D&D General Why grognards still matter

Not playing your game.
So you're standing by your use of "appeased casual minority audiences"? Okay, interesting, but the fact that you're doing that and refusing to defend any of your positions at all shows me you don't have any kind of serious point here.

And as per your edit, no you haven't explained yourself clearly. That's precisely the problem.

Returning to your initial claim of success via targeting hardcore audiences, even your follow-up didn't show that. You had no positive examples of success at all, only negatives that you attribute to failure to follow a "hardcore" audience - including ones that were obviously wrong like the Indiana Jones example.
 
Last edited:

log in or register to remove this ad

Another thing that should be noted is that ttrpg's are not a high spending market. There are only so many adventures that a group has time to play. Plus I really doubt that return on setting books is really worth the cost of developing them. Before, people come at me about this, WoTC has produce very pure setting books in the 5e era. Their most lore heavy books have been monster books as far as I can tell and even then they had player facing mechanics.
Now there is a place where lore sells, in video games, tv, movies and books. Anywhere story is a major part of the experience.
To me, it's a little weird to not see RPGs as a place where story is a major part of the experience.
 

So you're standing by your use of "appeased casual minority audiences"? Okay, interesting, but the fact that you're doing that and refusing to defend any of your positions at all shows me you don't have any kind of serious point here.

And as per your edit, no you haven't explained yourself clearly. That's precisely the problem.

Returning to your initial claim of success via targeting hardcore audiences, even your follow-up didn't show that. You had no positive examples of success at all, only negatives that you attribute to failure to follow a "hardcore" audience - including ones that were obviously wrong like the Indiana Jones example.
The reason I'm not engaging with you in the details is because you misrepresented facts which means I'm not going to have a fruitful discussion with you going forward.
As a first example, your idea as to what happened to the Witcher series ?!! You clearly live in another reality to mine.
 
Last edited:


LOL what are you talking about?

Witcher died because the star quit, bro. He quit to try and do a movie that didn't happen.
She-Hulk was an MCU show that I'm not sure was ever intended to definitely have multiple seasons. Has any MCU show had multiple seasons? By your logic "WandaVision died" for the same reasons!
Willow didn't have a hardcore audience. That was part of the problem lol. I mean, I guess that kind of supports your point but not in the way you think.

With Star Wars, the prequel trilogy caused the "hardcore fans" to want to loathe Star Wars, and basically to want to burn their Star Wars stuff (remember the classic Spaced episode?), but contrary to your logic, it was completely successful in generating an entire new generation of SW fans, many of who didn't see the OT until later. Whether the sequel trilogy will do the same remains unknown, and won't be know for maybe probably 10 years.

Amazon's LotR is badly written, but I'm not sure it's "not for hardcores". It's not really for anyone, I'd suggest. But it's very obsessed with deep Tolkien lore. You need to explain how it's "not for hardcores".

Star Trek Discovery was relatively successful, and Strange New Worlds is even more successful. Both bridge "hardcore" and newer audiences, as does the very successful Lower Decks.

Indiana Jones is a direct counter-example to your own point. I am astonished that you included it.

Also "appeased casual minority audiences"? EXCUSE ME? That sounds awfully like calling them "woke" as a pejorative and I'm pretty sure that's not okay. Do you want to clarify what "casual minority" audiences are maybe? It just sounds a bit racist/sexist mate. Surely that's not what you meant? Especially seems dodgy because you chose a very loaded negative word "appeased", like these audiences are Hitler.

The rest is mostly subjective nonsense too. "Trashed the lore". You know what "Trashed the lore" of Star Trek? Both the Mandalorian and Andor have, and funny, you don't seem mad about either of those. I think the lore gets "trashed" whenever you don't like it, and it's fine whenever you do, so that's the ultimate in subjectivity.
What If...and Loki both had multiple seasons.
 



As a first example, your idea as to what happened to the Witcher series ?!! You clearly live in another reality to mine.
So what you're denying he left the show because of scheduling conflicts or similar? You've got what, some kind of conspiracy theory instead? The last one of those I heard was debunked by literally everyone involved in the Witcher, and actually initially started as a hit-lie to attack Henry Cavill.

The sequence of events was:

1) Obscure self-regarding Twitter jerk made up that Henry Cavill was a mean ol' "anti-woke" bigot and that he was being mean to the female staff at The Witcher and demanding unreasonable changes. This started in S2 of the Witcher, but people had been moaning about Cavill's casting even earlier (seemingly because he was at the time was in his late-mid 30s dating a young 20-something, which age gap discourse Twitter found unacceptable even though I think most people would say it was a bit sad/loserly but not otherwise a problem).

2) Equally obscure alt-right grifters who thought "anti-woke" and mean to women was a good thing decided to amplify this and act like it was true.

2a) When Cavill left, these grifters, without any evidence, claimed that it wasn't scheduling issues like both Cavill and the Witcher people said, but actually they wouldn't change the show to be "correct" so he left. Even though he'd somehow endured multiple three seasons of fairly large changes from the books (at least some of which he'd apparently suggested!).

3) Eventually this got to YouTubers who turned it into a fake scandal, and from them to the niche press (and then months later to non-niche press), who tried to find out if it was true, and literally everyone involved denied it was true. Women on the show, including the showrunner, much later came out to say Cavill was actually really cool to work with.

4) It became clear Henry Cavill believed he'd been cast as Superman again, based on a conversation Cavill's manager (not his agent) had had with Dwayne Johnson, who is her ex-husband, and who she still manages. This was apparently "a done deal".

5) A few months later, James Gunn got put in charge of the DCU, and all plans were cancelled, including bringing back the Snyder-era Superman. Henry Cavill fired his manager shortly before this became public, which seems very indicative that he believed she had caused him problems.

I feel like I've had this conversation before here. I know it's attractive to believe conspiracy theories, but there's no evidence to support them here, and a ton of evidence otherwise, so yeah I can safely say I'm living in actual-reality here.

(EDIT: Edited points 1-2-2a for clarity)
 
Last edited:

LEGO is an interesting comparator because WotC are singularly failing at being something you could be an "Adult Friend Of".

An "Adult Friend Of D&D" (what a truly ghastly term, feels like something someone might use as a euphemism) just can't spend $2000/year on D&D official stuff. Especially not rulebooks/content that mean anything to other people.

Also, non-grog D&D players trend a lot older than LEGO assemblers, so we're looking at a market with significantly more personal buying power (that said grogs are a lot larger as a percentage than AFOLs, according to WotC's own figures).

But literally, how much can one even spend on D&D per year, not intentionally or stupidly wastefully?

Like, how much do all the official, rules-having books cost? PLEASE tell me someone already knows! I really don't want to have to look it up and do math! I'm begging my fellow nerds here - I know one or some of you already knows this lol! It's got to be like, what, hundreds of dollars? Well under a thousand? Under $500? Maybe not anymore? Let's separate out adventures if possible.
My average to include con fees and con rooms is about $1,667 per year. this includes office supplies, swag dice for new people, etc.
 


Remove ads

Top