D&D General D&D 2024 does not deserve to succeed

[Oofta]

When have I ever said anything of the sort?

I was responding to "...saying we should support them whether we like them and their products or not." Buy products, don't buy products, nobody cares. At least I don't.

 

[Oofta]

The 1e PHB is hard to read forward; so I should give backwards a try.

It might make more sense that way.

 

[mamba]

You lose some players, pick up a different group of players, those looking for a social activity. You can’t compete with WoW by trying to be WoW.

yes, the point was more that no matter what the D&D game had looked like at the time, WoW would have eaten into it

Anyone can get further by being better, no matter how good you are to begin with.

but not everyone can get further by the same distance, TSR management was objectively bad

It certainly didn’t become popular on it own! How do you think people found out about it? Magic?

word of mouth, Gary writing in all the magazines that were around at the time. That was not some genius TSR marketing plan, it happened and they were caught by surprise

 

[Doc_Klueless]

I stopped engaging with the OP, even to tweak him over McDonalds, because it was clear he was saying whatever he thought would get a reaction, even if he had to say something factually inaccurate about DC20.

But the other conversations have been riveting!

 

[CleverNickName]

What a weird thread.

It does not benefit the gaming community to continue putting money and attention into a now-lackluster, poorly managed, corporate-owned system. The more it has dominance atop the market, being able to advertise itself and propagate itself on gamestore shelves as * the * tabletop roleplaying game, the more the players suffer and the genre itself stagnates. Supporting D&D at this point feels almost as bad to me as supporting World of Warcraft - a game that ruined what MMORPG's are supposed to be and has been holding the genre back for decades. With any luck we may be nearing the point of that changing, and a reckoning needs to come for D&D as well. Choose to take your money and attention away from these shambling behemoths. Put it into better games.

This has been the business model for half a century. It's weird to suddenly say "but this time it's bad actually."

Anyway. You are right about this much: DC20 is an excellent game...most folks who talk about it only have good things to say about it. But it's not an either/or situation: you can have both! You can play D&D on Friday, and DC20 on Saturday, and nobody will show up and stop you. You can even pretend that Hasbro went bankrupt, if it makes you smile. (They didn't, and they won't, but you can still pretend and the effect will be the same: you will get to play whatever games you and your friends want to play.)

I won't buy the 2024 books, but that's not because of an anti-Hasbro, anti-D&D agenda. The truth is I already have the 5E core books and all the splatbooks (Xanathar's, Tasha's, Fizban's, Volo's, etc), so I wouldn't gain very much from the 2024 reprints. That's all. I'm not looking for something else to play, and I'm not pretending to punish Hasbro over their business practices. I'm just hanging out with my buddies every Friday night for some dice and storytelling.

And to a certain handful of comments in this thread: I don't need D&D to fail so that people will be forced to play different games. That's probably the weirdest thing I've ever felt the need to type in this forum. I don't understand that attitude at all. That's like hoping all the animals die so that people will be forced to go vegan.

If you and your friends want to play DC20, just play it. You don't need to wait for D&D to give you permission, and you don't need to ruin your blood pressure over what Hasbro is doing.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not necessarily. A game should be fun more than it is consistent or a slave to verisimilitude IMO.

Of course, I feel that consistency and verisimilitude are a huge part of what makes a game fun.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes, it was, because 3e was the most complex, least accessible version of D&D so far.

I liked 3e. Not my favorite D&D, but pretty good, and it led to a lot of creative product from a lot of creative people.

It is my wife's favorite D&D, and there are a number of things it does better than 5e IMO (skills, for one).

 

[Micah Sweet]

I would say the 80s was even better. But the hobby was tiny then.

The '80s were also great, for mostly the same reason. I'd take the smaller hobby as a worthy sacrifice for a healthier, more diverse and varied one.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I was responding to "...saying we should support them whether we like them and their products or not." Buy products, don't buy products, nobody cares. At least I don't.

Well you implied I have been telling people not to support what they want. Absolutely not the case.

 

[Micah Sweet]

What a weird thread.

This has been the business model for half a century. It's weird to suddenly say "but this time it's bad actually."

Anyway. You are right about this much: DC20 is an excellent game...most folks who talk about it only have good things to say about it. But it's not an either/or situation: you can have both! You can play D&D on Friday, and DC20 on Saturday, and nobody will show up and stop you. You can even pretend that Hasbro went bankrupt, if it makes you smile. (They didn't, and they won't, but you can still pretend and the effect will be the same: you will get to play whatever games you and your friends want to play.)

I won't buy the 2024 books, but that's not because of an anti-Hasbro, anti-D&D agenda. The truth is I already have the 5E core books and all the splatbooks (Xanathar's, Tasha's, Fizban's, Volo's, etc), so I wouldn't gain very much from the 2024 reprints. That's all. I'm not looking for something else to play, and I'm not pretending to punish Hasbro over their business practices. I'm just hanging out with my buddies every Friday night for some dice and storytelling.

And to a certain handful of comments in this thread: I don't need D&D to fail so that people will be forced to play different games. That's probably the weirdest thing I've ever felt the need to type in this forum. I don't understand that attitude at all. That's like hoping all the animals die so that people will be forced to go vegan.

If you and your friends want to play DC20, just play it. You don't need to wait for D&D to give you permission, and you don't need to ruin your blood pressure over what Hasbro is doing.

I don't want them to fail. I'm just not interested in personally helping them succeed, and I'm annoyed that everything bends in their direction. They have nothing I want.