You can absolutely play D&D using just the basic rules online.

Its not a fad. But it is riding a massive tsumami of a wave of players fed up with WOTC screwing things up one way or another with prior editions. Be that the 'five year plan', incompatibility, or just insulting the people you want to buy your damn game. Which prior to 5e WOTC had honed to an art form.

With 4e WOTC got the players hands on involved and that is something few companies have done. This really helped to garner the game goodwill even with those who might not like all its elements. (And the rest are just morons for hating it because someone told them to.) It just about hits all the good points and the bad points are easily swept aside or fixed with minimal trouble.

A fad is where fans latch tenaciously onto something that would otherwise be deemed stupid for a usually short span and then realize this was stupid and move on. Be it some false value or clever marketing. CCGs being the most telling one. In the span of 5 years it ascended and then crashed brutally hard and like Pet Rocks and Beanie Babies only a vanishingly few die hards cling tenuously to life yet.

That is not 5e D&D. Its not popular "because". It is popular because it works and works surprisingly well despite the flaws.

Quote from: NYTFLYR;1048620having not looked at D&D since 3.5... is there still the "Feat Bloat" that was found in 3.5?

No. The "feats" in 5e are more like class options rather than widgets. They were a little moreso that in the playtest. So you could make a fighter that dabbled a little in magic for example. Or a wizard who trains to use armour and shield. Theres fewer of them and the PCs get usually fewer of them because each feat you take means you arent getting 2 stat points to spend.

I do not think WOTC added any new feats till around the third expansion book, Xanithars Guide, and those are mostly race related. Heck there hasnt even been much item or even monster bloat yet and they have not yet even added a new class. (We did playtest one but feedback has WOTC rethinking it.) And even new races and class paths have been fairly few.

It may be at a peak. But I'm pretty pleased that it's not a consumer-based fad based on buying loads of product. There are supplements but there doesn't seem to be a culture of groups needing to keep up with the latest release.

Quote from: The_Shadow;1048976It may be at a peak. But I'm pretty pleased that it's not a consumer-based fad based on buying loads of product. There are supplements but there doesn't seem to be a culture of groups needing to keep up with the latest release.

A question related to this: how much of the audience is being brought in and sustained by Organized Play? And what are the implications of that?

I wouldnt call 5e a fad, seems to be going strong still.

I would say shows like Critical Role are a fad, which are dramatically boosting 5e sales (my guess).

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1048983A question related to this: how much of the audience is being brought in and sustained by Organized Play? And what are the implications of that?

Hard to say. One thing so far WOTC seems to be doing right that TSR eventually botched is avoiding the problems the RPGA eventually developed. Adventurers League seems to be working overall. WOTC might still botch it eventually somehow. But for now it is working.

The bigger question is what happens if/when WOTC cuts AL off? I think that as with the deserved death of the RPGA that things will coast along just fine and that DMs that were there for AL will continue and probably would have even without.

Quote from: Omega;1049022Hard to say. One thing so far WOTC seems to be doing right that TSR eventually botched is avoiding the problems the RPGA eventually developed. Adventurers League seems to be working overall. WOTC might still botch it eventually somehow. But for now it is working.

The bigger question is what happens if/when WOTC cuts AL off? I think that as with the deserved death of the RPGA that things will coast along just fine and that DMs that were there for AL will continue and probably would have even without.

What happened to the RPGA? When did it die? Weirdly I cannot find anything via Google.

Edit: continued googling found this from 2011 http://pixelatedgeek.com/2011/04/may-the-rpga-rest-in-peace/ - no reasons given though.

Quote from: S'mon;1049027What happened to the RPGA? When did it die? Weirdly I cannot find anything via Google.

My memory is sort of hazy on this, but the early RPGA was tied to a subscription to Polyhedron magazine and provided some nice perks in membership, such as access to certain non-public modules and the like.I joined in the mid 1980's and lost my membership card long ago, but still have my RPGA pin.  Somewhere along the way they switched to a free membership without any perks; I think that the switch to "free" made the whole thing not-so-special, and IMO that's what caused its eventual decline.

I'm not sure that the RPGA is technically "dead" since RPGA membership numbers were combined with WOTC's other product numbers (e.g. Magic players and the like) so that a person has one WOTC number instead of many individual game numbers. The current Adventurer's League is probably the descendent of the original RPGA "Living" campaigns (Living Greyhawk, Living Force, etc.).


EDIT: A little searching seems to confirm that WOTC issues a "DCI / RPGA Membership Number" so technically the RPGA is still around.

Quote from: Motorskills;1048641If it was a fad it would have disappeared two years ago.

This.  That's it.  The numbers don't lie.

Quote from: S'mon;1049027What happened to the RPGA? When did it die? Weirdly I cannot find anything via Google.

Edit: continued googling found this from 2011 http://pixelatedgeek.com/2011/04/may-the-rpga-rest-in-peace/ - no reasons given though.

When I first became an RPGA member it was pretty fun, Though by then Polyhedron was in progressive decline. But by the mid to late 90s there was alot of grumbling about how RPGA was running events and how it was becoming more and more about DMs getting points and making players fill out the damn form at the end of a session than actually, you know, run the session. Saw this myself even and yeah it IS fucking annoying as all hell. After 2001 lost track of it and after the mess with Dragon Storms RPGA-like guild Id pretty much had it.

Polyhedron was getting more and more anemic and eventually was folded into Dungeon and then apparently ended. For the span of about 10 issues, around Dungeon/Poly 91 to 101 though they were putting out some really nice mini settings for things like Planet Romance, X-files-esque investigation, Mecha, Music Band adventures, Cannonball Run-esque races and more.

At some point WOTC folded the RPGA membership into some sort of blanket membership.

The RPGA represented everything that I hated about convention style play. DMs who only wanted to get glowing reviews on the feedback forms, Players who traded out with DMs to run certain adventures in order to get certificates for powerful magic items or favors, and absolute plothammer railroad adventures that might as well have been video games with bad graphics.

The RPGA's bastard stepchild of the Adventurer's League I despise because my local branch has succumbed to the creeping SJW horror and it sucks what little fun there was left in organized play of 5E.

Now, the one shining example of worthwhile stuff that has survived from the RPGA is Polyhedron. Before Polyhedron became absorbed by Dungeon (in the same way that The Thing absorbed and consumed people), the 'zine produced some great stuff. I still go back and mine old issues for WEG d6 Star Wars material - back when they covered more than just D&D.

I do think it is a boom, which is part fad. I think it may not be purely a fad because a lot of other factors like the rise of social media and smart phones are probably also part of the equation. I do think anytime something like this happens, the pattern is the hobby expands, then contracts as the boom loses steam. The question is when it stops expanding and by how much it contracts. Also how much new blood continues to enter the hobby. I think enough elements are coming together that the hobby will likely be larger at the end of this and a lot of new platforms for generating excitement and recruitment will still be in place. So I am cautiously optimistic.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1048600But is this a fad? Are a bunch of people playing now because of Stranger Things and other nostalgic nods to D&D, and will that pass?

It's a fad, but just like the 3e boom, many players got hooked on the hobby and stuck around.

However, I'm quite sure those hardcore D&D community members whose total RPGing involves watching YouTube videos won't be around much longer.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1048944You can absolutely play D&D using just the basic rules online.

You can. But it's not the same as a published, marketed book you can buy on Amazon. It still feels like DIY. When you move beyond the hardcore in a hobby and into casuals - true casuals - convenience and ease of entry trump everything.

And a book designed from the ground up to introduce casual players into a basic, streamlined D&D would look dramatically different from the basic rules posted on line. It wouldn't be walls of text. It would be much more graphic heavy and text light, and it would use modern principles of instructional design - something WotC pretty much abandoned with 5E.

4E was actually miles ahead of 5E in presenting complex information in a usable and attractive manner. It was just the wrong system. 5E's system with 4E's presentation would be far more accessible and attractive to casual and new players.