NOT a "Fad" - as I said in other two recent threads about 5th edition D&D...

Its has been and still is an active mover on the shelves.

 Hell, I was shopping at a 'TARGET" store earlier tonight and they had 7 copies of the 5th edition beginners box on a promotional end cap. (Same price as at our store ...those bastards...)

- Ed C.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1049419It's a fad, but just like the 3e boom, many players got hooked on the hobby and stuck around.

That's not a fad, that's a 'taste maker'.  Fads fade away.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1049419However, I'm quite sure those hardcore D&D community members whose total RPGing involves watching YouTube videos won't be around much longer.

Citation needed.

Quote from: Haffrung;10495084E 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.

And yet it's extremely popular. So no, I don't agree with your assessment.

Quote from: Nerzenjäger;1049564And yet it's extremely popular. So no, I don't agree with your assessment.

There's actually some exceptionally poor presentation in the 4e PHB. The Powers by Level are clearly presented, but some of the class abilities you get at 1st are extremely hard to parse, I remember the Fighter's battlefield control abilities being especially bad. It's easy to fail when you don't use 'natural language' approach, bulletin-brief presentation is quite a technical skill.

Quote from: Haffrung;1049508And 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.

Print out the Basic pdf in two or three booklets, include it in an expanded starter set, and they are three-quarters there.  Only thing that would be missing would be the graphic and additional instructions in those booklets.  Heck, Put the Basic PDF in a 2:1 ratio column layout, with commentary and graphics in the narrow column, and they are nine-tenths there.  

Whether that is ammo for your point or a counter-point, I don't know.  The pieces are all there for someone that wants it.  It's the easy assembly and final instructions that are missing.

Quote from: Nerzenjäger;1049564And yet it's extremely popular. So no, I don't agree with your assessment.

So if A is more popular than B, then all elements of A are superior to all elements of B?

Tabletop boardgames are more popular than tabletop RPGs. So is everything about tabletop boardgames better than everything about tabletop RPGs?

Quote from: Haffrung;1049597So if A is more popular than B, then all elements of A are superior to all elements of B?

Tabletop boardgames are more popular than tabletop RPGs. So is everything about tabletop boardgames better than everything about tabletop RPGs?

Implicit in my disagreement was my opinion of them already doing most stuff right. I don't think 5E is hard to grasp at all presentation-wise, even for absolute beginners. Not every single thing is better, sure, but it's all around better.

Quote from: Nerzenjäger;1049600Implicit in my disagreement was my opinion of them already doing most stuff right. I don't think 5E is hard to grasp at all presentation-wise, even for absolute beginners. Not every single thing is better, sure, but it's all around better.

Only in the tabletop RPG hobby do people still believe the best way to present instructions and rules is in blocks of texts, with vital content buried in paragraphs full of filler content. Anyone who works in information or instructional design would laugh at a 5E rule book as something straight out of the 80s.

I've been playing D&D since 1979, and 5E since the initial Next playtests. And I still have to make cheat-sheets when I make a character because class abilities and levelling processes are buried in text. I also have to make my own DM aid sheets to summarize rules and effects. I shouldn't have to make cheat-sheets to play a game - the rules should be cheat-sheets.

Quote from: Haffrung;1049602I've been playing D&D since 1979, and 5E since the initial Next playtests. And I still have to make cheat-sheets when I make a character because class abilities and levelling processes are buried in text. I also have to make my own DM aid sheets to summarize rules and effects. I shouldn't have to make cheat-sheets to play a game - the rules should be cheat-sheets.

This runs completely contrary to all my anecdotal experience observing several different groups learning 5e.  The basics of playing a class are super easy to get but to really make classes sing and make the party mesh takes some time.  That's exactly what I want from a game -- quick to pick up but hard to master.

I needed cheat sheets and such the first couple of times I played 5E, but by now most of the system is pretty intuitive to me and I think it's much better than the past few editions of the game. My experience tells me that most players figure out 5E pretty quickly, but not everyone. I think sometimes a person used to other editions tends to be at a disadvantage because they have to "unlearn" some things and then learn others.

I would like to see a better "intro" set of rulebooks, maybe the basic rules laid out in a pamphlet booklet format like what OD&D looked like. Something where player info and spells could be split apart. I know I could do a lot of this on my own, but it's a lot of work; if WotC did it for me I'd buy a couple of copies for my table. (I know a guy who had the basic rules PDF printed off with a fancy cover, probably through lulu or one of those places. It was nice and I wanted one.)

The biggest stumbling block I see is on the DM side in terms of whether something should be an Ability Check, a Skill Check, or a Saving Throw.  Published adventures don't help here either because the writers often confuse the three.  A pet peeve of mine is a Strength (Athletics) checks.  They are used way too much.  Also the difference between Wisdom (Perception) and Intelligence (Investigation).

In regards to the OP I don't think it is a fad.  I think it succeeded in terms of bringing the D&D groups back to WotC and brought a lot more TTRPG players both new and old to D&D.  The bullshit like coloring books and streaming games will disappear.  That's a fad.

Quote from: KingCheops;1049603This runs completely contrary to all my anecdotal experience observing several different groups learning 5e.  The basics of playing a class are super easy to get but to really make classes sing and make the party mesh takes some time.  That's exactly what I want from a game -- quick to pick up but hard to master.

My experience matches yours. Almost everyone finds 5e vastly easier to pick up than 4e.

I think anyone who has played D&D will find 5e vastly easier to pick up than 4e.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Quote from: S'mon;1049614My experience matches yours. Almost everyone finds 5e vastly easier to pick up than 4e.

I didn't say 4E was easier to learn than 5E. I said it presented its rules better. Problem is there are a lot more of them.

There's no reason a double-sided sheet of cardstock couldn't contain all of the rules a player needs to play 5E, with general rules on one side and class-specific rules on the other, all presented in tables, clean bullet lists, and sequenced steps. The kind of thing every boardgame with more than about 12 pages of rules includes in the box.

The fact D&D doesn't includes such compressed summaries (and DM screens are woeful) is either incompetence on the part of the publishers, or a deliberate effort to safeguard the game from piracy. Either way, it's bad for the user, and puts as unnecessary load on players memorizing the rules, or having an uber-expert player at the table explaining the rules to everybody else each step of the way.

Quote from: Doom;1049617I think anyone who has played D&D will find 5e vastly easier to pick up than 4e.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Exactly right.