D&D General Mike Mearls sits down with Ben from Questing Beast

[aiouh]

I'm assuming the level of complexity someone prefers is influenced by the edition of D&D they started with. I came into D&D at 3.5 the year before 4E was announced, so a wealth of character choices was always the expectation for me until 5E came along and severely reduced the number of options available. I guess the people at Larian thought the same since they introduced weapon actions and a ton of cool magic items to patch some customization back into the game.

BG3 is a video game powered by a computer that is on average about ten thousand times more powerful than the computer that put mankind on the moon

 

[Micah Sweet]

Of course not. Because no other TTRPGs make any money. The designers make them just to get it out of their system.

No, not the kind of money that changes the nature of design like you suggest. Just D&D.

 

[Arilyn]

I know of it, but haven't looked at it yet. Shadow of the Demon Lord didn't click with me, and I believe SotWW is on the same engine correct?

13th Age?

 

[Aldarc]

I know of it, but haven't looked at it yet. Shadow of the Demon Lord didn't click with me, and I believe SotWW is on the same engine correct?

Same engine. Less grimdark Warhammer fantasy flavor, more Gygaxian Greyhawk flavor.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

BG3 is a video game powered by a computer that is on average about ten thousand times more powerful than the computer that put mankind on the moon

In the last campaign I ran from levels 3 to 12 I ported in a good bit of homebrew items myself, some of which were taken directly from BG3. I think players can handle a little more complexity and choice as long as those new options let them do cool things.

 

[DEFCON 1]

No, not the kind of money that changes the nature of design like you suggest. Just D&D.

And not surprisingly, the only game that is owned by a publicly-traded company I believe. So no other games have that Sword of Damocles over them.

D&D 5E14 is actually the lone outlier as far as WotC is concerned. All the other editions (3E, 3.5, 4E, Essentials, 5E24) were all designed with the expectation and focus of making the company money. 5E14 was the only one that did not seem to have that. Which makes it kind of odd that many people seem to think that is the way D&D design is supposed to be and that 5E24's pivot was some kind of odd change. Nope. 5E14 was the odd one out. All the others were how business was meant to be run.

 

[mamba]

Well, it makes sense. At the time Mike et. al. were working on 5E no one at Hasbro really cared because they didn't expect anything financial to come of it. So it was all just the D&D team trying to make a game that would please as many players as possible.

But now that D&D 5E is actually a money-maker for the company, Hasbro / WotC is making sure to put things in place to help generate additional funds from it.

we will see how that goes, putting the players first seems to have worked beyond their wildest dreams, so why mess with it…

 

[aiouh]

In the last campaign I ran from levels 3 to 12 I ported in a good bit of homebrew items myself, some of which were taken directly from BG3. I think players can handle a little more complexity and choice as long as those new options let them do cool things.

I don't disagree but I am not arguing against complexity for all TTRPGs. I know people can handle complexity. I also play Pathfinder. I am just saying that Larian adding more complex rules to a video game carries negligible cost compared to adding them to a board game.

 

[SteveC]

And now, a decade later, 5E is being torn apart from what seems to be a similar or adjacent crowd as being the antithesis of what an Old School game is. I don't know why it has became cool to naughty word on 5E. I do not like Wizards as a company and I'm done creatively with 5E, I've exhausted that design space. But it's clear to me that it's a well designed game that open the gates to so many new players.

I've just started reading this thread, so I apologize if it's been addressed. I remember what you said: Initially, 5E was viewed as a return to form for old-school play. I believe this was because it was a "keep the lights on" edition to start with, and the devs were very much trying to attract the lapsed audience.

Then, with Covid, Stranger Things, Critical Role ... a lot of other things, it became popular. There was a huge influx of new players who were much younger and have (in my experience) a very different way of looking at RPGs. And I definitely believe that WotC pivoted to accommodate them because that's where they saw all the new money coming from.

5E right now is (again, in my opinion) trying to very much not be an old-school game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And not surprisingly, the only game that is owned by a publicly-traded company I believe. So no other games have that Sword of Damocles over them.

D&D 5E14 is actually the lone outlier as far as WotC is concerned. All the other editions (3E, 3.5, 4E, Essentials, 5E24) were all designed with the expectation and focus of making the company money. 5E14 was the only one that did not seem to have that. Which makes it kind of odd that many people seem to think that is the way D&D design is supposed to be and that 5E24's pivot was some kind of odd change. Nope. 5E14 was the odd one out. All the others were how business was meant to be run.

Well, exactly the nature of the design changes and how you feel about them matters too, not just the character of the company making them. TSR never made any changes to D&D I really objected to during its tenure as IP holder, so the fact that it wasn't any better than WotC in this area was simply less personally relevant.