Zardnaar
Legend
It seems clear that by now that 5E has been a big hit by D&D standards with comparisons to D&Ds golden age or even exceeding them. Now there are a few contributing factors such as a perfect storm of social media, Amazon, VTTs etc along with 5E being a good edition. 5 years ago I though that 5E would do alright but would require rebuilding the player base after 4E. It seems that the 5E designers were not expecting 5E to do as well as it has done either.
A perhaps over looked reason why it has done that is I think it is the 1st D&D since perhaps 1989 if not 1983 to return to what made D&D popular in the 1st place- the D&D playstyle. That play style is basically a beer and pretzyls type D&D that is easy to pick up an play a'la the old Red box and 1E AD&D to a lesser extent. Its the same playstyle I suspect the majority of 3E playerbase used while 4E did not cater to that playstyle at all mostly because they listened to online forum users as a feedback source. Put simply the online stereo types about the various D&D playstyles do not apply to how people play the game. Those stereotypes broadly speaking are.
1E. Fantasy Vietnam.
2E. Narrative settings.
3E. Powergaming.
4E tactical.
For example Fantasy Vietnam in AD&D mostly exists in a handful of adventures with certain reputations the Tomb of Horrors being the prime one ( and Ruins of Undermountain and Labyrinth of Madness). The thing here is that for the most part I suspect those play styles are actually in the minority. Most of the classic adventures are fairly easy with perhaps the odd thing that can mess you up with old school energy draining undead. The Isle of Dread and post of the B and X series are fairly easy along with a good chunk of the classic 1E ones. 2E settings actually split the player base and helped bankrupt TSR. Most 3E groups I saw were playing it mostly as 2E type game with more bells and whistles, not many if any were going hard on the WBL guide lines and highly optimised PCs although I did see a few optimised PCs they were not like the online guides. 4E tanked I suspect because they fixed various issues the majority or players did not relate to because they were playing 3E in a more casual way over the assumptions forum posters made so they made a good system for the wrong crowd.
Even now people still slag off FR for example for various reasons, part of it being its always "cool" to hate whats popular. And yet is the only thing that has survived from 1E-2E-3E-4E due to its popularity. This would indicate that most players don't care to much about Darksun or Greyhawk or Eberron etc and FR killed off Greyhawk and Dragonlance for the most part in the 80's and 90's. The problem being fans of those setting and fans of there play styles often blind themselves to what everyone else is doing. For example in 3E we never went that far down the online assumptions rabbit hole but we did go far enough that how we were playing the game was a bit different to how I saw other groups playing the game which was more towards the casual end of things. In early 3.0 we were playing it like advanced 2E with more options. Then we figured out how to abuse metamagic and haste.
Looking back through my old D&D books there was a clear path towards more options for players. From large chunks of UA being added to the 2E PHB (mostly spells), through to streamlining the late 2E mechanics and turning them into feat for 3.0. 4E and Pathfinder were the ultimate evolution of those concepts, both of them have not done that well by D&D standards (great for Paizo at one point though they are a smaller company). The 3E playstlye is still somewhat popular at least online (5% 3.5 and 12% PF), but OSR is not really about fantasy Vietnam (it can be though) and 4E seems functionally dead (about 1% online).
And that is why I think rulings not rules as the basic concept has worked so well. Some players do like the extra crunch but if you scare off the GMs and fail to appeal to new players you might not have much of a game long term. It will be interesting to see how well Pathfinder 2 does. I suspect most D&D players fall in the roll a d20 (or d6/d10) for initiative lets go mentality so things like the 5 minute workday or whatever mostly don't apply to them as its more of a online thing. They don't know or care about most online arguments which really only seem to effect organised play as you only need 1 or 2 people to tell everyone else about whatever combo or OP thing they find.
A perhaps over looked reason why it has done that is I think it is the 1st D&D since perhaps 1989 if not 1983 to return to what made D&D popular in the 1st place- the D&D playstyle. That play style is basically a beer and pretzyls type D&D that is easy to pick up an play a'la the old Red box and 1E AD&D to a lesser extent. Its the same playstyle I suspect the majority of 3E playerbase used while 4E did not cater to that playstyle at all mostly because they listened to online forum users as a feedback source. Put simply the online stereo types about the various D&D playstyles do not apply to how people play the game. Those stereotypes broadly speaking are.
1E. Fantasy Vietnam.
2E. Narrative settings.
3E. Powergaming.
4E tactical.
For example Fantasy Vietnam in AD&D mostly exists in a handful of adventures with certain reputations the Tomb of Horrors being the prime one ( and Ruins of Undermountain and Labyrinth of Madness). The thing here is that for the most part I suspect those play styles are actually in the minority. Most of the classic adventures are fairly easy with perhaps the odd thing that can mess you up with old school energy draining undead. The Isle of Dread and post of the B and X series are fairly easy along with a good chunk of the classic 1E ones. 2E settings actually split the player base and helped bankrupt TSR. Most 3E groups I saw were playing it mostly as 2E type game with more bells and whistles, not many if any were going hard on the WBL guide lines and highly optimised PCs although I did see a few optimised PCs they were not like the online guides. 4E tanked I suspect because they fixed various issues the majority or players did not relate to because they were playing 3E in a more casual way over the assumptions forum posters made so they made a good system for the wrong crowd.
Even now people still slag off FR for example for various reasons, part of it being its always "cool" to hate whats popular. And yet is the only thing that has survived from 1E-2E-3E-4E due to its popularity. This would indicate that most players don't care to much about Darksun or Greyhawk or Eberron etc and FR killed off Greyhawk and Dragonlance for the most part in the 80's and 90's. The problem being fans of those setting and fans of there play styles often blind themselves to what everyone else is doing. For example in 3E we never went that far down the online assumptions rabbit hole but we did go far enough that how we were playing the game was a bit different to how I saw other groups playing the game which was more towards the casual end of things. In early 3.0 we were playing it like advanced 2E with more options. Then we figured out how to abuse metamagic and haste.
Looking back through my old D&D books there was a clear path towards more options for players. From large chunks of UA being added to the 2E PHB (mostly spells), through to streamlining the late 2E mechanics and turning them into feat for 3.0. 4E and Pathfinder were the ultimate evolution of those concepts, both of them have not done that well by D&D standards (great for Paizo at one point though they are a smaller company). The 3E playstlye is still somewhat popular at least online (5% 3.5 and 12% PF), but OSR is not really about fantasy Vietnam (it can be though) and 4E seems functionally dead (about 1% online).
And that is why I think rulings not rules as the basic concept has worked so well. Some players do like the extra crunch but if you scare off the GMs and fail to appeal to new players you might not have much of a game long term. It will be interesting to see how well Pathfinder 2 does. I suspect most D&D players fall in the roll a d20 (or d6/d10) for initiative lets go mentality so things like the 5 minute workday or whatever mostly don't apply to them as its more of a online thing. They don't know or care about most online arguments which really only seem to effect organised play as you only need 1 or 2 people to tell everyone else about whatever combo or OP thing they find.
Last edited:
