D&D (2024) Revised 6E prediction thread

[embee]

I saw a few headlines but haven't paid much attention to it.

It's very easy to explain.

GameStop is a dying company. Has been dying for years. Mainly because their revenue depends on buying used video games at a heavily discounted rate and reselling them at a heavily inflated price. They did this for a long time and it pissed off their customers. Meanwhile, video games themselves switched over to digital distribution, ruining the market for used video games.

Basically, what iTunes and Napster did to record stores like Tower Records and Sam Goody, Steam and Epic and the EA Store and the Sony and XBox marketplaces did to GameStop.

So, as a result, it's stock price was sitting at around $20 a share. Probably a little bit overvalued but not by much. So, several hedge funds bought a bunch of GME stock and were going to short it for a bit of a profit.

On Reddit, there is a subreddit called WallStreetBuys. It has a lot of day traders, especially furloughed, unemployed, or idling at home folk. One of them noticed that a couple of hedge funds bought a large amount of GME and figured that they were going to short it. So, on a lark, he suggested that folk buy up a bunch of the stock so that they - not the hedge fund - could turn a quick profit and wouldn't it be hilarious if the hedge funds had to keep buying more stock to avoid taking a loss.

It was easy to do this because there is an app called Robinhood that has no-fee trading and allows folk to trade on margin (basically borrowed money). So you can do a lot of trades without racking up fees by borrowing money. Yeah, it's as shady as it sounds.

This vicious cycle went on for a couple of days until it finally hit The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Then, it exploded. Lots of people downloaded the app and started doing no-fee trading. One hedge fund took a huge bath on it. Robinhood had to borrow a ton of money from its investors to pay for all of the trades (because trades do cost money, even if the brokerage doesn't charge the user the fee). Some people were able to turn a little profit on day trading.

Elon Musk stupidly weighed in on Twitter, telling people to buy, which is stupid FOR HIM because that's how he has gotten charged with SEC violations in the past.

And GME itself is starting to lose value again because, at the end of the day, it's a dying company.

That's pretty much it.

 

[Scribe]

You left out the part where they blocked buying the stock to prevent further pumping in a clear move to interrupt the disruption. I found that an interesting step in the process.

 

[tetrasodium]

It's very easy to explain.

GameStop is a dying company. Has been dying for years. Mainly because their revenue depends on buying used video games at a heavily discounted rate and reselling them at a heavily inflated price. They did this for a long time and it pissed off their customers. Meanwhile, video games themselves switched over to digital distribution, ruining the market for used video games.

Basically, what iTunes and Napster did to record stores like Tower Records and Sam Goody, Steam and Epic and the EA Store and the Sony and XBox marketplaces did to GameStop.

So, as a result, it's stock price was sitting at around $20 a share. Probably a little bit overvalued but not by much. So, several hedge funds bought a bunch of GME stock and were going to short it for a bit of a profit.

On Reddit, there is a subreddit called WallStreetBuys. It has a lot of day traders, especially furloughed, unemployed, or idling at home folk. One of them noticed that a couple of hedge funds bought a large amount of GME and figured that they were going to short it. So, on a lark, he suggested that folk buy up a bunch of the stock so that they - not the hedge fund - could turn a quick profit and wouldn't it be hilarious if the hedge funds had to keep buying more stock to avoid taking a loss.

It was easy to do this because there is an app called Robinhood that has no-fee trading and allows folk to trade on margin (basically borrowed money). So you can do a lot of trades without racking up fees by borrowing money. Yeah, it's as shady as it sounds.

This vicious cycle went on for a couple of days until it finally hit The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Then, it exploded. Lots of people downloaded the app and started doing no-fee trading. One hedge fund took a huge bath on it. Robinhood had to borrow a ton of money from its investors to pay for all of the trades (because trades do cost money, even if the brokerage doesn't charge the user the fee). Some people were able to turn a little profit on day trading.

Elon Musk stupidly weighed in on Twitter, telling people to buy, which is stupid FOR HIM because that's how he has gotten charged with SEC violations in the past.

And GME itself is starting to lose value again because, at the end of the day, it's a dying company.

That's pretty much it.

Ironically gamestop probably helped fuel the push from game producers & publishers to switch over to digital distribution. There were small local companies all over that bought & sold new & used video games prior to eb&gamestop doing it but they probably made less impact than piracy, gamestop did it at a scale that reflected on quarterly reports

 

[Micah Sweet]

No

Not sure what you mean here, but that has never been a worry for my players. When you start out with a +5 and the commoner has a +0, they pretty much felt expectational right from the start.

Well that is certainly possible, but not how I DM personally.

Not if you never run into any commoners. If everything you face is about as powerful as you, you're not going to feel exceptional.

 

[dave2008]

You left out the part where they blocked buying the stock to prevent further pumping in a clear move to interrupt the disruption. I found that an interesting step in the process.

And the part where it spread to other companies

 

[dave2008]

No

Not if you never run into any commoners. If everything you face is about as powerful as you, you're not going to feel exceptional.

I guess, but wouldn't that be the case in any edition from 3e on?

Personally, I've never run games where the PCs are always facing the next best thing. The typical progression for us is: from 1 orc to a few orcs to dozens of orcs, etc,, with a few more powerful beasties thrown in every once and a while.

 

[Vaalingrade]

3. Short rests are eliminated or reworked. "Once per short rest" becomes "proficiency bonus times per long rest."

Please be the opposite: everything is per encounter instead of per day.

No More Vancian charges design schema!

 

[Mecheon]

One of them noticed that a couple of hedge funds bought a large amount of GME and figured that they were going to short it. So, on a lark, he suggested that folk buy up a bunch of the stock so that they - not the hedge fund - could turn a quick profit and wouldn't it be hilarious if the hedge funds had to keep buying more stock to avoid taking a loss.

To be specific, last year DeepFuckingValue (that's him. that's the guy's name) noticed that Gamestop was under-value. It should have been around $20, but was pushed well under. There's a video floating around he did late last year talking about the whole scenario and him pointing out it was probably shorted, and that he'd be putting stuff into it. Not a rare thing, other stuff like AMC and Blackberry float around that sub as 'obviously shorted stocks'. The difference and what made Gamestonks what it is is how much it was shorted.

The kick-off event was one of the people from the hedge fund made this big video talking about how Gamestop was going to drop in value and was awful company you shouldn't invest in, and it was, well, a pretty blatent shorted stock and honestly, kind of verging on market manipulation. He's done this in the past, this person. Done a big video on why Company X is bad, its stocks subsequently drop, oops turns out they were shorted and now hedge fund gets the cash-money. Except, this time, it didn't work. Reddit's audience skews people who went to Gamestop a ton in their youths so, they weren't happy about being told Gamestop was basically going to die. DFV chose this moment to go "YOLO" and went all in, telling folks how blatently shorted the stocks were. Subsequently, other folks from WallstreetBets also went all in, whether through bad decision making or solidarity. And then the stocks started to rise as the hedge fund tried to buy the shorted stocks back. And then it kept rising. And then more people brought in. And here we are today.

The hedge fund's bet got absolutely called by WSB and now the hedge funds are complaining their free money scheme got called on, meanwhile WSB are buying billboards with their newfound profits to rub it in as they hold, because even with the price going down from its crazy heights, its still bad enough they're going to end up probably bankrupting at least one hedge fund.

Elon Musk stupidly weighed in on Twitter, telling people to buy, which is stupid FOR HIM because that's how he has gotten charged with SEC violations in the past.

While I've my problems with Elon, this is revenge. Tesla's stocks apparently got shorted by some hedge funds in the past, so he's basically revelling in their destruction at the moment.


Anywho, as for 6E? I predict inbuilt stats will go, each race/lineage/whatever they'll be called will have a Thematic Ability that at least goes to the idea of what the stat would previously be. I also predict half-orcs will be replaced with just orcs, but I don't think goblins will sneak in

 

[TheSword]

@Sacrosanct

Perhaps, though I see no evidence of the third point other than wishful thinking. I’d stake my wallet that over 50% of players today don’t even know what a Warlord is, let alone have a desire to play one.

Regarding the second point. Alignment has already been de-coupled from race so this is hardly a change. You’ve just stated a change that has already been made in 5e and then claimed it will stay. I don’t doubt it, about time. Though again no evidence that it will be removed other than some very loud peoples wishful thinking.

As for point one, well it follows the same vein. The change has been made. You actually are suggesting things that won’t be revised.

I am really surprised you think that racial ability stats and Orc alignment are sacred cows. Now if races were removed entirely, alignment or ability scores. Then those would be sacred cows... but then again there’s no evidence of that that I’ve seen. In fact 5e expressly repudiated a shift back to Chaos <=> Law.

 

[Stormonu]

2E was the longest-lived edition, and it was allowed to drag out far too long (12 years, I think). A large portion of gamers and even the RPG industry had switched to more "modern" systems.

I don't think 5E will be allowed to linger so long that its producing content for content's sake. I do have the feel that Tasha's has reached a point where it feels like designers are grasping for content AND attempting to change the paradigm of the game. However, adventure and campaign content still has a lot of life left that could be used to keep 5E alive and well.

At most, I'd prefer a reorganization of the main 3 books - take the lessons learned from the last few years, bundle some content (say, like the ranger and fix/replace the PHB sorcerer subclasses) and rerelease the primary books.

I can say, when 6E comes out, I won't be tagging along. I have enough 5E content to last me years to come and I find it very enjoyable. I just sort of worry what will happen to my Beyond content when things change, as right now it really helps organize my game.