D&D General Anyone else notice this?

[Paul Farquhar]

In other news, the grapes were sour.

 

[Morrus]

So I was thinking today... about how out of sync the games as designed seem to be with how people play.

Which people? The play style in just the people I know personally differs wildly, let alone across the whole hobby.

 

[Shardstone]

¿Por qué no los dos?

More seriously....yeah, I do personally think there's a pretty big disconnect. Sometimes, you have an unpleasable fanbase. I don't think the D&D fanbase is unpleasable. Instead, I think they've learned the wrong lessons, and focused hard on things that weren't actually that productive, while ignoring other things that are or could be. But "wElL iT sOlD sO oBvIoUsLy tHeY'rE cOrReCt" is a powerful, powerful temptation--especially when that is actually manifesting as "well it sold, so obviously we're correct."

Hence why I bang the drum of Novice Levels and Incremental Advancements, why I go on and on about the importance of rigorous playtesting, etc.

Have you seen Mearls latest work? Has a novice anc apprentice level for his classes, which preludes his 10-level classes.

 

[abirdcall]

My game, on average, ends up around the 1/3 each of exploration, combat, and social interaction that 5e is designed around.

The campaign theme is going to skew towards one or two of those more than others but overall it's about even.

I don't think I'm alone in this.

 

[Bomberooski]

I guess the reason may be because now the roleplayers are more focused into story because to kill bugs they can play videogames like Blizzards' Diablo. And the Storytelling System used in White Wolf's World of Darkness also could be a serious influence.

Agree with this. We have a lot of outlets for fighting monsters with the number of video games that are out now. But D&D allows for the RP creativity outside of the 3-5 pre-determined communication options that those video games provide. So although I don’t agree that everyone is focused only on RP, I do see why that part of the game is very attractive to a lot of people (myself included).

 

[DEFCON 1]

Or are we players just THAT contrary and ornery??

Yes.

 

[TiQuinn]

Are the game designers THAT far out of the loop

There’s designing TTRPGs and then there’s designing a D&D edition.

When a change happens to D&D, it’s a “Big Deal” with a lot of people who will be very much for and very much against what changed. Other games simply don’t have that issue.

 

[AlViking]

I don't think there's ever been one way of playing and I don't care if the rules don't "support" one particular style. I can play the style of game I want so it works for me and my groups. We have a mix of RP, combat and exploration in varying degrees depending on the session and where we are in the campaign.

So once again we have someone claiming that the designers of the most popular TTRPG ever made are out of the loop. Sorry if I can't help but roll my eyes at this claim which seems like an attempt to justify personal opinion and what the OP wants out of the game when millions of people are just fine with it.

 

[sevenbastard]

Modern D&D mechanically is everything we could have asked for in those heady days of dungeon

Except it's slow as heck with combat rounds taking forever.

And even slower if each player is running a PC and a few henchman.

Run a old school dungeon crawls with 1e, 2e, or B/X and then run the same one with 5e and compare the progress made each session. Huge difference. Sure 5e combat is more dynamic, but you explore less dungeon and thus your progress feels like a slog.

 

[Gorg]

“Everyone” is a strong word. I’m not sure anyone can make the claim about everyone playing a particular way.

Everyone is in quotes, because it's a tongue in cheek reference to #some guy on the internet, lol Also, to those that go whatever way the wind blows.