D&D 5E Greg Leeds talks about D&D

MechaPilot said:

Thanks for letting me know about them.

I suppose I'd just gotten into the habit of shopping for RPG books at local game stores. Then again, I'm not exactly a big tech adopter: I don't own a cell phone, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've used one. I've never even seen a kindle (or an ipod) in person either.

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Check out:
http://merricb.com/dungeons-dragons-5e/the-great-list-of-dd-5e-adventures/

Also, print on demand is more of a thing. So even without a tablet you can buy PDFs and send that content to Lulu to print.

Shasarak said:

I am sure that even JK Rowling was told not to quit her day job when she wanted to get into writing.

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Doubtful. She was unemployed at the time.

Mouseferatu said:

Just like it's better financial sense not to spend money on lottery tickets; the fact that a few people beat the odds doesn't change the fact that those odds are a enormously against you.

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Actually, there's an argument that for some people it does make sense - if you're in a position where you can spend the buck or two for a ticket without noticing the cost (or simply by giving up your morning coffee instead) but you're also the sort of person for whom a jackpot win would be a life-changing gain, then it may make sense to do so. Because even if the chance of winning is vanishingly small, the differential between the outlay and the potential gain makes it worthwhile.

Which may indeed mirror D&D's current position: the costs for keeping it going at the current level are pretty small, and may even be a rounding error against the Magic money tree, but the potential gains should they have a successful movie series (or breakout video game, or whatever) are pretty huge. And, yeah, there really doesn't seem much hope of D&D becoming the next Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it's not impossible that they'd hit the jackpot.

delericho said:

Doubtful. She was unemployed at the time.

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And Lee Childs famously made redundant before launching his Jack Reacher Novels.

Maybe "Dont quit your day job" meme is just flat out wrong.

Shasarak said:

And Lee Childs famously made redundant before launching his Jack Reacher Novels.

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And Bernard Cornwell's career apparently came about because he couldn't get a work permit in the US, after moving there with his American wife.

But...

Maybe "Dont quit your day job" meme is just flat out wrong.

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I doubt it. I suspect instead that there are a handful of counter-examples. For most of us, the need to eat would likely prove compelling.

Of course, there's also the "starving artist" cliche...

Shasarak said:

That a tabletop roleplaying company can not maximise their profits by producing tabletop roleplaying games.

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It would be the only logical choice for one which desired *only* to maximise profits. The point being that they have other goals, too.

MechaPilot said:

The change should happen because people who are round-robin-DM'ing need to be on the same page with each other. That's true of PHB and DMG options as much as potential future options. I mean, what happens when one DM is cool with all the PHB options, a second won't allow feats and a third will allow feats but won't allow multiclassing? Does each player make and update three different versions of their characters? No, while it's possible to do that, it doesn't make as much sense as making sure the DMs are on the same page to begin with.

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Of course they need to be on the same page initially when the core books come out and they first get together for gaming in that edition. But, the more additional expansion rules come out, the more often you're requiring them all to get together to "get on the same page" again and parse out a whole lot of stuff. It's again a matter of degree - the thing you want poses an additional burden on these DMs that is not inconsequential. It's not just a matter of "you have a problem saying no and that's not my problem," which is the flip answer people keep giving on this topic.

MechaPilot said:

Yeah, more options does increase the potential risk of entry of material that you find objectionable if those options are available for the AL. However, not all new options are available for the AL; in particular, the Aara-Coca-Cola comes to mind. Also, and no offense intended, I assume that your personal preferences are not the standard of exclusion for the AL. Presumably, the standard for exclusion requires a more broad-based objection than just your personal objection. That there is an increased risk that something objectionable to any one person may end up entering the AL is not the standard that should be employed.

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I am not arguing my personal preferences are the standard for exclusion, I am arguing the more options you come out with the more people whose personal preferences don't mesh well with the options that are allowed, and therefore the fewer people having fun DMing AL and fewer DMs willing to do it. It's already a pretty hard job, and the DM rewards are already weaker than the Player rewards. It's just yet another challenge to those DMs to have to deal with new material they may not like and have no choice about including in the game. It's yet another reason that doesn't fit into the "You have trouble saying No and that's not my issue you're just being self-centered when you deny me my options" flip answer.

MechaPilot said:

I don't expect all DMs to be good at assessing how current content will interact will future content. Since they can't know what that future content is, that would be ridiculous. However, I do expect DMs to evaluate content before just plugging it into their games. I do expect that when future content comes out, those DMs will asses the new content for interactions with the older content (which is a known element since it is already extant), and I expect them to make those future evaluations at least as thorough as their prior ones.

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But the problem becomes worse with each new option that comes out. The amount they have to assess increases, the number of potential interactions increases, and the amount of time they need to spend to assess it won't likely be there like it was for the core books prior to campaigns starting. Bottom line, the more options come out, the more this issue gets aggravated.

The more campaigns you have, the more risk you have of it happening too, doesn't mean you should have less campaigns.

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But apparently people do! Their surveys found people play home campaigns much longer than the published adventures originally played to, often playing one campaign for years. One reason for that may well be consistent rules within a single campaign are easier than changing the campaign more frequently and having to adjust rules to meet the campaign details. But really this is a side issue. I think you agree there are in fact arguments against additional options which do not come down to "you just have trouble saying no, and you're being self-centered by wanting to deny me options", which is an argument you have not made but which many others here have made and continue to repeat each time this topic comes up. I am not saying the arguments I am making here should override your desire for more options - I am just trying to get people to acknowledge not everyone against more options is against them for arbitrary or self-centered or wimpy or illogical reasons, but they may well have legitimate concerns that shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.

Mistwell said:

Of course they need to be on the same page initially when the core books come out and they first get together for gaming in that edition. But, the more additional expansion rules come out, the more often you're requiring them all to get together to "get on the same page" again and parse out a whole lot of stuff. It's again a matter of degree - the thing you want poses an additional burden on these DMs that is not inconsequential. It's not just a matter of "you have a problem saying no and that's not my problem," which is the flip answer people keep giving on this topic.

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The frequency with which additional content comes out is irrelevant to the need to establish a policy about content adoption because we all know that new content is going to come out (even if in limited doses) and that the group will have to decide to allow it or not. Having a group policy regarding adoption of new content is just a good idea, even if it only gets applied to very sparsely released material and the Unearthed Arcana articles.

Mistwell said:

But the problem becomes worse with each new option that comes out. The amount they have to assess increases, the number of potential interactions increases, and the amount of time they need to spend to assess it won't likely be there like it was for the core books prior to campaigns starting. Bottom line, the more options come out, the more this issue gets aggravated.

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That's not quite accurate.

The only things that you HAVE TO assess are things that people ask about playing at your table. Until someone brings to your attention that she wants to play it, you don't even have to know that the option exists.

If you want to go beyond that, you could limit yourself to assessing only what is relevant for your game. For example, if you are playing in FR, you don't have to assess Warforged, Thri-Kreen, and Vistani options that are released; unless you are playing in Eberron, you don't have to assess the Artificer; and so on.

Additionally, you are never going to stop the increase in available options. Publicly-available, and often free, options are created by fans at an astonishing rate. As an example, I posted a 5e slime race both here and at the now defunct WotC forums. That race is now an option that exists for 5e. Did you feel the need to assess it when it became available? I would bet that the vast majority of people didn't feel that they needed to assess it for potential use at their table, and that most people, including you, probably didn't even know it exists.

Mistwell said:

But really this is a side issue. I think you agree there are in fact arguments against additional options which do not come down to "you just have trouble saying no, and you're being self-centered by wanting to deny me options", which is an argument you have not made but which many others here have made and continue to repeat each time this topic comes up.

I am not saying the arguments I am making here should override your desire for more options - I am just trying to get people to acknowledge not everyone against more options is against them for arbitrary or self-centered or wimpy or illogical reasons, but they may well have legitimate concerns that shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.

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I'm probably going to disappoint you here a bit, but hopefully not too much.

The only time I see more options as being potentially a problem is with AL DMs (at all other times it really is only a matter of saying "no" and having to assess only those things that someone asks about bringing to your table). However, DMs who choose to DM for the AL are already agreeing to restrictions on what they can do, allow, and disallow (I'll never DM for the AL because I can't allow homebrew material, and even certain official material). Also, the AL restrictions should be designed so that AL play appeals to the largest amount of D&D fans, and that means they should have some type of vetting process for determining the objectionality of options for the process of determining exclusion/inclusion.

I'm also going to bring up something that was actually said to me over on the WotC forums. I was posting in a thread asking about who wanted to see firearms and firearms rules for 4e when one of the respondents in that thread literally said, "I don't want rules for firearms to exist in any book, whether published by WotC or not, because I don't want to have to tell my players they can't use them." That is an abysmally selfish point of view, and there are (apparently, and quite shockingly to me at the time) some people who legitimately hold to it. That poster's quote is always itching at the back of my mind whenever I see someone say that options shouldn't exist instead of simply saying that they just don't want to use certain options.

Now, the bright side is that I don't expect WotC to provide all the options that I want. I am perfectly content to pay another company if they provide what I want, and some posters have been kind enough to point me to some third party publishers who may do just that (I have finals in a couple of weeks, so I haven't checked yet). That said, I do think a formal 5e license from WotC would be a boon to potential publishers of material for 5e: litigation and lost development costs could very well be a risk that some publishing companies aren't willing to brave.

[MENTION=82779]MechaPilot[/MENTION] - why are you surprised by that attitude? A quick look at the Warlord forum shows that that attitude is not rare.

But again, I have to ask what you want? There are tons of 3rd party books out there. If you want options, they are already available. Dozens of optional books. Why do you need WotC to increase their pace?

But let's unpack the idea of pace. SCAG has six new class options. So in the first year of 5e, we got six new classes and about the same for new races (between SCAG and the Elemental Evil supplement). Fast forward five years. Assume the same pace throughout and we effectively double the PHB in five years. Seems fairly reasonable to me. How many more options are you expecting? How fast? Should we go the 3e route and release about double the options in the PHB every year? Two years? What would be a good release pace in your opinion?