and After The Bomb. Maybe RIFTS? But that's really something else.



Rifts is weird, but at this point is as old as TSR D&D was... it is holding and last time I was at Gen COn had equal foot print too WoD and ONLY D&D was bigger.


----------



## 5atbu

Oofta said:


> I've almost always played story driven games, I haven't done a dungeon crawl since high school. Even then a lot of our adventures were city based or heists (stealing from crime lord's, of course  ).
> 
> So when I hear about this new style, it's still rock and roll to me. Umm, still D&D to me. Oh, and the streamed games I watch don't look all that different than my home game.



I have always enjoyed both since the 80s.
So I am with you, all these approaches have been there since the beginning at the table, if perhaps a little less published as D&D adventures than other systems, but that didn't mean people weren't emoting their hearts out in D&D games or storming lairs in WoD games.

I'd suggest the first fully formed RPG for all styles was Traveller, most Traveller publications either supported all sorts of gaming, or kind of just let you explore as you wanted.


----------



## 5atbu

cowpie said:


> Agreed with all of this--especially the point about how people's priorities change as they progress through life. Supposedly we all go through a new life stage every seven years, so what the core audience values now, will likely shift over time.
> 
> WOTC has produced tons of splatbooks expanding player options, but not a lot of expansion support for DMs. This is probably because everybody buys the player options books, but more DMs than players will buy DMs Guides, resulting in less sales.
> 
> 5th Edition is a pretty flexible game system. I can't see why WOTC can just put out a book of "Game Modes" for D&D, with tutorials on multiple approaches to play. Then, write up a chapter teaching how novice DMs could DIY their own setting, put together using templates provided in the book.
> 
> You could have a chapter on each genre or play style. This could serve to include your entire player base, encourage them to try out different kinds of play styles under the "D&D Umbrella", and capture all of the customers. This would also increase interaction between groups of players, and introduce cross pollination of play styles and bring disparate players together as groups tried out each others' games.
> 
> There could be chapters on short term campaigns, and running very long campaigns. You could also have an introductory rules set, intermediate and hard mode. The hard mode could increase player mortality, and up the challenge in general, for players who are less casual and enjoy beating challenges as a team.
> 
> Genre chapters could include: Gritty Swords & Sorcery play, Planetary Romance/Science Fantasy play, CW-style fantasy teen relationship play (which I think is what Strixhaven is), Epic Heroic Fantasy, Classic Dungeon crawls, Crit Role style comedy romp/set piece action sequence games, Mysteries (like Candlekeep), Historical Realism or Arthurian Romance.



Have you seen the Kobold GM guides?


----------



## Thomas Shey

Ruin Explorer said:


> "I don't want a no true Scotsman argument"
> "How narrowly do you define "dungeon"".
> 
> Come on. You can't have it both ways.




Sorry, but I absolutely can when my point is you seem to have a narrow set of specific definitions you're working from that both unclear from the outside, and if allowed unquestioned turn the argument into a tautology.



Ruin Explorer said:


> For goodness sake. You know you're wrong and playing with semantics for the sake of it. And you still haven't explained why we have to "ignore" post-apocalyptic - Apocalypse World and MYZ support my point, and if you think Apocalypse World isn't "major" and MYZ is, well, that's just funny.




I'm not suggesting we ignore Apocalypse World; I'm saying that if we're going to treat it as more representative than MYZ, you need to make the argument why it is, and not just beg the question.



Ruin Explorer said:


> In the 1990s the number of competitors which had class/level was vanishingly small, and they were some of the less-successful competitors. The only major/successful one that lasted was RIFTS. There was Earthdawn in 1993 but I feel like it didn't really make much of an impact (though it was cool - and was basically the first attempt at what 3E was doing - genuinely "updating" D&D).




You obviously never saw the large number of fantasy heartbreakers out there.  You can, indeed, argue they were not exactly knocking the doors down, but there were a lot of them, and they weren't less successful than in gestalt than a number of non-class and level systems out at the same time.  I have boxes full of the latter out in the garage.



Ruin Explorer said:


> A very large minority and one that was still growing and indeed possibly an outright majority by the late '90s. 3E turned it around.




And?  I don't think I argued it wasn't growing, but that's not the same thing as saying it was the dominant view of how things should go.



Ruin Explorer said:


> That was over 10 years later, and I think he'd changed his philosophy by then, or Heinsoo was the dominant influence, because very little of 13th Age jives with 3E approaches.




It actually appears as a pretty clear hybridization of 3e and 4e design to me.


----------



## Thomas Shey

Ruin Explorer said:


> That's precisely my point. But the reach of MMOs in the early-mid 2000s was nothing compared to the fact that virtually every game under the sun now uses progression systems, many of them derived distantly from D&D, most of them involving levels of some kind, many of them classes.




Seriously, man, I'm beginning to think you didn't see a lot of material than came out in that period from small publishers, and/or don't see a lot of what does now.  If you ignore the direct 5e knockoffs I don't have much sign class-and-level systems are any more common than they ever were, and if you count knockoffs, there were an enormous amound of D&D3e era ones in that period.



Ruin Explorer said:


> I mean, if you look at modern military shooters, games that are clearly FPSes, you see this - Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, for example, has XP and levels and classes (you change class but you have to level each separately IIRC). And it's not just them - I can't think of a single genre completely untouched by levels and classes now. Whereas, roll things back to 2010 (after 4E, before 5E) and the idea of having levels in a shooter seems really off to a lot of people and would have people classing it as an "RPG shooter" or something.
> 
> We're talking about a situation where the reach of MMOs is absolutely nothing in comparison.




I'd argue the success of MMOs have just taken a while to completely splay across other genres.  If you don't think so, well, you don't.


----------



## Thomas Shey

5atbu said:


> I have always enjoyed both since the 80s.
> So I am with you, all these approaches have been there since the beginning at the table, if perhaps a little less published as D&D adventures than other systems, but that didn't mean people weren't emoting their hearts out in D&D games or storming lairs in WoD games.
> 
> I'd suggest the first fully formed RPG for all styles was Traveller, most Traveller publications either supported all sorts of gaming, or kind of just let you explore as you wanted.




Eh.  The early versions of Traveler only really supported two kinds of game worth a damn; space merchants and mercenaries.  The character generation was too random for much else.


----------



## el-remmen

If D&D is on the cusp of a sea change, it is on the other side of the cusp, inside the crest of the wave, not just about to hit it.  I also think that despite the popularity of streaming, the variety of ways people play D&D is beyond what any one or group of us can know, so it is really impossible to tell what the coming trends are, and if trends we do notice have reached their peak (thus our noticing them) they are likely already passing, not imminent.


----------



## Paul Farquhar

5atbu said:


> Moorcock
> 
> Yup, it's amazing how his influencer hobby has been completely obscured and forgotten.
> 
> Oh well at least it means he can be rediscovered later.



I...    I remember.


----------



## DarkCrisis

Thomas Shey said:


> My point was that at one time people getting into RPGs had littler or no structural expectations, but computer games did change that, and MMOs upped the reach of those pretty vastly.




While I was introduced to D&D via novels, it wasnt until I played EverQuest that I finally went out and played actual AD&D.


----------



## Paul Farquhar

5atbu said:


> I'd suggest the first fully formed RPG for all styles was Traveller, most Traveller publications either supported all sorts of gaming, or kind of just let you explore as you wanted.



I don't know, there where quite a lot of RPGs coming out about then, and most of them didn't think they needed to tell you how to play. Traveller was particularly well supported with a wide variety of supplements though. Maybe it helped to have those small rulebooks?


Thomas Shey said:


> Eh. The early versions of Traveler only really supported two kinds of game worth a damn; space merchants and mercenaries. The character generation was too random for much else.



...And I guess this illustrates the drawback. It didn't matter that character generation was random, because there didn't have to be combat so "sub-optimal characters" didn't matter. A Scientist with Computer-3, Admin-1 was just fine. But I guess not everyone realised that.


----------



## Staffan

cowpie said:


> 5th Edition is a pretty flexible game system.  I can't see why WOTC can just put out a book of "Game Modes" for D&D, with tutorials on multiple approaches to play.  Then, write up a chapter teaching how novice DMs could DIY their own setting, put together using templates provided in the book.
> 
> You could have a chapter on each genre or play style. This could serve to include your entire player base, encourage them to try out different kinds of play styles under the "D&D Umbrella", and capture all of the customers.  This would also increase interaction between groups of players, and introduce cross pollination of play styles and bring disparate players together as groups tried out each others' games.
> 
> There could be chapters on short term campaigns, and running very long campaigns.  You could also have an introductory rules set, intermediate and hard mode.  The hard mode could increase player mortality, and up the challenge in general, for players who are less casual and enjoy beating challenges as a team.
> 
> Genre chapters could include: Gritty Swords & Sorcery play, Planetary Romance/Science Fantasy play, CW-style fantasy teen relationship play (which I think is what Strixhaven is), Epic Heroic Fantasy, Classic Dungeon crawls, Crit Role style comedy romp/set piece action sequence games, Mysteries (like Candlekeep), Historical Realism or Arthurian Romance.



From what I understand, Wizards would rather provide these as setting books on their own. So instead of having a chapter on "Here's how to run horror in D&D" in a "D&D World Guide", they have Ravenloft. Instead of "flirty school game", they have Strixhaven.


----------



## TheSword

Changes of course… sea changes… now? I don’t think so.

Adventures have been episodic since the start of 5e. Tyranny of Dragons? Curse of Strahd? Out of the Abyss? Small chapters and self contained chunks. Rime of the Frost Maiden just took it a stage further. I’d say even that the episodic early adventure paths were very similar. Gathering of Winds and Three Faces of Evil are both broken up into smaller segments capable of completion in a 3 hour session.

The game has been getting more and more diverse and less entrenched every edition. Look at 3e with its lawful good half orcs and improving diversity in artwork. This has been going on a long time.

I see no evidence at all that 5e is more story based than previous editions… that’s entirely depending on who’s playing and how they choose to run the game and the suggestion it’s is, is really an extension of the stormwind fallacy.

5e is making changes, but nothing we haven’t seen coming for a long long time. And nothing that fundamentally changes the game.


----------



## cowpie

Rune said:


> I, for one, appreciate the subtlety. That’s the kind of thing I’ve been wanting in a monster description for at least twenty years. Bonus points if they give us a few examples for each monster.



I guess my issue with it, is that in every edition of the game there is always a disclaimer that the game is yours, you are free to do whatever you want with it.  Also, the hobby evolved out of hobbies like military modeling (and things like knitting clubs, quilting circles, etc) where people made stuff, and took it to their club members to show off.  For D&D this was "look at my home made adventure everyone" or "check out at this new monster I made".  So it was assumed that if there's a description in the monster manual, players have always been free to not use the vanilla description, and customize things.  Customizing things is actually part of the fun.

For example, I've had orcs in a game who were just bad guy stormtroopers, existing to threaten the PCs.  I've also had orcs who were cultured diplomats visiting from a rival kingdom, who the PCs were assigned to protect as bodyguards.  I guess I just thought it was already understood that players have been free to customize things from day one.

I guess this has to do with newer players having less time to play, and wanting the content pre-made and ready to go per their preferences, and a move away from wanting to customize stuff.


----------



## Paul Farquhar

cowpie said:


> I guess my issue with it, is that in every edition of the game there is always a disclaimer that the game is yours, you are free to do whatever you want with it.



This is true - but it's also very clear that a what most people did was ignore the disclaimer. If you have to beat people over the head with it to make the point then that's what you do.


----------



## Rune

cowpie said:


> I guess my issue with it, is that in every edition of the game there is always a disclaimer that the game is yours, you are free to do whatever you want with it.  Also, the hobby evolved out of hobbies like military modeling (and things like knitting clubs, quilting circles, etc) where people made stuff, and took it to their club members to show off.  For D&D this was "look at my home made adventure everyone" or "check out at this new monster I made".  So it was assumed that if there's a description in the monster manual, players have always been free to not use the vanilla description, and customize things.  Customizing things is actually part of the fun.
> 
> For example, I've had orcs in a game who were just bad guy stormtroopers, existing to threaten the PCs.  I've also had orcs who were cultured diplomats visiting from a rival kingdom, who the PCs were assigned to protect as bodyguards.  I guess I just thought it was already understood that players have been free to customize things from day one.
> 
> I guess this has to do with newer players having less time to play, and wanting the content pre-made and ready to go per their preferences, and a move away from wanting to customize stuff.



I think it’s also a byproduct of the ongoing conversion of D&D from hobby to entertainment. 

Tinkering will still happen, and we may even be provided tools for it, but an increasing proportion of players and even DMs will have no interest in doing so. Nevermind that the increasing proportion of D&D _viewers_ also will likely not do so.


----------



## cowpie

True, but does WOTC really want to cater to people who need to be hit on the head to get something as basic as this?  I mean, every Hollywood movie since 1932 has a similar disclaimer at the end credits stating:

"The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred."

This is pretty much old news, and a well established practice, but I guess there will always be people who either don't know, won't be satisfied with this.

Maybe if WOTC tried to educate the audience about their disclaimer, eventually they'd get it, and WOTC wouldn't feel the need to keep editing stuff and expurgate content.


----------



## cowpie

Rune said:


> I think it’s also a byproduct of the ongoing conversion of D&D from hobby to entertainment.
> 
> Tinkering will still happen, and we may even be provided tools for it, but an increasing proportion of players and even DMs will have no interest in doing so. Nevermind that the increasing proportion of D&D _viewers_ also will likely not do so.



Yeah, I think this is what it comes down to -- there's a lot of casual players, and WOTC is going to target that audience first.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Thomas Shey said:


> I'm not suggesting we ignore Apocalypse World; I'm saying that if we're going to treat it as more representative than MYZ, you need to make the argument why it is, and not just beg the question.



I've made the argument already. Now you're just not bothering to read, is pretty sad stuff.

To repeat, the argument is that it's been hugely influential on TTRPGs, with PtbA-based and then FitD-based RPGs being gigantic for last most-of-a-decade. You don't get to talk about "small-press fantasy heartbreakers" in the '90s (which actually, I'm well aware of - they all sold like three copies) and pretend you don't know about this.

MYZ got a cheesy and not-very-good turn-based shooter based on it, that was financially unsuccessful, and hasn't had much influence, certainly outside of the Scandi scene.


Thomas Shey said:


> You obviously never saw the large number of fantasy heartbreakers out there. You can, indeed, argue they were not exactly knocking the doors down, but there were a lot of them, and they weren't less successful than in gestalt than a number of non-class and level systems out at the same time. I have boxes full of the latter out in the garage.



Absolutely they were "less successful in gestalt".

I have no idea why you think otherwise. None. Pretty much all of them flopped very rapidly. They didn't go on to edition after edition like other stuff. I remember I used to go to all the Oxford Street-adjacent RPG shops in the early '90s, which was quite a number, not just Orcs Nest. Virgin Megastore was actually particularly good if you wanted to see totally rando small-press heartbreaker stuff. For some reason they had even broader stock than full-on RPG stores like Orcs Nest. Every month it seemed like they had a couple of copies of some new fantasy heartbreaker. And they'd be there for the rest of eternity, until Virgin Megastore got shut down.

I remember when I went to the US a ton in the 2004-2006, I visited the various FLGSes in that area. They had some really incredible ancient stuff in like bargain racks at the back - some of the very same fantasy heartbreakers from the '90s.

I think I understand the problem now, though, you're not actually interested in actual success or influence. You're not interested in what games actually shaped things. You're just counting. Not money even, or sales numbers. Just like "X games of Y type". Even if they were all small-press failures, you're treating them as mattering. The same with post-apocalyptic RPGs. As a genre, they're extremely minor. Those games aren't typically very successful, or influential (with Apocalypse World the main exception, which was influential rather than making huge money). But you seem to think we have to consider them - we don't. If you regularly saw what actually sold at FLGSes and so on it was extremely obvious. There was a reason some games occupied many shelves and had dozens of supplements, and apart from AD&D and RIFTS (and briefly Earthdawn) they typically weren't class/level-based.

A half-dozen fantasy heartbreakers everyone has now forgotten (and I definitely remember them existing, but most are 100% forgotten now) wouldn't match the sales or influence of some individual World of Darkness splatbooks - I don't even mean corebooks - I mean splatbooks. I'd be willing to bet say, Clanbook: Tremere alone outsold an awful lot of fantasy heartbreakers.

The same "real success doesn't matter" attitude is seemingly reflected in a later claim:


Thomas Shey said:


> I'd argue the success of MMOs have just taken a while to completely splay across other genres. If you don't think so, well, you don't.



Are you trying to say is the MMOs helped influence other video games into including "RPG mechanics"? If so I mostly-agree (it's a bit more complex but there's some truth there).

But the situation we have now might trace back to MMOs popularizing class & level, but it's certainly not solely caused by them nor is it what is the major influence today. They're a relatively niche kind of game, despite once being very successful. Someone who is 20 today may well never have played a full-on MMORPG. But they've probably played a bunch of games, maybe even most of their games from their teens and onwards, with classes and levels.


Thomas Shey said:


> If you ignore the direct 5e knockoffs I don't have much sign class-and-level systems are any more common than they ever were, and if you count knockoffs, there were an enormous amound of D&D3e era ones in that period.



I agree completely. I never suggested that was the case.

The gamers aren't looking for alternative class-and-level games. Why would they? D&D 5E is right here. That's part of why D&D 5E is so successful, and why people are sticking with D&D so well.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

cowpie said:


> "The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred."



LOL!

Bro, you don't understand why that is there.

It has nothing to do with "educating the audience", for goodness sakes. Why would think that? Can you explain? It's there to stop them getting sued. That's the sole purpose. It isn't there for the audience at all, it's there for the lawyers.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

HammerMan said:


> Rifts is weird, but at this point is as old as TSR D&D was... it is holding and last time I was at Gen COn had equal foot print too WoD and ONLY D&D was bigger.



I don't think "presence at GenCon" has much to do with anything except the people who make the game. It's obvious from any FLGS that RIFTS isn't selling like it used to (and from the steep decline in production quality of RIFTS books). I'm pretty sure the reason they had a big footprint there is because the owners are still living in the '90s when GenCon was a much bigger deal. 

Also, when was that? WotC skipped a number of GenCons, I dunno if they even still go at all. From the internet it looks like they've been skipping at least some back to 2008 or maybe even earlier. Looks like maybe the last time they were there was 2015?


----------



## Thomas Shey

Ruin Explorer said:


> I've made the argument already. Now you're just not bothering to read, is pretty sad stuff.




And if you'd rather have a fight than a discussion, do it with someone else.


----------



## HammerMan

Ruin Explorer said:


> I don't think "presence at GenCon" has much to do with anything except the people who make the game. It's obvious from any FLGS that RIFTS isn't selling like it used to (and from the steep decline in production quality of RIFTS books). I'm pretty sure the reason they had a big footprint there is because the owners are still living in the '90s when GenCon was a much bigger deal.
> 
> Also, when was that? WotC skipped a number of GenCons, I dunno if they even still go at all. From the internet it looks like they've been skipping at least some back to 2008 or maybe even earlier. Looks like maybe the last time they were there was 2015?



it was in the teens... I said D&D becuse i was counting the Adventure league and piazo


----------



## Thomas Shey

Paul Farquhar said:


> I don't know, there where quite a lot of RPGs coming out about then, and most of them didn't think they needed to tell you how to play. Traveller was particularly well supported with a wide variety of supplements though. Maybe it helped to have those small rulebooks?
> 
> ...And I guess this illustrates the drawback. It didn't matter that character generation was random, because there didn't have to be combat so "sub-optimal characters" didn't matter. A Scientist with Computer-3, Admin-1 was just fine. But I guess not everyone realised that.




"Just fine" for some types of campaign, but not others, and it was pretty easy to get a character who really wasn't contributing to any sort of campaign very well.  The advantage of the two campaign types I mentioned was that anyone could point a gun, and for a merchants campaign there were only a couple characters needed to actually make the campaign work; you could have four others who were either largely useless or all their skills looked like they fit in another kind of campaign and it wouldn't matter inordinately.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Thomas Shey said:


> And if you'd rather have a fight than a discussion, do it with someone else.



That's a pretty amazing thing to say when you _demanded_ I argue something I'd already argued and merely pointed that out lol.


----------



## Malmuria

cowpie said:


> I guess my issue with it, is that in every edition of the game there is always a disclaimer that the game is yours, you are free to do whatever you want with it.  Also, the hobby evolved out of hobbies like military modeling (and things like knitting clubs, quilting circles, etc) where people made stuff, and took it to their club members to show off.  For D&D this was "look at my home made adventure everyone" or "check out at this new monster I made".  So it was assumed that if there's a description in the monster manual, players have always been free to not use the vanilla description, and customize things.  Customizing things is actually part of the fun.
> 
> For example, I've had orcs in a game who were just bad guy stormtroopers, existing to threaten the PCs.  I've also had orcs who were cultured diplomats visiting from a rival kingdom, who the PCs were assigned to protect as bodyguards.  I guess I just thought it was already understood that players have been free to customize things from day one.
> 
> I guess this has to do with newer players having less time to play, and wanting the content pre-made and ready to go per their preferences, and a move away from wanting to customize stuff.



I don't really see how the changes are about people wanting more pre-made content.  If anything, they are moving away from over-defining each monster; the less specific lore they provide, the more that is left up to the imagination.  For example, my ideal monster description looks something like this.

In terms of playable races, tons of people are out there happily making OC tieflings and orcs kobolds that bear little to no resemblance to the description of those races in the official books.  As it has been since the beginning of the hobby, people _are_ customizing the game and playing it the way they want.  WOTC is just playing catch up.


----------



## Sabathius42

My feeling is that as time moves forward we are going to see D&D transition more and more from written for an adult audience to written for a young adult audience.

Basically less Watchmen and more Avengers.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Malmuria said:


> For example, my ideal monster description looks something like this.



I have to say, when I started running RPGs, indeed for the first few years, I found descriptions like that incredibly unhelpful, even counter-helpful.

A lot of monsters deserve a pretty thorough description, especially the weirder ones. You can't expect everybody to be on the same page from a couple of sentences, and you're kneecapping a lot of DMs with that kind of vagueness, even if you're empowering a few (mostly experienced) ones. And I don't think it's actually helpful to have people on entirely different pages about how monsters basically work, especially as in my experience it tends to promote some degree of strife.


Sabathius42 said:


> My feeling is that as time moves forward we are going to see D&D transition more and more from written for an adult audience to written for a young adult audience.
> 
> Basically less Watchmen and more Avengers.



I'd say that's been very clearly going on since 2E. I don't see how you can suggest it's novel. 2E feels like it was very much aimed at teenagers. I admit 1E does not feel that way at all. 1E seems to be aimed at maybe mid-20-somethings, but it was barely "aimed" at all.


----------



## Thomas Shey

Ruin Explorer said:


> That's a pretty amazing thing to say when you _demanded_ I argue something I'd already argued and merely pointed that out lol.




The difference is I at no point insulted you.  If you don't get that, that's on you.


----------



## embee

Oofta said:


> Even a broken old school clocks that you remember fondly are right twice a day



That is demonstrably untrue. A broken clock, i.e. one that does not properly function, could be continuously incorrect due to losing or gaining time. 

Now a stopped clock will be right twice daily. 

Similarly, there are few things around that can be compared as easily as apples and oranges.


----------



## Oofta

Sabathius42 said:


> My feeling is that as time moves forward we are going to see D&D transition more and more from written for an adult audience to written for a young adult audience.
> 
> Basically less Watchmen and more Avengers.



I've always been quite immature, does that mean the game will transition to the better for me?


----------



## Ruin Explorer

embee said:


> That is demonstrably untrue. A broken clock, i.e. one that does not properly function, could be continuously incorrect due to losing or gaining time.
> 
> Now a stopped clock will be right twice daily.



This is one of the finest examples of pointless semantics that I've seen on the internet for a while, given that by "broken", about 95% of people would mean "stopped" in this case.


----------



## Malmuria

Ruin Explorer said:


> I have to say, when I started running RPGs, indeed for the first few years, I found descriptions like that incredibly unhelpful, even counter-helpful.



True, that is pretty minimal.  What about something like this: Monsters – Dungeon World SRD


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Malmuria said:


> True, that is pretty minimal.  What about something like this: Monsters – Dungeon World SRD



Depends if it's paired with a good, accurate illustration or not. If it is, that can be okay, but if not... meh. I was actually thinking of Dungeon World as an example where they underdescribe monsters and rely on the fact that you're already familiar with D&D in a lot of cases.


----------



## Oofta

embee said:


> That is demonstrably untrue. A broken clock, i.e. one that does not properly function, could be continuously incorrect due to losing or gaining time.
> 
> Now a stopped clock will be right twice daily.
> 
> Similarly, there are few things around that can be compared as easily as apples and oranges.



Hey, I can't help it if you don't understand the concept of time zones.  Or, if you want to be super picky that because of the theory of relativity and time dilation that somewhere (probably on the event horizon of a black hole) the time will be correct _at least_ twice a day.


----------



## Umbran

Ruin Explorer said:


> Now you're just not bothering to read, is pretty sad stuff.




*Mod Note:*
It would be great for you to think about what your intended goal in saying that was. 

Dollars to doughnuts, either:
1) This sentence did not serve your purpose, and was a bad idea, or 
2) Your actual purpose, if you stated it, would likely get you booted from the thread.

Next time, don't start posts with accusations against the other speaker.


----------



## jgsugden

While there are aspects of this evolution that will remain, much of it is cyclical.  It is kind of like music - you go from periods of 'light' pop music to serious 'heavy' music and back and forth as time goes by.  

Some of the adancements will be maintained.  I doubt drow, orcs and other humanoids will be considered innately evil, for example.  However, I think we will see periods of shallow storytelling that fears to offend and often gives us flat or sympathetic villains (note: you can have sympathetic villains in many types of storytelling, but fearful storytelling often uses this tactic), and then we'll see a return to darkness with storytellers in movies, TV, books and D&D embracing the use of truly evil beings as villains - using horrible things to get their way.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Ruin Explorer said:


> LOL!
> 
> Bro, you don't understand why that is there.
> 
> It has nothing to do with "educating the audience", for goodness sakes. Why would think that? Can you explain? It's there to stop them getting sued. That's the sole purpose. It isn't there for the audience at all, it's there for the lawyers.



I think a lot of the stuff being changed is there for the lawyers too.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Micah Sweet said:


> I think a lot of the stuff being changed is there for the lawyers too.



Which bits?

I can't immediately see a single thing in the current list of changes which is "for the lawyers" (note: I work at a law firm and used to be a legal researcher, but am not a lawyer).

Who would be suing WotC on what basis?


----------



## Scribe

Micah Sweet said:


> I think a lot of the stuff being changed is there for the lawyers too.



I don't think so. There's nothing legally at issue.

The issue I believe is that the days of 'no bad press' are long gone, and Wizards doesn't want negative articles being blasted across Twitter.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Ruin Explorer said:


> Which bits?
> 
> I can't immediately see a single thing in the current list of changes which is "for the lawyers" (note: I work at a law firm and used to be a legal researcher, but am not a lawyer).
> 
> Who would be suing WotC on what basis?



I admit I was being a bit glib. I was thinking more in terms of non-legal liability, so the company can be seen as believing a certain way and promoting ideas that some folks want them to promote (and of course,  not be seen to be promoting other ideas).


----------



## TheSword

Sabathius42 said:


> My feeling is that as time moves forward we are going to see D&D transition more and more from written for an adult audience to written for a young adult audience.
> 
> Basically less Watchmen and more Avengers.



Barring a few intentionally dark supplements like Book of Vile Darkness and Champions of Evil has D&D ever really been Watchmen? Dark Sun was in principle pretty bleak, but the reality was more Dr Who than Dr Manhattan.

Most D&D adventures are threat—> adventure —> happy ending. Rime was in principle bleak, but the reality was cuddly and fuzzy for the most part and not really horrific at all.

What makes D&D content dark and adult is actually the stuff that isn’t written, that’s adapted by the DM to suit the style of the table. I’m not really detecting a difference in the writing style in official products in the last 20 years. Cormyr: Tearing of the Weave or Gathering of Winds reads pretty similarly to Rime of the Frost Maiden or Descent into Avernus.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

TheSword said:


> Barring a few intentionally dark supplements like Book of Vile Darkness and Champions of Evil has D&D ever really been Watchmen? Dark Sun was in principle pretty bleak, but the reality was more Dr Who than Dr Manhattan.



I certainly haven't even seen D&D being like that, so I agree with you here.

And not like there's a shortage of RPGs which are like that compare them to. The vast majority of White Wolf RPGs (including the non-WoD lines) were absolutely aiming for "Watchmen not Avengers", whether they're Vampire, Exalted, or Aberrant.

D&D has, since 2E at least, always been aiming at a different, younger and less grim-oriented market. As you say, there have been the odd book that's a bit "edgy", but y'know, compare Book of Vile Darkness to, say Clanbook: Tzmische (sp?) and BoVD looks like pretty schoolboy stuff.


----------



## BookTenTiger

I think rather than a "young" audience or "adult" audience, D&D has usually targeted a "universal" audience, in that both kids and adults can get a lot out of it.


----------



## TheSword

Ruin Explorer said:


> I certainly haven't even seen D&D being like that, so I agree with you here.
> 
> And not like there's a shortage of RPGs which are like that compare them to. The vast majority of White Wolf RPGs (including the non-WoD lines) were absolutely aiming for "Watchmen not Avengers", whether they're Vampire, Exalted, or Aberrant.
> 
> D&D has, since 2E at least, always been aiming at a different, younger and less grim-oriented market. As you say, there have been the odd book that's a bit "edgy", but y'know, compare Book of Vile Darkness to, say Clanbook: Tzmische (sp?) and BoVD looks like pretty schoolboy stuff.



Interestingly I don’t think it’s an age thing. I think it’s more that some people like angst and some people like heroism. I play with 40+ year olds for the most part and we largely like a heroic game with the occasional rare grimdark campaign to mix things up. Our 48 year old is the least likely to want a dark game.

He played a fair bit of WoD stuff when he was younger but doesn’t anymore. Preferring a lighter experience.

A lot of Young Adult stuff has friends dying, eternal curses, being fated to face the ultimate evil, not knowing who your parents are… then finding out they’re the villlain. Etc. 

As a case in point The Hunger Games is one of the most successful pieces of young adult fiction! I don’t see D&D going that way to be honest!


----------



## Argyle King

I think that backwards compatibility will hinder the design process of the upcoming changes. 

While I believe that 5E has a lot of good ideas which should be kept, I also believe that 5E implemented some of those good ideas very poorly in actual practice. As such, I believe that a better game should make more robust mechanical changes. 

Keep in mind that "backwards compatibility" can be a vague statement. Technically, as long as there's a way to convert old products to the new stuff (3.0 ---> 3.5 ---> Pathfinder, as an example,) the claim of being backwards compatible still remains true even with a lot of changes to the system.


----------



## TheSword

Argyle King said:


> I think that backwards compatibility will hinder the design process of the upcoming changes.
> 
> While I believe that 5E has a lot of good ideas which should be kept, I also believe that 5E implemented some of those good ideas very poorly in actual practice. As such, I believe that a better game should make more robust mechanical changes.
> 
> Keep in mind that "backwards compatibility" can be a vague statement. Technically, as long as there's a way to convert old products to the new stuff (3.0 ---> 3.5 ---> Pathfinder, as an example,) the claim of being backwards compatible still remains true even with a lot of changes to the system.



Do you have examples?


----------



## Mind of tempest

Argyle King said:


> I think that backwards compatibility will hinder the design process of the upcoming changes.
> 
> While I believe that 5E has a lot of good ideas which should be kept, I also believe that 5E implemented some of those good ideas very poorly in actual practice. As such, I believe that a better game should make more robust mechanical changes.
> 
> Keep in mind that "backwards compatibility" can be a vague statement. Technically, as long as there's a way to convert old products to the new stuff (3.0 ---> 3.5 ---> Pathfinder, as an example,) the claim of being backwards compatible still remains true even with a lot of changes to the system.



so we must put it in the wait and see category?


----------



## Argyle King

TheSword said:


> Do you have examples?




Of parts that I think are implemented poorly?


----------



## TheSword

Argyle King said:


> Of parts that I think are implemented poorly?



Sure.


----------



## Faolyn

cowpie said:


> In other words, you can still have the trappings of a hero's journey: quests, dungeon crawls, leveling up and power ups, etc, But, if the content is edited so there's no evil to fight against, then this could devalue the importance going on the quest in the first place.  If Emperor Palpatine or Sauron are no longer evil, then why bother fighting them?  If the Heroes aren't objectively good, are they still heroes? No good knights of King Arthur facing the evil knighs of Mordred, per the new values, Which is fine, if that's what you want, but if you want objectively evil or good mythical characters, I guess pick up a copy of Pendragon?



Emperor Palpatine and Sauron are still evil. Their minions are still evil. What's changed is that now you need to have a motivation for Blorg the Orc to be evil because "Blorg the Orc is evil _because _he's an orc" isn't a good motivation.

"Blorg the Orc is evil because he leads a gang of sadistic, murderous bandits" is OK. Nobody is saying you _have _to go into Blorg's history to find out what caused him to turn to evil. You can if you want to, but you don't have to.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

TheSword said:


> As a case in point The Hunger Games is one of the most successful pieces of young adult fiction! I don’t see D&D going that way to be honest!



I re-watched the Hunger Games recently and it was less grim than I remembered. I'd say it was about on-par with D&D. I read the books a while ago and they may have been grimmer, but the setting is less oppressive/scary than Dark Sun, say.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

TheSword said:


> Do you have examples?



I can give an example for him, of something that would be hard to change because of backwards compatibility, but ideally should be changed - 6-8 encounters/day assumption. It's so baked in to 5E that, short of taking the entire game apart and reassembling it, you couldn't fix it.

There's a lot of other stuff where it depends on how far they're willing to go. Like, with subclasses, are they willing to fundamentally change them and make some subclasses technically incompatible between 5E and 2024E? If not, then there are a lot of classes which cannot be "fixed" in 2024E even though they would be pretty easy to fix if you did do that.

I think it all depends on how WotC defines "backwards compatible" or whatever though. If it's absolute, it'll be hugely limiting. If it's just "mostly" or "you can use adventures and monsters without changing them, but PCs may need updating", then it'll be fine.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

BookTenTiger said:


> I think rather than a "young" audience or "adult" audience, D&D has usually targeted a "universal" audience, in that both kids and adults can get a lot out of it.



I mean, I don't think 1E targeted a "universal" audience. I don't think it was even thinking very hard about "targeting an audience" though, to be fair. I think the writers were thinking solely of "people like them" (i.e. slightly nerdy white men with decent educations in their late teens through thirties) where they thought about it at all.

2E and onwards target the "universal" audience which necessarily also involves essentially targeting "teen" or "young adult" audience as they're you're lowest common denominator.


----------



## Oofta

Faolyn said:


> Emperor Palpatine and Sauron are still evil. Their minions are still evil. What's changed is that now you need to have a motivation for Blorg the Orc to be evil because "Blorg the Orc is evil _because _he's an orc" isn't a good motivation.
> 
> "Blorg the Orc is evil because he leads a gang of sadistic, murderous bandits" is OK. Nobody is saying you _have _to go into Blorg's history to find out what caused him to turn to evil. You can if you want to, but you don't have to.



How about Blorg the Orc is a follower of Gruumsh so therefore we know he's evil because only someone evil would follow that god?


----------



## Mind of tempest

Oofta said:


> How about Blorg the Orc is a follower of Gruumsh so therefore we know he's evil because only someone evil would follow that god?



but then we must ask why is gruumsh is evil?


----------



## Scribe

Mind of tempest said:


> but then we must ask why is gruumsh is evil?



Because he is a selfish god.


----------



## Mind of tempest

Scribe said:


> Because he is a selfish god.



all of them seem guilty of that so we need something to make him more than cn.


----------



## Scribe

Mind of tempest said:


> all of them seem guilty of that so we need something to make him more than cn.



I dont think selfish, is particularly chaotic, I think selfish is evil.

I believe that Evil is best defined as working towards your own desires, regardless of the impact on others, including maliciousness.

Now, can all gods fall under that? Perhaps to some degree, because in D&D, even gods are 'people' and have free will, which we are discussing across a few threads right now.

Again however, I believe this is the central, largest issue currently present in how Wizards is presenting D&D, Gods, and how they are managed.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Scribe said:


> Because he is a selfish god.



I mean, the problem kind of is that about 70% of gods (at least in the FR) labelled "Good" display zero characteristics that you would expect from a Good-aligned PC and numerous characteristics you might expect from an "Evil" one. Someone like Ilmater, yeah, unarguably good, basically a take on a Jesus-type or Issek of the Jug or whatever. But like, Clangeddin? Basically the Dwarven god of genocide? Ehhhhh. He's labelled as Lawful Good. Basically nothing he teaches nor the expected behaviour of his followers matches up with LG. He's not far off Gruumsh.

Jeez even the FR wiki says:

"Though they sought to make their dwarven brethren stronger on the battlefield through their teachings, followers of Clangeddin were often viewed as little more than bloodthirsty barbarians among other races."

It's quoting Powers and Pantheons there I believe. And the other races are not wrong to see him that way.

So I'm fine with Gruumsh being CE or whatever, but it is a problem that there are, currently, a bunch of gods labelled as Good, who, again, if they were PCs, would not be "Good", especially not Lawful Good.

If selfishness is Evil then most FR gods are pretty much definitely Evil. And I think it is. I mean I don't think you're wrong, I just think if we get on that road we have to follow it the whole way.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

To add to the above, I think one interesting thing is, with Human pantheons, you don't see the same problem as badly.

So this very clearly derives from the fact that non-humans had strongly-suggested alignments. I have no doubt that if Clangeddin was a human god, he'd be labelled as Neutral or even Evil. But because Dwarves are LG by default, surely their gods must be? And you see the same thing with elves and so on.

Then with humanoids you see it again, even reverse. Gods who don't seem particularly awful are Evil, and/or it seems like they had to go out of their way to make them Evil.

So I think this is something that could easily improve. If we remove default alignments from races, then suddenly their gods don't have to be constrained to the default alignments. Yes, Gruumsh is probably still CE because he's a mean dude, but Clangeddin is likely LE, because dude's a genocidal maniac. And so on.


----------



## Mercurius

Faolyn said:


> Emperor Palpatine and Sauron are still evil. Their minions are still evil. What's changed is that *now you need to have a motivation for Blorg the Orc to be evil* because "Blorg the Orc is evil _because _he's an orc" isn't a good motivation.
> 
> "Blorg the Orc is evil because he leads a gang of sadistic, murderous bandits" is OK. Nobody is saying you _have _to go into Blorg's history to find out what caused him to turn to evil. *You can if you want to, but you don't have to.*



There seems to be inconsistency here. Which one is it, does everyone "need to have a motivation" for orcs to be evil, or only "if you want to?"

I mean, obviously it is the latter. Every game can be run differently. If a DM wants to run a campaign in which orcs and drow are evil, that's their prerogative, especially if they have player buy-in.

The core rules are simply clarifying that they don't "have to be" evil, or aren't inherently evil in all worlds. But in some they could be.


----------



## Mercurius

Y'all are missing the point:


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Oofta said:


> How about Blorg the Orc is a follower of Gruumsh so therefore we know he's evil because only someone evil would follow that god?



I think this is mostly valid if we assume everyone is a willing and committed follower, but it's worth noting that presumably a fair number of people might be neither, but rather worshipping to conform or out of fear of punishment (divine or otherwise). It's probably not something likely to come up much as you're probably going to run into committed religious lunatics a lot more than "I'm only here because they have spice-fried cockatrice wings after the ritual sacrifice!"-types though.


----------



## TheSword

Ruin Explorer said:


> To add to the above, I think one interesting thing is, with Human pantheons, you don't see the same problem as badly.
> 
> So this very clearly derives from the fact that non-humans had strongly-suggested alignments. I have no doubt that if Clangeddin was a human god, he'd be labelled as Neutral or even Evil. But because Dwarves are LG by default, surely their gods must be? And you see the same thing with elves and so on.
> 
> Then with humanoids you see it again, even reverse. Gods who don't seem particularly awful are Evil, and/or it seems like they had to go out of their way to make them Evil.
> 
> So I think this is something that could easily improve. If we remove default alignments from races, then suddenly their gods don't have to be constrained to the default alignments. Yes, Gruumsh is probably still CE because he's a mean dude, but Clangeddin is likely LE, because dude's a genocidal maniac. And so on.



My problem is that this is referencing a 25 year old book. D&D quietly tucked these issues in a crap drawer 15-20 years ago and hasn’t really looked back since.

When was the last time Clangeddin had a meaningful impact in a D&D product?


----------



## Scribe

Ruin Explorer said:


> To add to the above, I think one interesting thing is, with Human pantheons, you don't see the same problem as badly.
> 
> So this very clearly derives from the fact that non-humans had strongly-suggested alignments. I have no doubt that if Clangeddin was a human god, he'd be labelled as Neutral or even Evil. But because Dwarves are LG by default, surely their gods must be? And you see the same thing with elves and so on.
> 
> Then with humanoids you see it again, even reverse. Gods who don't seem particularly awful are Evil, and/or it seems like they had to go out of their way to make them Evil.
> 
> So I think this is something that could easily improve. If we remove default alignments from races, then suddenly their gods don't have to be constrained to the default alignments. Yes, Gruumsh is probably still CE because he's a mean dude, but Clangeddin is likely LE, because dude's a genocidal maniac. And so on.



I'd argue that this is back to that (admittedly old) paradigm where the other races are foils to humanity, not intended to be taken on their own.


----------



## TheSword

Ruin Explorer said:


> I can give an example for him, of something that would be hard to change because of backwards compatibility, but ideally should be changed - 6-8 encounters/day assumption. It's so baked in to 5E that, short of taking the entire game apart and reassembling it, you couldn't fix it.
> 
> There's a lot of other stuff where it depends on how far they're willing to go. Like, with subclasses, are they willing to fundamentally change them and make some subclasses technically incompatible between 5E and 2024E? If not, then there are a lot of classes which cannot be "fixed" in 2024E even though they would be pretty easy to fix if you did do that.
> 
> I think it all depends on how WotC defines "backwards compatible" or whatever though. If it's absolute, it'll be hugely limiting. If it's just "mostly" or "you can use adventures and monsters without changing them, but PCs may need updating", then it'll be fine.



I do agree that it would be nice if the game could be balanced with single encounter days. But at the same time, I don’t want all casters to look like Warlocks so I live with the discrepancy.

That said, I’m not sure that’s an example of 5e having a good idea and not implementing it. I don’t think 5e ever intended to balance the game around single encounter days.


----------



## dave2008

Mind of tempest said:


> but then we must ask why is gruumsh is evil?



No, I don't think that needs to be asked. It could simply be accepted and be done with it.


----------



## Galandris

Faolyn said:


> Emperor Palpatine and Sauron are still evil. Their minions are still evil. What's changed is that now you need to have a motivation for Blorg the Orc to be evil because "Blorg the Orc is evil _because _he's an orc" isn't a good motivation.
> 
> "Blorg the Orc is evil because he leads a gang of sadistic, murderous bandits" is OK. Nobody is saying you _have _to go into Blorg's history to find out what caused him to turn to evil. You can if you want to, but you don't have to.




But really, are there people who killed peaceful farming orcs because they were evil? Maybe I am playing with a gang of outlier, but (a) we don't kill people as much as possible [the GM vetoed by casting of Grease on the rooftop to make an enemy fall while yelling "Gravity does non-lethal damage!"] (b) having beyond-redemption capital E evil lessen the guilt in the cases where it's... unavoidable/franckly too inconvenient not to kill.

So it's not a matter of killing Blorg because he's evil, but since he's a sadistic murderous bandit AND he's evil, it's not that horrible to kill him outside of self-defence.

The whole debate seem totally alien to me and the only way I can understand the problem is if people are really killing orcs because they are orcs.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

TheSword said:


> My problem is that this is referencing a 25 year old book. D&D quietly tucked these issues in a crap drawer 15-20 years ago and hasn’t really looked back since.
> 
> When was the last time Clangeddin had a meaningful impact in a D&D product?



I don't know. Very few gods have any meaningful impact on D&D products.

The point is, because that's the most recent source, it's preserving a sort of messed-up/nonsensical situation. Actually there's probably 3E or maybe even later books which assert Clangeddin as LG, but I am not going to dig through my shelves to check lol.


----------



## Oofta

Mind of tempest said:


> but then we must ask why is gruumsh is evil?



They have anger issues and created an entire race for the sole purpose of watching the world burn.  Sounds pretty chaotic evil to me.

Not to mention because they don't exist in the real world and  it makes a handy antagonist in an a game that over-simplifies just about everything.  It's just the default and good enough starting point for a lot of people.  Even then Gruumsh and his followers have more depth than the vast majority of villains in TV, movies, and video games.


----------



## TheSword

Ruin Explorer said:


> I don't know. Very few gods have any meaningful impact on D&D products.
> 
> The point is, because that's the most recent source, it's preserving a sort of messed-up/nonsensical situation. Actually there's probably 3E or maybe even later books which assert Clangeddin as LG, but I am not going to dig through my shelves to check lol.



I’ve just read the full write up in Faiths and Pantheons for 3e. It’s clear there that Clangeddin is god of war, but also valor, defending others and honorable combat. The write up makes it pretty clear why he’s LG.


----------



## cowpie

I understand and agree with the moral point you're making.  Stereotyping and bigotry is wrong, and I've understood this for decades (as far as I'm concerned it's basic morality, and a core value in my moral compass that's unshakeable).  I've known this for so long that I no longer feel the need to explain myself, or tell other people about it, like spreading the gospel.  Call me grumpy, but if I'm willing to give a player the benefit of the doubt, I've come to expect it in return.

Since that's who I am, I feel I can be trusted to choose to have orc bandits like Blorg in the game who are _acting evil_, without having to spend valuable prep time fleshing this out every game. It's impractical when I only have 15 minutes. Also, the players are probably going to kill him off soon, so that prep is going to be wasted anyway. If a player asks me in a game about Blorg's motivations, I'll just make something up on the fly.

What I'm really taking issue with, is how making a big deal out of singling out Orcs as an example of how D&D is morally failing, enables some disruptive players to engage in bad behavior in the name of upholding this moral standard.  Because of this, I no longer use Orcs in games, because now there's always "that guy" who's going to assume the worst, just because I have orc bandits.  They will jump up on a soapbox to "call this out", interrupt the game, and imply wrongdoing, even if it's not taking place.  Strangely, if I have poorly fleshed out human bandits, or inherently evil demons, or a BBEG (like a Sauron) they don't seem to care (?)

In my experience, I've found that accusing someone of being morally bankrupt, or guilt tripping them in front of a group, is *guaranteed* to anger them, and cause a fight. I don't allow it during game sessions, because it's disruptive. I view it as a form of hogging the spotlight. I have had to cancel games (and ultimately kick a player) over this, because they couldn't just let it go. Bad behavior is still bad behavior, even when done ostensibly for a good cause.

What I want is to agree with the players that we all already know that people are complicated, and that their motivations for evil are there (but unspoken) before the game starts, and then be done with it.  Calling out during my game, is not allowed.


----------



## BookTenTiger

cowpie said:


> I understand and agree with the moral point you're making.  Stereotyping and bigotry is wrong, and I've understood this for decades (as far as I'm concerned it's basic morality, and a core value in my moral compass that's unshakeable).  I've known this for so long that I no longer feel the need to explain myself, or tell other people about it, like spreading the gospel.  Call me grumpy, but if I'm willing to give a player the benefit of the doubt, I've come to expect it in return.
> 
> Since that's who I am, I feel I can be trusted to choose to have orc bandits like Blorg in the game who are _acting evil_, without having to spend valuable prep time fleshing this out every game. It's impractical when I only have 15 minutes. Also, the players are probably going to kill him off soon, so that prep is going to be wasted anyway. If a player asks me in a game about Blorg's motivations, I'll just make something up on the fly.
> 
> What I'm really taking issue with, is how making a big deal out of singling out Orcs as an example of how D&D is morally failing, enables some disruptive players to engage in bad behavior in the name of upholding this moral standard.  Because of this, I no longer use Orcs in games, because now there's always "that guy" who's going to assume the worst, just because I have orc bandits.  They will jump up on a soapbox to "call this out", interrupt the game, and imply wrongdoing, even if it's not taking place.  Strangely, if I have poorly fleshed out human bandits, or inherently evil demons, or a BBEG (like a Sauron) they don't seem to care (?)
> 
> In my experience, I've found that accusing someone of being morally bankrupt, or guilt tripping them in front of a group, is *guaranteed* to anger them, and cause a fight. I don't allow it during game sessions, because it's disruptive. I view it as a form of hogging the spotlight. I have had to cancel games (and ultimately kick a player) over this, because they couldn't just let it go. Bad behavior is still bad behavior, even when done ostensibly for a good cause.
> 
> What I want is to agree with the players that we all already know that people are complicated, and that their motivations for evil are there (but unspoken) before the game starts, and then be done with it.  Calling out during my game, is not allowed.



This seems like a Bad Player problem rather than a 5e or WotC problem.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

TheSword said:


> I’ve just read the full write up in Faiths and Pantheons for 3e. It’s clear there that Clangeddin is god of war, but also valor, defending others and honorable combat. The write up makes it pretty clear why he’s LG.



I've read it too, and thought about it extensively back in the day, and I don't feel it can add up to LG, particularly with the fixation on literal genocide of his enemies.


----------



## cowpie

BookTenTiger said:


> This seems like a Bad Player problem rather than a 5e or WotC problem



Sorry, I forgot to quote the thread I was responding to, which was explaining that it was important to always give incidental villains motivations, rather than have inherently evil villains (in this case orcs), per WOTC's policy spotlighting them.  I was explaining that since I've long known that people are not inherently evil, and that I have limited prep time, I felt in unnecessary to use these characters as a vehicle in a game to publicly teach others right from wrong  The world will not be a worse place if occasionally a throwaway bad guy is just a throwaway bad guy in a private game where adult players already know right from wrong.

The bad behavior piece is definitely a player issue, but in this case the player (who was young and immature in other ways) was emboldened because they were parroting WOTC's policy to excuse being disruptive.  This could be an unintended consequence of the policy.


----------



## TheSword

Ruin Explorer said:


> I've read it too, and thought about it extensively back in the day, and I don't feel it can add up to LG, particularly with the fixation on literal genocide of his enemies.



That must be the AD&D version. The 3e version doesn’t mention genocide. It just mentions take any opportunity to attack evil giants. Which seems like a pretty good thing to do to me.


----------



## Faolyn

Oofta said:


> How about Blorg the Orc is a follower of Gruumsh so therefore we know he's evil because only someone evil would follow that god?



Is Blorg committing evil deeds? Because "leading a band of sadistic murderers" implies that he and his band are out there sadistically murdering people. But if Blorg is just a lay worshiper and only goes to Shrine on Bloodmass and Eyepoke days, then maybe no.

If Blorg _is _doing evil things because he worships Gruumsh, then sure. Slaughter away.


----------



## Faolyn

Oofta said:


> They have anger issues and created an entire race for the sole purpose of watching the world burn.  Sounds pretty chaotic evil to me.



Only because the other gods cheated him and took all the good land for themselves, and then made fun of him for losing out.

Maybe the demihuman gods are the _real _baddies.


----------



## Oofta

Faolyn said:


> Is Blorg committing evil deeds? Because "leading a band of sadistic murderers" implies that he and his band are out there sadistically murdering people. But if Blorg is just a lay worshiper and only goes to Shrine on Bloodmass and Eyepoke days, then maybe no.
> 
> If Blorg _is _doing evil things because he worships Gruumsh, then sure. Slaughter away.




If someone is a true devotee of Gruumsh, slaughter _is_ worship.  At least in my campaign world.



Faolyn said:


> Only because the other gods cheated him and took all the good land for themselves, and then made fun of him for losing out.
> 
> Maybe the demihuman gods are the _real _baddies.



Yeah, the description in Volos is kind of crap.  Gruumsh has a pretty different origin story in my campaign world.  In short, Gruumsh wanted the best of the fertile valleys, the riches of the mountains and forests and so on.  Basically tried to bully the rest of the gods into submission and giving him the best of everything with the threat of creating orcs if he didn't get his way.  

But orcs work quite differently in my campaign world in other ways as well (no one has ever seen a baby orc).


----------



## Galandris

Faolyn said:


> Only because the other gods cheated him and took all the good land for themselves, and then made fun of him for losing out.
> 
> Maybe the demihuman gods are the _real _baddies.




Actually, Gruumsh is CE because he _also_ came too late to the alignment grab and CG was taken by the elves, LG by the dwarves... all was left was CE as well. There is strong evidence that Gruumsh is a sloth, not an orc.


----------



## Reynard

TheSword said:


> Dark Sun was in principle pretty bleak, but the reality was more Dr Who than Dr Manhattan.



I just want to say how much I LOVE this particular turn of phrase. Bravo!


----------



## Faolyn

Galandris said:


> Actually, Gruumsh is CE because he _also_ came too late to the alignment grab and CG was taken by the elves, LG by the dwarves... all was left was CE as well. There is strong evidence that Gruumsh is a sloth, not an orc.



So he's adorable then?


----------



## guachi

Reynard said:


> I think that we are looking at as big a change in D&D "culture" as we saw in the fall of TSR and rise of WotC era. I'm confident we aren't like to see huge rules changes in 5.5 (I think backwards compatibility will be a thing, for example) but I think there are a lot of thing lining up for WotC to look at, and treat, D&D as a different thing in the very near future.
> 
> Now, just because I know some folks are going to make this argument: I don't think that was true of either the 4E or 5E transition.
> 
> 4E was very much a mechanical sea change but the explicitly stated goal at the time was to "still play D&D." And 5E was a course correction, the exact opposite of a sea change. It drew heavily on GenX nostalgia and was working very hard to say "D&D is still D&D!"
> 
> I don't think that is true going forward. I think the intent is to very much alter the way the game is played (story first, etc..) and aimed at a new generation -- and that generation's values -- in a way it hasn't been since Basic and D&D cartoon days.




I'm making the mistake of responding to the first post before reading 12 other pages. Y'all are some chatty Cathys. I think it's definitely moving towards "story first" with far less emphasis on dungeons or dragons, so to speak. Unfortunately, I think D&D is terrible as this kind of "story first" game and I have little faith in the current creators that they can pull it off.

5e did a great job of making the game "feel" like D&D while also adding a lot of modern touches. I don't think the current creative team can pull this off with 5.5e and 6e. It might not matter if the player base wants something different.  But my wallet will likely remain closed.

I don't object, in principle, to where the game seems to be heading. I just don't think WotC has the chops to pull it off.


----------



## Oofta

guachi said:


> I'm making the mistake of responding to the first post before reading 12 other pages. Y'all are some chatty Cathys. I think it's definitely moving towards "story first" with far less emphasis on dungeons or dragons, so to speak. Unfortunately, I think D&D is terrible as this kind of "story first" game and I have little faith in the current creators that they can pull it off.
> 
> 5e did a great job of making the game "feel" like D&D while also adding a lot of modern touches. I don't think the current creative team can pull this off with 5.5e and 6e. It might not matter if the player base wants something different.  But my wallet will likely remain closed.
> 
> I don't object, in principle, to where the game seems to be heading. I just don't think WotC has the chops to pull it off.



I dunno.  I don't remember the last time I used a dungeon (sometime last century I'm sure) and my last campaign was the first time in forever that I used dragons. I think the game still works just fine.  Then again I prefer a light touch from a rules perspective on social and influence which may not work for everyone.

As far as whatever comes next, I'm not holding my breath, but I also don't think anyone really has a clue.  My bet would be on minor cleanup, some relatively small changes that will convince some people the sky is falling.  Time will tell.


----------



## Levistus's_Leviathan

Yeah, the gods of the various pantheons of D&D are almost all pretty mislabeled for what their "said alignment" and "alignment from what their actions tell us" are. Gruumsh is evil . . . because he got angry when the rest of the gods cheated him out of his fair share of the world and he decided to make a race that would take what they were rightfully owed? While Corellon freaked out when the Primal Elves started taking on humanoid forms, forever banished them from Arvandor, and eternally damned all of his children for an "inherited sin" of their ancestors (which wasn't actually even that bad of an action), and Moradin was turning an entire sub-race of his children away from him because _they had the audacity to be the _*victims *_of a terrible and unthinkable_ (hah, get it, because they were Mind Flayer Thralls) _tragedy_! Gruumsh is the one we're supposed to think is evil based on this lore? We're supposed to think of Corellon as Chaotic Good and Moradin as Lawful Good when basically all of their "canon" actions in 5e lore say otherwise? 

Damn, I knew WotC had a lot of bad lore this edition, which totally sucks because they did a great job with 4e (ignoring the Spellplague), but I never really realized that the bad lore went so far as to try to attach Godly Victim Blaming, Eternal Damnation, and Species-Wide Xenophobia to *good* deities, and attaching the "holy vengeance for being cheated by my coworkers" to an *evil* god.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

AcererakTriple6 said:


> Damn, I knew WotC had a lot of bad lore this edition, which totally sucks because they did a great job with 4e (ignoring the Spellplague), but I never really realized that the bad lore went so far as to try to attach Godly Victim Blaming, Eternal Damnation, and Species-Wide Xenophobia to *good* deities, and attaching the "holy vengeance for being cheated by my coworkers" to an *evil* god.




The whole deal with giving gods alignments is basically a bust in D&D in the longer-term, perhaps even moreso than races in the longer-term, and you're illustrating this really well. In the FR beyond some of the really creepy stuff you illustrate (which tends to be centered around demihuman gods) there's also sorts of horrible misbehaviour from "Good" gods which amounts to petty jealousy, mean-spiritedness and so on, with sometimes horrific consequences. Hell, I'm not sure any god in the FR who lets the Wall of the Faithless keep happening could be called "Good". Separately sometimes you have stuff generally like parts of the Ancient Greek pantheon being labeled "Good", which is practically an insult to them, as I don't think a damn one of them would have matched up with D&D "Good", _nor wanted to_ (Prometheus maybe but he wasn't a god).

All I've ever seen alignments for gods do is cause confusion and frowns, really. Players, like, normal, casual players, are vexed by a lot of deity alignments if they actually find out about them, in my experience. They were an endless subject of debate when we started playing D&D, and whenever players actually learn details about almost any god the "How the heck does [insert god] have this alignment?" comes up.

Whereas if you just have the _teachings_ of the god and the behaviour of their followers, it's much easier to work out how to relate to them.

Causing a long-term problem though is the fact that the cosmology of D&D has been aligned with er... alignments, and thus the places the gods live in the Great Wheel cosmology are based on their alignments. Which means as long as you use that cosmology and don't revise it pretty majorly, some of these problems will be fixed in place. It feels to me like D&D could use a revised cosmology which based things more on the themes and interests of the gods than the alignments - that's already in there a bit of course, but it seems to be secondary to the alignments, where it should probably be primary. Also 4E was ahead of its time when it assigned Angels to all gods, not just the good ones. The Evil gods, as discussed before, currently have no official emissaries in 5E (because they took away Angels but had enough sense not to assign Devils/Demons).


----------



## Levistus's_Leviathan

Ruin Explorer said:


> The whole deal with giving gods alignments is basically a bust in D&D in the longer-term, perhaps even moreso than races in the longer-term, and you're illustrating this really well. In the FR beyond some of the really creepy stuff you illustrate (which tends to be centered around demihuman gods) there's also sorts of horrible misbehaviour from "Good" gods which amounts to petty jealousy, mean-spiritedness and so on, with sometimes horrific consequences. Hell, I'm not sure any god in the FR who lets the Wall of the Faithless keep happening could be called "Good". Separately sometimes you have stuff generally like parts of the Ancient Greek pantheon being labeled "Good", which is practically an insult to them, as I don't think a damn one of them would have matched up with D&D "Good", _nor wanted to_ (Prometheus maybe but he wasn't a god).
> 
> All I've ever seen alignments for gods do is cause confusion and frowns, really. Players, like, normal, casual players, are vexed by a lot of deity alignments if they actually find out about them, in my experience. They were an endless subject of debate when we started playing D&D, and whenever players actually learn details about almost any god the "How the heck does [insert god] have this alignment?" comes up.
> 
> Whereas if you just have the _teachings_ of the god and the behaviour of their followers, it's much easier to work out how to relate to them.
> 
> Causing a long-term problem though is the fact that the cosmology of D&D has been aligned with er... alignments, and thus the places the gods live in the Great Wheel cosmology are based on their alignments. Which means as long as you use that cosmology and don't revise it pretty majorly, some of these problems will be fixed in place. It feels to me like D&D could use a revised cosmology which based things more on the themes and interests of the gods than the alignments - that's already in there a bit of course, but it seems to be secondary to the alignments, where it should probably be primary. Also 4E was ahead of its time when it assigned Angels to all gods, not just the good ones. The Evil gods, as discussed before, currently have no official emissaries in 5E (because they took away Angels but had enough sense not to assign Devils/Demons).



I get what you're saying overall, but counterpoint: Eberron. The gods of Eberron's Sovereign Host and Dark Six have listed alignments, and they don't create the same sort of debates/controversy that the gods of Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance do. This is due to the fact that the gods may or may not actually exist, but they don't create these kinds of discussions (not in the real world, at least. One of the core teachings of the Blood of Vol is that if there are any gods, they're all evil for allowing peoples' souls to be destroyed after death and preventing the apotheosis of the living).


----------



## TheSword

AcererakTriple6 said:


> Yeah, the gods of the various pantheons of D&D are almost all pretty mislabeled for what their "said alignment" and "alignment from what their actions tell us" are. Gruumsh is evil . . . because he got angry when the rest of the gods cheated him out of his fair share of the world and he decided to make a race that would take what they were rightfully owed? While Corellon freaked out when the Primal Elves started taking on humanoid forms, forever banished them from Arvandor, and eternally damned all of his children for an "inherited sin" of their ancestors (which wasn't actually even that bad of an action), and Moradin was turning an entire sub-race of his children away from him because _they had the audacity to be the _*victims *_of a terrible and unthinkable_ (hah, get it, because they were Mind Flayer Thralls) _tragedy_! Gruumsh is the one we're supposed to think is evil based on this lore? We're supposed to think of Corellon as Chaotic Good and Moradin as Lawful Good when basically all of their "canon" actions in 5e lore say otherwise?
> 
> Damn, I knew WotC had a lot of bad lore this edition, which totally sucks because they did a great job with 4e (ignoring the Spellplague), but I never really realized that the bad lore went so far as to try to attach Godly Victim Blaming, Eternal Damnation, and Species-Wide Xenophobia to *good* deities, and attaching the "holy vengeance for being cheated by my coworkers" to an *evil* god.



I think you’re forgetting that these creation stories are told by unreliable narrators. Even given that the stories aren’t quite as simple as you make out. Though it is a good example of why this lore is good. You sound like a bitter drow matron, or surly duergar explaining to their flock why moradin and corellon are wicked.

The duergar made a deal with Asmodeus the prince of hell which you conveniently missed out. It was still greed that made them dig and dig. A lure, not a compulsion. They turned away from Moradin for treasure.

The elves were given beautiful and extremely long lived bodies because Corellon loved them, despite them turning away from him… they were also tricked to do so by an evil entity for the sake of power.

You can call it bad lore, I call it just groovy.


----------



## Mind of tempest

TheSword said:


> I think you’re forgetting that these creation stories are told by unreliable narrators. Even given that the stories aren’t quite as simple as you make out. Though it is a good example of why this lore is good. You sound like a bitter drow matron, or surly duergar explaining to their flock why moradin and corellon are wicked.
> 
> The duergar made a deal with Asmodeus the prince of hell which you conveniently missed out. It was still greed that made them dig and dig. A lure, not a compulsion. They turned away from Moradin for treasure.
> 
> The elves were given beautiful and extremely long lived bodies because Corellon loved them, despite them turning away from him… they were also tricked to do so by an evil entity for the sake of power.
> 
> You can call it bad lore, I call it just groovy.



moradin and corellon seem not to really be the problem it is the smaller gods that seem to be the problem.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

AcererakTriple6 said:


> I get what you're saying overall, but counterpoint: Eberron. The gods of Eberron's Sovereign Host and Dark Six have listed alignments, and they don't create the same sort of debates/controversy that the gods of Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance do. This is due to the fact that the gods may or may not actually exist, but they don't create these kinds of discussions (not in the real world, at least. One of the core teachings of the Blood of Vol is that if there are any gods, they're all evil for allowing peoples' souls to be destroyed after death and preventing the apotheosis of the living).



Sure, but there's also the issue that the alignments assigned to the gods in Eberron tend to be much more in-line with what you'd expect from their teachings. Whereas that's not really the case with a lot of settings.

It definitely is a massive help with Eberron that the setting is agnostic on whether they actually exist. It allows religion to be more diverse in that setting too, in terms of how it operates.

I think what Eberron most particularly illustrates is how helpful it is to construct a cosmology all at once in a coherent and considered way, rather than to randomly add stuff in and accrue cruft and make retcons and so on as the FR has done repeatedly. Which has ended up with a place where Ed Greenwood doesn't seem to even agree about what the cosmology of the FR is with the actual FR writers.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

TheSword said:


> I think you’re forgetting that these creation stories are told by unreliable narrators. Even given that the stories aren’t quite as simple as you make out. Though it is a good example of why this lore is good. You sound like a bitter drow matron, or surly duergar explaining to their flock why moradin and corellon are wicked.



I mean, for it to be "good lore" here, we have to assume Corellon and so on are absolutely as unreliable.

Which would be great. Except the game pretty clearly states that they aren't. If it was all unreliable narrators and conflicting stories and opinions and teachings and practices this could be awesome. But unfortunately we have stuff saying "Yo this guy is telling the truth and this guy is lying" and so on.


----------



## S'mon

Reynard said:


> I think that we are looking at as big a change in D&D "culture" as we saw in the fall of TSR and rise of WotC era. I'm confident we aren't like to see huge rules changes in 5.5 (I think backwards compatibility will be a thing, for example) but I think there are a lot of thing lining up for WotC to look at, and treat, D&D as a different thing in the very near future.
> 
> Now, just because I know some folks are going to make this argument: I don't think that was true of either the 4E or 5E transition.
> 
> 4E was very much a mechanical sea change but the explicitly stated goal at the time was to "still play D&D." And 5E was a course correction, the exact opposite of a sea change. It drew heavily on GenX nostalgia and was working very hard to say "D&D is still D&D!"
> 
> I don't think that is true going forward. I think the intent is to very much alter the way the game is played (story first, etc..) and aimed at a new generation -- and that generation's values -- in a way it hasn't been since Basic and D&D cartoon days.
> 
> And just to be clear, this is not a rant by a grumpy old goat. I mean, I am an old goat, but I'm not grumpy. I don't actually care much. I play D&D in general and 5E in particular largely because it has an accessible player base. I mean, I like D&D and 5E, but I like other games more that don't put bottoms in chairs around a table the way D&D does.
> 
> Anyway, what are your thoughts? Am I off my rocking chair? Is D&D changing again, or is this just 3.5 in a 5E skin?
> 
> Thanks!



@OP it's a bit early to say, but it does look as if WoTC is looking to narrow the player base going forward. They definitely don't seem interested in the kind of inclusive broad-church approach of 2014-17. How this works out will partly depend on how other publishers react. 5e currently has a lot of momentum. There isn't much to stop a third party publisher creating an 5e-SRD based game (just as Level Up is doing), but as this is basically a cultural/tonal rather than mechanical issue, I don't know if that is necessary. Currently you can equally well publish campaign settings using 5e rules, that have a very different feel from the Dragonheist-Strixhaven type material WoTC is focusing on.  If that becomes harder in future I can imagine some big third party publishers looking at doing a Paizo/Pathfinder.


----------



## S'mon

Umbran said:


> The problem I see with this assertion is that this has already happened, and folks didn't seem to notice.




I thought there was a significant shift around 2018, which has accelerated since.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

S'mon said:


> @OP it's a bit early to say, but it does look as if WoTC is looking to narrow the player base going forward. They definitely don't seem interested in the kind of inclusive broad-church approach of 2014-17.



LOL.

Pretty much every single change WotC have made makes D&D a "broader church" and it's literally not even possible to rationally argue that most of them do not. Removing stuff that was insensitive or potentially so never, ever makes D&D "less broad" as a church.

The issue is that some people turn their nose up at this broadening. But WotC have done literally nothing that stops them playing, nor anything which criticizes them. Claiming WotC is "looking to narrow" the player-base and being "less inclusive" when they're literally going out of their way to improve inclusiveness is 1984-style doublethink, frankly. It's like "Oh they took out stuff that might offend someone who wasn't me but didn't offend me, so even though it has absolutely on my game, I'm going to quit!".

If WotC wanted to "narrow the audience" in the way you're describing it would be extremely easy to do so, and they'd have gone a lot harder than they have.

Let's be clear, objectively, in a fact-based sense, D&D now is a broader church than D&D in 2014/15. That's not "merely an opinion". Literally removing stuff which is offensive to some people, but meaningless to others is never "narrowing the church".


----------



## Ruin Explorer

S'mon said:


> If that becomes harder in future I can imagine some big third party publishers looking at doing a Paizo/Pathfinder.



Can you explain how it would "become harder"?

And what would this "big third party publisher" be?

And what would their product look like?

To me, this is implausible nonsense. I can't think of a single "big third party publisher" who would want to "Make their own D&D with hookers and blow" or in this case "Make their own D&D with hookers and always-evil Orcs and dark-skinned always-evil Drow". If you can, name 'em. Which "big third party publisher" would do that? And it's nigh-impossible to imagine the product being something you could spin any more positively an an OSR game - you'd basically be seen as making "Intentionally problematic D&D". Not like accidentally problematic D&D, but intentionally problematic.

Who would even buy that?


----------



## Reynard

S'mon said:


> @OP it's a bit early to say, but it does look as if WoTC is looking to narrow the player base going forward. They definitely don't seem interested in the kind of inclusive broad-church approach of 2014-17. How this works out will partly depend on how other publishers react. 5e currently has a lot of momentum. There isn't much to stop a third party publisher creating an 5e-SRD based game (just as Level Up is doing), but as this is basically a cultural/tonal rather than mechanical issue, I don't know if that is necessary. Currently you can equally well publish campaign settings using 5e rules, that have a very different feel from the Dragonheist-Strixhaven type material WoTC is focusing on.  If that becomes harder in future I can imagine some big third party publishers looking at doing a Paizo/Pathfinder.



Why would WotC want to narrow the player base? That doesn't make any sense, either creatively or economically. They surely want to broaden the player base, particularly by reaching people they haven't before. In doing so it might cause some retraction in certain segments, but given how comparatively small those losses would be it's worth it.


----------



## Minigiant

S'mon said:


> @OP it's a bit early to say, but it does look as if WoTC is looking to narrow the player base going forward.




It's the opposite.

WOTC is widening the player base. The issue is the old audience who was used to getting targeted in 100% of products are being targeted for 50% of products. It's similar to how Games Workshop realized they milked most of their European Male market and is attempting to expand actively into American, Australian, Female, and Minority customers to take their money too.

It's all about the Benjamins baby
It's all about the Benjamins baby
Now, what y'all want to do
Want to be ballers, shot callers, brawlers
Who be dipping in the Benz with the spoilers
On the low from the Jake in the Taurus
Trying to get my hands on some Grants like Horace
Yeah living the raw deal, three course meals: spaghetti, fettuccine and veal
But still everything's real in the field
And what you can't have now, leave in your will


----------



## jayoungr

Reynard said:


> I think that we are looking at as big a change in D&D "culture" as we saw in the fall of TSR and rise of WotC era.




For what it's worth, I had a similar feeling last spring:



jayoungr said:


> I do have an uneasy feeling that Tasha's represents a shift and that anything after this will someday be referred to as "late 5E."  But I'm not sure I can put my finger on why I feel that way.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

jayoungr said:


> For what it's worth, I had a similar feeling last spring:



I mean, to me it was pretty obvious with Tasha's, why people would feel it was "late 5E".

For the very simple reason that in every edition, all the way back to 1E, there's this "late" phase and the sign you're in that late phase is major mechanical experimentation well beyond what was going on previously.

1E had Unearthed Arcana in 1985. In 1989 we had 2nd edition.
2E had the Player's Option series, starting in 1995. In 2000 3rd edition.
3E had a lot going on, but the sort of "final harbinger" was Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords in 2006. In 2008 we had 4th edition.
4E had Essentials in 2010, and then in 2014 we had 5th edition.
5E had Tasha's in 2020, and it seems like we're getting a new edition or quasi-edition in 2024.

One can definitely argue which books were the most identifiable for this. Like for me with 4E, the risks taken with Heroes of Shadow (wow that really just straight up has Arthas from WoW on the cover huh? Damn) in 2011 was the real "final harbinger" that told me this edition was kind of on the way out. With 3E I think you could point to other books earlier than ToB:tBo9S, but I think that was the "yo this is over" book.


----------



## TheSword

Ruin Explorer said:


> I mean, to me it was pretty obvious with Tasha's, why people would feel it was "late 5E".
> 
> For the very simple reason that in every edition, all the way back to 1E, there's this "late" phase and the sign you're in that late phase is major mechanical experimentation well beyond what was going on previously.
> 
> 1E had Unearthed Arcana in 1985. In 1989 we had 2nd edition.
> 2E had the Player's Option series, starting in 1995. In 2000 3rd edition.
> 3E had a lot going on, but the sort of "final harbinger" was Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords in 2006. In 2008 we had 4th edition.
> 4E had Essentials in 2010, and then in 2014 we had 5th edition.
> 5E had Tasha's in 2020, and it seems like we're getting a new edition or quasi-edition in 2024.
> 
> One can definitely argue which books were the most identifiable for this. Like for me with 4E, the risks taken with Heroes of Shadow (wow that really just straight up has Arthas from WoW on the cover huh? Damn) in 2011 was the real "final harbinger" that told me this edition was kind of on the way out. With 3E I think you could point to other books earlier than ToB:tBo9S, but I think that was the "yo this is over" book.



Do you truly think Tasha’s constituted major mechanical experimentation?


A customisable race?
The merest dipping of toes into psionics?
Rules for retconning character choices?
Patrons

These are small editions that tinker with small elements of the rules, not the design breaking stuff that came at the end of 2nd and 3rd editions.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

TheSword said:


> Do you truly think Tasha’s constituted major mechanical experimentation?
> 
> 
> A customisable race?
> The merest dipping of toes into psionics?
> Rules for retconning character choices?
> Patrons
> 
> These are small editions that tinker with small elements of the rules, not the design breaking stuff that came at the end of 2nd and 3rd editions.



Yes I do, given 5E basically swore blind that they'd never do as much as errata and has generally been pretty leery of adding mechanical elements (with good reason). It is relative. In every edition it's been relative, no exceptions.

It went beyond what you're describing, too - it's not just retconning choices, there are tons of new choices, and many classes are simply upgraded by Tasha's.

I don't think it's as extreme as Tome of Battle, but let me be really straight with you, when it came out, I said we were moving into the "late, experimental" phase of 5E (I really don't want to dig for those posts but they're out there), and was predicting (as were many others, I wasn't special) a 2024 edition. Which is exactly what is happening.


----------



## BookTenTiger

Ruin Explorer said:


> Yes I do, given 5E basically swore blind that they'd never do as much as errata and has generally been pretty leery of adding mechanical elements (with good reason). It is relative. In every edition it's been relative, no exceptions.
> 
> It went beyond what you're describing, too - it's not just retconning choices, there are tons of new choices, and many classes are simply upgraded by Tasha's.
> 
> I don't think it's as extreme as Tome of Battle, but let me be really straight with you, when it came out, I said we were moving into the "late, experimental" phase of 5E (I really don't want to dig for those posts but they're out there), and was predicting (as were many others, I wasn't special) a 2024 edition. Which is exactly what is happening.



Isn't that the same post you predicted my untimely death on Saturday, December 18 at 11:24 am Pacific Standard Time?

Wait- what's that noise behind me?

AAAHHHHHHH


----------



## TheSword

Ruin Explorer said:


> Yes I do, given 5E basically swore blind that they'd never do as much as errata and has generally been pretty leery of adding mechanical elements (with good reason). It is relative. In every edition it's been relative, no exceptions.
> 
> It went beyond what you're describing, too - it's not just retconning choices, there are tons of new choices, and many classes are simply upgraded by Tasha's.
> 
> I don't think it's as extreme as Tome of Battle, but let me be really straight with you, when it came out, I said we were moving into the "late, experimental" phase of 5E (I really don't want to dig for those posts but they're out there), and was predicting (as were many others, I wasn't special) a 2024 edition. Which is exactly what is happening.



I think that’s definitely putting the cart before the horse.

We know we’re getting anniversary releases of the core books. Everything else is speculation. We don’t know that it will come even close to a new edition.


----------



## Faolyn

TheSword said:


> I think you’re forgetting that these creation stories are told by unreliable narrators. Even given that the stories aren’t quite as simple as you make out. Though it is a good example of why this lore is good. You sound like a bitter drow matron, or surly duergar explaining to their flock why moradin and corellon are wicked.



Except that there's nothing in D&D that suggests that the narrators are actually unreliable. We all know Gruumsh's story, but has there ever been a version told from the POV of the other gods?



TheSword said:


> The duergar made a deal with Asmodeus the prince of hell which you conveniently missed out. It was still greed that made them dig and dig. A lure, not a compulsion. They turned away from Moradin for treasure.



They were being mind-controlled, though. "A great elder brain and its mind flayers waited there, ready to take the next step in the subjugation of clan Duergar. The monsters had sent out a psychic lure that played on the dwarves' greed, and the never-ending work schedule that was the product of their obsession weeded out all but the best specimens for their slave pens."

This rather suggests that dwarfs are at least a bit greedy in general (as is everyone, of course), and the Duergar were just unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and got caught. They only made a deal with Asmodeus in order to get out of many generations of slavery--meaning that Lawful Good Moradin either couldn't or wouldn't aid them.



TheSword said:


> The elves were given beautiful and extremely long lived bodies because Corellon loved them, despite them turning away from him… they were also tricked to do so by an evil entity for the sake of power.



So again, punished for being tricked by an evil entity. And it's still punishing the children for the crimes of the parents. Even with the reincarnation angle, it's still a squicky to me.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

TheSword said:


> I think that’s definitely putting the cart before the horse.
> 
> We know we’re getting anniversary releases of the core books. Everything else is speculation. We don’t know that it will come even close to a new edition.



/shrug

Well you asked mate! It's part of what the thread's about!

My opinion is that, given what WotC has said, we're looking at a transition that will be like a more gentle form (but just as extensive, ultimately) the transition from 1E to 2E. Which obviously compared to the 2E-3E or 3E-4E or 4E-5E transitions would be a lot less extreme.

It's not like there isn't a lot of evidence or that my previous predictions have proven particularly inaccurate. If anything I've been slightly conservative re: degree of change I expect to see. They retained way more of the changes in from the playtest thing to Tasha's than I expected, for example.


Faolyn said:


> This rather suggests that dwarfs are at least a bit greedy in general (as is everyone, of course)



Quite, dwarves in particular, including "good guy" dwarves "have form" (as we say in the UK) for being greedy. I mean, it's right there in Tolkien - "they delved to greedily and too deep". I don't think anyone would say the dwarves of the Mines of Moria "had it coming" lol.


----------



## S'mon

Ruin Explorer said:


> Can you explain how it would "become harder"?
> 
> And what would this "big third party publisher" be?
> 
> And what would their product look like?
> 
> To me, this is implausible nonsense. I can't think of a single "big third party publisher" who would want to "Make their own D&D with hookers and blow" or in this case "Make their own D&D with hookers and always-evil Orcs and dark-skinned always-evil Drow". If you can, name 'em. Which "big third party publisher" would do that? And it's nigh-impossible to imagine the product being something you could spin any more positively an an OSR game - you'd basically be seen as making "Intentionally problematic D&D". Not like accidentally problematic D&D, but intentionally problematic.
> 
> Who would even buy that?




I was thinking more something a bit dark fantasy, like eg Kobold Press's Midgard, not Venger Satanis levels of sleaze.


----------



## S'mon

Minigiant said:


> It's the opposite.
> 
> WOTC is widening the player base. The issue is the old audience who was used to getting targeted in 100% of products are being targeted for 50% of products.




What products have they released recently targetting the old audience, do you think? I don't own Dungeon of the Mad Archmage, but that sounded like a pretty trad D&D concept, at least if it had had any treasure in the dungeon.  

I haven't bought much WoTC stuff recently, but I guess that's as much about quality concerns as content per se. I think good 3PPs like Kobold Press, Arcanum Worlds (Odyssey of the Dragonlords) and Sasquatch (RIP) often seem to do a lot better stuff than most of my WoTC material. Otherwise I'd probably have had a look at Mythic Odysseys of Theros and a couple other things maybe.


----------



## Malmuria

S'mon said:


> What products have they released recently targetting the old audience, do you think? I don't own Dungeon of the Mad Archmage, but that sounded like a pretty trad D&D concept, at least if it had had any treasure in the dungeon.
> 
> I haven't bought much WoTC stuff recently, but I guess that's as much about quality concerns as content per se. I think good 3PPs like Kobold Press, Arcanum Worlds (Odyssey of the Dragonlords) and Sasquatch (RIP) often seem to do a lot better stuff than most of my WoTC material. Otherwise I'd probably have had a look at Mythic Odysseys of Theros and a couple other things maybe.



Wasn't there an entire book on dragons released like a month ago?


----------



## S'mon

Malmuria said:


> Wasn't there an entire book on dragons released like a month ago?



Thanks! Since I already had a 3PP dragon book fulfilling my draconic needs, I ignored it.


----------



## Minigiant

S'mon said:


> What products have they released *recently* targetting the old audience, do you think? I don't own Dungeon of the Mad Archmage, but that sounded like a pretty trad D&D concept, at least if it had had any treasure in the dungeon.




Bolded for emphasis.
The whole beginning stage was for old audiences. The PHB, DMG, MM, and everything that was released in the first 2 years of 5e was for old audience.

5th edition _literally_ doesn't have a release of a new setting nor class created by WOTC yet and is just barely adding newraces and subclasses.

That's why a lot of the stuff is shifting. Because almost _everything_ in the beginning was not designed for the new audience D&D 5e accidentally got. 

The burger joint that adds a chicken sandwich is still a burger joint.


----------



## Levistus's_Leviathan

S'mon said:


> What products have they released recently targetting the old audience, do you think?



Just to name a few; Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, and Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden.


----------



## Minigiant

S'mon said:


> Thanks! Since I already had a 3PP dragon book fulfilling my draconic needs, I ignored it.



Any people wonder why WOTC is targeting a new audience.


----------



## S'mon

Reynard said:


> Why would WotC want to narrow the player base? That doesn't make any sense, either creatively or economically.




I think Jeremy Crawford for one has a very specific creative vision for the game, which is quite a long way from prior D&D. At least I can't really think of any antecedents.  Games Workshop and Mike Mearls have both made statements 'firing' gamers they don't want (Wehrboos and Gearheads, respectively - Mearls seemed to think Gearheads are anti-female-gamer, which I found a bit odd since the biggest rules-crunchers I know are both female 4e fans). Sometimes you just need to cull the impure to realise your vision of a pure gamer pool uncorrupted by wrongthinking degenerate neckbeards & gatekeepers.


----------



## S'mon

Any people wonder why WOTC is targeting a new audience


Minigiant said:


> Any people wonder why WOTC is targeting a new audience.



Well they DID create DM's Guild - they expected me not to buy anything?!


----------



## BookTenTiger

S'mon said:


> I think Jeremy Crawford for one has a very specific creative vision for the game, which is quite a long way from prior D&D. At least I can't really think of any antecedents.  Games Workshop and Mike Mearls have both made statements 'firing' gamers they don't want (Wehrboos and Gearheads, respectively - Mearls seemed to think Gearheads are anti-female-gamer, which I found a bit odd since the biggest rules-crunchers I know are both female 4e fans). Sometimes you just need to cull the impure to realise your vision of a pure gamer pool uncorrupted by wrongthinking degenerate neckbeards & gatekeepers.



Can you provide actual quotes? I am distrustful of "he said / she said" statements.


----------



## S'mon

BookTenTiger said:


> Can you provide actual quotes? I am distrustful of "he said / she said" statements.



This is the GW statement, which I believe was aimed at the kind of players who paint swastikas on their Space Marines - You Will Not Be Missed

Mike Mearls firing "“fans” who insist on gatekeeping via rules complexity and lore density" -


----------



## Malmuria

Minigiant said:


> Bolded for emphasis.
> The whole beginning stage was for old audiences. The PHB, DMG, MM, and everything that was released in the first 2 years of 5e was for old audience.
> 
> 5th edition _literally_ doesn't have a release of a new setting nor class created by WOTC yet and is just barely adding newraces and subclasses.
> 
> That's why a lot of the stuff is shifting. Because almost _everything_ in the beginning was not designed for the new audience D&D 5e accidentally got.
> 
> The burger joint that adds a chicken sandwich is still a burger joint.



I would count the mtg books as new settings, and Wildemount too.  But yeah overall it's wild how everytime wotc creates a different kind of product there are complaints that they are 'abondoning' the old fans, and when they release a product for the old fans (Ravenloft) there are...still complaints that they are abandoning old fans, because the updated setting didn't match perfectly with old setting.


----------



## Malmuria

S'mon said:


> This is the GW statement, which I believe was aimed at the kind of players who paint swastikas on their Space Marines - You Will Not Be Missed
> 
> Mike Mearls firing "“fans” who insist on gatekeeping via rules complexity and lore density" -



The GW statement says they don't want "prejudice, hatred, or abuse."  How do you get from that to "Sometimes you just need to cull the impure to realise your vision of a pure gamer pool uncorrupted by wrongthinking degenerate neckbeards & gatekeepers" ??


----------



## S'mon

Malmuria said:


> The GW statement says they don't want "prejudice, hatred, or abuse."  How do you get from that to "Sometimes you just need to cull the impure to realise your vision of a pure gamer pool uncorrupted by wrongthinking degenerate neckbeards & gatekeepers" ??



That was a joke!!!


----------



## Minigiant

Malmuria said:


> I would count the mtg books as new settings, and Wildemount too.




I don't. The MTG books are from MYG settings that WOTC already owned. Outside of Strixhaven, it was just converting something they already owned. So it's a new conversion but not a new creation.

And Wildemount is just an official licensing of a celebrity's creation.

WOTC hasn't created a wholely new setting for D&D in over 20 years.


----------



## S'mon

AcererakTriple6 said:


> D&D 5e was built primarily on the back of nostalgia, and when its popularity blew up (as did streaming D&D and other TTRPGs) the target audience shifted. The core rulebooks were designed in a completely different style than a more modern audience would prefer




Seems weird that it would be 'completely different style than a more modern audience would prefer', yet the most popular edition of D&D ever? I think 5e both attracted new players and brought back old ones. And the experienced players were important for introducing new players to the game. 5e being both accessible to new players and attractive to old players was important to its initial success.


----------



## Minigiant

S'mon said:


> Seems weird that it would be 'completely different style than a more modern audience would prefer', yet the most popular edition of D&D ever? I think 5e both attracted new players and brought back old ones. And the experienced players were important for introducing new players to the game. 5e being both accessible to new players and attractive to old players was important to its initial success.




New fans by design tend to be players. Players have less control of the rules and narratives of a table. New players more so and they tend to defer to the ideas of older players and the DMs who tended to be from older audiences.
However once the new players stopped being new and got creative, their desires became more vocalized.

Happened every edition. 5e was just the one with the biggest influx of new players.


----------



## JEB

AcererakTriple6 said:


> Just to name a few; Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, and Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden.



Fizban's and Icewind Dale aren't specifically targeting old audiences, anymore than Shang-Chi was specifically targeting fans of the original Shang-Chi comics. It's a reuse of old IP meant to appeal to both old and potential new fans. I'll grant you Fizban's certainly taps much more into the nostalgia well than Icewind Dale, though.

Van Richten's, meanwhile, was clearly targeted more at new audiences, since it rebooted the original setting and thoroughly reworked it. Sure, they wanted (and got) some classic Ravenloft fans on board, but they weren't the main target in that case.



Minigiant said:


> WOTC hasn't created a wholely new setting for D&D in over 20 years.



That's about to change, fortunately! Two brand-new settings in the next few years, or so we've been told.

EDIT: Although, point of order... Eberron came out in 2003 (18 years ago) 2004 (17 years ago). Nentir Vale first appeared in 2008 (13 years ago). Maybe the latter isn't "wholly new" but the prior sure is.


----------



## Staffan

Ruin Explorer said:


> Sure, but there's also the issue that the alignments assigned to the gods in Eberron tend to be much more in-line with what you'd expect from their teachings. Whereas that's not really the case with a lot of settings.
> 
> It definitely is a massive help with Eberron that the setting is agnostic on whether they actually exist. It allows religion to be more diverse in that setting too, in terms of how it operates.




One of the particularly cool things about how religion works in Eberron is that it allows for unorthodox interpretations of the gods, which in turn can lead to some interesting sects. The most common interpretation of the gods split them into two pantheons: the Sovereign Host and the Dark Six, who have been cast out of the Host. But you also get things like the Three Faces of War, which worships the three different war gods and recognizes that some situations call for the valiant protection of the weak that's Dol Arrah's purview, and other situations call for the underhanded ambushes that's the Mockery's. Or the Restful Watch which believes that Aureon and the Keeper cooperate to select worthy souls for safe keeping. 



Minigiant said:


> WOTC hasn't created a wholely new setting for D&D in over 20 years.



The Eberron campaign setting was released in 2004, and while the primary designer was Keith Baker, a lot of the setting also came from James Wyatt, Bill Slavicsek, and other WOTC designers. Ghostwalk was published in 2003, though it didn't get any support beyond the one book. And of course, 4e had a whole new implied setting of its own, usually referred to Nerath Vale even though that's just a part of it.


----------



## Malmuria

I'm still confused as to what a "sea change" is supposed to look like, barring a completely new edition with a fundamentally different design.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

S'mon said:


> I was thinking more something a bit dark fantasy, like eg Kobold Press's Midgard, not Venger Satanis levels of sleaze.



But how would that attract bunches of people? I don't think there's a particular correlation between being annoyed with 5E's changes and liking "dark fantasy" (also I would question whether Midgard is "dark fantasy". If it is, Earthdawn definitely, and a whole lot of stuff is - arguably Golarion is even, it's about as dark as Midgard). It seems like the people who are "stomping their foot" mad are all mad about stuff like non-all-evil orcs and so on, so you'd have to go a bit further than that.


----------



## GMforPowergamers

I often wonder what a D&D campaign world would look like if made with 2021 sensibilities


----------



## guachi

GMforPowergamers said:


> I often wonder what a D&D campaign world would look like if made with 2021 sensibilities




My serious answer is it would probably look like Exandria.


----------



## Malmuria

guachi said:


> My serious answer is it would probably look like Exandria.



I don't know a ton about Exandria...seems pretty generic in a lot of ways?


----------



## Minigiant

GMforPowergamers said:


> I often wonder what a D&D campaign world would look like if made with 2021 sensibilities




Depends if you mean a traditional setting with 2021 sensibilities or a setting built from the ground up for 2021 gamers.


----------



## Oofta

GMforPowergamers said:


> I often wonder what a D&D campaign world would look like if made with 2021 sensibilities



I continue to run a campaign.  The D&D police haven't broken down my door yet.  Does that count?


----------



## GMforPowergamers

Minigiant said:


> Depends if you mean a traditional setting with 2021 sensibilities or a setting built from the ground up for 2021 gamers.



Well I was thinking a fantasy setting that runs on the current system and has a mind for the modern idea of fantasy.


Oofta said:


> I continue to run a campaign.  The D&D police haven't broken down my door yet.  Does that count?



I mean me too, been running since 96ish but regularly since 2001. I have plenty of my own ideas and campaign settings, but I mean a WotC setting.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Malmuria said:


> I don't know a ton about Exandria...seems pretty generic in a lot of ways?



It is. Honestly I don't feel like it's all that different from Eberron in some ways, a different, more high fantasy, less pulp-y vibe, but they're both pretty modern. Honestly if we're just looking at social elements, I think you could pretty much reprint Eberron and say it was "new for 2021" and few, if any people would question it. There's probably more subtle inclusiveness in Exandria, but it's not a huge gap and 99% of what people are mad about about 5E changes is basically already the case in Eberron in 2004.

I think if you went beyond the social elements and looked at what might be attractive to the "new 40 million" or however we want to call them, then just generally you're probably looking at well, yeah kitchen-sink-y settings which are probably a bit more "over the top", really high fantasy, high magic (a la MtG, WoW, etc.) and a bit less grounded. But with that many people, there's bound to be some significant diversity in what groups want, it's unavoidable.

I do think the kind of semi-realist settings that might once have been seen as cool aren't going to be as popular, but who am I kidding, that trend started in like the 1990s, with Spelljammer and Planescape (and in a weird way, Dark Sun). Spelljammer is as high magic and over-the-top as you could possibly want. I think settings like my beloved Taladas or my bro's beloved Birthright are right out, and I don't mourn for that really. Likewise Greyhawk or Dragonlance, because they're just not really that vibe.

Of course I should be in bed so I'm probably rambling nonsensically.

Just listing traits as a bullet point for 2021:

Setting is inclusive/diverse (little in the way of sexism/racism/homophobia etc. - D&D has always avoided the latter for the most part).
Setting is "High Magic" - i.e. like strongly magical things can and do regularly happen.
Setting is "High Fantasy" - or "Epic Fantasy", as opposed to "Dark Fantasy" or "Low Fantasy".
Setting allows kitchen-sink-ish usage of elements like class/race, isn't about narrowing options

I guess underlying this would be that a lot of people's vision of fantasy now is shaped more by video games (Western and Eastern), animation (not all of it anime, note, Disney and Avatar and so on are also in the mix) and so on rather than fantasy novels, let alone pulp fantasy/short stories which were a major influence on 1E. I don't think GoT or the LotR movies have had much impact on the fantasy people are running in D&D.

Not hugely different from 2004, say, and only a little different from 1994, say, but pretty different from say 1984.


----------



## Reynard

GMforPowergamers said:


> I mean me too, been running since 96ish but regularly since 2001. I have plenty of my own ideas and campaign settings, but I mean a WotC setting.



I couldn't guess at specifics but I would definitely say "overly ambitious." Attempts to be inclusive and show breadth would lead to a huge world of a bunch of cultural archetypes either "done correctly" or intentionally built against type. There would be too many playable races and by extension races with prominent positions in the setting, and few if any would get their due because of it. I would also bet that it would spend a lot of time trying to.conv8nce the reader that every kind of adventure you can think of would fit perfectly in every part of the setting, ultimately making every part of the setting bland and similar.


----------



## Oofta

GMforPowergamers said:


> Well I was thinking a fantasy setting that runs on the current system and has a mind for the modern idea of fantasy.
> 
> I mean me too, been running since 96ish but regularly since 2001. I have plenty of my own ideas and campaign settings, but I mean a WotC setting.



I know.  But it's an issue with all big company mass media isn't it? How many Spider-Man movies have we had?

The safe thing is to mine familiar IPs and do relatively small things like Strixhaven.  I don't expect to see a big release of a new campaign world anytime soon.


----------



## Malmuria

Reynard said:


> I couldn't guess at specifics but I would definitely say "overly ambitious." Attempts to be inclusive and show breadth would lead to a huge world of a bunch of cultural archetypes either "done correctly" or intentionally built against type. There would be too many playable races and by extension races with prominent positions in the setting, and few if any would get their due because of it. I would also bet that it would spend a lot of time trying to.conv8nce the reader that every kind of adventure you can think of would fit perfectly in every part of the setting, ultimately making every part of the setting bland and similar.



i.e. the forgotten realms


----------



## Minigiant

GMforPowergamers said:


> Well I was thinking a fantasy setting that runs on the current system and has a mind for the modern idea of fantasy.




Then you are looking like something out of a slightly comedic seinen fantasy anime.

High magic and high martial with gritty political intrigue and you'd need a wiki to keep tract of the different factions, religions, and alliances.

Basically Exandria and Thedas having a baby and letting Westeros and Konosuba babysit all the time.


----------



## JEB

Oofta said:


> I don't expect to see a big release of a new campaign world anytime soon.



Winninger outright told us they're working on two new campaign settings to be released in the next few years (presumably before 2024).


----------



## Mistwell

AcererakTriple6 said:


> Just to name a few; Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, and Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden.



And before that, Dungeon of the Mad Mage and Tales from the Yawning Portal.

But truly I find the entire premise of this "everything is going to change for a new audience" to be silly. That "new audience" is playing more online using Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds than at any point in the history of the game, and online play tends to favor much more tactical combat than story gaming. People are using light radius and precise movement more - it's not trending to story gaming just because streamers tend that way. Streamers are not the majority of the game - people who watch them might be, but when those people actually play the game they seem to be playing using a platform which favors more tactical combat right now.

The pandemic has driven people to play remotely - and this entire generation is now used to playing remotely more rather than in-person. It's in-person play which favors a more story-gaming approach (and streamer tend to play in-person), and that looks to be on the downswing right now.


----------



## Levistus's_Leviathan

Mistwell said:


> And before that, Dungeon of the Mad Mage and Tales from the Yawning Portal.



As well as Ghosts of Saltmarsh, Curse of Strahd, and the SCAG.


----------



## guachi

Malmuria said:


> I don't know a ton about Exandria...seems pretty generic in a lot of ways?




I don't know a lot, either, aside from it being the Critical Role setting and that my college friend who is now 49 loves it and she has started DMing an online campaign I am a player in. My extremely limited understanding is that it's pretty generic with good background details of the various countries and locations.

Generic isn't a bad thing. My favorite world is Mystara and its basics are thoroughly generic with the hallmark (when done right) being a bit gonzo and nations with great detail. It's built on the foundations of BECMI and doesn't stray too far from it. In fact, it uses the rules to explain why the world is the way it is. E.g., the elf gazetteer explains why there are no half elves. The Glantri book uses the fact that dwarves and halflings can't be magic-users and have high magic resistance to good effect, imo.

In other words, being generic isn't a problem if there is enough on the culture and background of the locations to make it interesting. And my understanding is Exandria succeeds in that.


----------



## Malmuria

guachi said:


> I don't know a lot, either, aside from it being the Critical Role setting and that my college friend who is now 49 loves it and she has started DMing an online campaign I am a player in. My extremely limited understanding is that it's pretty generic with good background details of the various countries and locations.
> 
> Generic isn't a bad thing. My favorite world is Mystara and its basics are thoroughly generic with the hallmark (when done right) being a bit gonzo and nations with great detail. It's built on the foundations of BECMI and doesn't stray too far from it. In fact, it uses the rules to explain why the world is the way it is. E.g., the elf gazetteer explains why there are no half elves. The Glantri book uses the fact that dwarves and halflings can't be magic-users and have high magic resistance to good effect, imo.
> 
> In other words, being generic isn't a problem if there is enough on the culture and background of the locations to make it interesting. And my understanding is Exandria succeeds in that.



Generic is perfectly fine.  I just don't see it as a particularly "2021" setting.  Then again, I don't think what the "kids nowadays" want from high fantasy is something markedly different from standard high fantasy convention.  Hence, no "sea change"


----------



## Scribe

Ruin Explorer said:


> Not hugely different from 2004, say, and only a little different from 1994, say, but pretty different from say 1984.



I think if we are honest, its about presentation of the setting, way way more than about the setting actually being restrictive.


----------



## S'mon

Ruin Explorer said:


> But how would that attract bunches of people? I don't think there's a particular correlation between being annoyed with 5E's changes and liking "dark fantasy" (also I would question whether Midgard is "dark fantasy". If it is, Earthdawn definitely, and a whole lot of stuff is - arguably Golarion is even, it's about as dark as Midgard). It seems like the people who are "stomping their foot" mad are all mad about stuff like non-all-evil orcs and so on, so you'd have to go a bit further than that.




Outside of D&D I think the most popular fantasy settings tend to be stuff like The Witcher and Game of Thrones, mostly not super dark but certainly much darker than D&D's current direction. I'd tend to put Golarion in there too, yup, at least 1e Golarion. Runelord Sorshen spontaneously deciding to be non-evil and non-lustful in Return of the Runelords felt very odd* to me, and I've not followed the setting in 2e.

*Although I did stick with it in my own Runelords campaign, I just don't obligate the players to side with her.


----------



## Micah Sweet

S'mon said:


> Outside of D&D I think the most popular fantasy settings tend to be stuff like The Witcher and Game of Thrones, mostly not super dark but certainly much darker than D&D's current direction. I'd tend to put Golarion in there too, yup, at least 1e Golarion. Runelord Sorshen spontaneously deciding to be non-evil and non-lustful in Return of the Runelords felt very odd* to me, and I've not followed the setting in 2e.
> 
> *Although I did stick with it in my own Runelords campaign, I just don't obligate the players to side with her.



I do find it odd that official D&D is not a good emulator for that kind of fantasy, at least in tone.  I guess there's more money in light and cheerful.  Anyway, plenty of 3rd party products handle that stuff well.


----------



## Paul Farquhar

Malmuria said:


> Generic is perfectly fine.  I just don't see it as a particularly "2021" setting.  Then again, I don't think what the "kids nowadays" want from high fantasy is something markedly different from standard high fantasy convention.  Hence, no "sea change"



If you use phrases like "kids nowadays" then you are probably out of touch with what kids nowadays want.

As mentioned a couple of posts up there is an Eastern influence - particularly Japanese and Korean - that simply wasn't there in the 1970s. The main feature is the Eastern style sees nothing strange in mixing magic and swords with a modern or futuristic setting. So the idea that medieval Europe as the default fantasy setting is being squeezed. If you read something like Barrier Peaks, you see sci fi tropes being described based on the assumption that the player characters have a medieval mindset.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

S'mon said:


> Outside of D&D I think the most popular fantasy settings tend to be stuff like The Witcher and Game of Thrones, mostly not super dark but certainly much darker than D&D's current direction.



Definitely but I don't see any indications that _any_ group of 5E players (whether 20-somethings or 40-somethings or whatever) particularly wants their D&D settings to be like that.

Otherwise darker settings would sell like hot cakes, wouldn't they? And in fact they don't. For your theory to work, there would have to be this unmet demand for that stuff. But the demand is absolutely met. Even beyond D&D, there are tons of "dark fantasy" RPGs, Shadow of the Demon Lord being an obvious one. Are they hideously successful? Not really. They do fine. It certainly looks like demand is met there.

So I would say that evidence suggests that the people who watch GoT and The Witcher, do not want to play out GoT or The Witcher in a TTRPG. YMMV.

EDIT - As an aside, whilst it didn't blow up the world, the Shadow and Bone show for Netflix is based on a series which roughly Witcher-dark, and which shows perhaps a take which is closer to how TTRPG doing "dark fantasy" in those kinds of settings might look. It was successful but I don't think a mind-blowing hit.

Further, I think a lot of it on TV is just about spin. Like, look at the Wheel of Time show. Firstly it's pretty great, I was shocked, the books are dull, but the show starts "Eh" and becomes "HELL YEAH!", but the show FEELS like 10x darker than the books. It isn't. It's the roughly the same events, but for some reason seeing them, hearing them, all that - wow that's a lot scarier than reading them (this is not always the case - I think it shows a limitation Jordan had as a writer but feel free to disagree). So what I would call "normal fantasy" in terms of darkness - WoT - comes across as pretty damn scary. I mean I think you could spin the FR or Eberron to be pretty "dark" if you wanted to. It's just on how you describe things and what you choose to happen.


----------



## Paul Farquhar

Ruin Explorer said:


> Definitely but I don't see any indications that _any_ group of 5E players (whether 20-somethings or 40-somethings or whatever) particularly wants their D&D settings to be like that.
> 
> Otherwise darker settings would sell like hot cakes, wouldn't they? And in fact they don't. For your theory to work, there would have to be this unmet demand for that stuff. But the demand is absolutely met. Even beyond D&D, there are tons of "dark fantasy" RPGs, Shadow of the Demon Lord being an obvious one. Are they hideously successful? Not really. They do fine. It certainly looks like demand is met there.
> 
> So I would say that evidence suggests that the people who watch GoT and The Witcher, do not want to play out GoT or The Witcher in a TTRPG. YMMV.
> 
> EDIT - As an aside, whilst it didn't blow up the world, the Shadow and Bone show for Netflix is based on a series which roughly Witcher-dark, and which shows perhaps a take which is closer to how TTRPG doing "dark fantasy" in those kinds of settings might look. It was successful but I don't think a mind-blowing hit.
> 
> Further, I think a lot of it on TV is just about spin. Like, look at the Wheel of Time show. Firstly it's pretty great, I was shocked, the books are dull, but the show starts "Eh" and becomes "HELL YEAH!", but the show FEELS like 10x darker than the books. It isn't. It's the roughly the same events, but for some reason seeing them, hearing them, all that - wow that's a lot scarier than reading them (this is not always the case - I think it shows a limitation Jordan had as a writer but feel free to disagree). So what I would call "normal fantasy" in terms of darkness - WoT - comes across as pretty damn scary. I mean I think you could spin the FR or Eberron to be pretty "dark" if you wanted to. It's just on how you describe things and what you choose to happen.



I think fantasy TV is like DC superhero movies. The film makers think that for them to appeal to older audiences they have to be super-dark, when really, what the audience wants in Marvel.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Paul Farquhar said:


> I think fantasy TV is like DC superhero movies. The film makers think that for them to appeal to older audiences they have to be super-dark, when really, what the audience wants in Marvel.



MCU stuff definitely consistently feels more like superhero RPGs I've actually played with actual players lol, what with all the quips and backslapping and rivalry and general "party of adventurers" vibe they often have.

That said the most purely "fun" superhero movie I've seen in recent years was DC - Aquaman. It rocks by the way. But it absolutely felt like an MCU movie (I suspect Marvel is seething that their main Aquaman-type's central personality trait is "He's a tremendous jerk" so Namor is probably not getting his own movie lol).


----------



## Paul Farquhar

Ruin Explorer said:


> I suspect Marvel is seething that their main Aquaman-type's central personality trait is "He's a tremendous jerk" so Namor is probably not getting his own movie lol



It worked for Deadpool!


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Paul Farquhar said:


> It worked for Deadpool!



Deadpool is the_ good kind_ of jerk though! Whereas Namor is just a jerk. Then again, they did manage to make that work with Cable (also "just a jerk" most of the time) by having him play off Deadpool.

Honestly I think the best way Namor is actually fun enough to make a movie about if you make him maybe just a tremendous catty b-in-apartment-23, making horrifically catty/cutting comments to just everyone, and just being the shadiest dude out there.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Scribe said:


> I think if we are honest, its about presentation of the setting, way way more than about the setting actually being restrictive.



I think there's some truth in this, for sure, especially re: inclusiveness.

But I think beyond presentation there are come actual underlaying changes in what people want. Albeit most had happened by the 1990s.

Like:

1) The 1980s in fantasy settings was utterly dominated by "basically an Earth society but renamed and with some tweaks" (if even that), from Mystara to the Forgotten Realms, to Dangerous Journeys, to Greyhawk and so on. From the 1990s onwards, this is no longer popular or and indeed is seen as a negative unless the setting intentionally apes the real world (7th Sea etc.). I don't think mere presentation can fix that (though it is arguable with Greyhawk at least).

2) A lot of 1980s fantasy also focuses on "hatreds" between groups. Not "evil plans" so much - those still fly fine (hi Zhentarim!), but when you have these settings where there's a lot of "kill on sight" or "angry villagers will murder you" or "if you're from X, you can't go to Y". I don't think this works for a lot of people now as well, and this change is even impacting stuff like video games (World of Warcraft has been considering dropping the central, well, war, and allowing cross-faction stuff for years, it's so built-in that it's hard to do though). In many cases I don't think presentation can eliminate this issue, and can conflict with inclusiveness. I know there are some DMs/groups who totally love the idea that being a Tiefling gets you lynched, or Dragonborn will be run out of town, but that's definitely not mainstream stuff anymore, if it ever was. (Also I think some of it is just passive-aggression from DMs who are still stuck in an early 3E or earlier mindset re: races, but that's a whole other discussion). I think distrust/dislike which can be overcome tends to be acceptable, though. Just not like "oh we gotta deal with people hating half the party 24-7, that's fun...". It's not like there won't be enough legit reasons to hate most parties... 

3) I think players now are a lot more interested in big complex cities, urban and semi-urban environments, and so on, than people in the 1980s and even 1990s were. Wilderness fantasy doesn't seem to attract the same level of interest it once did. This is partly possible to do with presentation and just focusing on cities, but, if your setting is mostly villages and trackless wilderness, it's going to be harder to pull off, especially if you don't even have any really wild cities. And I don't think Waterdeep, say, cuts it.

4) Level of magic. With 1980s settings, there is often powerful magic that has happened or that is linked to an artifact or whatever, but things tend to be fairly or extremely low-magic generally, and even when Eberron came along in 2004 some people groused about it being "too magical". I don't think the mass market would agree now. I think, being raised on all sorts of very high-fantasy video games, that people want to see stuff that's more magical. And yeah, again this is a long-term trend. Spelljammer and Planescape I already mentioned. I feel like presentation can modify this but only so much.


----------



## Paul Farquhar

Ruin Explorer said:


> 3) I think players now are a lot more interested in big complex cities, urban and semi-urban environments, and so o



I can't say as I've seen any evidence for that, or much evidence for the opposite, wilderness vs urban seems much the same as it ever was. As evidence, I cite City State of the Invincible Overlord (1976).

There might be a British vs American bias going on with this one, we don't exactly have much true wilderness in the UK! 


Ruin Explorer said:


> 4) Level of magic.



I think this is more down to mechanics. Magic is a way of having a bunch of interesting things to do in a fight. It's a way to give PCs superpowers without officially being a superhero game.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Paul Farquhar said:


> I think this is more down to mechanics. Magic is a way of having a bunch of interesting things to do in a fight. It's a way to give PCs superpowers without officially being a superhero game.



I'm talking about in the setting. Not necessarily in terms of the PCs at all. Eberron's magitech for example.


----------



## Paul Farquhar

Ruin Explorer said:


> I'm talking about in the setting. Not necessarily in terms of the PCs at all. Eberron's magitech for example.



I don't think you can really separate them. It's very hard to fit high magic PCs in a low magic world, ergo the world the PCs occupy has to be high magic. Eberron was largely designed around (3e) game mechanics.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Paul Farquhar said:


> I don't think you can really separate them. It's very hard to fit high magic PCs in a low magic world, ergo the world the PCs occupy has to be high magic. Eberron was largely designed around (3e) game mechanics.



You say "ergo" but that's certainly not really how worlds used to be designed, despite PCs potentially being very "high magic". So if there is an ergo, it's one that's developed in the 1990s and later.

I think there's a pretty clear difference between worlds were massive magic is a day-to-day thing (at least in a certain locations in those worlds), like Eberron, Spelljammer and Planescape, and worlds like the Greyhawk or the FR, where if there massively magical places, they're far from civilization and haunted ruins and so on, for the most part.


----------



## TheSword

Ruin Explorer said:


> You say "ergo" but that's certainly not really how worlds used to be designed, despite PCs potentially being very "high magic". So if there is an ergo, it's one that's developed in the 1990s and later.
> 
> I think there's a pretty clear difference between worlds were massive magic is a day-to-day thing (at least in a certain locations in those worlds), like Eberron, Spelljammer and Planescape, and worlds like the Greyhawk or the FR, where if there massively magical places, they're far from civilization and haunted ruins and so on, for the most part.



What like Waterdeep? Built on a massive magical dungeon, surrounded by a mythal, ruled by an archmage chosen of the goddess of magic. Policed by a wizards guild, defended my magic walking statues… etc etc.


----------



## Paul Farquhar

Ruin Explorer said:


> You say "ergo" but that's certainly not really how worlds used to be designed, despite PCs potentially being very "high magic". So if there is an ergo, it's one that's developed in the 1990s and later.



Yeah, high magic PCs (and NPCs) had a big impact on the development of FR, and was at the core of Eberron design. And somewhat impacted Dragonlance in the 80s. If you view it as a change, it's a change that happened a very long time ago now.


Ruin Explorer said:


> I think there's a pretty clear difference between worlds were massive magic is a day-to-day thing (at least in a certain locations in those worlds), like Eberron, Spelljammer and Planescape, and worlds like the Greyhawk or the FR, where if there massively magical places, they're far from civilization and haunted ruins and so on, for the most part.



Greyhawk is about the last setting designed without high magic as a basic assumption. Pretty much every population centre in FR is ruled by high level spellcasters.


----------



## FrozenNorth

Ruin Explorer said:


> Just listing traits as a bullet point for 2021:
> 
> Setting is inclusive/diverse (little in the way of sexism/racism/homophobia etc. - D&D has always avoided the latter for the most part).
> Setting is "High Magic" - i.e. like strongly magical things can and do regularly happen.
> Setting is "High Fantasy" - or "Epic Fantasy", as opposed to "Dark Fantasy" or "Low Fantasy".
> Setting allows kitchen-sink-ish usage of elements like class/race, isn't about narrowing options



Probably some of the popular newer races would have a larger role in the world lore, with some of the less popular old races still present, but on the margins.


----------



## Minigiant

FrozenNorth said:


> Probably some of the popular newer races would have a larger role in the world lore, with some of the less popular old races still present, but on the margins.



Nah.

A true 2021 setting would bring the new race, old races, and humans to equality of importance. And their would be good, evil, and nuetral factions of each.

Basically take every PHB race plus orcs and goblins and make 3-5 countries/factions/cults for each. Then take some of the other races like warforged and leonin and make them into nations and factions as well.

It would look like Total War Warhammer's Mortal Empire's Map. 
Humans,Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Lizardmen, Warforged, Halflings, Dragonborn. Tiefling, Goblins, Orges, Tabaxi, etc all over the place.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

TheSword said:


> What like Waterdeep? Built on a massive magical dungeon, surrounded by a mythal, ruled by an archmage chosen of the goddess of magic. Policed by a wizards guild, defended my magic walking statues… etc etc.



Waterdeep is a pretty good example for presentation, I guess.

You can spin that stuff up or down. In 2E it was spun down pretty hard, for sure. Waterdeep was very much presented as a normal city with this stuff largely "in the shadows".

Waterdeep has a separate problem though, in that, last I checked, it was ruled by oppressive jerks who don't want to let anyone do anything, and is basically pretty unfun and intentionally hostile to adventurers, well, adventuring. But maybe that changed in 5E presentations? That was a pretty common problem in a lot of 2E and 3E FR approaches - "We've made this cool place, you could be adventurers based here! Oh btw they hate adventurers and there are taxes and mandatory charters and loads of pushy cops/quasi-cops who want to get all up in your business! Enjoy!".


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Minigiant said:


> Nah.
> 
> A true 2021 setting would bring the new race, old races, and humans to equality of importance. And their would be good, evil, and nuetral factions of each.
> 
> Basically take every PHB race plus orcs and goblins and make 3-5 countries/factions/cults for each. Then take some of the other races like warforged and leonin and make them into nations and factions as well.
> 
> It would look like Total War Warhammer's Mortal Empire's Map.



I really strongly disagree.

The massive racial separatism you're describing is absolutely the opposite of a 2021 setting.


----------



## Galandris

Ruin Explorer said:


> 4) Level of magic. With 1980s settings, there is often powerful magic that has happened or that is linked to an artifact or whatever, but things tend to be fairly or extremely low-magic generally, and even when Eberron came along in 2004 some people groused about it being "too magical". I don't think the mass market would agree now. I think, being raised on all sorts of very high-fantasy video games, that people want to see stuff that's more magical. And yeah, again this is a long-term trend. Spelljammer and Planescape I already mentioned. I feel like presentation can modify this but only so much.




Exalted was quite popular when it was published, very high magic over the top and magitech influence. I think it predates Eberron but I really can't remember. Late 1990s?



> The massive racial separatism you're describing is absolutely the opposite of a 2021 setting.




Same here. Cities have been cosmopolitan to the point of stretching suspension of disbelief since 3e, it's not something new, even if it was limited to a subset of races (generally the good aligned, eg Waterdeep : humans, dwarves, elves, halflings, half-elves, gnomes and half-orcs).

I see what you're describing as a 2001 setting, not a 2021 setting.



> The 1980s in fantasy settings was utterly dominated by "basically an Earth society but renamed and with some tweaks"




I wasn't there in the 1980s anymore than I was there when Isildur... sorry. But if anything, I feel the current settings are more and more "Earth society", with values imported wholesales, including very recent ideals (like due process, individualism, nations yet tolerance...) into fantasy world without any explanation on how those ideas came into being. How could it be "even more Earthy" in the 80s?


----------



## Minigiant

Ruin Explorer said:


> I really strongly disagree.
> 
> The massive racial separatism you're describing is absolutely the opposite of a 2021 setting.



There would be countries and cities with multiple races in them. A bunch of cosmopolitan cities and countries.

But having a home or ethnic country where your PC came from that isn't marginalized as a far away place would be a big thing.

The 2021 player wants to say his Tabaxi go to New Port City or Bondon then tell the bartender he is from Catistan not Felinia and have everyone know the difference.


----------



## Oofta

Minigiant said:


> There would be countries and cities with multiple races in them. A bunch of cosmopolitan cities and countries.
> 
> But having a home or ethnic country where your PC came from that isn't marginalized as a far away place would be a big thing.
> 
> The 2021 player wants to say his Tabaxi go to New Port City or Bondon then tell the bartender he is from Catistan not Felinia and have everyone know the difference.



You're assuming people actually read the lore of a setting.   If you're talking about NPCs, not players, you're assuming people have broad knowledge of the world which even in today's day and age is sadly lacking.

I _do_ think you could have more interesting factions and forces in a specific campaign world that for the most part ignores race. I do that to a certain degree in my own campaign world, but honestly I have a hard time getting people to read a page of lore so it's not worth the effort most of the time.  So most of my factions are relatively local and campaign specific.


----------



## Minigiant

Oofta said:


> You're assuming people actually read the lore of a setting.   If you're talking about NPCs, not players, you're assuming people have broad knowledge of the world which even in today's day and age is sadly lacking.
> 
> I _do_ think you could have more interesting factions and forces in a specific campaign world that for the most part ignores race. I do that to a certain degree in my own campaign world, but honestly I have a hard time getting people to read a page of lore so it's not worth the effort most of the time.  So most of my factions are relatively local and campaign specific.



It's not about the lore.

Catistan is House Cat people. Felinia is Wild Cat people.

The point is the 2021 gamer wants to have the same feeling of saying "My sniper is from Brazil" to the French driver, the Texan gunslingers, the Nigerian hacker, and the assassin from Hong Kong the in a modern RPG. So Brazil has to exist and be different from Columbia.


----------



## Staffan

Galandris said:


> Exalted was quite popular when it was published, very high magic over the top and magitech influence. I think it predates Eberron but I really can't remember. Late 1990s?



Early 00s. I remember White Wolf running an advertisement campaign where you could exchange your 3e PHB for an Exalted book, and that would make little sense after the release of 3.5.


----------



## Oofta

Minigiant said:


> It's not about the lore.
> 
> Catistan is House Cat people. Felinia is Wild Cat people.
> 
> The point is the 2021 gamer wants to have the same feeling of saying "My sniper is from Brazil" to the French driver, the Texan gunslingers, the Nigerian hacker, and the assassin from Hong Kong the in a modern RPG. So Brazil has to exist and be different from Columbia.




As much as you and I may enjoy this kind of in depth lore, a lot of people simply don't care.  Most people wouldn't be able to point out Columbia or Brazil on a map much less have any clue that the cultures are different.  For that matter if I'm being honest while I know where the locations you listed are, I wouldn't know enough about the cultures to really distinguish them. 

I agree that factions that are organized regardless of race can work and add depth to a specific campaign world.  I'm just not sure it will have broad enough appeal to justify the effort.  It would require a brand new setting and a lot of careful checking for stereotypes, even then I can see it being a potential landmine no matter how well done it is.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Galandris said:


> I wasn't there in the 1980s anymore than I was there when Isildur... sorry. But if anything, I feel the current settings are more and more "Earth society", with values imported wholesales, including very recent ideals (like due process, individualism, nations yet tolerance...) into fantasy world without any explanation on how those ideas came into being. How could it be "even more Earthy" in the 80s?



Huh? No that's not at all what I mean. This was a really common thing.

I'm saying that in those settings many or even most of the nations are simply imported versions of historical Earth societies renamed a bit, sometimes made a non-human race, and often leaning into some stereotypes or anachronism. A particularly spectacular example you might be aware of is the Moonshae Isles in the FR (originally intended to be it's own setting), which is basically a horrific mish-mash of various "Celtic" cultures ("The Ffolk" will never stop being funny) and also some "Vikings". It was just really lazy and a repeated pattern. If you never saw it because you've not played those settings, well, maybe that why you're confused about what I was saying, also you're lucky lol.


Galandris said:


> I see what you're describing as a 2001 setting, not a 2021 setting.



Is the text where in like, four different posts, I've said "Most of these changes happened in the 1990s", like not showing up for people or something? That's not even sarcasm, I'm genuinely confused at this point. I've said it a bunch of times.


----------



## Minigiant

Oofta said:


> As much as you and I may enjoy this kind of in depth lore, a lot of people simply don't care. Most people wouldn't be able to point out Columbia or Brazil on a map much less have any clue that the cultures are different. For that matter if I'm being honest while I know where the locations you listed are, I wouldn't know enough about the cultures to really distinguish them.




The point is that the nation/faction exists not that you know the lore of it

The idea is that high elves, wood elves, dark elves, deep elves, and light elves would all have their home home countries. The lore wouldn't be deep so the players and DMs could make up most of it. 

A 2021 setting would look like an isekai


----------



## Mind of tempest

Minigiant said:


> The point is that the nation/faction exists not that you know the lore of it
> 
> The idea is that high elves, wood elves, dark elves, deep elves, and light elves would all have their home home countries. The lore wouldn't be deep so the players and DMs could make up most of it.
> 
> A 2021 setting would look like an isekai



isekai is a dying genre in 21 as its explosions were a late 2010's thing only the big ones are really still going.


----------



## Argyle King

TheSword said:


> Sure.




I think backgrounds are a cool idea but one which could have been given a little more substance as a way to cover a lot of the cultural/racial/ethnic stuff that is part of a character.

Tool proficiency doesn't seem as though it was fully finished. 

I think using HP as the primary way of scaling difficulty makes encounter and monster design somewhat wonky and leads to combat which is a weird combo of 3E's swinginess and 4E's grind at later levels. 

Feats... new books continue to introduce more, but a character usually only gets 4-5 choices and those choices already compete with ability score increases.

"Natural Language" as used in 5E neither comes across as natural nor does it give a clear idea about how certain things are supposed to work. Yeah... rulings not rules; I get that, but a lot of rules issues could be avoided with clearer language. 

Bounded accuracy sorta works, but it also sorta doesn't as the game continues to introduce more ways to get +1s which stack. Likewise, supposedly magic items are optional because of bounded accuracy, but monster design doesn't appear to support that.


----------



## Scribe

Ruin Explorer said:


> But I think beyond presentation there are come actual underlaying changes in what people want. Albeit most had happened by the 1990s.



This is what I mean though, and was agreeing with you. Despite my age making it easy to think 'oh its the 2000's whatever' its actually almost 2022...and most of the changes you are describing are OLD OLD at this point. Eberron Campaign Setting was 2004.

I mean again maybe its just me, but I still just 'oh 2000's sure whatever' without thinking its been TWENTY YEARS.

The art, has imo a MASSIVE impact on the amount of pushback from certain segments of the population, because the inclusiveness issue's mechanically, were mostly already handled.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Argyle King said:


> I think backgrounds are a cool idea but one which could have been given a little more substance as a way to cover a lot of the cultural/racial/ethnic stuff that is part of a character.
> 
> Tool proficiency doesn't seem as though it was fully finished.
> 
> I think using HP as the primary way of scaling difficulty makes encounter and monster design somewhat wonky and leads to combat which is a weird combo of 3E's swinginess and 4E's grind at later levels.
> 
> Feats... new books continue to introduce more, but a character usually only gets 4-5 choices and those choices already compete with ability score increases.
> 
> "Natural Language" as used in 5E neither comes across as natural nor does it give a clear idea about how certain things are supposed to work. Yeah... rulings not rules; I get that, but a lot of rules issues could be avoided with clearer language.
> 
> Bounded accuracy sorta works, but it also sorta doesn't as the game continues to introduce more ways to get +1s which stack. Likewise, supposedly magic items are optional because of bounded accuracy, but monster design doesn't appear to support that.



These are valid points imho.

Backgrounds are slightly too simplistic/weak to achieve what they've wanted. Also as initially introduced, with the big-ass tables to roll for traits on, they were a huuuuuuuuuuuge waste of space. Like each background took up 3-4x as much space as it needed because of that. If you cut those tables and wrote in some guidance you could at least double the number of backgrounds. But I think I'd take a wholly different approach.

Tool proficiencies seriously need a careful look in DND2024, and they also need to build in the "tool and skill = Advantage" thing or something.

HP is an issue as you describe but I don't think it's going to change in DND2024, because you'd break too much backwards compatibility if you start messing with that and/or damage. I could see a lot of redone monsters having somewhat lower HP totals though.

Feats/ASIs are something they definitely could address. I feel fairly confident in saying that in DND2024, the default situation at Level 1 will be that you get a "power" (a la Ravenloft or Theros) or a Feat at level 1. I could easily see them including a generic "power"-style system for starting characters too (but they might just use Feats). I dunno if they'll go beyond that.

Natural language - couldn't agree more. It hasn't worked out. Re-write stuff for clarity, and/or use keywords. Also re-think the targets for some spells. They really need to add "object or creature" instead of just "creature" to some.

Agree re: monster design vs. bounded accuracy. If they're going to continue to claim magic items are "optional", then actually give us some real guidance on what to do if we opt against.


----------



## Faolyn

Ruin Explorer said:


> I really strongly disagree.
> 
> The massive racial separatism you're describing is absolutely the opposite of a 2021 setting.



I could see having a setting that has that sort of separatism but that also focuses on one or more highly multi-racial cities or areas.


----------



## Sabathius42

Ruin Explorer said:


> Definitely but I don't see any indications that _any_ group of 5E players (whether 20-somethings or 40-somethings or whatever) particularly wants their D&D settings to be like that.
> 
> Otherwise darker settings would sell like hot cakes, wouldn't they? And in fact they don't. For your theory to work, there would have to be this unmet demand for that stuff. But the demand is absolutely met. Even beyond D&D, there are tons of "dark fantasy" RPGs, Shadow of the Demon Lord being an obvious one. Are they hideously successful? Not really. They do fine. It certainly looks like demand is met there.
> 
> So I would say that evidence suggests that the people who watch GoT and The Witcher, do not want to play out GoT or The Witcher in a TTRPG. YMMV.
> 
> EDIT - As an aside, whilst it didn't blow up the world, the Shadow and Bone show for Netflix is based on a series which roughly Witcher-dark, and which shows perhaps a take which is closer to how TTRPG doing "dark fantasy" in those kinds of settings might look. It was successful but I don't think a mind-blowing hit.
> 
> Further, I think a lot of it on TV is just about spin. Like, look at the Wheel of Time show. Firstly it's pretty great, I was shocked, the books are dull, but the show starts "Eh" and becomes "HELL YEAH!", but the show FEELS like 10x darker than the books. It isn't. It's the roughly the same events, but for some reason seeing them, hearing them, all that - wow that's a lot scarier than reading them (this is not always the case - I think it shows a limitation Jordan had as a writer but feel free to disagree). So what I would call "normal fantasy" in terms of darkness - WoT - comes across as pretty damn scary. I mean I think you could spin the FR or Eberron to be pretty "dark" if you wanted to. It's just on how you describe things and what you choose to happen.



I prefer a darker gritty grey brand of fantasy.

1. I run 5e.
2. I homebrew my campaign.

My game, and others like it, exist.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Sabathius42 said:


> I prefer a darker gritty grey brand of fantasy.
> 
> 1. I run 5e.
> 2. I homebrew my campaign.
> 
> My game, and others like it, exist.



Sure, but you have a homebrew.

So you demand is met by your own supply.

We're discussing if there's _un_met demand. Would you ditch you homebrew for a 3rd-party setting? If DND2024 is even more different than expected, and a 3rd-party company comes out with a 5E-clone, let's call it "Trailblazer", and it has a dark fantasy setting, which won't be grey (might be gritty) because it's a 5E clone that leans backwards somewhat, and the demand is for alignment, which conflicts with "grey", would you ditch your homebrew and 5E for this 5E clone?

That's the question here.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Faolyn said:


> I could see having a setting that has that sort of separatism but that also focuses on one or more highly multi-racial cities or areas.



I couldn't, really, in 2021. Not with the degree of separatism he described - specifically the comparison was made to the Mortal Empires map in Total War: Warhammer 2 - I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it features large stretches of terrain and sharp delineations of ownership, and areas are very much only owned/inhabited by one race. Even adding in multi-racial areas, if I go by that comparison, it's just a wee bit creepy honestly.

If it was just a bad comparison and that degree of separatism isn't intended, sure.


----------



## Greg Benage

If we’re talking about what gets greenlit and produced by relatively large companies (rather than necessarily “what the people want”), a 2021 setting probably looks like the WOT show. Give me an isolated community of mountain people with pronounced ethnic diversity, not for any in-setting reason at all, but because just look at what decent and virtuous people we all are at this company.


----------



## JEB

Ruin Explorer said:


> Backgrounds are slightly too simplistic/weak to achieve what they've wanted. Also as initially introduced, with the big-ass tables to roll for traits on, they were a huuuuuuuuuuuge waste of space. Like each background took up 3-4x as much space as it needed because of that. If you cut those tables and wrote in some guidance you could at least double the number of backgrounds.



The trait tables were pretty popular with my group. Saved them the trouble of coming up with the traits completely on their own, served as a starting point for other concepts, and didn't get in the way if they had something completely different in mind.

Some folks like to have inspirational ideas, not just "make it up yourself." So I hope they keep the suggestions in the 2024 version.

Now, stronger, more impactful backgrounds? That would be nice. Maybe they can absorb the cultural traits they're removing from all the PC races...



Ruin Explorer said:


> Natural language - couldn't agree more. It hasn't worked out. Re-write stuff for clarity, and/or use keywords.



Clearer language sounds good, but strong disagree on using keywords. You should be able to use a statblock immediately with as little cross-referencing as possible. Definitely something I don't miss from earlier editions.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

JEB said:


> Some folks like to have inspirational ideas, not just "make it up yourself." So I hope they keep the suggestions in the 2024 version.



If they do I really hope they make them more compact, because the space they took up was pretty excessive. Also some of them were just boring, so maybe they need to take a look at them. There's no point rolling for random traits if they don't really add anything to the character and some didn't.


----------



## Galandris

Is there a reason this mix of population is considered a "good" thing _in play_? Last time I was in rural Japan, I didn't remember seeing many Europeans, but I wasn't shocked. And the only reason I could be there was because modern jets and trains make that possible (and the reverse is true, rural France has very few Okinawans to be seen). I wouldn't have gone there, probably, if the only means of transportation had been ships and horses, not because the locals would have thrown stones at me but simply because large melting pots are usually the product of things not available to pseudo-medieval societies. Is this just because Melting Pot = Sounds like a country known for its melting pot cities that I won't name it because it would certainly be against real world politics rules = Good? I can see a concern to avoid locking a player into "hey, you're the first human we've ever seen, why are your ears not pointy?!? Should we throw rock at this strange demon-eared creature?" but I don't think GMs would be heavy-handed like that outside the "horror GM" thread...


----------



## Sabathius42

Ruin Explorer said:


> Sure, but you have a homebrew.
> 
> So you demand is met by your own supply.
> 
> We're discussing if there's _un_met demand. Would you ditch you homebrew for a 3rd-party setting? If DND2024 is even more different than expected, and a 3rd-party company comes out with a 5E-clone, let's call it "Trailblazer", and it has a dark fantasy setting, which won't be grey (might be gritty) because it's a 5E clone that leans backwards somewhat, and the demand is for alignment, which conflicts with "grey", would you ditch your homebrew and 5E for this 5E clone?
> 
> That's the question here.



I'm ditching 5e for A5e because it fills my unmet demand for more crunch laid on the 5e base.

I would not switch my homebrew for a published Trailblazer setting because I have already invested the time into creating it.  

If there had been an official "shades of grey" or "kingdom building and politics" setting or Adventure Path I would have purchased them as they would have had elements I could graft into my game.

As it is the only books I have purchased are those that are generic and not setting or adventure paths.

As the adventure paths and settings move more and more away from the "traditional" DnD style they are less and less likely for me to be able to use any part of them for my game.

I think the closest setting DnD has to emulate GoT style political intrigue is probably Planescape which is M.I.A.


----------



## J.Quondam

Galandris said:


> Is there a reason this mix of population is considered a "good" thing _in play_? Last time I was in rural Japan, I didn't remember seeing many Europeans, but I wasn't shocked. And the only reason I could be there was because modern jets and trains make that possible (and the reverse is true, rural France has very few Okinawans to be seen). I wouldn't have gone there, probably, if the only means of transportation had been ships and horses, not because the locals would have thrown stones at me but simply because large melting pots are usually the product of things not available to pseudo-medieval societies. Is this just because Melting Pot = Sounds like a country known for its melting pot cities that I won't name it because it would certainly be against real world politics rules = Good?



I don't think it's necessarily to establish a "mixing pot" world, so much as it's for players to have the freedom to create a wide variety of PCs with identities they're familiar with in the real world, without those PCs being by default persecuted in the in-game society, or feeling party to in-game colonialism, or whatever.
I mean, if those issues are part of the stated nature of a _particular_ campaign, cool. But the aim, I think, is for the _default_ to feel broadly inclusive.

*tl;dr* - It's for sake of players, not the setting.

.


----------



## Mordhau

Just feel the need to point out that Trailblazer already exists.


----------



## Mordhau

J.Quondam said:


> I don't think it's necessarily to establish a "mixing pot" world, so much as it's for players to have the freedom to create a wide variety of PCs with identities they're familiar with in the real world, without those PCs being by default persecuted in the in-game society, or feeling party to in-game colonialism, or whatever.
> I mean, if those issues are part of the stated nature of a _particular_ campaign, cool. But the aim, I think, is for the _default_ to feel broadly inclusive.
> 
> *tl;dr* - It's for sake of players, not the setting.
> 
> .



It does impact on things though.

If my game rule setting is basically 13th century Iceland (or fantasy fascmile) then having characters of most of the world's ethnicities is a real stretch. 

Not that think it's necessarily wrong to make a setting based on 13th century Iceland, but you do need to recognise that it's not inherently the most inclusive setting.

This matters because there's more to a setting than just a world.  If I divide my setting into China continent and fantasy scandinvaia type continent and put them on opposite sides of the world then technically I've got some level of diversity, but if I haven't built in any ongoing interaction it's again not going to be particularly inclusive.

In order to have a wide variety of different ethicities represented you do have to have some kind of mixing pot set up.  You need to have not just different ethnicities, but some kind of set-up that makes interaction plausbile.


----------



## guachi

I think the reason that "Earth culture with the serial numbers filed off" works well in a fantasy setting is because, as Oofta mentions, players don't really care about lore all that much. If a place happens to be similar to Earth in weather/architecture/people/food/clothing/etc. it makes it much easier to describe something. I can give a multi-sentence description of a building or just say "Tudor-style" and be done with it.


----------



## Faolyn

Ruin Explorer said:


> I couldn't, really, in 2021. Not with the degree of separatism he described - specifically the comparison was made to the Mortal Empires map in Total War: Warhammer 2 - I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it features large stretches of terrain and sharp delineations of ownership, and areas are very much only owned/inhabited by one race. Even adding in multi-racial areas, if I go by that comparison, it's just a wee bit creepy honestly.
> 
> If it was just a bad comparison and that degree of separatism isn't intended, sure.



Well, maybe not to that degree of separation, but something that's not quite so much. I'm not familiar with Warhammer, but one idea could be less based on ownership and more on "natural terrain." Elves in the woods, dwarfs on the icy mountains, orcs on the plains, tritons in the oceans, etc., but a few areas that have become multicultural, and perhaps with magically-created "artificial terrains." Like Zootopia, if you don't mind a cartoonish comparison.

Or another possible idea for such a setting is where the races had been separated by the (probably Evil) Overlords, who are now gone, or in the process of leaving or being overthrown, and only now are the races starting to meet each other en masse. I played a game like this ages ago in college, although the GM never really explored the ramifications of it.


----------



## Bill Zebub

Cusp of a sea change?

I think we’re on the brink of an abyss.

But one giant leap forward could change everything.


----------



## J.Quondam

Mordhau said:


> It does impact on things though.
> 
> If my game rule setting is basically 13th century Iceland (or fantasy fascmile) then having characters of most of the world's ethnicities is a real stretch.
> 
> Not that think it's necessarily wrong to make a setting based on 13th century Iceland, but you do need to recognise that it's not inherently the most inclusive setting.
> 
> This matters because there's more to a setting than just a world.  If I divide my setting into China continent and fantasy scandinvaia type continent and put them on opposite sides of the world then technically I've got some level of diversity, but if I haven't built in any ongoing interaction it's again not going to be particularly inclusive.
> 
> In order to have a wide variety of different ethicities represented you do have to have some kind of mixing pot set up.  You need to have not just different ethnicities, but some kind of set-up that makes interaction plausbile.



Right, I largely agree with that. But there's a reason I specifically differentiated one's "particular campaign" from the "default" of D&D, which is nothing like 13th century Iceland.


----------



## Enevhar Aldarion

Reynard said:


> It doesn't feel like they are shying away from offending some portion of the fan base (NOTE: I am NOT one of those offended people; I am just saying they seem to know some rules and lore changes will rankle some and they seem fine with that).




This may have been said in the 338+ posts on this thread, but even so, it bears repeating.

Any changes that are made, whether mechanical or in lore, that make the game more representative and inclusive and accepting, without feeling like pandering, that also pushes the close-minded, racist, sexist, hate-filled people away from the the game can only be a good thing. The more of those people that Hasbro/WotC offends, the better, because I don't think anyone here wants any of that connected to our games.

We already know that some OSR games are having that problem. While a lot of OSR stuff is perfectly fine and it is just players wanting that old school feel and old school mechanics that don't include the old problematic bits and lore, there are some where the R in OSR may as well stand for racist.


----------



## Mordhau

J.Quondam said:


> Right, I largely agree with that. But there's a reason I specifically differentiated one's "particular campaign" from the "default" of D&D, which is nothing like 13th century Iceland.



Yeah but...

The default setting for 5e seems to be the Sword Coast.  It's a real stretch from there to have a PC from Kara-Tur.  It's a fantasy setting and PCs are exceptional so sure I'd allow it, but with the setting as is, they're mostly going to be filling in the outsider role; it's a stretch for them to be meeting other NPCs from that region.

If the focus of your game is in the northern part (the savage frontier) then it's basically going to be similar for PCs from Chult or Calimshan*.  Sure there'd probably be some npcs from those regions in Waterdeep, but in the rest of the North?

Part of the issue here is the bigger you make your setting the more you can include, but bigger settings are actually less useful.  For the purposes of role-playing, a smaller well developed region is more useful.  However, if you want to do that, _and_ be as inclusive as possible for as many different real world ethicities as possible, then you reall need to put some thought into it.

The Parasantium setting for Pathfinder, is a good example of a regional setting that does this well.  Basically it's kind of fantasy Byzantinum but with regions brought closer together so that it has a much larger mix of different cultures than it's historical counterpart.

*And these ethnic counterpart cultures have their own issues anyway being mostly constructed from pulp stereotypes.


----------



## Henadic Theologian

Okay they aren't going to whole sale ditch class, race, background, feats from the 5.5e PHB, it's most likely going to be refinements out what they have learned and worked well so far. They will look to the stuff they have done that is popular.

 We have a general idea of what races races will be like, I think Lineages rules will be saved for the DMG. They will want to offer more then the regular 5e PHB, so expect some additional races, like Goblins, Aasimar, Genasi, and Orcs could be in. We will need to wait for MP: MotM to get a better idea for how subraces will be handled.

 Classes will have Tasha style alternate class features, those were extremely popular. I also think the Artificer and maybe the Psion could make it in. Really, really outside chance of something like Blood Hunter or Warlord making it in.

 There maybe some spells from outside the 5e PHB that get in, and boring unpopular spells will get cut. I expect more conjugation spells like Summon Celestial, Summon Dragon, and Summon Aberration then the previous conjure spells. Even Planar Ally is not well designed.

 More suggestions inspired by Strixhaven on the social and exploration pillars, but not at the expense of combat.

 The Patron system could make it in.

 There could even be a more generic piety and faction systems in the PHB if they can find the room for it. Piety system could be based around Domains instead of individual Gods, replacing Domains as the Cleric subclass with something broader and more interesting.

 I think Background kind of suck right now, the feature is just too hard to use in published adventures for example, BUT the space sacrificed by races maybe give backgrounds room to do more.

 I could see a Gifts system added, like Supernatural Gifts from Theros.

 The biggest change I see is references to Magic the Gathering settings in the core books.

 By 2024 I think the merging of the multiverses will be official, way to late to bury it anymore.

 Look to MP: MotM to know what the 5.5e MM will look like, it's basically the template, the MM will be that, but much bigger.

 The 5.5e DMG will be more focused on social and exploration pillar advise and mechanics, if there even is a 5.5e DMG.

 I also think these books will reference 5e books.

 Multiverse will be a much bigger focus with less FR as default, which ironically will be good for FR as they will be able to release a 5.5e Campaign Setting Book for FR without fear it will derail their yearly adventures.

 And I expect at least one kind of surprise UA I don't see coming.

 So more refinements, not a sea change.


----------



## Yora

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> Any changes that are made, whether mechanical or in lore, that make the game more representative and inclusive and accepting, without feeling like pandering,



Let's see how they do at squaring the circle.

They have to retain all the D&D archetypes, and they are also WotC, who have a long history of just not understanding what the issue is in the first place.

I don't see that ever happening.


----------



## teitan

I think we are about to see a new market split. If the changes aren't enough to justify the new purchase, people won't buy in immediately. It will be a slow purchase because of compatibility. IF there are too many changes it will split because if the changes don't benefit the game or harm the backwards compatibility element, if they really try to advertise that, people won't buy in. They brilliantly marketed 3.5 enough to make it seem like it was really an upgrade to 3e, they were able to talk about the gaps in 3e and what they were doing to "patch" them while giving lip service to compatibility that really wasn't there. They are kind of in a weird space with this because its a different market and D&D is no longer really a part of the RPG market, being it's own thing with how it outclasses every other game. New fans might just gobble it up but they might also be very slow to pick it up. I don't really intend to as I am fine with 5e as is and if the changes are as small as they say, ehhh, maybe one day if my group insists.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Mordhau said:


> Just feel the need to point out that Trailblazer already exists.



That's pretty funny. I guess the had the same reaction to the options in the thesaurus as me.


teitan said:


> If the changes aren't enough to justify the new purchase, people won't buy in immediately. It will be a slow purchase because of compatibility.



From everything WotC is saying right now, this is what they expect. It would also make a lot of sense.

WotC have 50m players right now. The vast majority have never gone through an edition-shift before, because they're new to the game and started with 5E. So you can't expect them to just shrug and go "new edition" and immediately move on. WotC likely does not want to risk losing too many of them to a sharp shift.

If anything they're going to fail to/avoid making changes that they know would long-term benefit the playability of 5E because they'd potentially reduce backwards-compatibility and split the community more. Moving away from the 6-8 encounter day to really _any_ lower number would likely make D&D play better for most groups, so would "benefit the game" in a rules sense, but it would make you need to revise the game across the board.

But they don't really have to worry about that right now, because as you say, there's no serious competition to D&D. So if they fail to fix some flaws, most of the audience (being new to RPGs) isn't really going to feel it (even though they would likely notice the improvement if it was fixed), so they can focus on just changing things that they can change whilst mostly maintaining backwards-compatibility.


----------



## Galandris

Ruin Explorer said:


> That's pretty funny. I guess the had the same reaction to the options in the thesaurus as me.
> 
> From everything WotC is saying right now, this is what they expect. It would also make a lot of sense.
> 
> WotC have 50m players right now. The vast majority have never gone through an edition-shift before, because they're new to the game and started with 5E. So you can't expect them to just shrug and go "new edition" and immediately move on. WotC likely does not want to risk losing too many of them to a sharp shift.




Of those 50m players, apparently, only 1-5m or so actually bought a PHB. It would be strange to expect players who didn't buy anything suddenly rush forward to buy something, especially something that isn't totally different from what they are used to playing without spending anything. [It might explain why RPG book prices are depressed: 80-98% of the hobby gets it for free...)


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Galandris said:


> Of those 50m players, apparently, only 1-5m or so actually bought a PHB. It would be strange to expect players who didn't buy anything suddenly rush forward to buy something, especially something that isn't totally different from what they are used to playing without spending anything. [It might explain why RPG book prices are depressed: 80-98% of the hobby gets it for free...)



What's the source on that curiously imprecise figure?

I mean, unless it's a very good source, and includes digital sales, I would put approximately zero stock in it myself.


----------



## HammerMan

teitan said:


> I think we are about to see a new market split. If the changes aren't enough to justify the new purchase, people won't buy in immediately. It will be a slow purchase because of compatibility. IF there are too many changes it will split because if the changes don't benefit the game or harm the backwards compatibility element, if they really try to advertise that, people won't buy in.



yup, and I don't know how to avoid it... in 2e they reprinted the books with new shinny covers and some errata and rewording and even that sparked some issue (not as noticeable with WAY less internet. 


teitan said:


> They brilliantly marketed 3.5 enough to make it seem like it was really an upgrade to 3e, they were able to talk about the gaps in 3e and what they were doing to "patch" them while giving lip service to compatibility that really wasn't there. They are kind of in a weird space with this because its a different market and D&D is no longer really a part of the RPG market, being it's own thing with how it outclasses every other game. New fans might just gobble it up but they might also be very slow to pick it up. I don't really intend to as I am fine with 5e as is and if the changes are as small as they say, ehhh, maybe one day if my group insists.



I would love (but I doubt it would happen) if every class was rebuilt form the ground up useing Artificer and Warlock as the basic chasies but with more 4e stuff built in... I doubt it will jump so far but I would love it.


----------



## Micah Sweet

teitan said:


> I think we are about to see a new market split. If the changes aren't enough to justify the new purchase, people won't buy in immediately. It will be a slow purchase because of compatibility. IF there are too many changes it will split because if the changes don't benefit the game or harm the backwards compatibility element, if they really try to advertise that, people won't buy in. They brilliantly marketed 3.5 enough to make it seem like it was really an upgrade to 3e, they were able to talk about the gaps in 3e and what they were doing to "patch" them while giving lip service to compatibility that really wasn't there. They are kind of in a weird space with this because its a different market and D&D is no longer really a part of the RPG market, being it's own thing with how it outclasses every other game. New fans might just gobble it up but they might also be very slow to pick it up. I don't really intend to as I am fine with 5e as is and if the changes are as small as they say, ehhh, maybe one day if my group insists.



No matter what changes they make, and what reason they're making them, they are still reissuing the core books again and hoping people will re-buy the rules.  That's not an easy sell, so marketing will be important. They have to convince folks that it's worth spending another $150 again.  I'm sure, for example, that they'll throw money at CR to get them on board.


----------



## Galandris

Ruin Explorer said:


> What's the source on that curiously imprecise figure?
> 
> I mean, unless it's a very good source, and includes digital sales, I would put approximately zero stock in it myself.




It was discussed on this board, based on the 800,000 sales of the 5e PHB up to 2017, and various other sources. It was in the latest thread about the record year of 2020 for WotC. The imprecision is mine, I don't remember how the final number got around 5m, not the original thread, because this figure might have included previous editions's PHBs.


----------



## S'mon

Ruin Explorer said:


> Definitely but I don't see any indications that _any_ group of 5E players (whether 20-somethings or 40-somethings or whatever) particularly wants their D&D settings to be like that.
> 
> Otherwise darker settings would sell like hot cakes, wouldn't they? And in fact they don't. For your theory to work, there would have to be this unmet demand for that stuff. But the demand is absolutely met. Even beyond D&D, there are tons of "dark fantasy" RPGs, Shadow of the Demon Lord being an obvious one. Are they hideously successful? Not really. They do fine. It certainly looks like demand is met there.
> 
> So I would say that evidence suggests that the people who watch GoT and The Witcher, do not want to play out GoT or The Witcher in a TTRPG. YMMV.




I think the main demand is for generic/vanilla fantasy which is darker than the current WoTC direction, but pretty much in line with earlier WoTC campaign adventures. Less shades-of-grey than The Witcher but pretty much same ballpark. 

OTOH if Strixhaven is an outlier then maybe there's nothing to be concerned about. I don't think most of the recent Sensitivity Reader stuff is a big deal for most people. IME even when the game was saying "It's OK to kill these guys, they're Always Chaotic Evil", most players would be very reluctant to attack on sight, and are inclined to seek assurance their PC actions are morally justified.


----------



## Yora

Micah Sweet said:


> No matter what changes they make, and what reason they're making them, they are still reissuing the core books again and hoping people will re-buy the rules.  That's not an easy sell, so marketing will be important. They have to convince folks that it's worth spending another $150 again.  I'm sure, for example, that they'll throw money at CR to get them on board.



I really don't know where they would be going with a new major rules overhaul. 3rd, 4th, and 5th edition all addressed underlying mechanical aspects that many people were not really happy about.
What about 5th edition would need fixing, other than character option bloat?


----------



## Yaarel

Mechanically, I want 5e to fix the six abilities.

Make sure there is no overlap between one ability and an other. It should be unambiguous about when to use one ability and when to use an other.

Make sure each ability is equally useful and powerful, compared to each other. So investing in any ability is a reasonably beneficial choice.

If the solution is to reduce the number of abilities to four, or to increase them to eight, then allow these variant rules to be convenient and easy to implement during gameplay.


----------



## HammerMan

Yora said:


> What about 5th edition would need fixing, other than character option bloat?



Uneven options between martial and caster
uneven ability spread among subclasses for the same class 
race features all over the place
(all of the above can fall under balance)

Races getting an overhaul (see linages)
More options built into the classes themselves outside of subclass
Major spell changes (mostly I am thinking summoning spells look very different 7 years later)
Alignment and RP suggestions.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Yaarel said:


> Mechanically, I want 5e to fix the six abilities.
> 
> Make sure there is no overlap between one ability and an other. It should be unambiguous about when to use one ability and when to use an other.
> 
> Make sure each ability is equally useful and powerful, compared to each other. So investing in any ability is a reasonably beneficial choice.
> 
> If the solution is to reduce the number of abilities to four, or to increase them to eight, then allow these variant rules to be convenient and easy to implement during gameplay.



Unfortunately, I feel very strongly that any significant change to what the ability scores do would be a bridge too far for WotC to consider, even with a 6e.


----------



## jayoungr

Ruin Explorer said:


> (World of Warcraft has been considering dropping the central, well, war, and allowing cross-faction stuff for years, it's so built-in that it's hard to do though).



Eh, it's a perennial rumor among the fanbase, but I don't believe anyone connected with the developers has ever officially stated that they were thinking about it.  And after quieting down the central war for a while, they reignited it HARD in 2018 with the next-to-latest expansion, to the point where players have been at each others' throats in a not-fun way ever since.


----------



## Oofta

Yora said:


> I really don't know where they would be going with a new major rules overhaul. 3rd, 4th, and 5th edition all addressed underlying mechanical aspects that many people were not really happy about.
> What about 5th edition would need fixing, other than character option bloat?



Ask 5 different people on this forum and you will probably get 5 different answers, many of them conflicting.

Personally?  A few spells could use tweaking and clarification.  There's a bit of wording here and there, like half orcs living in slums that should probably go.  I think the MM should go back to the percentage qualifier and clarify that the entries don't necessarily represent the entire population (it's there but buried now).    I think dex is overpowered in this edition, but honestly I'm not sure how to fix it.  I assume there will be some variation of flexible racial builds ala Tasha's, I hope they keep a default just for flavor.

No game is perfect but I'm not sure how much they can change without really pissing people off and causing a backlash.


----------



## Malmuria

If they were ambitious, they would add elements to make the game modular, since people want to adapt it for every style of rpg anyway.  The "DMs workshop" section of the dmg could be expanded into a full book that provides optional rules for each pillar of play and also advice on slimming the game down into something more rules lite and deadly.  They could also provide optional rules for adapting the game to different genres.


----------



## Mordhau

Malmuria said:


> If they were ambitious, they would add elements to make the game modular, since people want to adapt it for every style of rpg anyway.  The "DMs workshop" section of the dmg could be expanded into a full book that provides optional rules for each pillar of play and also advice on slimming the game down into something more rules lite and deadly.  They could also provide optional rules for adapting the game to different genres.



In the past I think they've been wary of that for reaons of preserving a sense of brand identity and shared experiences of play.

I don't know if they still feel that way.


----------



## EzekielRaiden

Malmuria said:


> If they were ambitious, they would add elements to make the game modular, since people want to adapt it for every style of rpg anyway.  The "DMs workshop" section of the dmg could be expanded into a full book that provides optional rules for each pillar of play and also advice on slimming the game down into something more rules lite and deadly.  They could also provide optional rules for adapting the game to different genres.



Sadly, I don't think the D&D team has this kind of ambition anymore. They tried some ambitious things in the early Next playtest, not a single one of which made it to the final product (oh, Playtest Sorcerer, how I grieve thy loss).


----------



## CleverNickName

EzekielRaiden said:


> (oh, Playtest Sorcerer, how I grieve thy loss).



I know at least one DM who still uses that playtest version of the Sorcerer class.


----------



## Yaarel

Oofta said:


> Ask 5 different people on this forum and you will probably get 5 different answers, many of them conflicting.
> 
> Personally?  A few spells could use tweaking and clarification.  There's a bit of wording here and there, like half orcs living in slums that should probably go.  I think the MM should go back to the percentage qualifier and clarify that the entries don't necessarily represent the entire population (it's there but buried now).    I think dex is overpowered in this edition, but honestly I'm not sure how to fix it.  I assume there will be some variation of flexible racial builds ala Tasha's, I hope they keep a default just for flavor.
> 
> No game is perfect but I'm not sure how much they can change without really pissing people off and causing a backlash.



To my surprise, splitting up the abilities to eight, by adding Perception and Athletics as separate abilities, works really well to make each of the eight balanced and discrete.

Then it is easy for old school to assign the same score to both Strength and Athletics, and to both Wisdom and Perception.


----------



## Mordhau

Yaarel said:


> To my surprise, splitting up the abilities to eight, by adding Perception and Athletics as separate abilities, works really well to make each of the eight balanced and discrete.
> 
> Then it is easy for old school to assign the same score to both Strength and Athletics, and to both Wisdom and Perception.



Why Athletics as a seperate ability score?

My gut feeling would probably incline to something like

Might (STr/Con)
Coordination (Ranged Attacks/Finesse attacks - possibly all melee - part of Dex)
Reflex (Initiative Armor Class part of Dex)
Education (Knowledge aspects of Intelligence)
Perception (part of Wis)
Willpower (other part of Wis)
Self (Charisma)


----------



## Yaarel

Mordhau said:


> Why Athletics as a seperate ability score?
> 
> My gut feeling would probably incline to something like
> 
> Might (STr/Con)
> Coordination (Ranged Attacks/Finesse attacks - possibly all melee - part of Dex)
> Reflex (Initiative Armor Class part of Dex)
> Education (Knowledge aspects of Intelligence)
> Perception (part of Wis)
> Willpower (other part of Wis)
> Self (Charisma)



Athletics works better as its own thing.

D&D discourages swashbuckling themes by splitting up the athletics − run, jump, fall, climb, balance, tumble, etcetera − between both Strength and Dexterity.

Athletics covers every body stunt and mobility. As a separate ability, it works perfect.

Then Strength handles tests of brute Strength (and extra damage), and Dexterity handles cautious precision and manual dexterity, like aiming a bow and stealth.

A separate Athletics also makes sense of small creatures that comparatively lack strength but are extremely athletic and mobile.



The most important thing is to ensure that the abilities are defined bottom-up: things that players actually roll for − perception, hiding, hitting, dodging − rather than vague abstractions that practically never happen during gameplay. (Looking at you, "good memory" "book knowledge" Intelligence. I have never rolled to see if my character "remembers" something. But even if it happens via a lore check, it would need to happen in almost every encounter to be worthy of an ability.)


----------



## Mordhau

Yaarel said:


> Athletics works better as its own thing.
> 
> D&D discourages swashbuckling themes by splitting up the athletics − run, jump, fall, climb, balance, tumble, etcetera − between both Strength and Dexterity.
> 
> Athletics covers every body stunt. As a separate ability, it works perfect.
> 
> Then Strength is handles tests of Strength (and extra damage), and Dexterity handles cautious precision and manual dexterity, like aiming a bow and stealth.



Hmmm...

Really you could replace Strength with Athletics (it sort of already is that in terms of skills).  Rolls to do things like lift heavy objects aren't really all that common, that they need a whole ability score to determine them.

I could see basically renaming Strength as Atheltics and using that as an excuse to switch some things around and take acrobatics out of Dex.

But I wouldn't want to have Athletics _and_ Strength as that makes Strength even less useful than it is now.  If you were to merge the remainder of Strength into Con it could work I guess.


----------



## Sabathius42

Malmuria said:


> If they were ambitious, they would add elements to make the game modular, since people want to adapt it for every style of rpg anyway.  The "DMs workshop" section of the dmg could be expanded into a full book that provides optional rules for each pillar of play and also advice on slimming the game down into something more rules lite and deadly.  They could also provide optional rules for adapting the game to different genres.



This is what they were supposed to do when 5e was playtesting but once it came out the "crunchy" options never really developed.


----------



## HammerMan

Sabathius42 said:


> This is what they were supposed to do when 5e was playtesting but once it came out the "crunchy" options never really developed.



yeah remember nobs and dials

aka vaporware


----------



## Yaarel

Mordhau said:


> Hmmm...
> 
> Really you could replace Strength with Athletics (it sort of already is that in terms of skills).  Rolls to do things like lift heavy objects aren't really all that common, that they need a whole ability score to determine them.
> 
> I could see basically renaming Strength as Atheltics and using that as an excuse to switch some things around and take acrobatics out of Dex.
> 
> But I wouldn't want to have Athletics _and_ Strength as that makes Strength even less useful than it is now.  If you were to merge the remainder of Strength into Con it could work I guess.



The thing is: whichever ability gets the athletic agile dodging mobility, should also get the AC bonus. So it means Strength improves AC, not Dexterity.

Separating Athletics out makes the shift more neutral.

Also, a creature with high Strength and low Athletics would feel like a lumbering brute. Vice versa, low Strength and high Athletics might feel like a cat.

The two dont necessarily correlate.



I figure Strength as in brute muscle will always add the damage bonus, so it will always have its fans. Also, Strength allows heavier armor and heavier weapons.


----------



## Minigiant

Sabathius42 said:


> This is what they were supposed to do when 5e was playtesting but once it came out the "crunchy" options never really developed.



If I were to name the greatest failing of 5e is that it was pretty much playtested and designed with the assumption of variant rules to modify the base experience and no only did very few of those rules come, it moved forward as if some of those variant rues were base and if future variant rules would not to be added.

Like there could and should have been official rules for Herioc, Mythical. Cinematic, Gritty, or Wuxia combat that used WOTC's resources and the large community base for playtesting.


----------



## Galandris

Even if it didn't make the base book, it could have been introduced through settings, including each his own specific "knobs and dials" to meet the feel of the game. I think it's too late to embrace this approach.


----------



## Staffan

Minigiant said:


> Like there could and should have been official rules for Herioc, Mythical. Cinematic, Gritty, or Wuxia combat that used WOTC's resources and the large community base for playtesting.






Galandris said:


> Even if it didn't make the base book, it could have been introduced through settings, including each his own specific "knobs and dials" to meet the feel of the game. I think it's too late to embrace this approach.



I get the feeling that there was a plan to do this originally, but they kind of pivoted away from that. I remember Mearls mentioning how they looked at additional settings not just as lore (geography, history, politics, etc.) but also as a way to tune the game differently. The example he used was how Greyhawk would be done with more old-school sensibilities and rules, like grittier healing and things like that. You can see the embryo of that in the DMG, where they discuss different "sub-genres" of fantasy and use various settings as examples.


----------



## Thomas Shey

Staffan said:


> I get the feeling that there was a plan to do this originally, but they kind of pivoted away from that. I remember Mearls mentioning how they looked at additional settings not just as lore (geography, history, politics, etc.) but also as a way to tune the game differently. The example he used was how Greyhawk would be done with more old-school sensibilities and rules, like grittier healing and things like that. You can see the embryo of that in the DMG, where they discuss different "sub-genres" of fantasy and use various settings as examples.




Its not hard to cynically see this as a bone thrown at that point to various groups the core game wasn't going to serve well to minimize outcry, then figuring out later once the game was established that said groups could, functionally, go pound sand because they weren't going to have any meaningful impact on the success of the game.  I doubt it was deliberate, but I'm not sure, in practice, that wasn't how it played out.


----------



## Oofta

As far as I know, Mearls was the only one that talked about a modular game early on, and then in only one interview.  Seems like people took a molehill and turned it into a mountain.

You can already change the lóok and feel of the game with a few tweaks and minor house rules.  But you can only build in so much flexibility before complexity skyrockets.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

S'mon said:


> IME even when the game was saying "It's OK to kill these guys, they're Always Chaotic Evil", most players would be very reluctant to attack on sight, and are inclined to seek assurance their PC actions are morally justified.



That's been my experience too. Players are less inherently psychopathic than a lot of adventure writers seem to assume (even most quasi-murderhobos). However, adventure writers consistently underestimate just how much an NPC who is even a mild wanker towards the PCs will turn the players against that NPC, but that's a separate issue lol.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

jayoungr said:


> Eh, it's a perennial rumor among the fanbase, but I don't believe anyone connected with the developers has ever officially stated that they were thinking about it.  And after quieting down the central war for a while, they reignited it HARD in 2018 with the next-to-latest expansion, to the point where players have been at each others' throats in a not-fun way ever since.



It's absolutely true it was a "just a rumour" for a long time (literally since Vanilla), but they've literally openly discussed it multiple times in the last 3-4 years. If I wasn't feeling so lazy and it wasn't 1am I might dig up some quotes lol. But I assure, they devs have discussed it openly ever since BfA, and particularly in the Shadowlands era. Not in a "we will do this" way, but in a "we're considering do this and looking if it's technically feasible" way.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Oofta said:


> As far as I know, Mearls was the only one that talked about a modular game early on, and then in only one interview.  Seems like people took a molehill and turned it into a mountain.
> 
> You can already change the lóok and feel of the game with a few tweaks and minor house rules.  But you can only build in so much flexibility before complexity skyrockets.



I actually think there was an honest intention to make 5E more modular than it eventually ended up, but that the modular elements ended up being very half-baked or simply not included because of deadlines. There are several things you can "tweak" in 5E - but most of them are not very well implemented, some outright badly implemented (not really a diss on 5E, it's fine without them). In general 5E has probably the most half-baked optional rules I've seen in any edition, and given how they seem it really looks like time pressure.


----------



## Thomas Shey

Oofta said:


> As far as I know, Mearls was the only one that talked about a modular game early on, and then in only one interview.  Seems like people took a molehill and turned it into a mountain.
> 
> You can already change the lóok and feel of the game with a few tweaks and minor house rules.  But you can only build in so much flexibility before complexity skyrockets.




I'm going to again say a game with as much exception based design as D&D has had from day one (even the simplest versions had it in terms of spell lists) is not going to be able to say it couldn't have more flexibility if it wanted it without significantly increasing complexity, especially since the flexible components can be dutifully ignored by anyone who doesn't want to use them, and a such supply no meaningful cognitive load.


----------



## Mordhau

Thomas Shey said:


> I'm going to again say a game with as much exception based design as D&D has had from day one (even the simplest versions had it in terms of spell lists) is not going to be able to say it couldn't have more flexibility if it wanted it without significantly increasing complexity, especially since the flexible components can be dutifully ignored by anyone who doesn't want to use them, and a such supply no meaningful cognitive load.



Just the addition of magic to the game already adds complexity to the base system.

Base system - the only pluses and minuses are advantage/disadvantage.  Add in spells and we have, Guidance, Bless, Bane etc.


----------



## Thomas Shey

Mordhau said:


> Just the addition of magic to the game already adds complexity to the base system.
> 
> Base system - the only pluses and minuses are advantage/disadvantage.  Add in spells and we have, Guidance, Bless, Bane etc.




That was my point.  The spell system already loads enough complexity on to the system that I absolutely think you could toss in a lot of additional things without notably upping the average complexity.  Hell, you could probably do that and make it simpler if you went to a build-a-spell system with common components, but we all know most of the base would have apoplexy at that.


----------



## Oofta

Thomas Shey said:


> I'm going to again say a game with as much exception based design as D&D has had from day one (even the simplest versions had it in terms of spell lists) is not going to be able to say it couldn't have more flexibility if it wanted it without significantly increasing complexity, especially since the flexible components can be dutifully ignored by anyone who doesn't want to use them, and a such supply no meaningful cognitive load.



I think making a modular system is easier said than done and also carries it's own set of risks.  If there had been enough demand maybe it could have been done.  But I don't think there's that much of a demand.


----------



## teitan

Yora said:


> I really don't know where they would be going with a new major rules overhaul. 3rd, 4th, and 5th edition all addressed underlying mechanical aspects that many people were not really happy about.
> What about 5th edition would need fixing, other than character option bloat?



There is character option bloat in 5e? Where?


----------



## Thomas Shey

Oofta said:


> I think making a modular system is easier said than done and also carries it's own set of risks.  If there had been enough demand maybe it could have been done.  But I don't think there's that much of a demand.




It absolutely does, but its not intrinsically any more complex than what D&D has been for a long, long time.  But as you say, its not what people expect, or the spell system would have been addressed years ago; even the ones in 4e were fundamentally ad-hoc.


----------

