D&D 5E Is 5e's Success Actually Bad for Other Games?

[Kurotowa]

I don't think that having a larger audience, potential or real is a sign of good design, more of "inoffensive" one. Like Oscar's Best Picture -- it's something that the majority are okay with, not something that everybody loves to death.

That's always the choice. You have specialized products with a narrow audience that loves them fiercely, and you have general purpose products that don't evoke such hot feelings but is a "good enough" choice for a much larger audience of people. Neither is right or wrong, and it's healthy and natural to have both choices available. There will always be the big popular "good enough" market leader that most people use because it's a good common base and a whole bunch of smaller specialized choices beloved by the people for whom they are the exact right fit.

It may be the cool hipster thing to sneer at the popular choice, but I don't see anything wrong with having a broad appeal by design.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with engaging with game design, on the contrary, it's great!

However, I seriously doubt that someone who was exposed to only one RPG can design anything good.

I wouldn't know.

That said, we live in an age where pdfs are only a click away (and many are cheap or even free). Where a live play is also only a click away on YouTube. I'd say that educating oneself about different games and ideas has never been easier.

I'm highly skeptical that most people willing to write an entire binder of house rules wouldn't be curious as to what else is out there.

 

[Campbell]

D&D in any version is not a broad or general use game. It's an action adventure game where you play adventurers that form into adventuring parties who go on adventures where you fight monsters (about 4-6 times) and seek treasure. There are literal hosts of games where none of that is on the menu. Do not mistake broad appeal for flexible design.

 

[Fanaelialae]

D&D in any version is not a broad or general use game. It's an action adventure game where you play adventurers that form into adventuring parties who go on adventures where you fight monsters (about 4-6 times) and seek treasure. There are literal hosts of games where none of that is on the menu. Do not mistake broad appeal for flexible design.

Pretty sure no one who said 5e is flexible was suggesting it should be used as a dating sim, or whatever. Context is important, and in the context of this thread we are discussing D&D. So when someone says that 5e is flexible, it's probably safe to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are speaking in terms of D&D.

You could say "game X is flexible" and I could come back with "it's not flexible, it can't even make smoothies". But that would be an ungenerous reading of your statement on my part, to say the least.

 

[Campbell]

Pretty sure no one who said 5e is flexible was suggesting it should be used as a dating sim, or whatever. Context is important, and in the context of this thread we are discussing D&D. So when someone says that 5e is flexible, it's probably safe to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are speaking in terms of D&D.

You could say "game X is flexible" and I could come back with "it's not flexible, it can't even make smoothies". But that would be an ungenerous reading of your statement on my part, to say the least.

It's obviously making a comparative claim. That it is more flexible than other games. In my experience D&D is not especially flexible when compared to say Exalted, Legend of the Five Rings, Vampire, Apocalypse World, Worlds Without Number, or Blades in the Dark. People like what D&D has to offer. That does not make it flexible. In the same way Call of Duty has broad appeal and is not an especially flexible game.

I play D&D. I like D&D. It is not a swiss army knife of games.

 

[Fanaelialae]

It's obviously making a comparative claim. That it is more flexible than other games. In my experience D&D is not especially flexible when compared to say Exalted, Legend of the Five Rings, Vampire, Apocalypse World, Worlds Without Number, or Blades in the Dark. People like what D&D has to offer. That does not make it flexible. In the same way Call of Duty has broad appeal and is not an especially flexible game.

I play D&D. I like D&D. It is not a swiss army knife of games.

The only claim I've seen is that 5e is more flexible than other versions of D&D.

This thread is about what 5e does better than other versions of D&D. Context.

Edit: Mea culpa. I mixed up which thread I was in.

 

[loverdrive]

That's always the choice. You have specialized products with a narrow audience that loves them fiercely, and you have general purpose products that don't evoke such hot feelings but is a "good enough" choice for a much larger audience of people. Neither is right or wrong, and it's healthy and natural to have both choices available. There will always be the big popular "good enough" market leader that most people use because it's a good common base and a whole bunch of smaller specialized choices beloved by the people for whom they are the exact right fit.

It may be the cool hipster thing to sneer at the popular choice, but I don't see anything wrong with having a broad appeal by design.

Good enough is okay, sure. I just don't think that 5E is actually good enough.

I mean, if you don't want to play a resource management game, where characters drastically rise in power in short periods of time (which, in my experience, doesn't align with game tales people tell both online and offline) you either have to fight the rules or invent them on the spot or use a tiny subset of them that boils down to "roll d20, and the DM will tell you what happens next" (which has usefulness of approximately zero).

You can't expect a newbie group to just follow the rules and get a cool story, something that 5E heavily advertises on.

I honestly think that vast majority of people who enjoy D&D would enjoy Dungeon World more -- a game that actually delivers on the promise of exciting adventures in a fantasy world.

 

[Aldarc]

This thread is about what 5e does better than other versions of D&D. Context.

Isn't that what @overgeeked's thread is about? I thought this one was about the effects of 5e's success on other games.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Isn't that what @overgeeked's thread is about? I thought this one was about the effects of 5e's success on other games.

You're right. My mistake. I mixed up which thread I was in.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Speaking from the experience of my groups, I just had two leave OSR games to return to 5e because of familiarity, a "middle ground" approach, and ease of finding resources (in person, online). They have resisted trying other systems (Cthulhu, Savage Worlds, Pathfinder 1 or 2), because 5e does everything they want it to do.
Do you think 5e is so successful that it actually takes away players from other systems?

I think it's greatly expanded the overall pool of RPG players, beyond anything we've ever seen before. Some of them will make a single stop and never want to go further, others are going on to play all sorts of other games as well.

If you look at more general RPG boards than this one, which is overwhelmingly D&D-centric, you'll read about groups that refuse to play anything other than GURPs or old World of Darkness or Savage Worlds or PBtA games. Some folks just like what they like, others like a wide variety of stuff.