D&D (2024) I think we are on the cusp of a sea change.

[Mordhau]

I'm one of those weirdos who think that the rules influence how a game is played. I have observed many times over the years D&D players avoiding engaging in conversation with NPCs because they weren't playing a "talky" character class. I don't do that, I'll have my characters talk to everyone whether they're good at it or not. I think anyone who wants D&D to expand into a more storyteller is going to have to address the problems with Charisma and communication oriented skills and the class system.

Having (poor) rules which make certain people better at things, but which may or may not be used sort of seems like the worst of both worlds.

 

[Oofta]

I've almost always played story driven games, I haven't done a dungeon crawl since high school. Even then a lot of our adventures were city based or heists (stealing from crime lord's, of course ).

So when I hear about this new style, it's still rock and roll to me. Umm, still D&D to me. Oh, and the streamed games I watch don't look all that different than my home game.

 

[Professor Murder]

Also, when it comes to social systems, I am looking to see what I can adapt from Stryxhaven.

 

[Professor Murder]

Also, what this is really about:
People who don't like the way DnD changes into something different then the way they played in the past aren't actually directly affected by shifts of focus. DnD isn't milk. The rules don't spoil over time. People still play older rules versions. The OSR movement is predicated on this. What upsets them is more people coming into the hobby, making up the numerical majority of the hobby according to all recent data, playing the game in ways that aren't to their liking, which I totally grok. They want people they can play with. It's what we all want. The thing is, one of the side effects of this golden age is its easier than ever to find people you can play with, your way. There is a table out there for you so long as you are someone who's bringing good to the table.

 

[Mistwell]

I think I was watching a Matt Colville video recently, and he brought up a point that I agree with. 5e was designed and released before streaming really took off. The next iteration will address it in some capacity. It's the biggest shift in how the game is played and how it is viewed in society that we've ever seen. Bigger than AD&D 1e, bigger than WotC's purchase, bigger than Hasbro's purchase, bigger than the Satanic Panic.
How will that change it? I think it's going to be a lot less about rules and combat. More roleplaying to solve problems. Less dungeons and more urban/political intrigue.
Of course, culture changes quicker than books can be re-written and printed. The change is already here, but WotC just needs to address it in their books to further capture that market.

Online gaming through platforms like Role20 and Fantasy Grounds favors tactical combat quite a bit, and that has grown more in terms of actual play than streaming (which is just one group playing and many watching it). In that respect, I strongly doubt we will see a big shift in terms of less rules and combat. Instead it will just be more optional rules I suspect.

 

[Mordhau]

Also, what this is really about:
People who don't like the way DnD changes into something different then the way they played in the past aren't actually directly affected by shifts of focus. DnD isn't milk. The rules don't spoil over time. People still play older rules versions. The OSR movement is predicated on this. What upsets them is more people coming into the hobby, making up the numerical majority of the hobby according to all recent data, playing the game in ways that aren't to their liking, which I totally grok. They want people they can play with. It's what we all want. The thing is, one of the side effects of this golden age is its easier than ever to find people you can play with, your way. There is a table out there for you so long as you are someone who's bringing good to the table.

My experience. If you don't want to play D&D the way most people expect it to be played you're better off playing a different game.

There's so many people out there looking for D&D that they'll "settle" for a game that isn't in the style they really want. To some extent this is even true of OSR games which are D&D enough they get the 5e spillover.

Whereas if you advertise for something like Conan 2d20 you might find it harder to find players initially, but you'll have a better chance of finding players who want to actually play the game and will stick around.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think the biggest influence at the time was Storyteller games. At one point Vampire was outselling AD&D I believe.

There's some debate about that, but yeah, that's one of the two cases I referred to earlier.

But some of the swing away from D&D structures in some countries well predates Storyteller.

Virtually everyone I knew had either graduated from AD&D (at high school) to Storyteller or had started (usually at University age) with Storyteller. People tended to approach other systems for fantasy due to the perceived out-of-dateness of AD&D.

Virtually every new game being produced in the late 90s was some kind of Stat+Skill with Advantages/Disadvantages game. For a while there the hobby seemed to have settled on a consensus in rpg design approach.

Eh. There's always a tendency to play follow-the-leader when something is successful and well-known, but I think "consensus" overstates it pretty severely.

 

[cowpie]

Yep. Which is why targeting for any specific set of "values" or trying to capture the "latest trends" leads to problems. I mean, it is one thing to broaden the scope of what D&D is, quite another to say "D&D is now about Y and no longer about X."

I'm reminded of some advice a literary agent gave, which is not to worry about trends, whether your work fits in with it or not (or worse still, trying to adjust your work to a certain trend that you have little or no interest in). In fantasy literature, new trends generally don't mean a sea change as much as they are a broadening of what fantasy means. The old stuff doesn't go away. So for instance, when "grimdark" became the thing, it wasn't like all of a sudden all other tones of fantasy stopped being published. There might have been a few years where grimdark took up a larger percentage of market share--at least apparently so--but then the wider genre adjusted and integrated grimdark as another thematic sub-genre.

Furthermore, people change. A person's values and worldview at 30 or 40 is probably (hopefully!) not the same as it was when they were 16. This ties into another reason why going for the current trend is not recommended: by the time you get to publication, things might have moved on.

Or to put it another way, I think the best way forward is "both/and" not "either/or." Meaning, you can play traditional style D&D and kill things and take their stuff, or if you want to roleplay magic masquerade balls and academic politics, we'll provide that too. D&D is now big enough for a big umbrella approach.

But for that to be successful, two things have to happen:
1) WotC has to honor the big umbrella, and publish a range of thematic offerings.
2) The fan-base has to accept that not every product was written with them in mind.

I think the former is more likely than the latter.

Agreed with all of this--especially the point about how people's priorities change as they progress through life. Supposedly we all go through a new life stage every seven years, so what the core audience values now, will likely shift over time.

WOTC has produced tons of splatbooks expanding player options, but not a lot of expansion support for DMs. This is probably because everybody buys the player options books, but more DMs than players will buy DMs Guides, resulting in less sales.

5th Edition is a pretty flexible game system. I can't see why WOTC can just put out a book of "Game Modes" for D&D, with tutorials on multiple approaches to play. Then, write up a chapter teaching how novice DMs could DIY their own setting, put together using templates provided in the book.

You could have a chapter on each genre or play style. This could serve to include your entire player base, encourage them to try out different kinds of play styles under the "D&D Umbrella", and capture all of the customers. This would also increase interaction between groups of players, and introduce cross pollination of play styles and bring disparate players together as groups tried out each others' games.

There could be chapters on short term campaigns, and running very long campaigns. You could also have an introductory rules set, intermediate and hard mode. The hard mode could increase player mortality, and up the challenge in general, for players who are less casual and enjoy beating challenges as a team.

Genre chapters could include: Gritty Swords & Sorcery play, Planetary Romance/Science Fantasy play, CW-style fantasy teen relationship play (which I think is what Strixhaven is), Epic Heroic Fantasy, Classic Dungeon crawls, Crit Role style comedy romp/set piece action sequence games, Mysteries (like Candlekeep), Historical Realism or Arthurian Romance.

 

[Professor Murder]

My experience. If you don't want to play D&D the way most people expect it to be played you're better off playing a different game.

There's so many people out there looking for D&D that they'll "settle" for a game that isn't in the style they really want. To some extent this is even true of OSR games which are D&D enough they get the 5e spillover.

Whereas if you advertise for something like Conan 2d20 you might find it harder to find players initially, but you'll have a better chance of finding players who want to actually play the game and will stick around.

The lack of local games cons is killing me. Got soo many little one shots of indie games or just games that arent well suited for my regular gaming group and no one to play with.

 

[Thomas Shey]

My experience. If you don't want to play D&D the way most people expect it to be played you're better off playing a different game.

There's so many people out there looking for D&D that they'll "settle" for a game that isn't in the style they really want. To some extent this is even true of OSR games which are D&D enough they get the 5e spillover.

Whereas if you advertise for something like Conan 2d20 you might find it harder to find players initially, but you'll have a better chance of finding players who want to actually play the game and will stick around.

And let's not forget there's a certain percentage of people who, bluntly, don't know what they want. They'll project their expectations on the game at hand, whether its particularly good at what they're trying to do or not. Its also why you see gaming groups where different people are pulling the campaign in different directions because they've got different expectations, sometime really incompatible ones.