Quote from: horsesoldier on May 26, 2021, 12:04:49 PM
DnD has been controlled by steely eyed businessmen from nearly the beginning. If it hadn't been, TSR would have went out of business and DnD might be some footnote. We'd be on here arguing about Runequest or something else. So you can't just blame the guys in suits. Hell TSR was so ahead of its time they had a gal in a suit ruin the company!

What we're seeing now is our cultural revolution make its way into DnD. This cultural revolution is indeed eating everything. Those horrid men in suits are there to help it along. In the cultural revolution, some professional Asian complaining about Oriental Adventures actually helps the brand of DnD, as it demonizes the bad old white men who wrote it and gives the company an opportunity to genuflect.

It isn't a mistake that Mike Mearls is MIA and we have Perkins/Crawford running the show. It also isn't a mistake that we have record numbers of non-gamers buying books and record numbers of books being sold. When appealing to gamers, you get books like the DMG II. When appealing to non-gamers, you get Tasha and multiple Ravenloft products.

I agree with horsesoldier that D&D has been a big business for a while - certainly by 1980 when they had things like licensing deals for the television cartoon, and a marketing department and lawyers and so forth. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. As a corporation, TSR and WotC have been money-grubbing, but that motivates them to make products that the maximum number of people will pay money to buy. That doesn't mean the products are worthwhile, but they could be.

While I haven't liked a number of the 5e books, I think overall 5e is my favorite edition. It's been easy to set up, quick to pick up by players, with plenty of variety and flavorful without having too involved a rules. BX was simpler, but had a lot less options and support.

The culture wars are happening all through society, and the fact of life is that there are *both* conservative D&D players and liberal D&D players. WotC wants to sell to both of them, so it's going to have material that is mixed in politics.

There are some liberals gamers who are exclusive - they're the sort who only buy woke indie games. There are also some conservative gamers who are exclusive, and they're the sort who only buy traditionalist OSR games. And that's their choice and perfectly fine. They're voting with their feet. But there are also a bunch of gamers who don't care if there are bits of material that don't match their politics, and will just ignore or change the parts they don't like.

Quote from: horsesoldier on May 26, 2021, 12:04:49 PMWhen appealing to gamers, you get books like the DMG II. When appealing to non-gamers, you get Tasha and multiple Ravenloft products.

Nah.  You are seeing a strategy to sell books to more of the players.  The DMG and MM sells a copy or two per gaming group.  The settings, Volo's, Xanathar's and Tasha's books add "optional" player content as well as DM materials.  That sells copies to a lot more of the group members, even though most of the content isn't relevant.

Quote from: Palleon on May 26, 2021, 01:51:39 PM

Quote from: horsesoldier on May 26, 2021, 12:04:49 PMWhen appealing to gamers, you get books like the DMG II. When appealing to non-gamers, you get Tasha and multiple Ravenloft products.

Nah.  You are seeing a strategy to sell books to more of the players.  The DMG and MM sells a copy or two per gaming group.  The settings, Volo's, Xanathar's and Tasha's books add "optional" player content as well as DM materials.  That sells copies to a lot more of the group members, even though most of the content isn't relevant.

Is there any tally kept of how many don't buy any hard copy products but instead use the online sources? Are players more likely to buy or pass on such vs. hard copy?

If D&D really is switching to so many younger players, then I have to imagine that the time of hard copy products is running down.

Quote from: Palleon on May 26, 2021, 01:51:39 PM

Quote from: horsesoldier on May 26, 2021, 12:04:49 PMWhen appealing to gamers, you get books like the DMG II. When appealing to non-gamers, you get Tasha and multiple Ravenloft products.

Nah.  You are seeing a strategy to sell books to more of the players.  The DMG and MM sells a copy or two per gaming group.  The settings, Volo's, Xanathar's and Tasha's books add "optional" player content as well as DM materials.  That sells copies to a lot more of the group members, even though most of the content isn't relevant.

Non-gamers would open the 3.5 DMG II and have no idea what they're looking at. Non-gamers can look at the Tasha and Volo book and have a product they can understand.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on May 26, 2021, 01:33:34 PM

Quote from: The Thing on May 26, 2021, 07:20:01 AM
Yeah yeah you all mostly blame "SJWs" and "Feminazis" for ruining D&D now, but there might be more than that to it.

Long ago gaming like RPGs was a tiny business,  the fucking souless suits and corporate bloodsuckers never cared about it.

But it hung in there, growing slowly, but surely, becoming more and more noticed over the decades, and eventually got to where 'businessmen" (SPIT!) became interested.

The same souless, heartless, cold, calculating grey men in their dark suits and tied slowly got into gaming, and of course D&D was the big boy then. The came i with offers of money and marketing, and slowly took over, because they weren't gamers, tyhey were capitalists, and as Bill Maher said, capitalism eats everything.

The camel got its nose under the edge of the tent, and pretty soon the whole ugly, stinking, mean, stubborn beast was in control.

Games weren't by gamers for gamers anymore, they were by businessmen for profit. Game writers were kept around, with a corporate shoe on their necks kept their by businessmen who regarded gamers as stupid geeky losers to bilk money from.

Games became a small bit of big business, with market research and marketing making the big decisions, the game writers were forced to follow the orders of people who weren't gamers but had worked for television, movies, etc. People who didn't understand a game audience is a whole different animal than tv audiences.

And of course, games had to not offend anyone, yes, the marketing departments recognized the so called SJW crowd and pandered to them. Gotta appeal to the zeitsmode, which is exactly what the pioneers of gaming in the late 70's-80's didn't do.

Hell, once upon a time even games workshop was about gamers having fun, not strip mining gamer's wallets. But after a while capitalism's insatiable tentacles wormed their way in and out were the fun, in came the professionals, and the fun was just squeezed out of it for maximum profit. People in suits and ties replaced gamers in tshirts and jeans. And now they're running big gaming. Soulless suits who have zero idea what they're doing but hold up puppets who claim to be gamers and relate to the game public.

Yeah, the outrage brigade and the butthurt battalion did some harm to TTRPGs, (and as a leftist i'm sick of those types too)  but In think that 'businessmen" with their "market analysis" and mindless need to make more profit every year helped ruin big gaming companies. A lot of old school gamers were happy if their work paid the bills, they didn;t need to make more and more profit for it's onw sake like the modern 'murcan business model demands.

There are a lot of  fingers to point at a lot of things, but let's not just blame it all on the fringe left, hell if you righties had had you way D&D would have been banned for being satanic a long time ago.

Fuck, one thing i love in Ep is the fact it sure ain't being made by (UGH!) fucking businessmen. (SPIT!)

What a childish view of the situation.

I hate it when Big Business wrecks something for a profit margin, but hey, remember that Gary willingly corporatized TSR. Without handling the business side of selling RPGs, you'd probably never have seen Dungeons and Dragons in your local store, or the Sears christmas catalog.
And now the New Hotness is being woke, and middle managers love to pad their metrics with nonsense goals like diversity meetings and racial hiring quotas, instead of actually making fun games.
The Religious Right are a shadow of a memory from decades ago. The Wokesters are on the front porch, right now, demanding D&D be changed to fit their fucked up view of the world.

Hear, hear! Or as illiterate morons say, here here!

Big rant coming up....

My take:

5ed came out almost 7 years ago, and is basically just a rules variant of a game system that's already ~40 years old.  At this point there's not really much left to say about it mechanically, but if you want to say something... there's probably either a house rule or full blown edition or "fantasy heartbreaker" already saying it.

Love 5ed, hate 5ed, it's been well enough finished since the three core books came out.

But WotC (and all those indy 3rd Party Publishers) need to push product to pay their bills.  And while these games are marketed to people who pride themselves on "imagination" and "creativity", fact is they're just as likely to buy "The Complete Book of Flumphs* vol 4, Revised 8th edition" as anyone else.  So they repackage and resell Ravenloft for the third time ("now with 95% new art and 3% new setting info!  Using a ruleset that's 50% new!"), and listen to the loudest voices regarding how to better sell- I mean "improve"- the game.  Yesterday we had to protect kids from demons and devils in D&D, today we protect adults (who used to be those protected kids) from the horrors of not having adventurers in wheelchairs ("can't you just get some healing magic?"  "Stop deprotagonizing me!  Now carry me and my chair up those stairs!"). 

Plus, orcs & drow = black people for "reasons" (I guess gnolls equal Afghanis, and kobolds equal Peruvians?  Or does everything equal black people?  I'm honestly not sure how this works).  I mean, could D&D use more representation?  Absolutely!  But it should be plausible, and not reactionary.  And it shouldn't be based on attitudes that are themselves ignorant and borderline racist ("drows are representative of black people!"  "Because they both have people who live for centuries in matriarchal societies based around evil miracles granted by a spider demon-goddess?"  "What?  No.  They both have black skin."  "Not all drow have black skin though.  Some are blue, or purple.  And their features aren't African, and they have long white hair."  "...  Why do you have to be so racist?").

But that's the big picture.  Let's zoom back to the small picture.

5ed has been out for about seven years now.  And by this time, most players will have had a chance to play it out.  You've probably tried multiple builds, read up the min-max builds, and largely felt like you 10th level Human Champion Fighter isn't all that different from any other 10th level Human Champion Fighter.  "But -I- roleplay!"  Good for you, but you could probably roleplay that same character in damn near any fantasy system out there.  And there's a bunch.  Roleplaying isn't unique to D&D anymore (and really, it never was).  Meanwhile, as a player, the differences between fighting orcs across hasn't really changed either.  Combat in 5ed is simplified, yes, but -everything- is simplified to the point that the game itself starts to feel stale in short order.  And the more D&D variants you've played, the faster the newness wears off.  If 3ed was too complex and offered too many options, 5ed is too simple and light on options.

And then there's the setting.  I'm sorry, but the Sword Coast is boring.  Or at least it's presented as such.  I know in the hands of good writers it can be more engaging, but the current crop of writers seem to think players will be excited to face Elminster or wander Icewind Dale based on brand name alone.  I'm not.  And their adventure writing abilities?  I remember playing the end of Storm King's Thunder and my DM complaining how overwhelmed he was with a big battle, because it was presented as this huge, multi-character fight sequence between factions, that would've looked great as a cinematic battle you watched rather than something to be played through.  But if the battle was presented merely as a block of text to read, people would've complained about railroading (and perhaps rightly so).  Or how about Descent into Avernus?  Which devotes a ton of pages and text to Baldur's Gate and background art sketches, but comparatively little to Avernus.  "It has vehicular combat though!"  Oh it has some neat pieces, for sure, but it's missing a good chunk and is largely unplayable as is.  But hey, WotC will sell you minis for it!



tl;dr - I -like- 5ed.  I've been playing it pretty much exclusively for a few years now.  But I also feel like I've seen everything -it- has to offer, and anything good I'd get out of a game would come from the GM/Players and not the books being sold.  At this point I don't see anyone ruining it, as they have to make unnecessary pap in order to have something to ruin.

Quote from: Snark Knight on May 26, 2021, 10:59:33 AM

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on May 26, 2021, 10:41:57 AM
I think folks are seeing a contradiction that isn't relevant any more. In the past few years, corporate America has gone from 'trying to appeal to everyone' to 'openly siding with one half of the culture wars' in many cases. The changes are being driven by both corporate and creative sides.

Official D&D belongs to the Woke. You're not going to change that unless you get an upheaval like that of 25 years ago.

It's not going to change until the other half actually start speaking with their wallets. How many people on this site bemoan D&D for whatever reason and then not a few pages later admit they bought the New Shiny anyway? Of course RPGs are a bit different to a lot of products in that you can just outright ignore the parts you don't like, but even so, all it's really doing is reaffirming to Wizards and everybody else that what they're doing is working.

Plus most of the 'normies' buying into 5E don't really care. Sure, they don't like being called Privileged Racist W*ite Scum, but they're so Grillpilled and apathetic they just roll with the punches because everyone else is playing D&D so whatever.

I bum off my brother, who is on the woke side. I haven't bought any 5th ed product for myself.

Quote from: Torque2100 on May 26, 2021, 08:53:37 AMThe best advice I can give is: stop being a fan. Of anything. Stop buying everything just because of the name.  Become loyal to Creators, not Brands.  Follow Creators and buy their stuff if you like their work.  Then when the creators leave, follow them.  Learn to recognize when Brand and Franchises are locked in the Corporate IP Death Cycle, mourn and move on.

Fucking YES. While I do believe a culture war exists, its unrelated to my belief that stop being a consumerist whore.
I hate how people are fans of 'franchises' not creativity.

People BEG for revivals like addicts instead of identifying that a brand is a disloyal nothing, and by always depending on existing IPs, they make it harder for new fresh stuff to develop.

  I bought all the core books, and a few of the supplements.   I bought all the core books to 3e too, and never once played it.  So I am not the best judge of a purchase meaning something is good.  I will say there is zero chance I buy anymore products from them though.  Some of the twitter stuff, combined with having to hear a bit too much about things NOT D&D from J.Crawford trying to watch him in a video on youtube and I am out.  I think I gave them an honest chance, before I was not a customer, so they can do as they like.  Heck, they can still do as they like, I just will not be buying anything from them, and chaining off of my decision (more like these people agreeing with my point of view) they likely lose another 4-6 customers.   I am sure for everyone like me, there are 5 watching videos, loving the twitter stances, and can not WAIT to hear about what Jeremy Crawford and his husband did on vacation.  So I wish them success, and God Bless them.

I know Paizo also isn't a fan fav around here but they at least put out good rule books with meat inside (unlike WOTC).   Pathfinder 2e came out in 2019 since then its had a total of 3 rule books and 3 Bestiary's as well as 6 Campaign books and countless adventures released.   They are releasing 3 or 4 more books this year.   2 are rulebooks, one is an equipment book and the last is going to be some named monsters in their setting.   

I did buy a set of 5e books for my son about 3 years ago who still plays D&D with his friends online.   While he has fun with his friends he does enjoy PF2e more because it has more crunch than 5e.

Quote from: Krugus on May 26, 2021, 06:42:17 PM
I know Paizo also isn't a fan fav around here but they at least put out good rule books with meat inside (unlike WOTC).   Pathfinder 2e came out in 2019 since then its had a total of 3 rule books and 3 Bestiary's as well as 6 Campaign books and countless adventures released.   They are releasing 3 or 4 more books this year.   2 are rulebooks, one is an equipment book and the last is going to be some named monsters in their setting.   

I did buy a set of 5e books for my son about 3 years ago who still plays D&D with his friends online.   While he has fun with his friends he does enjoy PF2e more because it has more crunch than 5e.

Please show this to your son.

What's ruining D&D 5e?

WotC + SJWs

Quote from: The Thing on May 26, 2021, 07:20:01 AM
... But after a while capitalism's insatiable tentacles wormed their way in and out were the fun, in came the professionals, and the fun was just squeezed out of it for maximum profit. P...

Exploitive greed, and just about any other immoral financial shenanigan you can name are human moral failures, and are not more inherent in capitalism than any other economic policy.

All the moral failings laid down at the feet of capitalism are just as bad if not worse in every other economic system tried by man.

Quote from: Krugus on May 26, 2021, 06:42:17 PM
I know Paizo also isn't a fan fav around here but they at least put out good rule books with meat inside (unlike WOTC).   Pathfinder 2e came out in 2019 since then its had a total of 3 rule books and 3 Bestiary's as well as 6 Campaign books and countless adventures released.   They are releasing 3 or 4 more books this year.   2 are rulebooks, one is an equipment book and the last is going to be some named monsters in their setting.   

I did buy a set of 5e books for my son about 3 years ago who still plays D&D with his friends online.   While he has fun with his friends he does enjoy PF2e more because it has more crunch than 5e.

I admit Paizo's Pathfinder 2 rules system is closer to what I'd like out of D&D as an RPG system than 5e. (Not that 5e is per-se bad, but I do think it lacks a little bit of personalization in the mechanics.)

Unfortunately I think Paizo is even worse than WotC when it comes to deliberately injecting its agenda into the game. In one recent PF2 game using a Paizo AP, even one of the players from California couldn't help but remark how implausibly diverse the organization we were trying to gather info about was.

Also, a major factor in TTRPGs going downhill is the way the COG (Corporate Overlord Government) is dumbing down the population by basically making everything dumber and attacking intelligent people.a

look at some classic TV, star trek and the original outer limits. Both tried to pull the audience up, generally, make people think. Compared to the laughtrack soaked formulaic comedies and paint by numbers police shows on tv at the time both those shows were islands of intelligence in an ocean of idiocy.

Now look at JJAs star drek. Mindless action movies, die hard in space. dumbed down and pulling the audience with it instead of trying to pull people up.

Most tv gets dumber by the season, jersey shore, meet the cartrashians, here comes honey boobooo, etc. Why? Because c COG wants it that way. Why do they want it tyhat way? Stupid people are easier to control. They want entertainment that dumbs down the audience,  not stuff that makes people think.

Let the master explain it to you.

https://youtu.be/sNXHSMmaq_s

And, sadly, gaming is following the same trend. Now sure, it's still easier to find an intelligent game system than it is to find an intelligent reality show, and there are crunchy systems out there for people who want toms believable game systems that at least produce results that kinda look believable. GURPS has always done that, and what share of the market does it have?

Eclipse phase in a system for intelligent people, and it's barely alive.

meanwhile the quick and easy systems are doing well in the TTRPG market.  FATE, savage worlds, etc, those are going pretty well. And that's fine as they're at least gaming. They're still kinda dumbed down systems, but at least people play them and that's ok with me.

But generally everything in america is being dumbed down on the large scale.  Plus stupid selfish people are portrayed as cool while intelligent people are generally portrayed in a negative light. Charlie Sheen's character on 2 1/2 men was a selfish moron and he was like then highest paid actor on tv till his real life stupidity killed his gravy train.

Sure we get some intelligent shows like Cosmos and Through the wormhole. Few and far between.

COG wants people to be stupid, selfish,  materialistic and proud of it. People like that are very easy to control and unlikely to get smart and decide to take down the system.

And yes, to a degree, that's affecting RPGs as well.