D&D General What if Critical Role had stuck with Pathfinder? Or 4E?

[Scruffy nerf herder]

yeah... I doubt anyone has good numbers through 2e and maybe even early 3e for how many people played... so that 50 million estimate always strikes me as odd... like at one Point a guy I used to know talked about his first game being at college (I was just born that year BTW) and it was with half the rules cause it was a photo copy someone made of a pamplet going around his school... no one can count those games.

Heh, there's always going to be the No True Scotsman thinking floating around with regard to who all plays and whether what they played was D&D, but you have a point. It's just not clear what the size of the active player base is.

 

[Parmandur]

"Have played" as in, total number of people that have played D&D ever since 1975, sure.

"Are playing" which is what you wrote up there, is not 50 million people.

I doubt the mostly teenagers and twentty somethings in that 60+ million were playing in 1975.

Critical Role is very successful...but it's still a fraction of D&D's current audience.

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

I doubt the mostly teenagers and ywrnty somethings in that 60+ million were playing in 1975.

Critical Role is very successful...but it's still a fraction of D&D's current audience.

Another element that has probably been considered by people here, but so far as I can tell not mentioned in the thread: Critical Role is an English language program.

There are people playing D&D who don't speak English, and there are forums in other languages where people discuss the game.

 

[teitan]

I actually in another thread said if Essentials (with 2 pretty simple fighters) had come out first with some splat book a year later with the PHB fighter (I mean maybe Martial power, maybe PHB2, I don't think it matters) with just more AEDU options that it would have gone over better.

TBH as a major 4e stan I have my own idea of how I would have made a new edition based on it. I would (and I am only doing the 2 classes and even then most likely badly) make wizards still have X spells preped, but no spell slots per say. Each spell that you prep has it's own 'recharge timer' so somthing like burining hands is a 1st level spell you can use 1/encounter or 1/short rest but Detect magic) is one that can be used at will, and magic missle is one that can only be used 1/day... mixed with some spells turning into ritual only spells... so you don't prep them. take the slayer and the knight almost word for word from the essentials (with later options for more 'swap power strike for other more varied abilities like come and get it and mountain hammer ect) I would also have POWER SOURCE abilites so any arcane character can learn this spell (identify as a ritual) and martial character can learn this exploit ect... I would also go closer to the 5e bounded accuracy (although maybe upping it a little bit) Most important I would create more varied (and way more playtested) skill challanges... showing how to hex crawl exploration (I like the ideas in the middle earth 5e book for this) being a diffrent type of skill challange then trying to convince the king to send aid...

Agreed. If Essentials were the first version (but not the Heroes of books, one PHB) it would have gone over better.

 

[Mort]

I doubt the mostly teenagers and twentty somethings in that 60+ million were playing in 1975.

Critical Role is very successful...but it's still a fraction of D&D's current audience.

My 8th grader's school D&D club has 30 people (maximum allowed) and had a wait list just as long (it filled up in something like a day). This would have been completely unheard of in my days in school (late 80s early 90s). Not to mention the fact that the club isn't just supervised by one of the teachers - he runs a game for the kids (rotates the kids in his game to keep things fair), in addition to the kids DMing.

Neither my son, any of his friends or anyone I interacted with from that group has ever heard of Critical Role.

In this particular case, several newspapers ran articles on how D&D positively impacts children's learning - and the parents now WANT their kids in D&D. So, at least in my area, that had a much bigger impact than Critical Role.

 

[darjr]

My 8th grader's school D&D club has 30 people (maximum allowed) and had a wait list just as long (it filled up in something like a day). This would have been completely unheard of in my days in school (late 80s early 90s). Not to mention the fact that the club isn't just supervised by one of the teachers - he runs a game for the kids (rotates the kids in his game to keep things fair), in addition to the kids DMing.

Neither my son, any of his friends or anyone I interacted with from that group has ever heard of Critical Role.

In this particular case, several newspapers ran articles on how D&D positively impacts children's learning - and the parents now WANT their kids in D&D. So, at least in my area, that had a much bigger impact than Critical Role.

My youngest son had a similar experience.

All the original club organizers had to run because so many showed up.

And they had to turn people away.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

Agreed. If Essentials were the first version (but not the Heroes of books, one PHB) it would have gone over better.

Who knows but in hindsight there were a ton of little things they could have done. Including a few simplier non ADEU classes alongside would have been good. I personally think it should have been done alongside the PHB ADEU fighter.

But IMO one of the biggest of these unbaked things was to tack on Rituals instead of putting them front and center.

Imagine if they had all the old utility spells as Rituals in the PHB (which they eventually did by the end of 4e but started with only a handful)

AND

They gave some "free" ritual castings a day to the traditional full casters which they started to do later. Even if it was a only a few a day, imagine if you had "Rituals per day" chart that looked kind of like the old spell charts added into the Wizard class.

Up to your level for free/day:

1-10th 11-20th 21-30th

1-3th 1
4-6th 2
7-10th 3
11-15th 3 1
16th-20th 3 2
21-30th 3 2 1

Wouldn't have changed much but would have put the Ritual system front and center instead of feeling tacked on.