D&D General D&D's Utter Dominance Is Good or Bad Because...

[Snarf Zagyg]

I think that's the sticking point (and maybe a bit of a sematic issue). If something is designed to perfectly meet its goals, but those goals are "broad acceptance and marketability", rather than "be the best X possible", does that mean its design is good?

Like you said above, you (and presumably all of us) can recognize features of the Porsche that obviously exceed that of the Ford F-150; it's why you used it in your example. If we're not complimenting the design of the Porsche in comparison to the F-150, what metric are we recognizing as being better?

That's the rub, isn't it? It goes down a subjective wormhole.

I think that for most people who are "really into cars," (car design, sports cars, etc.) they would agree that the Porsche 911 is a "better designed car" than the Ford F-150. In some abstract sense.

In the same way that people that are "really into movies" would say that, for example, Drive My Car was a better movie in 2021 than Shang-Chi.

But Drive My Car overperformed to $15 million at the box office worldwide.
Shang-Chi was #2 worldwide (COVID) with $432 million.

And I am quite sure that there are many people here, if not most, that would greatly prefer the "design" of Shang-Chi to Drive My Car.

I think that people often look down on things that are broadly popular and accepted, because they are broadly popular and accepted. But that requires its own type of skill. It's ... well, it's not easy to design something amazing and awesome, but when you are designing for a niche market, you also have fewer constraints- you are just designing something for that market, or, in the TTRPG market, you are designing something that doesn't have to worry about broad acceptance. Designing things that are broadly appealing isn't easy- because you have to design it so that lots of people like it, not just design it for a small number of people. That means that your design will always be a product of compromise, and trying to determine what boundaries to push, and what will remain palatable to a lot of people. That's not easy.

So that's why I default to being equivocal; the Porsche 911 manual may be, in some abstract sense, a "better" design- in the sense that it is better for those people that are really into cars, especially sports cars, that like manuals, and the feel of driving (as opposed to mere transportation or use for work) ... and also have the money for purchase and repair. But it's certainly not a better design for anyone outside of that niche. And there's a reason that Ford puts its resources toward the F-150, which is a better design for that use (lots of sales for a vehicle that people like).

It's the same with TTRPGs. WoTC could make some custom, indie-inspired bespoke game that is absolutely amazing and appeals to a small number of people. But why would they? Why would WoTC make the Porsche 911 Manual of TTRPGs?

Which is why I don't get the complaints about the design of 5e. When I want to run something different, really different, I either run a different game or (more often) I create my own bespoke game. But that doesn't mean that 5e is poorly designed; it's well-designed for its use and market.

 

[Swanosaurus]

I'll repeat what I just said above. This all started from statement that public playtests were just PR and that the design of the game is not at all relevant to the success of the game. That's what I get tired of hearing. I don't put D&D on a pedestal, even if I happen to enjoy the game. But the design is absolutely essential to supporting the cultural zeitgeist that has propelled it to numbers we've never seen before for any TTRPG.

I won't disagree. Still, I don't see why you have to act as if you had been personally attacked in your preference for 5e, when there's really only a difference of opinion about how important 5e's design was for its success.

 

[billd91]

5E's success is not really attributable to its design. there are other, far more powerful factors that caused D&D's popularity to blossom and since inertia has effectively taken over. there is no evidence that a true new edition would hurt the game or its popularity, either.

The success of 5e may be derived from a variety of factors too complex to completely weigh, but the implication that design wasn't part of that attribution is BS. And while the situation IS at least somewhat different, we do have evidence that a radical departure has hurt the game's popularity.

 

[TwoSix]

Which is why I don't get the complaints about the design of 5e. When I want to run something different, really different, I either run a different game or (more often) I create my own bespoke game. But that doesn't mean that 5e is poorly designed; it's well-designed for its use and market.

To be honest, when people complain about the design of something at the top of the market, I generally think they're complaining about the tastes of the market more than the design of the product.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

To be honest, when people complain about the design of something at the top of the market, I generally think they're complaining about the tastes of the market more than the design of the product.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I mean, I get what you're saying, but D&D is the brand owned by WotC/Hasbro. If we are going to call all OGL derived material "D&D" then the term becomes essentially meaningless or at least cumbersome. If Pathfinder, Shadowdark, OSE and 13th Age are all "D&D" then it has ceased to be a useful term for discussion

That's why I tend to use "D&Doids" or "D&D adjacent" for the others.

 

[Swanosaurus]

To be honest, when people complain about the design of something at the top of the market, I generally think they're complaining about the tastes of the market more than the design of the product.

Which is back to the original question of the thread, because if I say that D&D dominance is bad, that's simply a complaint about the tastes of the market.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No, but they played their cards right. 5th edition captured enough of "old school" vibe and mixed with nostalgia and vintage popularity, plus Stranger Things being huge hit, they pulled in decent amount of people who played it back in the day, who are now grown ups, with disposable income. Good customer base. Decent amount of those people have pre teen and teen kids, who also watched the show, so parents getting kids into hobby isn't that hard ( appeal to popularity of the show). Plus YT streams since YT really became big thing around that time. Also, decent amount of "geek culture" just became mainstream pop culture, again thanks to media and shows like Big Bang Theory.

3d edition came out in days we still used dial up internet. 4th came out when YT was just starting to get big, broadband internet was a thing, but flat rate was still not standard. Avenues for marketing were lot smaller and TTRPGs were still niche geek hobbys in the eyes of mainstream public. And if you want to go big, you need to capture mainstream attention, which D&D did and competitors didn't ( at least not in significant numbers).

Sorry, one side note. Why do you need to specify WotC D&D? Is there any other D&D?

Yes, to my mind. Every game and game product with strong thematic and mechanical similarities to any edition of official D&D is D&D IMO. This would include all 3pp for any edition, games like Level Up, Pathfinder, and 13th Age who share an obvious lineage with a WotC edition, and the vast majority of the OSR, who share an obvious lineage with a TSR edition.

"WotC 5e", therefore, is their published 5th edition products, a small percentage of D&D, outsized in its popularity IMO.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Does D&D 5E have to be the biggest RPG there is? No. Or as big as it is in comparison to all the other RPGs? Also no.

But it IS both of those things. So so what?

At this point in the conversation I think a more interesting side question might be "Would (general) you be more okay with D&D 5E being the biggest RPG and market leader if it wasn't owned by Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast?"

No. As I noted before, I don't think its a virtue for any one element of an industry to be that dominant. I not only wouldn't be any happier with anyone else owning D&D, I wouldn't be happy with another game I liked better being the market leader to the extent it is.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm on board with specifying "WotC 5E" in the current era given how broad the 5E landscape is now, especially post OGL kerfuffle, but "WotC D&D" is kind of overdoing it.

Yeah, WotC 5e is more appropriate.