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

[Aldarc]

@MerricB

I agree with you Don, but I wonder how much of that was because no one could make a D&D clone and not get sued into the dirt.

Yeah, that sounds definitely like what John Wick would want to do.

In all seriousness, I think that there were always people who were dissatisfied with D&D's designs. Heartbreakers were symptomatic of this phenomenon. There was bound to be people who would have made their own games in significant enough ways from D&D, such as RuneQuest and Traveller. I don't think that the only solution to every "I have an idea for an RPG" would somehow involving wanting to make a D&D clone. I think it short-sells human creativity significantly, and it feels a bit insulting to the designers of this era to be honest.

 

[darjr]

I also find it puzzling, because I prefer clarity, clear terminology, and quick reference over hunting key info in a garbled soup of "natural language."


Anchovies are a fantastic cooking ingredient that adds a wonderful umami flavor to a number of dishes (e.g., Caesar salad dressing, Pasta Puttanesca, etc.).

About that, I’m color blind and found the color icons decision a strange one.
More so Rob Heinsoo is also colorblind. Though his (as I now suspect mine is after talking to him) is due to a brain issue, not an eye one.

 

[darjr]

Yeah, that sounds definitely like what John Wick would want to do.

sorry, I wasn’t engaging with that debate.

MerricB stated something about the kinds of games that “took over” when D&D was in trouble.

Pathfinder was the main one this recent round. I just wanted to note that the last round there was no decent D&D clone. And to wonder if there had been would it have taken the place of Vampire.

 

[darjr]

My experience of 4E was that most people I played with began seeing their character as a game piece with specific preprogrammed capabilities, rather than as a complex individual character.

And I started to see less and less of people’s faces as they were always looking at their darn character sheets. At least for a while it wasn’t their phones.

 

[Fanaelialae]

About that, I’m color blind and found the color icons decision a strange one.
More so Rob Heinsoo is also colorblind. Though his (as I now suspect mine is after talking to him) is due to a brain issue, not an eye one.

Yeah, we have a guy who is partially colorblind in our group as well, and that gave him some trouble too.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I agree with Thomas Shey here. If my goal is to sell a product into a market in large quantities, then investigating the reasons for something being popular may be worthwhile.

But if I am trying to design a RPG that will deliver a certain experience I value or think is worthwhile, then it seems a pretty open question whether or not the popularity of some other RPG is relevant. Especially in the case of D&D, it seems unlikely that there are many RPG designers around who don't have at least a passing grasp of how it works.

Even if you are wanting some success, fishing in the same pond that is already heavily served is a questionable strategy. I tend to bring it up when someone talks about a game needing a rework and what they're suggesting is, in practice, making it more like Savage Worlds. Savage Worlds for the most part has the market that wants something like it sewed up. You're not doing yourself any favors trying to be more like it. You might have a quixotic desire to try and build a better Savage Worlds, but for the most part that's not going to get you anywhere.

Simolarly, trying to be more like D&D, when there's already D&D, Pathfinder, and a host of lesser systems with a similar structure is not exactly the way to get yourself anywhere. Doing something different might or might not get you anywhere (it won't get you to D&D levels of success, but as has been noted there are only two games that (may) have done that, and for limited periods, so that's a fool's errand anyway) but it will at least not be directly competing with a section of the market that is super-saturated as it is.

 

[Manbearcat]

Now I just though of something I encounter very often.

People who have played only D&D are most of the time are just bad players, and all the wrong naughty word D&D has teached them now needs to be beaten out of their heads! Even the most basic concepts of roleplaying need to be explained, and I always have to be sure that newbies I meet don't get their minds broken by D&D.

I've yet to see a veteran D&D player who can at least pass the most basic litmus test. "Your character is chasing the bad guy with a revolver in her hand. What you, as a player, would want to achieve?"

The correct answer is, "to figure out a way for my character to lose her revolver, so she can engage the bad guy in a fist fight, or maybe, so he would be able to escape!".
The D&D player answer is, "to shoot the bad guy, what else?!"

Careful! This sounds verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry similar to a certain high profile indie RPG analyst/bogeyman WHO SHALL NOT BE NAMED!

 

[loverdrive]

It's an RPG. If you ask me, there is no correct answer. That's the beauty of this medium (as opposed to a video game, where there usually is a correct answer). Choice is what makes a TTRPG unique in terms of gameplay.

That you don't think the player's choice is interesting enough doesn't make it the wrong choice. If your players only made the choices you would make, that wouldn't be much different from playing solo (and that is always an option).

"Roleplaying is realized in the presence of death. This means choosing death whenever there is a choice between life and death. There is no other reasoning."

This simple test shows where the player's priorities are — whether they prioritize keeping their character alive and making sure they succeed, or rising stakes and embracing the fact that the player is the main adversary of their character.

 

[Fanaelialae]

"Roleplaying is realized in the presence of death. This means choosing death whenever there is a choice between life and death. There is no other reasoning."

This simple test shows where the player's priorities are — whether they prioritize keeping their character alive and making sure they succeed, or rising stakes and embracing the fact that the player is the main adversary of their character.

I'm unfamiliar with the quote, but I fundamentally disagree.

At best, it's one school of thought. It might be yours, but it's not representative of how other people approach the game, and it doesn't make them wrong for not wanting to play with "death" front and center.

There are entire playstyles focused around mitigating and managing risk, for example. You might not like to play that way, but that doesn't mean that those who enjoy this playstyle are engaging in badwrongfun. They just have a different, but perfectly valid, preference.

 

[pemerton]

I think that there were always people who were dissatisfied with D&D's designs.

It's odd that this needs saying!

RQ and RM are both reactions to D&D. They are also FRPGs but abandon, in different ways and to different degrees, core conceits of D&D that make it less "realistic"/"simulationist". This is evident in their combat rules, their rules for PC build (which include skill systems), and their approaches to non-combat action resolution.

There are other systems I reckon I could mention here besides RQ and RM, of similar vintage - C&S, DQ and Man-to-Man/GURPS - but I'm not as familiar with them.

As you say, there have always been people who liked the idea of RPGing - ie playing a game in which (i) a mechanical system is used to determine who gets to establish a shared fiction, and (ii) players engage that fiction via singular and distinctive characters who are part of it - but who have not liked D&D's approach: the fiction it produces, and/0r the method whereby it produces it.