Quote from: Kael;1110377Yeah, $90 - $120 in today's prices wasn't going to happen for a poor college student like myself. If 5e's free rules had been around then, I probably wouldn't have quit RPGs and I'd guess that finding a group would have been easier. That's just conjecture though, I was super busy at the time.

I haven't and will never buy the 5e hardbacks. No reason to. $150 is still too rich for my blood for something that's free. The starter sets are much better values, IMO.

It would probably put a sizable dent in 5E's popularity if you couldn't pick up the books for around half price on Amazon.  I'm not sure I'd have tried it $50 each.  At the very least, I'd have been much slower to adopt.

Quote from: Kael;1110377Yeah, $90 - $120 in today's prices wasn't going to happen for a poor college student like myself. If 5e's free rules had been around then, I probably wouldn't have quit RPGs and I'd guess that finding a group would have been easier. That's just conjecture though, I was super busy at the time.

I haven't and will never buy the 5e hardbacks. No reason to. $150 is still too rich for my blood for something that's free. The starter sets are much better values, IMO.

Only if you want to play the first 5 levels and stop.  Which is a cool way to play; but not the only way.

I'd prefer they offer about 10 levels of character progression, and 4 or 5 classes; but I can get that with White Box FMAG, in a $5 soft cover edition.

I'm 34 years old and my system of choice has always been Palladium, from Heroes Unlimited to Rifts. Most of my generation is fixated with 5E due to celebrities coming out of the woodwork saying they have been longtime D&D nerds, and thus it is now cool to play D&D. Shows such as Critical Role have also helped to popularize the game, making it sexier than 5 unnattractive fat/skinny dudes sitting in a dank basement eating doritos and playing the game (not that there's anything wrong with that). As others have mentioned, 5E is also the most accessible and least offensive version of D&D, also contributing to it's widespread appeal. Millennials disdain other systems because it's harder to, and I'm making this term up as I go along, gamer signal to others than if they had just said "I play D&D" to instantly collect their coolness cred.

Basically, my generation is full of sycophantic sheep.

Quote from: Razor 007;1110385Only if you want to play the first 5 levels and stop.

Combining the free rules with the starter set is what I ended up doing the first time I DM'd 5E. Worked great. No level limitations. $15 all-in. Lost Mines is solid, but I could have saved the $15 and just made up an adventure myself, but I was being lazy and I needed some practice.

5e is not written for hardcore gamers, it's written at a very low level for maximum public accessibility and saturation, which is the main reason I could never get into it. The only thing of any use I found in it were the descriptions of alignment which are useful for running low intelligence NPCs.

Quote from: Kael...Speaking for myself, I completely skipped 3E and 4E because the SRD's made zero sense to me and the hardbacks were dense with arcane rules and, more importantly, prohibitively expensive....

Niche hobbies and entertainments tend to go bad once they become popular. When AD&D became a fad, large numbers of outsiders swarmed in and Gary and company turned their backs on us hardcore gamers and focused on the masses because they thought they were going to get rich, which is how we got abominations like UA and Angry Mothers From Heck.

Doctor Who used to be just for us nerds. I remember when it first came to the USA in 1978, the grad students from England (physicists, chemists, mathematicians mostly) got really excited when they saw me watching it since they didn't know it was available here. But when the new Doctor Who came out and the outsiders came swarming in to watch it, it was only a matter of time before it was trashed and turned into an ideological platform.

I can't see a popular form of D&D going anywhere good.

Arcane texts, lack of bright colors and paint-by-numbers rules, and prohibitive costs (whether measured in time or money) are useful barriers to gate-keep against those who are just following the latest trend.

Quote from: deadDMwalking...In any case, any normal person would accept that ~20 years ago (ie, it is more than 15 but less than 24) would round to 20. Even my 3rd grader knows that.

Nerds aren't normal people. I always use the atomic mass of hydrogen rounded to 6 significant digits even if I don't have to.

Quote from: KaelYeah, $90 - $120 in today's prices wasn't going to happen for a poor college student like myself...

When I was 11 I had no problem shelling out that kind of money. I had a treasure trove of cash (~$200) which I hoarded specifically for AD&D.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1110363Thank you Mr. Literal.  

3rd edition was released in August of 2000.  That was 19 years 2 months ago.  The true 'boom' was more around 2001.  

In any case, any normal person would accept that ~20 years ago (ie, it is more than 15 but less than 24) would round to 20.  Even my 3rd grader knows that.

Normal people understand how 34% is a majority and that the Australian Space Academy isn't part of the Australian Space Agency......

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1110193D&D is the most popular RPG (again) and the latest edition is the most popular edition. That's nothing new.

Quote from: S'mon;11102291. Network externalities
2. It's a good game.

If you want to recruit players, from their perspective offering to GM some 5e is a nice safe intro. Once players trust you, most of them will try other games.

These. It's the gateway drug RPG. D&D always has been, due to cultural cache from the '70s fad boom to now and namebrand recognition over generations.

(You always want to lead with the biggest name to get the most people inside the circus... Then you can subdivide with side attractions. Once they enter the trap you can spring Kult on them soon after. )

I agree 100% with the idea that it has name brand recognition, and is a "safe" intro.  It also has FAR more successful video game, movie, and book crossovers likely to draw folks in than other systems.

I will also say it's hard to get a relatively large number of people together on a fairly regular, dedicated schedule.  So when trying to set something like that up, it makes sense to cast the largest net possible.  If you go with something esoteric, it's exponentially harder to have everyone committed than the "big name".  It's like asking why Call of Duty or Battlefield are popular.  They're popular, so they have a large playerbase, which means quickly matching up with decently balanced opponents, and that in and of itself is attractive and makes them more popular.  It sounds inane to say "they're popular because they're popular", but large playerbases are a real draw, and as such popularity feeds upon itself and results in the big names growing in popularity well out of proportion to any advantages it may have in quality or design which resulted in the popularity in the first place, if that makes any sense.  Hopefully it does.

Quote from: Egyptoid;1110353because they once smelled a grognard.

~~
JUST KIDDING

I smell of bourbon and Irish Spring!

Maybe I'm kidding, maybe not.....

Quote from: Alex K;1110158If you're searching "D&D Players Handbook" on Amazon you're just not going to get that same exposure to other games.

The Player's Handbook is for sale at Target (at a discount). I think that answers a lot of your question.

Quote from: Kael;1110357McDonald's sucks but fast food is a disposable investment/experience so who cares. You can always go somewhere else next time, with no social repercussions. Gaming (and RPGs in particular) necessitate a minimum time buy-in and unless you only play one-shots with strangers, are not disposable. An ongoing RPG campaign is more like choosing *not to eat fast food everyday* rather than eating at McDonald's on occasion.

And hey, isn't there a Wendy's RPG out there somewhere?? What's up with RPGs and fast food lately??? LOL...

So the McDonald's analogy fits more with convention games and Organized Play. I can agree to that.

DnD is commonly known. So commonly known that often people do not even realize that there are any other RPGs out there. It is the biggest and baddest of the RPG scene - and I would say that may also be one of its problems. I bought the Essentials Kit and much of the writing is just plain bad, like the staff decided that since they are already on top that they do not have to even try anymore. Thing is that with a lot of the newer players, since they do not have a lot of experience with RPGs in general or even a variety of different RPGs in particular, they do not even know that they are not getting their money's worth with writing that poor.

As far as the Wendy's RPG, it is more entertaining than a "re-imagining" of an older AD&D module. People hate on it because it is original and funny to read (I haven't got a chance to play it yet).

Quote from: Mistwell;1110433The Player's Handbook is for sale at Target (at a discount). I think that answers a lot of your question.

Yes. Yes it does.

Quote from: jeff37923;1110409Normal people understand how 34% is a majority.

Dude, they really, REALLY don't. In no sense are you anywhere close to accurate on this. Not even kinda. This is an island of just you. Pretty sure almost everyone (you might say an overwhelming majority, even) comprehend that majority means more than 50%. It's a concept taught in math and civics and history and the sciences. You're going to be hard pressed to find any field which uses it the way you're trying to use it.

Quote from: jeff37923;1110435Yes. Yes it does.

Not sure why you linked to that particular page as it is not on the clearance page. Unless that page is tied to your location, in which case it's not on clearance in Los Angeles. It's $42.49 here.

Quote from: Cloyer Bulse;1110408I can't see a popular form of D&D going anywhere good.

Huh? 1E? RC? 2E? Holmes? B/X? Redbox? All popular. All great. All influential and the most popular of all (Basic Redbox) is still used as the basis for most OSR games 35+ years later.

Quote from: Cloyer Bulse;1110408Arcane texts, lack of bright colors and paint-by-numbers rules, and prohibitive costs (whether measured in time or money) are useful barriers to gate-keep against those who are just following the latest trend.

Yes, we need less people in the hobby, not more. /s

Quote from: Cloyer Bulse;1110408Nerds aren't normal people. I always use the atomic mass of hydrogen rounded to 6 significant digits even if I don't have to.

It's 2019. Nerds are the new normal.

Quote from: Cloyer Bulse;1110408When I was 11 I had no problem shelling out that kind of money. I had a treasure trove of cash (~$200) which I hoarded specifically for AD&D.

When I was eleven I bought a Sony color TV, a Super Nintendo, the 2E core books (later in middle school along with M:TG cards), Rules Cyclopedia, Ravenloft, Robotech, Palladium Fanstasy, Faserip, Battletech, and dice. I also bought comic books, Marvel cards, sports cards, Wizard magazine, toys, ninja shit, army shit, Rambo shit, and all the other things nerdy kids buy with their money in the late 80's/early 90's...

In college, (2000-2006, grad school FTW) the WOTC offerings were garbage and not worth my scholarship money.