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

[Thomas Shey]

This whole thread has been a pissing contest for several pages now. But the point I'm making is to the people saying D&D is a bad game whose continued success is just some combination of luck, having been first, and benighted players who never try other games. Those are the excuses that wear thin over 50 years. You can't coast on past successes for half a century.

While my views are not with the people you're talking to, I again point at Microsoft. All you really need to continue when you have market dominance is basic competence, especially in a field where the network factor is strong, the way it is with OSes and RPGs.

 

[Thomas Shey]

One of the biggest impediments to the success of other games is that game stores (at least here in the States) largely treat RPGs as zero sum. It's really the combined stranglehold of D&D and Pathfinder since the 4e era that is the issue. You're lucky if there's even anything on the rack that does not come from Wizards or Paizo. In the 5e era Adventurer's League has made this worse because it is a format game stores can promote in the same way they promote Friday Night Magic. Home games and especially running other games at the store are often discouraged. I have pretty much given up on game stores as a way to connect with other gamers or recruit for not 5e / not PF2 games.

Over and above availability (and this is not my saying you're wrong), its easy to underestimate how much weight the network factor has in some areas.

Let's say you have a fellow who is, for whatever reason, dissatisfied with D&D. It doesn't even matter why. So what are the steps he has to take to play something else?

1. He has to be aware of it. While that may seem stupid in the day of the Net, I've encountered people even in recent years who were, at best, only vaguely aware other games existed, some for the reason you reference above, some because they didn't actually buy game books themselves but just used other people's. This is particularly easy to do in small communities where there's no local game store and what gaming population exists is pretty much D&D universal.

2. He has to figure out what he wants instead. Even once he finds sources to talk about other games, it can well be overwhelming. Does he even want to stay within fantasy? Even within there, just to look at the more well known cases you have Warhammer, RQ, and various PbtA options, and I'm forgetting some common cases because its early and I didn't get enough sleep.

3. Now that he's figured out what he wants, how does he get to play it? Does he GM? If not, he's got a serious uphill battle to fight because he has to get others to engage with the game, including someone else to run it.

Given a fair amount of the gaming populace is pretty casual in their approach to the hobby, is it any surprise that this most likely means the majority of people, even people who find elements of D&D annoying, are just going to stick with what's already at hand?

(And of course there's the issue even in bigger places that most game systems do not have anything like D&D's organized play system; the only other one I know of that does anything like it is (surprise) Paizo).

By the way what Wizards has been able to accomplish with both Friday Night Magic and Adventurers' League is some damn brilliant marketing. They have basically turned gaming stores into a vestigial marketing wing that pushes their products, keeps players engaged, and builds community around their games. It also has a chilling effect on anyone trying to compete with them directly.

Or, this.

 

[Parmandur]

The group that became the Critical Role show started together almost 2 years before 5E was published, according to their Wiki, and was running their game using PRPG, but converted everything to 5E rules for the show, which started airing in March 2015, or about 4 months after all three core books had been released.

Now that makes you wonder what things would look like if they had stuck to PRPG for the show?

Critical Role did a PFRPG one-shot onxe...having watched it, Critical Role would never have been a thing under that system.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's a lot less of a significant consideration than it used to be however. When I was young the hobby shop was basically the only place you could get RPG books and most of the people you knew who roleplayed were the people you knew face to face who used the same hobby shops. These days Amazon has a ridiculous number of games, as does drivethru and itch.io and we don't have to find our way to usenet sites like alt.games.rpg (or whatever it was).

And one of the positive things I'll say for 5e is that it's very much a "least bad" choice with as little as possible in there that will put anyone off. It's good enough for most jobs while not, I would say, being particularly great at any. Which makes it very good as a game random people can all have a good time with even if many of those groups would have a better time with something more focused.

Well, as long as you want fantasy. But then, you can argue most other genres in the hobby are a rounding error, for reasons that can't be but speculative.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

By the way what Wizards has been able to accomplish with both Friday Night Magic and Adventurers' League is some damn brilliant marketing. They have basically turned gaming stores into a vestigial marketing wing that pushes their products, keeps players engaged, and builds community around their games. It also has a chilling effect on anyone trying to compete with them directly.

The regular once-a-week in-store game session actually started during 4E, with their Encounters night, I think it was called, and that was then converted over to being Adventurer's League night after 5E released.

And there are still plenty of places where Pathfinder Society games outnumber Adventurer's League games.

So it is not specifically 5E, but a D20 system that people know and are comfortable with and can adapt to different versions of much easier than taking the time to learn something totally new. This is a reason why Adventures in Middle-Earth greatly outsold The One Ring, even though it is a great game. Familiarity and a large number of players able to teach the base system to people brand new to gaming.

 

[darjr]

Six months in doesn't count as my first sentence? It does to me. It quickly revved up awareness in groups who previously had probably had little or no exposure to RPGs at all.

which had zero impact upon 5es release.

If you want to be hostile because I didn't mean by the sentence what you thought I did--after all, since CR used D&D, how could it have occurred prior to its publication? How do you imagine I thought that worked?--that's on you.

Me hostile?
Let’s see, you’ve essentially called the folks at WotC dummies as far as marketing, anyway.

you seem to have this notion that 5e fans are, what, unthinking?

And then you build a bunch of straw men.

For what?

All I did was point out that 5e was already a huge freak of a success at launch. Before CR even existed. And that seems to be such an issue for you you’ve done this? OK.

and it’s not like folks didn’t know what 5e was before launch. The playtest alone gave folks a really good idea.

 

[Umbran]

Bad analogies are bad. I've seen bad analogies a few time around here now to support a nitpicking point, and it is annoying.

I don't feel that the point that you can be perfectly satisfied with D&D, and still play other games, to be a nitpick in this context.

 

[Fanaelialae]

While my views are not with the people you're talking to, I again point at Microsoft. All you really need to continue when you have market dominance is basic competence, especially in a field where the network factor is strong, the way it is with OSes and RPGs.

D&D was temporarily unseated by PF as market leader during 4e, but I disagree that it was a result of incompetence. 4e was more than just competently designed. I would argue that, while it certainly wasn't perfect, it was a well designed game.

What I believe 4e lacked was flexibility and broad appeal (with respect to previous editions of D&D). PF, which was by no means perfect either, nonetheless was more able to encompass a range of playstyles than 4e. I say this as someone who would much prefer 4e over PF1, because I think it's a fair criticism of 4e. Inertia certainly hasn't hurt the popularity of D&D, but I think 4e demonstrated that basic competence doesn't cut it.

DW is a really well designed game, but it has a fraction of the market that 5e has. Why? I would say because DW focuses on doing its specific playstyle well, but doesn't really work outside of it. Whereas 5e isn't the best at any one style, but is capable of supporting a fairly broad range of playstyles.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Pathfinder…..
I think that pathfinder, strangely, is selling as much or has about as many players as it always did, in normal, non boom pathfinder times. By boom I mean during release times or other short bursts of sales. I suspect it’s even close to when it surpassed WotC in sales because I think that was largely a phenomenon of WotC drastically losing sales numbers.

I think this is good, though I do wish competition was greater.

What’s my point? I dunno. Except to say I don’t think there is a CLEAR signal that 5e has helped other games.

Other companies? Yea, absolutely. Look at MCDM and Ghostfire and Kobold Press, and even Monte Cook Games. But their success is due in no small part to their 5e content. (and other factors, yes, obviously, some maybe greater than others).

But other games? I dunno. Anybody have any clear direct evidence?

Idk about clear direct evidence, but the success of funding campaigns for dozens of games suggests to me that the “only buy/play indie” crowd is pretty sizable, and the “play indie and D&D” crowd is probably even bigger. Not to mention the “buy indie to mine it for ideas” crowd.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The French Revolution happened 44 years later and this may be a shock but NOT EVERYONE HAD MUSKETS. Particularly the unemployed economically depressed revolutionaries who fought against their "Social Betters" in the Revolution. Most of them had old swords and spears or occasionally pistols when they stormed the Bastille and battled soldiers in the streets.

Look at all those Civilians with Pikes and some with Axes. Okay, they're not "Traditional" pikes from pike-squares of Swiss from the 850s, but you can blame Gustavus Adolphus of what is now Germany for changing naughty word up for Shorter Spears and Lighter Muskets in 1631.

They aren't any sort of pike square on either side. There aren't any pikes and there isn't a meaningful square, a key feature of which is that it was square. And civilians would not by the nature of things be using a weapon that required training and discipline to maneuver and not get in everyone's way. The "pikes" are no higher than the musket and bayonet combination on the other side meaning they certainly aren't pikes, and that's not a square.

No, not everyone had muskets. But even fewer people had pikes. And what Gustavus Adolphus mostly shortened was the depth of his formations, making them more maneuverable and because he realised the muskets were winning the fights.

The Improvisational combat methods of the citizenry, using what they had and half-remembered descriptions of winning tactics in historical battles lead to victory. Their version of the Pike Square was particularly useful in the more crowded streets of Paris.

It was only useful because they forgot the pikes. And ignored the squares. Narrow streets are the very last place you want to be carrying pikes. Meanwhile a mix of agricultural implements and spears that aren't at least twice your height and anything up to five times your height are much easier to move. (The normal length expected for a pike was between 3m and 7.5m). And while pike squares are close formations not all close formations are squares. Close formations on the other hand have been used by ... just about everyone.