I like the release of actual sales figures for the Starter Set. 126,000 in North America in 2014 (from the July release); 306,000 in North America in 2018. I wonder what we can extrapolate from that!
D&D General 40 Million People Have Played D&D [UPDATED!]
- Category Dungeons & Dragons
- Category Industry
I like the release of actual sales figures for the Starter Set. 126,000 in North America in 2014 (from the July release); 306,000 in North America in 2018. I wonder what we can extrapolate from that!
darjr
I crit!
Ha! A veiled edition jab! I ran so very much 4e and it wore me out to the point I really would be happy never running it again (except for 4e Gamma World, that’s so much silly fun).
I wouldn’t be surprised if more people DMed for the first time with 5e than have ever DMd 4e. I’d say that 5e is MUCH easier to pick up and run, it’s certainly far more forgiving to a DM, imho.
Tony Vargas
Legend
Note to self: find thicker veils.
Experiences differ, of course. 5e is familiar to returning players, and if you have a mixed group of experienced, returning, and new players the new players get plenty of help learning the D&D Way.
5e does Empower the DM, which means you /can/ just brazen it out, running off the cuff. Whether you find that 'easy' - I do...well, I find it fun & it comes naturally, but it requires a level of energy I don't have at the moment - but I've known a lot more GMs and players-who-won't GM who balk at the very idea.
Zardnaar
Legend
I don't think 5E is the easiest version of D&D to run. That would be B/X and various OSR clones that use ascending ACs such as C&C and Basic Fantasy.
Condensed rules for 5E are 2 pages long, for C&C new players more or less have to remember 2 numbers, 12 and 18.
Condensed rules for 5E are 2 pages long, for C&C new players more or less have to remember 2 numbers, 12 and 18.
Last edited by a moderator:
Scrivener of Doom
Adventurer
People are fundamentally lazy so playing is the easy way out. By contrast, DMing requires effort and accepting responsibility: That clashes with the innate laziness of most of us.
Honestly, I don't think 5E is as easy to DM as 4E. With 4E, everything is there on the stat block. With 5E you still have to look things up. And then there is...
... which are arguably even easier to run. B/X, in particular, is a dream to run or play and everything you need to know is so easy to find. If only the people behind B/X had been able to rewrite Gygax's impenetrable prose and poor design so that AD&D had been playable as written....
Zardnaar
Legend
That's kind of 2E. 2E is way easier to understand for modern players. They also seem to like the art last week I took the 2E phb 1989 and 1995 along with the Druids hand book in. Encounter design and pacing are way easier in the OSR games as well.
It's because everything is daily whileicing short rest and long rest classes in 5E makes things a bit harder along with hit point inflation and damage inflation.
Last edited by a moderator:
Tony Vargas
Legend
The classic games they imitate didn't even /have/ encounter design, so that's... odd.
Not that encounter design guidelines in 5e are simple, intuitive, or, well, work, but they /exist/.
New players don't notice 'inflation' /relative to past eds/.
Zardnaar
Legend
They don't, but it's easier to wing encounters, damage tends to be low. A lot of 5E monsters can be very swingy, Orcs, Gnolls, Ogres,Bugbears, Hobgoblins for example.
In OSR games it's 1HD-1 hp for a goblin, orcs are a whole hit dice, Hobgoblins get an extra hi t point, Gnolls have 2, Bugbears have 3, Ogres have 4.
1d10 is a lot of damage, now a Hobgoblin can connect for 1d8+1 or an extra +2d6.
Level 3 is the new level 1 but extra dice plus crits can make things very swingy.
OSR might be ass backwards mechanically but had some pros.
Last edited by a moderator:
This attitude is pernicious and wrong. The main reason that players don't want to DM is because they don't find DMing to be fun. Us weirdos who like to run the game, coming up with dozens of characters and plots, losing hundreds of battles, and generally having to play second fiddle to the "stars" of the game are the strange ones. It's like the difference between being an actor and a director - neither one is lazier than the other, they each get fulfillment from different parts of the creative process.
(And there are those who enjoy both. I rarely get to play the game anymore - once a year or so when I'm at a con - because I DM all the time. It's a different experience playing vs. DMing, and frankly even though I like playing, I prefer DMing. That doesn't make me better than my players, it just makes me someone who gets more enjoyment from running the game than they do.)
Azzy
ᚳᚣᚾᛖᚹᚢᛚᚠ
Possibly:
- No interest in video games (like me)
- No knowledge of the game (of the people I play D&D with I am the only one who even knows the game is coming)
- Dislike of the Baldur's gate series of games
- Dislike of CRPGs
Or...
- Don't have a computer or console that is capable of playing it
- Don't have enough disposable income to justify getting the game
- Don't have enough time to allot to playing a CRPG (and still do the other stuff they want to do)
The one things older editions had was morale rules and reaction rules. They kind of act as an equalizer. So you don't have encounter design rules, but you kind of have a series of safety valves that keep things in check.
My guess is people didn't use these rules back in the day, and as a result, you have the stories of constant death and slaughter that seem to be so prevalent when discussing old school games. To be honest, I don't think we used them when we played as kids... when I started playing these games again, now as an adult, and I actually read these rules, it was kind of a sea-change for me.
When used, you have a lot of built in survivability, or at least most of the time a total party kill is at least the result of a player choice.
Similar Threads
Related Articles
-
WotC Estimating D&D’s Revenue, Teos Abadia crunches the numbers.
- Started by darjr
- Replies: 37
-
-
-
D&D (2024) WotC Reveals The Confirmed Release Dates of 2024's D&D Slate
- Started by Morrus
- Replies: 267
-
D&D General Should D&D feature fearsome critters and other Americana?- Started by Whizbang Dustyboots
- Replies: 139