D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[TiQuinn]

Yes and?

Almost everyone has a breaking point where they dig in their heels about what they want the game to be or not be? (Insert 4e conversation here)

 

[Aldarc]

Almost everyone has a breaking point where they dig in their heels about what they want the game to be or not be? (Insert 4e conversation here)

Sure. I am just advocating a healthy reevaluation of the current set of classes.

 

[NN]

And the ancestries as well. Theres really only three: human, human in fancy dress, and weirdo.

 

[mamba]

Well, sure. I'm sure WotC would love for people to buy more books. Ok. I imagine that's true for every single publisher in the world. That's hardly nefarious or has anything to do with the notion of "planned obsolescence".

no, it’s definitely not planned obsolescence, I don’t think that exists in book publishing, outside of printing flimsy books

 

[Scribe]

Sure. I am just advocating a healthy reevaluation of the current set of classes.

An interesting discussion in there for sure.

 

[mamba]

why is D&D so incredibly complex?

Youd think by the 8th (?) iteration the some designers might have stumbled upon simplicity.

If you think D&D is complex compared to a CRPG, you are very wrong. As to why is it more complex than eg Shadowdark, I assume it’s market demand

 

[Micah Sweet]

If you think D&D is complex compared to a CRPG, you are very wrong. As to why is it more complex than eg Shadowdark, I assume it’s market demand

Hard to say. WotC hasn't ever tried to produce something like Shadowdark.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

An interesting discussion in there for sure.

Given that WotC hasn't brought back a 4E class that arguably doesn't have its niche filled in 5E, the proliferation of arcane caster classes that share the names of previous versions, but not their original reason for being, I'd definitely agree.

 

[AlexofBarbaria]

“progress” in rpg design does not come from twiddling dials, but from harmonizing them.

Eg less resource management is not design progress. Resolving inconsistencies and contradictions is.

Right, agree.

As anyone who's tried to create their own D&D edition knows, it's not like you start with a list of problems and fix them atomically one by one. Fixing one thing breaks another thing.

So rather than being a steady march of progress up a single peak, editions are more like hills on a range. You fix and break and fix and break, making the game worse before better, until you run out of time/money. Hopefully at that point you're up a decent hill. Other editions went off in different directions and ended up different hills. Some bit off more design work than they could chew by release time and died at the base of a new hill.

If you think D&D is complex compared to a CRPG, you are very wrong. As to why is it more complex than eg Shadowdark, I assume it’s market demand

Huh? D&D is way more complex than mainstream CRPGs. Talking about player-facing complexity of course, not the physics calculations happening in Skyrim when you run across a table knocking all the plates off.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I bet you're not playing the three and four hour games that people who don't get all the properties quickly sold off and who keep injecting more money into the game do.

Not sure I understand. Quite often, it takes a lot of time for all the properties to be sold off because there are always some properties no one lands off. The only way to inject money in the game is completing turns of the board (or less consistently, Chance and Community Chest cards).
Until someone gets a set (which can take quite a bit of time), no one can build and the rents remain low, dragging out the game. It often takes several turns of the board before anyone can complete a set.