Quote from: Jaeger on December 20, 2021, 08:20:43 PMWhen you look at Kevin Crawford's Worlds without numbers in comparison 5E is a very slapdash product.

Exactly! I thought I was on crazy pills when people where giving it praises for the bare minimum of not imploding in your hands.
Kevin Crawford has actually got me interested in playing some OSR inspired stuff with friends. I tried Godbound, but the group kinda needed more structure and where not the world-building sort.

QuoteIn fact a great opportunity was wasted IMHO, because I think people would have accepted a lot of actual streamlining and improvements to a D&D d20 system coming off of the reviled 4e era.

YES, I remember following the promised design posts and being disapointed when the end result was a pale imitation of that. I know some things are always just marketting speak, but this wasn't even in the ballpark.

And there are good things to be taken from 4e (which you can actually see in Kevins stuff for instance), and only its worst made it over to 5e.

QuoteYes.

In which case we are in agreement.

Quote from: tenbones on December 20, 2021, 10:03:29 AM
1) Not if old-school players keep buying "D&D" because of the name.
2) You may still be correct, but I think it's a much longer dwindling line than you might think. Because of #1 above.

I agree with this.

While I do believe that things will eventually catch up with WotC – there are unique aspect of the RPG industry that can delay the inevitable:

1: First mover status in RPG hobby is HUGE. HUGE!

Every commercially-viable genre in the medium is already taken, and held, by a title no younger than the early 90's.
Only the evergreen IP's of Star Wars, Conan, and Lord of the Rings get people to look past already established Systems. (And people will still snap up D&D 'compatible' versions like candy.)

In spite of the moves WotC made with 4e, and the way that they treated the 3e fanbase; the second 5e came out people dropped the clone like a bad habit and came flooding back to 'official D&D'.


2: Established RPG IP fans are very long-suffering. (It's ridiculous IMHO.)

Shadowrun is a prime example of this. Catalysts Shadowrun 4-6e: There was nothing about the SR 3e rules that couldn't have been fixed. 4-6e changed the way the die pools worked for no reason because Catalyst never addressed the underlying system complexity that made the game unwieldly in play. (Which in fairness FASA should have addressed by 3e)

As one of the first mover cyberpunk games it does gets attention when a new edition comes out, because people really liked the setting premise. SR 6e was the #3 best selling game on  ICv2's list for about half a year in 2019. But then people saw that it was still a hot mess, and stop playing it just like the previous editions. This is the main reason Shadowrun has faded. People will come for the IP, but you can drive them away with the system!

But when Shadowrun 7e comes out, people will still give it a look!

Same with R.Tal's Cyberpunk. Cyberpunk Red was briefly ICv2's #2 selling RPG in late 2020. And the first edition of the game hit in 1998...

And no one has released an even remotely competitive Cyberpunk game to these two even during the years they were largely defunct.

Mutant and Masterminds has taken the top Superhero RPG spot by default largely because the various owners of Champions can't get out of their own way...

The long-suffering nature of RPG fandoms love for their favorite gaming IP is the major reason why Star Wars, Conan, and Lord of the Rings always seem to do reasonably well regardless of what system they use. Only SJG managed to nerf a Conan RPG when they briefly held the license.


3: Making an objectively better competitive product is not enough to effectively challenge the first movers when faced with #'s 1&2.

The First mover has to make a huge mistake that alienates the fanbase, or be incompetent enough, long enough, for you to take a big enough chunk out of their market share, (preferably both at the same time) so that the network effect for your game is built up to the point that it is literally not worth the effort of the old IP's players to switch back.

(Baizuo was in place to take advantage of the 4e debacle - but took a design shortcut with PF1e that ensured that they would lose out to WotC once they so much as halfway got their act together.)

That is a tall fucking order. Especially considering that in the current RPG market that means releasing 4-6 supplements per year. On top of having a Character app, and having stuff ready to go for virtual table tops.

The cost of competition is high!

So while I do believe WotC D&D will fade, it will be up to ten years after their 50th anniversary before any real competitor truly dethrones them.

And that is assuming someone throws their hat into the ring sometime in 2024-28 and can make a good enough product for long enough before WotC pulls their head out of their ass. Even then, the power of mega corp promotional $$ is a mighty big obstacle all on its own even if put behind an utterly woke and mechanically shit version of D&D...

D&D just crashing, with no game taking its place, and the rest of the RPG hobby just continuing to trundle along with their narrow slice of players is a viable outcome to WotC's woke madness.

Quote from: Jaeger on December 21, 2021, 10:17:07 PMWotC once they got their act together.

This is again what il debate: WOTC zeroed in on attracting based on nostalgia over quality. 5e is the worst designed edition so far considering its point in time.
A product made by 1 dude and a few playtesters is FAAAAR superior. WOTC has no excuse.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on December 21, 2021, 10:29:11 PM

Quote from: Jaeger on December 21, 2021, 10:17:07 PMWotC once they got their act together.

This is again what il debate: WOTC zeroed in on attracting based on nostalgia over quality. 5e is the worst designed edition so far considering its point in time.
A product made by 1 dude and a few playtesters is FAAAAR superior. WOTC has no excuse.

I think we are talking past each other here more than we really disagree. (It seems you typed your reply as I was editing typos and adding to my comments - but my reply is functionally the same.)

In my opinion; The Bar for WotC "getting their act together" post 4e was very low.

Baizuo had taken the design shortcut with Pathfinder in just layering their employee's house rules on top of the OGL. They fixed none of the underlying issues with the 3.x system.

And 3.5 was already getting rather unwieldly under WotC... And despite the merits it did have, 4e was reviled.

Enter "D&D Next" a.k.a. 5E:  "Saving" D&D players from two unwieldly systems in one stroke...

As an example of game design by a group of so-called professionals, IMHO your critiques are 100% correct.

But it just didn't matter.

5e was "good enough" that people could squint real hard to see the game they wanted to see, and it said D&D on the cover.

The "grey goo' got something that resembled what they thought they were getting.

And they never though to question if it was actually very good before they gobbled it up...



Missed this last time:

Quote from: tenbones on December 20, 2021, 10:03:29 AM
I do not understand the idea of bitching and complaining about WotC while many give it all the monetary support to continue the cycle. It's like spousal abuse.

Yes, yes it is...

How Woke CRT cancel culture gets people to behave, and the symptoms for Battered Woman syndrome, have a lot in common:

•   The abused thinks that the violence was their fault. – White Privilege + Colonialism.
•   The abused has an inability to place the responsibility for the violence elsewhere. – White Privilege + Systemic Racism.
•   The abused fears for their life, and/or, the lives of loved ones whom the abuser might or has threatened to harm  - Cancel Culture + Doxxing + Online Smear Campaigns, Deaths threats etc,.
•   The abused has an irrational belief that the abuser is omnipresent and omniscient. – Self Censoring speech at all times lest you say something that can be used to accused you of being some kind of ist-a-phobe.

Quote from: Jaeger on December 22, 2021, 03:19:25 PMI think we are talking past each other here more than we really disagree. (It seems you typed your reply as I was editing typos and adding to my comments - but my reply is functionally the same.)

Yup.

WOTC getting their act together reminds me of 'GW' getting their act together. It infuriates me that so many alternative games only existed until GW lessened to stomping on toes in place of kicking in the groin. And then everybody FLOODED back.
Its more like they needed an excuse to start giving GW money because its friggin pathologic. And what a shock they started kicking your groin again.

Im not a commie, but I can still critique this sort of rabid mindless consumerism.

Quote from: KingCheops on December 17, 2021, 10:05:49 AM

Quote from: 3catcircus on December 17, 2021, 08:37:55 AM

Quote from: Rhymer88 on December 17, 2021, 02:39:34 AM
I don't want to disparage anybody but could this phenomenon also be partly due to mental illness? A great many woke people complain of mental health issues and in my experience people with such issues simply don't last long in a game. Having a bunch of such players in a group will quickly make it fall apart and could explain the extremely short duration of many "campaigns".

How did we get a generation of mental defectives?  They didn't just develop mental health issues she to covid lockdowns, there have been these insane people for at least 5 years or more being prominent and being taken seriously.

Arm people with Google searches for psychological and medical conditions and incentivize them with a victimhood culture where they can gain power over people through their self-diagnosed "illnesses" and bingo bango you have a society full of weaponized narcissists.

This right here is entirely spot on. I started noticing this behavior while in college in Seattle. Just the very trace beginnings of it...but it was just as insidious and vile.

Social media's growth has exacerbated it.