D&D 5E D&D and who it's aimed at

I'll ask this question clearly, so this time you don't misunderstand it: Do you seriously, truthfully believe that early D&D was never goofy, at least not as goofy as you view some current D&D products to be?
Never said that.

And you're missing most of the points I was trying to make. We hardly know each other, but I feel like you're making a ton of assumptions that aren't true and then getting really angry about them.

I know you don't agree with me on the tone of D&D right now. I think it's too cute and fluffy and you think it's as badass as ever. That's totally cool and I really like your examples. I'm not here to go to war with anyone.
 

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I mean, say what you will about 5e and its system or about the quality of any given product, but I think it’s pretty clear that they’ve produced a variety of products in an attempt to appeal to people of different tastes.

Whatever they do, I think trying to appeal to one demographic with every product would be a very foolish thing to do.
 

Never said that.
Then what are you saying?
I think it's too cute and fluffy and you think it's as badass as ever.
No, actually, that's not my position. I think that D&D is more diverse than ever, in playstyle, types of books being published, and the player base. I think that if someone thinks that modern D&D is too cute and fluffy, they're really not looking hard enough because there's plenty of other stuff not at all cute and fluffy (Ravenloft, Avernus, Dragonlance, Fizban's, Netherdeep).

I think that if you want to run a badass game of D&D 5e, you can definitely do that with quite a few of the recent releases. If you want a goofy/gonzo adventure, you can definitely do that with quite a few of the recent releases. I think that it's a good thing that there's this diverse of options for people to use. I think that it expands the hobby to support different playstyles, and that there is value in the "cute and fluffy" stuff being available for the people that want it, just like there is value in supporting darker/grimmer playstyles of the game.

Not every release has to be for you. Not every release is aimed at you. The same applies to me and every other member of this hobby. That's a good thing. If everything was specifically aimed at my tastes, we would never get Dragonlance, Planescape, Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, Magic: the Gathering settings, or any more anthology books. We would just be getting more Eberron, Exandria, Spelljammer, Mordenkainen's/Volo's/Fizban's-style Monster books and more Xanathar's/Tasha's-style player option books for the rest of D&D 5e. That's sincerely what I want, but I can recognize that this would be bad for the hobby and that not every product should/can be aimed at pleasing me.

My position is that supporting the playstyles and preferences of people besides me is a good thing. It's a good thing that we're getting Dragonlance, anthology books, and probably Planescape/Dark Sun even though I personally don't want those things.
 

I know you don't agree with me on the tone of D&D right now. I think it's too cute and fluffy and you think it's as badass as ever. That's totally cool and I really like your examples. I'm not here to go to war with anyone.
They don't just disagree. They brought receipts. They presented evidence that refutes your claim. That it is your opinion does not shield it from criticism. And speaking as someone who doesn't own any of the books being drawn upon for examples, I can tell you that the argument that you are demonstrably incorrect has been made much more strongly than yours. Opinions can, of course, simply be wrong sometimes. The evidence seems to be pointing in that direction here.
 

I think that D&D is more diverse than ever, in playstyle, types of books being published, and the player base. I think that if someone thinks that modern D&D is too cute and fluffy, they're really not looking hard enough because there's plenty of other stuff not at all cute and fluffy (Ravenloft, Avernus, Dragonlance, Fizban's, Netherdeep).
Just let me know when WotC markets (not just releases, I want the full marketing push!) a book that diversely embraces Sword and Sorcery, chainmail bikini's, nefarious or even downright villainous player character backgrounds, feats, class options, and lore, and an art style that evokes a look at Fantasy which has been "sanitized" right out of the game. ;)
 

They don't just disagree. They brought receipts. They presented evidence that refutes your claim. That it is your opinion does not shield it from criticism. And speaking as someone who doesn't own any of the books being drawn upon for examples, I can tell you that the argument that you are demonstrably incorrect has been made much more strongly than yours. Opinions can, of course, simply be wrong sometimes. The evidence seems to be pointing in that direction here.
That isn't refutation. That you can ignore parts of the game in order to push D&D down the path you like doesn't make D&D as a whole less fluffy and cute. It just means that you can cover your eyes and ignore the cute and fluffy parts. D&D as a whole includes those cute and fluffy parts, though, regardless of what you ignore.

Whether 5e has more of it or not is debatable. It has been present in every edition of the game as far as I know.
 

Sword and Sorcery
Do Tales from the Yawning Portal and Ghosts of Saltmarsh not count as this? Or Dungeon of the Mad Mage?
chainmail bikini's
I don't see how that is in any way a playstyle or something worth bringing up.
nefarious or even downright villainous player character backgrounds, feats, class options, and lore
Umm . . . do the Oathbreaker Paladin and Death Domain Cleric not count as this? Phantom Rogue? Most Warlock subclasses? (Fiend, Hexblade, Undead, GOO) They don't mechanically require you to be Chaotic Evil or anything, but they're pretty strongly themed as being not morally good.
an art style that evokes a look at Fantasy which has been "sanitized" right out of the game. ;)
That's a circular argument. If you think D&D 5e is being sanitized, you're only going to look for art that supports your argument. I already posted a ton of dark D&D 5e art from the past two years. If those don't prove that D&D isn't being Disneyfied/sanitized, nothing will.
 

For you, and for others who also hold this "haven't seen much other stuff from WotC lately" position, I have some questions.

Were you happy or unhappy, back in (say) 2015-2016, about the fact that Wizards was intentionally producing only a small amount of material each year?
A hard-slow release schedule was a very good and viable long-term strategy intended to prolong the life of the edition before it collapsed under the weight of its own bloat (which is largely what killed 2e, 3e, and to a lesser extent 4e).
Do you think "bloat" is a serious problem that games should make significant efforts to avoid?
Yes.
Are you of the opinion that, in game design, "less is more" is just better than other approaches? (That is, few and generic options that cover many cases broadly, as opposed to many and specific options that each cover a few cases thoroughly.)
System-dependent. For D&D, less very much can be more - in fact, less can be or become exactly what any given DM wants it to be provided the designers a) make the system easy to kitbash and then b) encourage DMs to do so.
Finally, do you feel your preferences need official support in order to be playable or functional within D&D?
No, but at the same time I don't want to see what seems like a fairly good and very successful edition die when it doesn't need to.
 

I mean, we literally have a famous idiom in English that you cannot judge a book by its cover...one of the most widely used metaphors in the language, specifically used to remind people that superficial appearance can be deceiving. And it's flanked by several others, like "still waters run deep," "not all that glitters is gold," "beauty is only skin deep," "the clothes do not make the man," "more than meets the eye"....

It's probably one of the most common metaphors in our language, and English isn't alone in this. Judging something on the basis of very limited information, especially if your judgment ends up being truly inaccurate for that thing's actual qualities, is usually considered a fault.

Now, the issue of course is basing a judgment on sufficient information. What's sufficient? How much do you need to know? This is necessarily a sorites paradox. There is no single right answer for all cases; as Aristotle would put it, we must find the value that is correctly intermediate between the extremes of deficiency and excess for each situation, not some singular perfect intermediate value which is universally correct for all cases and all time. It is not possible to have a vice of excess in terms of "making good judgements in general," since a larger number of good judgements is always better than a smaller number of good judgements, but it clearly is possible to have a vice of deficiency in terms of failing to seek out enough information, vs a vice of excess, delaying so long that you effectively fail to make a decision at all. I would consider this a branch of diligence, which is flanked by the deficient vice of sloth, and the excessive vice of perfectionism: on the one hand, lacking in due motivation to properly prepare and investigate, and on the other, becoming so hyper-focused on making perfect decisions or judgments that you end up making no judgment at all ("the perfect is the enemy of the good" and all that.)

You are not wrong to say that you should not need absolutely flawless back-to-front understandings of things in order to make judgments about them. Yet, at the same time, your actual conclusions drawn here appear to be rather at odds with the product itself, such that others have claimed you are asserting simply false things about the book in the process of stating your judgment about it, rendering that judgment questionable. To use an obviously toy, primitive example: if someone said they did not like a particular flavor of ice cream because it was pink and they don't care for bubblegum ice cream, it would not be inappropriate for someone to question that judgment, not because disliking bubblegum ice cream is somehow inappropriate, but because the ice cream is actually strawberry flavored. In other words, the judgment has been made based on a (in this case, axiomatically, by design) inadequate understanding of the item in question. Now, you may certainly argue that there is a difference between this real example and my artificial, toy example, in that (say) one can actually read parts of the text and miss details that only come up later, whereas if one has tasted any amount of the ice cream at all one should quickly recognize what it's supposed to taste like. That's the sorites paradox coming in: what is a heap? When does a sufficient reading of the text fall below the minimum amount of information to draw a conclusion? There will never be a single answer. But that does not mean that there aren't states of insufficient information, nor that all judgments are equally valid on the basis of incomplete readings...especially if those judgments are accurately (that's very important) called out as asserting objectively false things about the text (such as claiming that it contains things it does not, or fails to contain things it actually does contain.)
While I actually agree with the premise and assertion that this post conveys, I can't help but feel that using idioms to qualify one's arguments is just a little bit disingenuous. I guess what I'm offering isn't so much a refutation of this post as it is a commentary on it.

True, you can't judge a book by its cover. But a picture is worth a thousand words. Beauty is only skin-deep, but the garments make the man. All that glitters is not gold, but fine feathers make fine fowl. You can do this for any proverb. Better to be safe than sorry, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. No man is an island, though good fences make good neighbors. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but did you know that silence is golden? Such truisms are simply vague enough to give the impression that there is an inner wisdom to them.

You are correct in that an informed opinion is strictly superior to an opinion formed in ignorance, though the ice cream comparison (what is it with the internet and food analogies?) neglects the fact that one does not actually need to consume any ice cream to discern its flavor. One single binary question is all that is required to gain the knowledge required to make a 100% informed purchase.

If I read the package or ask the vendor, and they inform me that the flavor is "bubblegum," then I can know with certainty that I will dislike it and keep my money. If I instead learn that it is "strawberry," then my purchase is only predicated on whether or not I happen to be craving strawberry ice cream at that moment.

The same is not true for a book, however. The best equivalent would be to listen to marketing and hearsay from other consumers to get a feel for it, and even that is a mixed bag. Now, one could explore the substance of a book if they can sample it in the store, borrow it from an acquaintance, or obtain a digital copy that happened to fall off of a truck, this much is undeniable. In fact, one's opinion would be better formed for it. But... why should I, unless I'm actually on the fence about a purchase or just want to shoot spitballs at other EN World users?

It's perfectly sufficient for a casual consumer to flip through a book, see a few quirky pictures, catch an odd pop culture reference, skim a small quest hook that they don't much care for, and decide that they'd rather buy a Call of Cthulhu adventure instead.

It's pretty obvious that D&D 5e isn't trying to turn you into a furry, or brainwashing you into buying more books, or turning you into a grimdark edgelord, or only publishing silly nonsense only fit for kids.
Dungeons & Dragons made me into a Satanic acolyte, actually!
 

It has been present in every edition of the game as far as I know.
But that's exactly our point, though. If D&D has always had these goofy/wacky concepts like Owlbears, Spelljammer, Modrons, Flumphs, and Displacer Beasts, then claiming that D&D is suddenly being Disneyfied/sanitized in regards to newer goofy/silly content is a stupid argument. And, yes, that is what most people are claiming when they say that D&D is being sanitized/Disneyfied. They don't actually mean that stuff like nudity and extreme gore is being removed. If they meant that, they would be saying that. What they've been saying/showing is just a handful of pieces of art from books that they think looks too cute and are throwing a fit about it.

If they meant "nudity/explicit gore is no longer being depicted in official D&D art" as being their definition of the hobby being "sanitized," they'd actually be right. That is a valid statement. I don't think it's a valid complaint, I don't think that this is at all a new thing, and I think that stating it is pretty useless, but it's a valid and fairly accurate thing to say.

Reading through this thread proves that what most people mean when they talk about the "Disneyfication of D&D" is that they think some modern 5e art is too cute/silly. That's what the majority of complaints (and the most liked ones) in this thread are talking about. That is what some of us are trying to refute.
 

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