D&D General Is DnD being mothballed?

[Hussar]

I know that certainly matches my experience. I bought a bunch of 3e books. Then 3.5 came out and I didn’t even buy a DMG. 4e saw just the core books.

5e? In addition to my 3pp collection, WotC’s pried open my wallet for at least one book per year.

 

[Parmandur]

I know that certainly matches my experience. I bought a bunch of 3e books. Then 3.5 came out and I didn’t even buy a DMG. 4e saw just the core books.

5e? In addition to my 3pp collection, WotC’s pried open my wallet for at least one book per year.

I bought a PHB for 3.5, and one for 4E. Then for 5E, I have bought every book in hardcover except Acquisitions Incorporated. Slight escalation...I've bought more D&D books in the past 2 months than I did for the first 10 years of playing D&D combined.

 

[Maxperson]

You are far better at this than I. I'm constantly running into stuff that trips me up. I almost never get to play, which means I don't pay any attention to the player side of things, trusting that the players will. And repeatedly, it bites me on the ass as players interpret rules in a ... generous way.

I spent all of 3e chucking out CR and eyeballing the monsters vs. the PCs capabilities when figuring out if a fight would be easy, moderate, hard or deadly. That made me pretty good at figuring out if a given race, class, prestige class or feat would be too much. Right now I think I DM about 65%-70% these days. It used to be 95+%, but then one of the players decided to give me a break with a short campaign. Then a few years later another wanted to try. Now 3 of my 4 players will give me a break when I need one.

Another thing that probably makes a difference is that I likely have a higher tolerance for imbalance. During 3e I had a standing rule that any race of ECL+1 or lower could be taken automatically. Anything +2 or higher needed approval, mainly because those races had a greater potential to disrupt a campaign and so I decided on a campaign by campaign basis if a specific +2 or higher race would be allowed.

 

[mamba]

I bought a PHB for 3.5, and one for 4E. Then for 5E, I have bought every book in hardcover except Acquisitions Incorporated. Slight escalation...I've bought more D&D books in the past 2 months than I did for the first 10 years of playing D&D combined.

I bought more 5e books than for other editions, but that is mostly a function of income (and the break I took during 3e and 4e). I have about 40% of the books, and that is pretty consistent across the years (a few outliers)

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah, it's the paradox of choice. Give people a relatively small number of choices and they make a decision fairly easily. Give people a ton of choices, not only do they have a hard time deciding, they're ultimately less likely to be happy with their choice.

I've noticed the first part with some people. Probably 30% have had a hard time deciding when faced with a ton of choices. I've not noticed the latter part happen very much. The players I've played with have been very happy with their choices in the vast majority of instances. What I have noticed significantly more often is unhappiness due to lack of an appropriate choice. None of the feats or subclasses matched what the player had envisioned for his character. That was rare in 3e when you could create almost any concept you could imagine.

 

[Maxperson]

I bought more 5e books than for other editions, but that is mostly a function of income (and the break I took during 3e and 4e). I have about 40% of the books, and that is pretty consistent across the years (a few outliers)

I have far more 3e/3.5 books than I do 5e books. I don't buy adventures, except for anthology books like Yawning Portal, oh and Undermountain. That's my favorite dungeon of all time so I buy pretty much anything Undermountain. I don't buy most settings, because I run FR almost exclusively. I did blunder and run out to buy 5e Spelljammer before looking at it, because it was one of my favorite 2e settings. Planescape is also near the top, but Spelljammer cured me of the urge to buy it for 5e and nothing I've seen indicates that it is a full setting. Better than Spelljammer for sure, but still not enough to warrant spending money on.

That leaves crunch books. I've purchased every crunch book that they've made for 5e except for the giant one that just came out. I was in a game store a few weeks ago and they had the alternate cover giant book on the shelf. For a few seconds I was tempted to buy it, but then I remembered the slow release rate and poor setting releases and walked out of the store empty handed. The slow release rate and few options are killing 5e for my group.

I own about 15 5e books, including two that were gifts and I wouldn't have purchased myself(Strixhaven and one of the dragon queen adventures). For 3e/3.5 I own 40ish books and keep an eye out at game conventions for good prices on the ones I am missing.

 

[dave2008]

I've noticed the first part with some people. Probably 30% have had a hard time deciding when faced with a ton of choices. I've not noticed the latter part happen very much. The players I've played with have been very happy with their choices in the vast majority of instances. What I have noticed significantly more often is unhappiness due to lack of an appropriate choice. None of the feats or subclasses matched what the player had envisioned for his character. That was rare in 3e when you could create almost any concept you could imagine.

I could be wrong but I think Oofta is talking about simple human psychology not personal game experience. I know studies have shown the statement to be generally true: more choice leads to less satisfaction with the choice that is made. Obviously everyone is different, but the is generally true for a group of humans. Of course it has been a long time since I took any psychology classes, my info could be out dated.

 

[dave2008]

The slow release rate and few options are killing 5e for my group.

Just curious, how is that working for your group? I feel like there are so many options and adventures for 5e we could never see a 10th of them. How is your group being restrained by what appears to be a mountain of material to me and my group.

For clarity, my group is on our same characters and campaign since we started 5e in early 2015. We have done a few one shots (almost all high level) with other characters and adventures, but the majority of our time has been spent with the same characters.

 

[Maxperson]

I could be wrong but I think Oofta is talking about simple human psychology not personal game experience. I know studies have shown the statement to be generally true: more choice leads to less satisfaction with the choice that is made. Obviously everyone is different, but the is generally true for a group of humans. Of course it has been a long time since I took any psychology classes, my info could be out dated.

Sure, but I think that's more for real life choices where a hell of a lot more rides on the decision than maybe having to pick a different feat next time. I don't think gaming in the same league/category as that. As I said, it certainly hasn't been my experience for the most part and the vast majority of the time the player wasn't as happy, it was just a shrug and let it go because it just wasn't a big deal.

 

[Maxperson]

Just curious, how is that working for your group? I feel like there are so many options and adventures for 5e we could never see a 10th of them. How is your group being restrained by what appears to be a mountain of material to me and my group.

My group is VERY concept focused for their PCs. With 3e there was a class, prestige class, feat or combo for just about anything they could imagine. 5e doesn't have nearly the variety and so a whole lot of concepts fall through the cracks and the players either have to kludge something together that really doesn't fit their vision, but kinda sorta is in the same category, or give up on it and play something else.

It wasn't that we used every 3e choice or even close to half of them. It was that there were choices to fit into whatever we could imagine when we went to make characters.