One of my favorite computer game ads in the early 80s was from Infocom, the makers Zork and other text adventure games, ran this ad:



With the later adventure of standard graphics on the most popular machines, IBM compatibles, Infocom turned out to be wrong. For a lot of people, external graphics created by a computer trumped their imagination.

Is the OneDnDVTT a be that is true for D&D now? Are they betting microtransaction custom skins appeal more than imagining your character in your head? Sure, people get custom character portraits (or make their own), but is WotC really going to offer that kind of custom modeling at a price the average player can afford? If they can't offer that will a purple hat on an online character be enough to give up your imagination?

I used to think Infocom's idea was still true in the ttrpg space. People paid to make companies lots of money disagree. It'll be interesting to see who is right.

Quote from: PulpHerb on December 27, 2022, 11:42:41 AM
With the later adventure of standard graphics on the most popular machines, IBM compatibles, Infocom turned out to be wrong. For a lot of people, external graphics created by a computer trumped their imagination.

For a lot of retards, maybe.

Who the hell can't imagine better than 2022 graphics, never mind 80's graphics?

The people that are going to love OneDnD are the types that need an authoritative source to tell them how to think or feel about everything, IE mouth-breathers.

Hobby based around imagination rewards those with imagination, film at 11.

They're betting people will take the path of least resistance. For the same reason video games are more popular than TTRPGs. And Matt Mercer Critical Role Improv Theatre is more popular than actually playing a TTRPG properly. It's really cool to imagine a character in your head or even have a physical miniature you made yourself. But most people just want to play in the easiest way they can. If they can press a button and awesome stuff happens without them having to even think about it they will do it. If people can play a version of DnD that automates all that "super hard" basic adding and subtraction of single digit numbers, and presents pretty visuals of their super cool OCs they will go to that over theatre of the mind and physical sessions.

People either forget or refuse to acknowledge that TTRPGs have always been a super niche hobby that most people find weird. The idea of using your imagination to play a game with numbers, dice and rules is abstract to the average person. Critical Role presented DnD as this super cool visual hobby with lots of self expression which attracted a crowd that doesn't actually care for or even understand TTRPGs at all. But they're more numerous and most of all pay more than you or me.

People sometimes point to TTRPGs becoming mainstream and "cool" because of Critical Role and other stuff. But no. No it isn't. The version of DnD presented by Wizards and the mainstream media is a popular brand.  One DnD is NOT FOR YOU. Separate it and it's community from tabletop RPGs.

Quote from: King Tyranno on December 27, 2022, 12:09:56 PMPeople sometimes point to TTRPGs becoming mainstream and "cool" because of Critical Role and other stuff. But no. No it isn't. The version of DnD presented by Wizards and the mainstream media is a popular brand.  One DnD is NOT FOR YOU. Separate it and it's community from tabletop RPGs.

Yup, this is a point so many people miss. The product being marketted towards the mainstream isn't the one you probably loved when it was niche. The Star Trek Reboot movies didn't resurge the old series. They spun off into their own nonsense

I would argue that the number one advantage TTRPGs have over video games in many instances turns out to be player choice and adaptive human narration. Basically, if it makes sense in character, and doesn't mess too much with group enjoyment or whatever other localized and freely agreed to social contract or unspoken rules are in play, you can attempt basically whatever. And if it makes sense within the DM's setting and likewise your character's stats within the context of the rules, you might even have a chance to succeed. Players, NPCs, and the world at large can basically be proactive and react depending on what makes sense to the people running them. As opposed to video games where even if they try to maximize choice, any option has to be preconsidered and preprogrammed to a solid extent in order for it to come into play.

But WotC to me seems to be throwing away a fair bit of that advantage. They seem to be draining out freedom and the imagination/human element that gives TTRPGs an edge in favor of a more video game type approach. It may still somehow succeed solely on the basis of sheep-think and social pressure, but it really shouldn't.

Quote from: PulpHerb on December 27, 2022, 11:42:41 AM
Is the OneDnDVTT a be that is true for D&D now? Are they betting microtransaction custom skins appeal more than imagining your character in your head? Sure, people get custom character portraits (or make their own), but is WotC really going to offer that kind of custom modeling at a price the average player can afford? If they can't offer that will a purple hat on an online character be enough to give up your imagination?

I don't think it's an either-or.

D&D has always had a lot of illustrations and visuals, going back to the original. It's never been purely text based. I loved the illustration booklets in Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan and Tomb of Horrors, for example. Miniatures and battle maps have been popular for decades. Dungeon tiles were a more recent innovation in this.

In the future, there will be different ways to bring in visuals. I predict there will be an AI art character portrait generator that can come with your D&DBeyond character sheet, possibly through a microtransaction. There will be other visuals that can come from the VTT.

Quote from: jhkim on December 27, 2022, 02:10:54 PM

Quote from: PulpHerb on December 27, 2022, 11:42:41 AM
Is the OneDnDVTT a be that is true for D&D now? Are they betting microtransaction custom skins appeal more than imagining your character in your head? Sure, people get custom character portraits (or make their own), but is WotC really going to offer that kind of custom modeling at a price the average player can afford? If they can't offer that will a purple hat on an online character be enough to give up your imagination?

I don't think it's an either-or.

D&D has always had a lot of illustrations and visuals, going back to the original. It's never been purely text based. I loved the illustration booklets in Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan and Tomb of Horrors, for example. Miniatures and battle maps have been popular for decades. Dungeon tiles were a more recent innovation in this.

In the future, there will be different ways to bring in visuals. I predict there will be an AI art character portrait generator that can come with your D&DBeyond character sheet, possibly through a microtransaction. There will be other visuals that can come from the VTT.

The issue isn't that there are visuals in DnD content such as rulebooks and so on. But the actual playing of  the game requires some level of imagination. Even if you've physicalized everything with minis and terrain. My own little brother is someone who doesn't want to play TTRPGs because he "can't imagine things." and finds the idea of playing a game based on imagination to be dumb. One DnD can offer essentially the same level of visualization as a video game. Especially with advances in AI generated content. Just press a button and something awesome happens. You don't even need to think.

As I said before, it's the difference between a video game you don't need to think about to play. Versus imagining a scenario in your head that requires you to think. And a lot of people are going to go straight for the former over the latter because it's easier. That's it. That's what always happens. Books were replaced with radio, which was replaced by TV, which was replaced by Tiktok and You tube. The end. 

My hot sports opinion.

Good GM's are rare. So rare that I'm willing to bet that most GM's fall out of the hobby at a higher rate than stick with it. So their number is likely "stable" at low numbers.

D&D has long ago abandoned GMs with encouraging them to go beyond running Adventure Paths. This is not some kind of shocking news. What is shocking is that they're just now realizing that the scale of creating TTRPG's have ceiling that is directly died to the largest consumers of their product, and they've *abandoned them* like McDonalds is doing with their automated fast-food joints.

The problem is a good GM isn't just the automated die-roller and text-reader like some cashier at McD's. Yet it might sound counter-intuitive to many consumers of the D&D brand, in keeping with the McDonalds analogy my question remains: why are you eating McDonalds?

It *doesn't* matter what WotC does with D&D - D&D fantasy isn't about the system. It's not about the box they put it in. It's not about the brand. There is *no community*. It's not a lifestyle to be owned by WotC. It's a contained genre of fantasy that you can engage with in more authentic modes that are *already here*.

No AI will give a group of players the same experience as a good GM will in a TTRPG. I'm confident that an AI can replicate a bad GM with little effort. That does not change the fact that TTRPG's will remain. OneD&D will be a failure. It' not competing against other TTRPG's. It's now competing against videogames which have *already* cornered this market by a few light-years.

This actually hits on one of my pet peeves when I'm running games.  I have always pushed hard to have no relatable depictions of characters, as I want people to use their minds and the descriptions they've been given.  So on physical tables, small markers, not miniatures.  On VTT, recognizable glyphs of thematic relation, not faces.  While not everyone agrees with my position, no one has been too cross about it.  I suspect that in the future, this won't be so, and I suspect this overall trend will be accelerated slightly by 6.0 having a plan to create such a compelling interface with detailed models.

Pretty sure OneD&D is a bet that they can harvest mobile game microtransaction-scale dollars from TTRPG players.

A bad, bad, stupid, stupid, bad, stupid bet, in other words.

Quote from: King Tyranno on December 28, 2022, 02:29:24 PM
One DnD can offer essentially the same level of visualization as a video game. Especially with advances in AI generated content. Just press a button and something awesome happens. You don't even need to think.

As I said before, it's the difference between a video game you don't need to think about to play. Versus imagining a scenario in your head that requires you to think.

There have already been a bunch of D&D-based video games like Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, etc. So yes, OneD&D could be that - but nothing that I've seen has said that.

The OneD&D material that has been posted so far is that there will be some slight rule changes that will be backwards compatible. It's still the same processes of creating a character by ability scores, race, background, and class. That doesn't sound to me like Neverwinter Nights or similar.

Quote from: jhkim on December 28, 2022, 06:22:16 PM

Quote from: King Tyranno on December 28, 2022, 02:29:24 PM
One DnD can offer essentially the same level of visualization as a video game. Especially with advances in AI generated content. Just press a button and something awesome happens. You don't even need to think.

As I said before, it's the difference between a video game you don't need to think about to play. Versus imagining a scenario in your head that requires you to think.

There have already been a bunch of D&D-based video games like Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, etc. So yes, OneD&D could be that - but nothing that I've seen has said that.

Neverwinter Nights and the prior NWN AOL MMO stuck fairly close to the D&D rules they were emulating, with some notable changes like NWN/AOL using a rather esoteric system of rolling a bunch of d2s to get ability scores, or NW 1 and 2 having some different interactions.

It is the mmo NW online that deviates massively from the D&D system. And anything that was simmilar has been steadily removed. Throw a dagger and do 250000 damage. Which is not enough to kill a bear or a wolf.

The OneD&D material that has been posted so far is that there will be some slight rule changes that will be backwards compatible. It's still the same processes of creating a character by ability scores, race, background, and class. That doesn't sound to me like Neverwinter Nights or similar.