D&D General Chris just said why I hate wizard/fighter dynamic

[Cadence]

This isn't the place to relitigate the edition wars, unless you're that anxious to get the thread shut down.

 

[Minigiant]

Ehh... It's definitely a better balanced game than any other edition. But I'd not put it in as being a great simulator any more than any edition was, and being actually better in any of the categories you listed is highly subjective. Personally, I think there are things in D&D that could stand to change, but I would not change them in the same direction 4E did.

It was a better simulation of the core imagined concept of "dungeon crawling adverturers in semi-niche-protected classes of balanced roles grinding through multiple rooms." It was fully designed to be better in those aspects.

The issue is it chucked any rule that didn't serve this and required more more learning and adapting to changed concepts. However it wasn't better enough to pull enough people into ditching the old games.

Those old ideas were and are still popular.

However my point was that being the "First to be Good Enough" is often enough to succeed. Blizzard made millions on that. Being the first to make a B- game. Starcraft, Warcraft, WOW, Hearthstone.

When they game late in a genre (Heores of the Storm), disaster struck.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Allow me to put this tread back on track with this classic video...

 

[Maxperson]

4e "failed" because it changed too much too quick in order to "fix" it. And you litterally had to buy more books and learn new ideas. Hell it was too much for even the designers and they didn't have enough time to design it full before getting it out.

However 4e was a better level based, class based, team based dungeon crawling simulator with dragon enemies than any other edition. However it came too late and was too different for its ideas to either take over as or became the skeleton of D&D.

Essentials came out 2 years after the release of 4e. That means that they had to have realized almost instantly that 4e was in trouble, since it takes a good while to change rules, playtest the new rules and then publish them. Then 2 years later they realized that not even essentials was working and decided to scrap 4e and begin work on 5e.

Again, I'm not saying it was a bad game, but it clearly wasn't good enough to succeed.

 

[Minigiant]

Essentials came out 2 years after the release of 4e. That means that they had to have realized almost instantly that 4e was in trouble, since it takes a good while to change rules, playtest the new rules and then publish them. Then 2 years later they realized that not even essentials was working and decided to scrap 4e and begin work on 5e.

Again, I'm not saying it was a bad game, but it clearly wasn't good enough to succeed.

My conversation was never on quality becuse I wasn't edition warring.

My point was that 4e had a different focus and ended up creating a different kind of game. However because it was not only not the FIRST edition and came out 30+ years after Dungeon crawling TTRPG, 4e would have to be the best freaking game ever to counter sunken cost.

And it wasn't.

5th edition's success is mostly due to leaning into sunken cost. 80% of it is copying old ideas and taking concepts from poplar media and gamer culture. Fans didn't have to learn much and video games of the last 30 years did the heavy lifting.

 

[Maxperson]

My conversation was never on quality becuse I wasn't edition warring.

Nor am I. I don't do that. Observations on the timing of events, though, are not edition warring.

5th edition's success is mostly due to leaning into sunken cost. 80% of it is copying old ideas and taking concepts from poplar media and gamer culture. Fans didn't have to learn much and video games of the last 30 years did the heavy lifting.

I think 5e's success is due to more than just that. Its simplicity is a large part of it. As is Critical Role and D&D entering main stream. The older concepts would only really matter to the older players, who are in the minority now. There are a lot more new players who were never exposed to those older concepts.

 

[Minigiant]

Nor am I. I don't do that. Observations on the timing of events, though, are not edition warring.

I think 5e's success is due to more than just that. Its simplicity is a large part of it. As is Critical Role and D&D entering main stream. The older concepts would only really matter to the older players, who are in the minority now. There are a lot more new players who were never exposed to those older concepts.

5e's success was more than than fighting sunken cost. However some of 5e's success was also due to a lot of D&D's concepts being ingrained in a video game culture that is big with millennials and zoomers.

And with many of the new fans, they literally didn't have an old edition they sunk time and money in that they would be "abandoning".
There's no sunk cost in new raw fans.

If Critical Role was VTM, there was WWByond, and all those fans brought WW books, 5e would have to convince them to put them Vampire and Werewolf books down and buy D&D books.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

While being first and good enough ARE important, I don't think that's fully it. There was a thread on this issue a while back. Best answer (other than, of course, it's now by far the biggest player in the market) a combination of the leveling system and the huge amount of adventures available for the levels as characters progress.

People criticize the leveling system but players, especially new players seem to take to it much better than the various point systems out there. I've had players outright say they prefer D&D because they want to see their character get from 1-20.

Combine that with the large amount of adventures at each level (to make the DMs job easier by providing prefabricated scenarios that, even if you homebrew, area great resource) and you have a winning combination.

Yep. Leveling is good. It feels good. It’s satisfying.

And that’s the thing, games need to be enjoyable to play, in order to become popular. D&D 5e isn't just “good enough”, that’s just the hipster impulse run amok. D&D 5e is very good. It kicks ass. It

It was a better simulation of the core imagined concept of "dungeon crawling adverturers in semi-niche-protected classes of balanced roles grinding through multiple rooms." It was fully designed to be better in those aspects.

The issue is it chucked any rule that didn't serve this and required more more learning and adapting to changed concepts. However it wasn't better enough to pull enough people into ditching the old games.

Those old ideas were and are still popular.

That’s one way to look at it. I think that what is actually more the case is that most people don’t enjoy very rationally designed leisure activities as much as they do “messy”, asymmetrical, idiosyncratic, activities.

4e was and is a great game, but it needed to relax and let things be a little messy in places. It felt very much like a rigidly logical game, to the point where I had a friend who called it D&D for Vulcans.

But anyway the idea that D&D is the most popular game out there because it was first is…difficult for me to take seriously.

 

[Minigiant]

But anyway the idea that D&D is the most popular game out there because it was first is…difficult for me to take seriously.

If you think about it though. It's not ridiculous.

Almost everyone of the most successful games in TT, VG, and BG are the firsts ones to make a decent version.

Think of almost every top game. Then think of how many surpassed a successful predecessor in the same genre.

Really only happens in strategy games that have different foci.

"If you aint first, you're last" - Ricky Bobby

 

[RainOnTheSun]

Allow me to put this tread back on track with this classic video...

You know, it's funny. When I think of explicitly "mundane" heroes dealing with supernatural worlds - your Conans, your Batmen, your Odysseuseseseses, any of the early twentieth century pulp heroes - they're almost all polymaths. They might have a preferred idiom, but they're the master of whatever skill happens to be relevant. When they aren't an expert at something, it's either because the skill is inherently tainted or unworthy, or to allow another expert to be a plot device for the story at hand. You don't see "Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit," you see "Angel Summoner and Nuclear Physicist Brain Surgeon Olympic Decathlete Chessmaster Circus Acrobat Karate Champion, possibly also a Billionaire"

I guess what I'm saying is that the real mundane hero in D&D should be the Rogue, not the Fighter. If you only do one thing and want to hang out with the wizard, your one thing had better be amazing.