D&D General Kobold Press Going Down a Dark Road

[mamba]

no it doesn't...

5e grew in a huge boom when D&D got brought back into the zeitgeist of popular culture... there is no reason to believe that exact same boom would not have happened if the rules of 2e, 3e, or 4e were in place when the pop culture thing happened.

we will never know, I am not sure how that is relevant though. If people did not like what WotC is selling, they would not buy it, so sales still show that they like it.

The thing we do not know is whether they would also have managed to get this kind of growth with e.g. 4e due to external factors, i.e. we do not know of the growth is because of 5e or if 5e only managed to get out of the way (and whether 4e would have gotten in the way and prevented this kind of growth), but that is not the argument I was making.

Personally I think it is a bit of both, Stranger Things, Critical Role, etc. all help, but I doubt CR would have used eg 4e for their game

 

[GMforPowergamers]

A lot of this toing and froing has to do with the importance to playing by RAW.

what else do you expect us to discus in a thread about systems?

Should I talk about the work I put into house ruleing 4e manuvers in compairing black flag to 1d&D? or maybe when I expand the background features to more like world of darkness backgrounds?
I mean those are cool house rules to talk about, but I don't know what they have to do with what system I put them in...

Heck I keep pushing TORG... I could take most if not all my D&D house rule and with a ltitle effort move them over to TORG

If at my table we were changing an existing campaign to the new rules. I think I would be open to just grandfathering in the existing characters but some stuff would switch to the new rules. Spell prep, the actual spells, the meaning of conditions, smites and sneak attack.

I wasn't thinking of exsisiting characters... I don't have a lot of experience with porting a game over from 1 edition/version to another... unless it is to restart the game.

Though if nobody wanted to rebuild their character I would question the merit to adoption of the new rules.

again my example is someone says "5e" and so someone comes with a character from the 2014phb and another comes with a character from the 2024 PHB (yes not out yet)

 

[Micah Sweet]

someone was working on (I don't know if they ever fully did it) a PHB1 from 4e PDF that was the orginal with hyperlink openable boxes that had all the errata at a click

That would have been sweet (and I'm not even really a 4e fan, I just appreciate the effort put into the game design).

 

[GMforPowergamers]

The +2 and +2 are already accounted for in the Mountain Dwarf abilities,

except in the playtest you just have dwarf with no stat bonus and you take a background that gives you +1 to one and +2 to another.
the playtest says to replace the race with the background...aka it means remake the character.

The others are handled immediately by "particular beats general." Thisnrrally isn't remotely hard.

the spesfic what? the rules are not teh same for the same sets of actions abilities you name it... it's a diffrent game ion the same chasie

 

[Imaro]

lol... you see my bias but not your own

Ok name something else that had continued growth for 10 years that can be contributed to it's advertisement on a single tv show? I'm seriously drawing a blank but there have to be other examples or is the argument D&D 5e a singular anomaly in this case and that's more likely than it's good game design that has resonated and continues to resonate with a large number of people who play it.?

 

[Micah Sweet]

The real questions is what percentage of their market would even care about this... I don't think it's significant enough to even justify the storage costs (and yes I realize they would be minimal).

An assumption none of us can safely make.

 

[Imaro]

An assumption none of us can safely make.

One I'm sure WotC has paid analysts to determine. So if we see it... I'm assuming the deemed it was worth the effort, if not...well.

 

[Micah Sweet]

not true for background or race... again lets go to dwarf bard noble... the noble gives me 3 retainers I just lost, the bard class has different way to do inspiration and spells, and no way to reconcile the +2str +2con at best I can take +2 to one an +1 to the other... oh and that is all before condition and actin changes

But the math...you know the math is the only thing that matters.

 

[Imaro]

except in the playtest you just have dwarf with no stat bonus and you take a background that gives you +1 to one and +2 to another.
the playtest says to replace the race with the background...aka it means remake the character.

Ok I'm confused... but isn't this how characters are made via Tasha's now??

EDIT: So is Tasha's a new edition?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Ok name something else that had continued growth for 10 years that can be contributed to it's advertisement on a single tv show?

I'm sorry did pop culture zeitguiest make you think it was a 1 off on 1 show? this isn't "big bang mentioned D&D in season 4 episode 6" this is a ongoing 5 or 6 year series that a reoccurring main theme is D&D... and it isn't alone. So no not a "Single stand alone advertisement"

by the way when econimies turn down or in general there are emergencies games and toys are the thing that keep selling (well broadly entertainment so movies and sports things too) and when covid hit stranger things was huge and look at that the big boom hit...
oh it also is a HUGE nestolgia for the 80's (I would argue that was a contributing factor not just in D7d but in stranger things that also then fed into D&D)
mean while the concept of "lets plays (both video game and some how TTRPGs) have taken off and we had the luck that one of teh biggest moved from pathfinder to 5e.


it wasn't one stand alone thing... it was the reverse of a perfect storm where everything came togather to make something sell... The fact that 5e was already the compramise edition to bring 4e and PF players both back helped


Now no edition of D&D has been a flop ever, not basic, not 1e, not even my least favorite 3.5... D&D the name sells no matter what and never has there been a true stinker system.

IF the FATAL mechanic was rebranded as D&D the name alone would sell some and all this boom would sell some but the qualify of the worst rpg ever would have still made it fail... but any edition of D&D, or any other game... even ones that have MASSIVE mechanical flaws (shout out to RIfts, I love you worts and all)0 would have soared in this environment.