D&D General Matt Colville on adventure length

GrimCo

Hero
Well, there is one solution. Play with likeminded people. I know, it's easier said than done, but it's only good solution for what is esentially human problem. It sucks when you can't find group, but thats life. You cant find compatible group, you don't play game and find different hobby.
 

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Off the top of my head:

1. Ratings systems for dms. StartPlaying does this already where players are able to post reactions to dms and dms with higher positive ratings are listed higher when searching for a game.
This sounds like a good idea, until you look at what happened with Rotten Tomatoes. You would get DMs being dumped on because someone didn't like their politics, or gender, or the colour of their skin, and any other bad reason you can think of.

Fundamental flaw: horrible people.
2. Provide positive examples. Live play is a good thing here.

3. Providing actual advice in various venues to show good practices.

4. Provide multiple “teaching” adventure modules instead of just the starter set.

5. Provide advice sidebars and transparent explanations in products.
Generally sound ideas, and we will probably see some of this in (and to coincide with) the new rulebooks. But it still has to be paid for. And if your products are too heavily skewed towards beginners, then experienced players are not going to want to pay for them. You are heading back to the 1979 situation of splitting your product line into "Basic" and "Advanced" versions.

And it would have more effect on face to face groups, it does nothing to address the core internet problem of horrible people.
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
Generally sound ideas, and we will probably see some of this in (and to coincide with) the new rulebooks. But it still has to be paid for. And if your products are too heavily skewed towards beginners, then experienced players are not going to want to pay for them. You are heading back to the 1979 situation of splitting your product line into "Basic" and "Advanced" versions.
Would that really be a bad thing?
 

Would that really be a bad thing?
From a commercial point of view, splitting the product line is bad, yes. And we have seen just yesterday that Hasbro are struggling to break even. If they went under it would be pretty disastrous for D&D as a game. The brandname is the only asset with real value.
 

EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way
The root cause is that people are horrible. Next.
Your overwhelming, unjustified cynicism will never be a persuasive reason to stop trying to make things better. "There's no point, people are just wicked and you can never ever do anything to address that except by forcefully coercing them to obey" is a pernicious and, frankly, dangerous position regardless of whether it applies only at the level of pretend elfgames or any other aspect of human life.

We have nothing more to discuss on the matter.

From a commercial point of view, splitting the product line is bad, yes. And we have seen just yesterday that Hasbro are struggling to break even. If they went under it would be pretty disastrous for D&D as a game. The brandname is the only asset with real value.
Horizontal market segmentation says hi.
 


And yet Rotten tomatoes remains relevant today.
I would see it shut down, it has brought disaster to far too many good and decent people already.

I certainly wouldn't want to see decent DMs treated in that way. Such a system would promote exactly the sort of people we are trying to protect against.
 

Hussar

Legend
I would see it shut down, it has brought disaster to far too many good and decent people already.

I certainly wouldn't want to see decent DMs treated in that way. Such a system would promote exactly the sort of people we are trying to protect against.
Meh. It works perfectly fine most of the time. Is there problems? Sure. But, most of the time? It's fine.

Which is pretty much the same as any other system.

Like I said, this system is in place RIGHT NOW. It's not something new. It's right there and it works fine. Just because some bad actors might abuse it does not change that fact.
 

Meh. It works perfectly fine most of the time. Is there problems? Sure. But, most of the time? It's fine.

Which is pretty much the same as any other system.

Like I said, this system is in place RIGHT NOW. It's not something new. It's right there and it works fine. Just because some bad actors might abuse it does not change that fact.
It certainly does not “work fine” when it punishes the innocent.
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
Including adventures on long-term hold (thanks, lockdown) and currently in progress, I'm on adventure 94. Including between-adventure downtime (usually good for a session or two each time) and off-cycle catch-up or updating sessions, last Sunday was session 1047. There's been in total about a couple of hundred* PCs, maybe half* of which are either currently active, on hold, or still out there somewhere.

* - and of course now I'm curious; I'll run the numbers and update this post later.
Finally got to this.

In my current game there's been 216 player characters, including one that started as a PC and then was handed over as an NPC.

Of those, 29* are currently active or on hold, 70 are to some degree retired (either currently inactive, or on longer-term hold, or their player has left forever), and 117* are dead.

* - of the 29 counted as active, one died last session but the plan is to revive her next session.
 

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