Unpopular opinions go here

[Micah Sweet]

This only works if the other pillars are used as regularly. Which they rarely are in general in the RPG hobby, and D&D doesn't even lean into those other pillars as well as some.

Yeah, the whole table really has to put some effort into it if you want exploration and social to matter practically as much as combat at the table. Definitely doable, but everyone needs to put in the work.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I can't comment on the hobby as a whole. But I play, or have played, plenty of RPGs in which some important characters' principal strengths are not combat - Classic Traveller, Prince Valiant, Burning Wheel, Torchbearer, to some extent Rolemaster, even to some extent the invoker/wizard ritualist in my 4e D&D game.

I don't think that this has much to do with balance, though. The significance of balance - in some sense of a comparable degree of mechanical capacity enjoyed by players, in virtue of their PCs, to impact the fiction of the game - doesn't go away because the game involves situations and conflicts that are not combat-reltaed.

So, you should just go narrative then. Not a surprising answer from this quarter.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Nobody asked for Snarf's sass

Mama Snarf? I didn't know you were on EnWorld!

What, do they have BOGO on malt liquor?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I've often thought D&D should be talked about almost entirely separately from the rest of the hobby.

Not because there aren't other games that take a tack similar to D&D in the hobby, but because it makes it almost impossible to talk about trends in the hobby and/or market as a whole because it dwarfs everything else. It too easily makes it seem like anything that doesn't fit the D&D model is irrelevant, rather than asking whether, once you move out of D&D proper, things that are different are popular or not.

I would be gleefully happy if official D&D were cordoned off from the rest of the industry, especially now that it's contributed everything worthwhile it had to give and we don't need them for anything.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It isn't like RPGs were going to leap into existence without some underlying referent, and also including everything we would later think of as being valid in RPGs. The first game was bound to have a skewed design, and incomplete from the view of the genre 50 years later. Guess what? In another 50 years, they may view our current games woefully immature in design as well.

But D&D's latest release and the shenanigans of whatever company owns it will still be all anyone talks about.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I would be gleefully happy if official D&D were cordoned off from the rest of the industry, especially now that it's contributed everything worthwhile it had to give and we don't need them for anything.

I don't mean to completely ignore it so much as "Yes, that's what D&D is doing, now let's talk about everyone that isn't D&D."

The only problem is there's no clear way to decide to talk about heavily D&D-adjacent games then: PF2e, 13A, SotWW and so on. Do you discuss their design decisions in terms of D&D or in terms of everything else?

 

[Umbran]

But D&D's latest release and the shenanigans of whatever company owns it will still be all anyone talks about.

The point is that there is nothing about D&D that makes that so. That would be true whatever the Big Game was.

And that there is a Big Game really isn't about D&D, either. It is about human/market dynamics - there is a strong argument that markets naturally develop one or two strong leaders, and tend to collapse if they don't have leaders. We need some large games in order for RPGs to be a notable hobby across multiple generations.

If somehow we came to RPGs through something other than D&D, there would still be a Big Game, and everyone would talk about that. And there will always be folks for whom the Big Game would be not-so-hot. Maybe, with a different Big Game, you, Micah Sweet, would be happy, but someone else would be in your shoes.

 

[Scribe]

I would be gleefully happy if official D&D were cordoned off from the rest of the industry, especially now that it's contributed everything worthwhile it had to give and we don't need them for anything.

Excuse the amateur hour art but...

You bring to mind discussions I've read about 'spitting on a forest fire' to put it out. You would have more luck holding back the Ocean.

D&D isnt something to be cordoned off from the Industry, I dont think.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't mean to completely ignore it so much as "Yes, that's what D&D is doing, now let's talk about everyone that isn't D&D."

The only problem is there's no clear way to decide to talk about heavily D&D-adjacent games then: PF2e, 13A, SotWW and so on. Do you discuss their design decisions in terms of D&D or in terms of everything else?

Sure there is. You just draw a line between what WotC is doing with their game, and everyone else.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The point is that there is nothing about D&D that makes that so. That would be true whatever the Big Game was.

And that there is a Big Game really isn't about D&D, either. It is about human/market dynamics - there is a strong argument that markets naturally develop one or two strong leaders, and tend to collapse if they don't have leaders. We need some large games in order for RPGs to be a notable hobby across multiple generations.

If somehow we came to RPGs through something other than D&D, there would still be a Big Game, and everyone would talk about that. And there will always be folks for whom the Big Game would be not-so-hot. Maybe, with a different Big Game, you, Micah Sweet, would be happy, but someone else would be in your shoes.

There's room for more than one leader, though, as you said. It doesn't have to be just WotC.

And in any case, I can't come at a question of opinion from anyone's perspective but my own, other than to accept that other people feel differently.