D&D 5E (2024) Mearls has some Interesting Ideals about how to fix high level wizards.

[A_Carrington]

Right, no other games have lore.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Because the Wizard can swap in spells from the spellbook, to simplify the number of spells that the class can use at any particular time still allows for many spells.

That's simplifying for combat, but it's just making the prep point decision-making much, much harder.

But whatever. I despise the "you should only be able to do like five things and magically forget how to use all the other abilities you've learned for the day" school of ttrpg design, and view even the current 5e limitations on prepped spells an obnoxiously gamey element I accept to keep the game playable, so this sort of design clearly isn't for me.

 

[Mort]

Its popularity is largely down to being first, having the most marketing, and sheer inertia. Its rules have almost nothing to do with it. Most of its users don't even know what the rules say.

Except when they changed the rules, it lost significant market share.

And then gained it back (and a lot more) when the rules where changed back to resemble prior editions.

It's not nearly that simple, of course, but the rules, and,strangely, people's perception of the rules - matter a lot.

 

[Zardnaar]

Right, no other games have lore.

Main point is theres lots of overlapping reasons D&D is on top.

I started playing 1993. Ive been hearing about how bad it is since 1994 and my first DM.

1996 from people outside my social group.

I dont care if people agree with me or not. I dont go to other RPG sites snd crsp in terms for not being D&D.

Just ignore them instead and wait it out. They'll die off soon enough.

 

[A_Carrington]

And that's not a contradiction to what I said. People imagine that they know a great deal about D&D rules, and so reject changes arbitrarily, regardless of whether those changes are good, because, as mentioned, they have never actually read them, certainly don't care to, and have zero interest in design, let alone any understanding of it. The rules are irrelevant, only social perception and sunk cost matters.

 

[A_Carrington]

Ma8n point is theres lots of overlapping reasons D&D is on top.

And my point is that "lore" is not one of the reasons. Inertia is the actual reason people appear to be concerned with lore. If lore was a reason, then we would expect an equal distribution of players among games with lore. We don't see that, so this hypothesis is rejected.

 

[Zardnaar]

And that's not a contradiction to what I said. People imagine that they know a great deal about D&D rules, and so reject changes arbitrarily, regardless of whether those changes are good, because, as mentioned, they have never actually read them, certainly don't care to, and have zero interest in design, let alone any understanding of it. The rules are irrelevant, only social perception and sunk cost matters.

You're entitled to your opinion. We have two very big recent examples of people caring about the rules however.

Most casuals wont care about the nitty gritty. They will care about big picture stuff

 

[tetrasodium]

I think all of the work is me "I can't build a sorcerer themed around a single element gimme MOAR spells" talk is overlooking the root cause of why that sort of ultra narrow subclass concept doesn't work as anything but a 3.5 style 3-5ish level PrC with prereqs. Specifically the fact that sorcerer (and every other class) is a monolithic 1-20 thing crammed full of class and subclass features already & that design has a lot of downsides stemming from the resulting inflexibility

 

[Zardnaar]

I think all of the work is me "I can't build a sorcerer themed around a single element gimme MOAR spells" talk is overlooking the root cause of why that sort of ultra narrow subclass concept doesn't work as anything but a 3.5 style 3-5ish level PrC with prereqs. Specifically the fact that sorcerer (and every other class) is a monolithic 1-20 thing crammed full of class and subclass features already & that design has a lot of downsides stemming from the resulting inflexibility

5.5 you can do it or really post tashas.

2014 fire, frost and lightning were viable bit had issues. Eg lack of ranged lightning cantrip.

Building a good blaster is more complicated than it looks. Mostly due to hp bloat.

 

[Tigris]

Except when they changed the rules, it lost significant market share.

And then gained it back (and a lot more) when the rules where changed back to resemble prior editions.

It's not nearly that simple, of course, but the rules, and,strangely, people's perception of the rules - matter a lot.

Sorry but this is wrong.

The market share increased after D&D became popular through critical role and stranger things (and other mentions like big bang theory which made nerd stuff in general more popular).


"When the rules where changed back", with 5E D&D had actually its weakest realease of any WotC release. It did not have any drop off in year 2, but only because year 1 was already just equal to previous editions numbers AFTER dropoff.


Also 4E had its biggest dropoff after Essentials, when the classes where changed back to look similar to previous editions, which made people stopped buying the new Essential products.


Also the biggest reason why D&D decreased its market share was the incredible bad license, which made 3rd party content almost impossible. 5E had with the OGL debacle exactly the same kind of negative reaction, only that there this decision was reversed.