Quote from: SHARK on Today at 09:23:16 AMYeah, the non-existant Woke Liberal market audience.

25% to 30, 40% of people under the age of 30 are unemployed and fucking broke. If they are lucky, they are working as a Barista at Starbucks and living 6 to an apartment. Still, with the high cost of living, crushing prices everywhere for so many things, it isn't a stretch to think that 50% of people under 30 are thus broke or stretched close to it. Them having disposable income to lavish on D&D is unlikely.

But WOTC says fuck to all the Gen Xers and Boomers, and people over 40 that actually have the *MONEY* to spend on the D&D hobby.

Absolute morons. As usual, Liberals are fucking idiots when it comes to understanding economics and business, and really, anything in the REAL WORLD. They are too busy staying high on drugs, or circle-jerking each other on some fantasy dream of Marxist Utopianism.

WOTC needs to entirely ignore Greyhawk. Greyhawk has devoted fans, and doesn't need WOTC to do anything with Greyhawk.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Economically it makes no sense by switching their target demographic from Gen X (me) and Boomers who generally have money to spend of entertainment, to the Millennials and Gen Z who don't have money to spend on entertainment.

I think they just looked at numbers of people by age group and not taking in annual income by age group. A younger generation may be larger in numbers, but it doesn't mean they have an income to have money to spend.

Generally speaking, the older you are, the more economically stable you are.

If it were me, I would have cast as broad as a net I could to get everyone from 10-60+. Basically I would have made the rules a clean up/clarification of both B/X and AD&D 1st ed. maybe have a skill system similar to 3E as well, though skills would be limited by class or race. By doing that, I think it would appear more "modern", but accessible to everyone.

Art-wise, I would have called in some of the old school artists like Otus, Elmore, etc. and some of the newer artists who have an old school vibe (Brian "GLAD" Thomas, Peter Mullen, Stefan Poag, etc.).

Oh. Wait...

THE OLD SCHOOL RENAISSIANSE HAVE BEEN DOING THIS FOR YEARS.

Sarcasm aside, this is why I went OSR years ago. Arguably before it was a thing (Hackmaster 4E IMO is what really kicked of the OSR).

I never changed. D&D did, and not for the better.

2nd ed was fine. At least it was backward compatible.

Never liked 3e. 20+ page conversion book and nothing was backward compatible. They made it different enough to where you had to buy all new books. Nope. Not me.

4E: The Edition That Shall Not Be Named. Where the video-game vibe came in. start of cutting ties with D&D roots.

5E: the ties to older editions finally cut. feels like a computer RPG than table top, and that's by design. more like Dragon Age, and less (if any) Tolkien. Sword & Sorcery influences are no longer evident.

The OSR is less restrictive and more inclusive than D&D today could ever wish it could be. Sure, they say the DMG has sold "Record numbers", but how many of those promptly put is aside, never to play again? Or sold it online? Or returned it?

Yeah, those are the numbers you don't hear about, though I've heard stories and seen pics of the latest D&D books ending up in bargain bins. Just saying...

They get initial customers, but the number of RETURNING customers I'm willing to bet are low.

Top it off with the DEI hill Wotc is willing to die on, and you have a slow death of the game that started to whole rpg hobby.