I'm seeing all the D&D vloggers and social mediaites posting that they are getting invites to WotC HQ to discuss their thoughts and opinions on the new edition of D&D. A quick glance through their channels and posts and they appear to be the wokest of the woke. The transwomen are women and the toddlers need gender identity education crowd. White babies are born racist and need to be taught CRT.

This is a clear indication of just how Woke 6th edition is going to be. And my prediction is that 6th edition is going to be hated even more than 4th. It is going to be bad.

Quote from: Thor's Nads on March 09, 2023, 07:17:24 PM
I'm seeing all the D&D vloggers and social mediaites posting that they are getting invites to WotC HQ to discuss their thoughts and opinions on the new edition of D&D. A quick glance through their channels and posts and they appear to be the wokest of the woke. The transwomen are women and the toddlers need gender identity education crowd. White babies are born racist and need to be taught CRT.

This is a clear indication of just how Woke 6th edition is going to be. And my prediction is that 6th edition is going to be hated even more than 4th. It is going to be bad.

   I said I was all done with D&D.  I found myself looking around the internet and found several pdfs of 1st edition books.  Ran it for the gang.  We are not done with D&D, just looks like we will be playing 1st edition.

Greetings!

*Laughing* Yeah, well, there is the really soon-to-be released Shadowdark game. Beyond that, there is OSE, LOTFP, DCC, amongst others. And, well, there is also OSRIC and even original 1E. Even if I keep using my hacked and modified 5E, I'm still not going back to WOTC for anything. WOTC has killed longtime "whale" fans and paying CUSTOMERS like myself. It still amazes me how WOTC are such absolutely incompetent, corrupt, and greedy morons. As well as arrogant, and hate-filled racists. They can choke, and burn in the crackling fires slowly.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK on March 09, 2023, 07:37:55 PM
Greetings!

*Laughing* Yeah, well, there is the really soon-to-be released Shadowdark game. Beyond that, there is OSE, LOTFP, DCC, amongst others. And, well, there is also OSRIC and even original 1E. Even if I keep using my hacked and modified 5E, I'm still not going back to WOTC for anything. WOTC has killed longtime "whale" fans and paying CUSTOMERS like myself. It still amazes me how WOTC are such absolutely incompetent, corrupt, and greedy morons. As well as arrogant, and hate-filled racists. They can choke, and burn in the crackling fires slowly.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Agreed, I have all the old school AWESOME games I need. Enough for a lifetime. It is the upcoming generation that is going to see this garbage and be turned off of D&D. And the ones who do embrace it are going to be even more radicalized. And as for us old timers, well you saw what happened to the "olds" in Mao's China.

Quote from: Thor's Nads on March 09, 2023, 08:33:29 PM

Quote from: SHARK on March 09, 2023, 07:37:55 PM
Greetings!

*Laughing* Yeah, well, there is the really soon-to-be released Shadowdark game. Beyond that, there is OSE, LOTFP, DCC, amongst others. And, well, there is also OSRIC and even original 1E. Even if I keep using my hacked and modified 5E, I'm still not going back to WOTC for anything. WOTC has killed longtime "whale" fans and paying CUSTOMERS like myself. It still amazes me how WOTC are such absolutely incompetent, corrupt, and greedy morons. As well as arrogant, and hate-filled racists. They can choke, and burn in the crackling fires slowly.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Agreed, I have all the old school AWESOME games I need. Enough for a lifetime. It is the upcoming generation that is going to see this garbage and be turned off of D&D. And the ones who do embrace it are going to be even more radicalized. And as for us old timers, well you saw what happened to the "olds" in Mao's China.

My players will shift to the games myself and the other DM's are choosing. None of us want to be in the Paywalled garden that is 6E and are happily going to look at Shadowdark to fullfill that role for our gaming panacea.  We will no longer need DNDBeyond to manager the spreadsheet of a PC and everything is so painfully simple that all we will need is our dice and imagination and gleefully use everything else at our fingertips with 1/4 the required DM overhead.

Neither of us are going to pay per month for Virtual PC management for our 10+ players and we know those cheap basatards won't pay fuck all.  I refuse to pay a monthly fee to play D&D in this manner for my in person game.

Quote from: Thor's Nads on March 09, 2023, 08:33:29 PM

Quote from: SHARK on March 09, 2023, 07:37:55 PM
Greetings!

*Laughing* Yeah, well, there is the really soon-to-be released Shadowdark game. Beyond that, there is OSE, LOTFP, DCC, amongst others. And, well, there is also OSRIC and even original 1E. Even if I keep using my hacked and modified 5E, I'm still not going back to WOTC for anything. WOTC has killed longtime "whale" fans and paying CUSTOMERS like myself. It still amazes me how WOTC are such absolutely incompetent, corrupt, and greedy morons. As well as arrogant, and hate-filled racists. They can choke, and burn in the crackling fires slowly.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Agreed, I have all the old school AWESOME games I need. Enough for a lifetime. It is the upcoming generation that is going to see this garbage and be turned off of D&D. And the ones who do embrace it are going to be even more radicalized. And as for us old timers, well you saw what happened to the "olds" in Mao's China.

Greetings!

Yeah, my friend. So true! It is weird though. I've been a customer of TSR/WOTC literally for *years*. Honesty, before some of the current designers that work for WOTC have even been *alive.* It is depressing to see this company transform, right before your eyes--into a company of people that hate YOU. They have become arrogant, smug, and condescending. That's just by their prattle and mind-numbing interviews, articles, and statements. DESIGN-wise, they keep failing massively there, too. Constantly pushing and driving the game into happy Rainbow Hippo Drag Queen Story Hour--instead of a heroic, dangerous game word filled with knights, wizards, righteous priests and barbarians fighting hordes of savage, evil monsters.

Instead, I feel constantly like I'm trapped in a room blaring with recycled promo-commercials for Trans Happy Hour, Feminist Fantastic, and BIPOC Struggle sessions.

Meanwhile, book by book--the game has mechanically and flavour-wise been transformed into a weird game of invincible, REN FAIR cosplay superheroes--instead of a brutal and harsh world of medieval combat, exploration, and adventure.

And then, the new frontier is to push all this stuff onto a digital, online AI format where I get Pay-To-Win'd to death and made broke by endless micro-transactions, and a MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION FEE.

I'm done with WOTC.

As for the future and the *Olds*--*laughing* Yeah. It definitely isn't looking to be a rose garden for sure!

Like the Black-Scout-Survival YouTube program says, "Stay Frosty. Stay Strapped. Stay Dangerous!"

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Its one of the reasons why I hacked my own system from OSE and then printed them via lulu.com and handed them out to my players

TBH, I'm sure most of you guys are like me and all you need is a set of dice, paper, and a pencil and you can make everything up on the fly easily enough without any books.

A few weeks ago I started a B/X (OSE) game with some people at work, and we are all having the time of our lives. 

My regular goup is still stuck on 5e.  I aim to change that.  D&D is here to stay.

Quote from: SHARK on March 09, 2023, 07:37:55 PM
Even if I keep using my hacked and modified 5E, I'm still not going back to WOTC for anything. WOTC has killed longtime "whale" fans and paying CUSTOMERS like myself. It still amazes me how WOTC are such absolutely incompetent, corrupt, and greedy morons.

They were incredibly fortunate to create a nigh-on $150 million dollar/year brand with D&D, as the result of some good decisions made during the development of 5e D&D, almost entirely by Mike Mearls afaict. They're reeling in vast sums of dosh for absolutely minimal effort - compare what WoTC puts out to Kobold Press or Paizo.

So naturally they then declare "the brand is under-monetised" - and proceed to torpedo it. 

My current RPG plan is to

1. Play (BRP-based) Dragonbane/Drakkar och Demoner, which seems really good, for generic fantasy gaming. My playtest session was awesome, second game tomorrow!

2. For megadungeon Dungeon Fantasy, I currently think I'll be sticking with 5e D&D. It seems to hit the sweet spot for me and my players, being reasonably simple with a lot of options, and is well suited to "six encounters in the dungeon, than rest" type play. I mostly use converted OSR-system adventures/dungeons for this, and I could use S&W/OSRIC/LL etc etc - but after eight years I still think 5e works fine.

Re #2, I don't feel like giving WoTC any more money, though. Certainly I won't be getting ONE/6e or their VTT, Roll20 does what I want for a VTT, and I have lots of money invested there.

I wonder if 6e could be a boon for controlling sources used, inasmuch as the new material won't be seen as 5e, hopefully? I'll hopefully no longer have to yell at players "No you CAN'T cast Silvery Barbs* (you idiot)!"  My biggest fear I guess is that WoTC so muddy the waters that it becomes hard to run an un-tainted 5e game. Certainly I expect them to trash D&D Beyond, but I'm ready for that. I'm more concerned about them corrupting my 5e material on Roll20.

*A terrible OP spell from Strixhaven, a 5e magic school campaign.

Quote from: S'mon on March 10, 2023, 02:53:08 AM
They were incredibly fortunate to create a nigh-on $150 million dollar/year brand with D&D, as the result of some good decisions made during the development of 5e D&D, almost entirely by Mike Mearls afaict. They're reeling in vast sums of dosh for absolutely minimal effort - compare what WoTC puts out to Kobold Press or Paizo.

So naturally they then declare "the brand is under-monetised" - and proceed to torpedo it. 

And let us not forget that the great RPGPundit consulted on 5e, and you can see some of his philosophy of design shine in places.

As a player from way back in 1981, and of every edition, I came to 5e unwillingly after the debacle of 4th edition, wanting nothing to do with WotC D&D and it has become my favorite edition since B/X. It will long be remembered as a great edition. By no means perfect (the PHB seriously needs a rewrite and reorg), but great nonetheless.

Quote from: S'mon on March 10, 2023, 03:04:46 AM
For megadungeon Dungeon Fantasy, I currently think I'll be sticking with 5e D&D. It seems to hit the sweet spot for me and my players, being reasonably simple with a lot of options, and is well suited to "six encounters in the dungeon, than rest" type play. I mostly use converted OSR-system adventures/dungeons for this, and I could use S&W/OSRIC/LL etc etc - but after eight years I still think 5e works fine.

The conclusion that I've come to is that Megadungeons are what D&D 5e is mechanically optimised for. It does them better than any OSR Retroclone but at the same time it performs worse than any OSR Retroclone at any other kind of play.

I don't even think it was a deliberate choice either. I'd say that if the number of playtest sessions for 5e during development was mapped by level then most would be early levels with things tailing off toward 10th and nothing at all beyond that. This is because 5e seems to have been designed to fix problems with low-level play in a way that breaks the game at higher levels.

Old School players know the drill. At 1st level you aren't a hero carving your way through the Orc Hordes. A 1st level adventurer is in a survival horror game; the power fantasy kicks in at higher levels and the name of the game is to somehow beat the odds and get there, thus making that high-level power trip feel like it was earned. 5e decided this wasn't optimal and re-designed things so you'd feel like a hero at level one.

Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. A lot of players have always disliked the low-level gauntlet. Unlike the 80s there's more competition for D&D now, not just from other systems but from the sheer amount of crap getting churned out for video games and streaming TV. Saturation with those things means the modern youth is likely to give something like D&D a shorter "trial period" before dropping it if they don't start feeling invested. So making first level more fun to play was IMO the right option for 5e. The problem was that rather than giving them more of the high level stuff at low level they just gave more stuff full stop, and this meant that past a point 5e was broken and there was no challenge to the players.

Thus Megadungeons.

5e is designed so that 1st level players can clear a much larger dungeon than they could in 2e with a smaller PC party and lower PC fatalities. The factors that made this possible remain at higher levels, meaning they also can clear a larger dungeon than was possible at their level in 2e. At some point a Megadungeon becomes the only thing that can provide a challenge for D&D 5e PCs using the RAW.

Quote from: Krugus on March 10, 2023, 12:43:56 AM
Its one of the reasons why I hacked my own system from OSE and then printed them via lulu.com and handed them out to my players

TBH, I'm sure most of you guys are like me and all you need is a set of dice, paper, and a pencil and you can make everything up on the fly easily enough without any books.

Given a GM with some modest, thoughtful experience, that's always been enough.  The main benefits of a set system from someone else are to smooth that learning curve for GM and players, avoid the work of having to make and document your rules/rulings, and transfer that knowledge to another group.  There are, of course, many potential secondary benefits, such as having inspiring art and ready-made adventures.   

If they were Woke and somehow still delivering quality, then I doubt we'd be having this conversation.  However, woke and quality have a negative feedback death spiral effect.  It's not get woke, go broke, or even going broke, get woke to try to salvage it.  That's the short version.  The slighter longer expansion is the kind of person who is rabid woke is allergic to real work, limited at discerning quality, and imaginatively bankrupt.  Also, they tend to sense this about themselves and be insecure about it, with all kinds of mental gymnastics to avoid confronting it. In some cases, the rabid woke with substantial natural talent can ride that talent for some time, especially if they haven't yet driven off associates that are maybe less talented but not so limited in real work, discernment, and imagination.

The natural outcome of any quality death spiral is that the benefits of buying a set system decrease, slowly at first and then more rapidly.  There is a tipping point where it becomes easier for the thoughtful GM to ignore the system, because it is more work to work around and fix system problems and disentangle players from bad advice than it is to do just document it all yourself from a blank slate--or some other game that's a better starting point. 

As with any such quality death spirals in a long beloved franchise, some people will stick no matter what, and many more will hang on long past the point where the franchise was their best choice.  I think 6E is probably going to be a monetary success, based of the inertia of the 5E success.  What it won't be is a good, useful system that helps people run and learn to run an RPG session.  Or something that a thoughtful, moderately experienced GM will find helpful.  The consequences of that failure will probably be downstream.

Quote from: Thor's Nads on March 10, 2023, 05:08:56 AM
And let us not forget that the great RPGPundit consulted on 5e, and you can see some of his philosophy of design shine in places.

Yes, I think perhaps Mearls's real genius was in knowing to consult with the right people! Plus the public testing & feedback. He always says he's not a rules guy, he seems rather lacking in self confidence, and it's a bit of a mystery to me exactly how 5e D&D initially turned out so well. Unfortunately the game then fell under the control of Jeremy Crawford, who combines boundless belief in his own brilliance with a very low level of actual rules competence (not to mention his determination to 'queer' the game), setting it on its current downward path.

Quote from: Tantavalist on March 10, 2023, 05:20:33 AM
5e decided this wasn't optimal and re-designed things so you'd feel like a hero at level one.

If that was the intent, I think they comprehensively failed. An encounter between 1st level 5e PCs and kobolds or giant rats, both attacking at +4 with advantage from Pack Tactics, is just as horrific as anything I've seen in B/X. Even goblins are terrifying if the DM uses their disengage & hide bonus actions - which 5e Rogue PCs don't get until level 2.

I actually find that 5e PCs start off relatively weaker at 1st level than in other editions, and experience a generally shallower power gradient, apart from the big bump at 5th level.