D&D 5E (2014) What is Quality?

GMforPowergamers · May 23, 2022

payn said:
I have never been able to enjoy diet soda. I just stopped drinking soda period to get my sugar levels down. I do have one or two a year around holidays.

same

Oofta · May 23, 2022

Mort said:
Not quite sure what you're getting at?

I was just saying that with respect to rules quality itself is subjective. Such that I, for example, I have about 2 pages of houserules for 5e. I think the rules overall work. Certainly enough to need minimal tinkering. I consider it a quality rules set. Whereas I've seen people on this board claim they have dozens to over a hundred pages of houserules. Someone who has a hundred pages of houserules probably doesn't think of the original rules as quality rules (though why they're still with 5e at that point? no idea.)

I don't even have a full page (I don't count my purchasing cost list), I can't imagine having a hundred. Maybe they're trying to compete with the guy that's running the 40 year long campaign?

FrogReaver · May 23, 2022

Perhaps the better question is to ask others why they view 5e as low quality?

Oofta · May 23, 2022

GMforPowergamers said:
so what is quality, and does sales matter?

lets jump into multiverse theory here... earth A has Rob A and earth B has Rob B...

both are conseved on a one night stand... but the mom on earth A has the nerve to go to the rich man that knocked her up and say "You have a son" and earth B doesn't she raises him as a single mom in an okay environment

Both robs have an idea for a story. They want to write it, and maybe even make it a trilogy. The story is 100% the same. Remember this is the same story/novel.

Rob A gets it written by 25 and his dad pulls some strings and a publisher puts it out. They even put it out at a time when book sales will be low. Rob A and his dad also purchase copies of the book day 1 and donate them to libraries... lots of them thousands of them. His dad then pulls some strings and gets 2 local highschools to add the book to the reading list for Jrs that year... and then they buy a bunch themselves and BOOM new york times best seller list.... there is this guy who has some pull in Holly wood and he wants the dad's attention so he buys the option for the book to be a movie (he doesn't care if it even gets made) but this triggers some slow news days to do reports on this new up and coming book "Best seller turning into a movie" and that gets more sold...

BUT THE BOOK IS AWESOME, and even with that kick start it just keeps going... months of best seller's the movie rocks and Rob A gets to write some comics and TV shows and put out his next two books.

Rob B doesn't have the same free time, so he doesn't get it written as quick, but by 28 he has (the EXACT SAME AWESOME book) it written. He however can't get an agent and gets a few rejection letters... he is still an awesome writer and tries to write some short fiction and start a tick tok and a youtube channel... he even gets an okay following. He finally self publishes the (exact same) book by 30, and sells a few hundred books over the next few years. it never goes anywhere and he has to save up and use kick starter to get the second book published... but it misses the goal.

so Rob A and Rob B wrote the same book... how can 1 be "HIGHER QUALITY" shown by the sales? Even discounting the cheating the system for the first few weeks people loved the book who read it (on both earth a and earth b) but if we say sales is the rule of thumb for quility somehow the exact same story changes quality...

Lack of sales does not automatically indicate lack of quality. The inverse, in a competitive space, is rarely true.

Mort · May 23, 2022

Oofta said:
I don't even have a full page (I don't count my purchasing cost list), I can't imagine having a hundred. Maybe they're trying to compete with the guy that's running the 40 year long campaign?

I actually checked - mine is really only half a page or so. The rest is just enumerating the alternate rules we like to use from the DMG (and even that's not a lot) but those aren't house rules.

GMforPowergamers · May 23, 2022

Oofta said:
Lack of sales does not automatically indicate lack of quality. The inverse, in a competitive space, is rarely true.

i will respectively disagree here. Low quality work can out sell high quality work when the low quality has money/name backing it.

Oofta · May 23, 2022

Mort said:
I actually checked - mine is really only half a page or so. The rest is just enumerating the alternate rules we like to use from the DMG (and even that's not a lot) but those aren't house rules.

Yeah, I don't have a set list of alternate rules from one campaign to the next. It's something we discuss in our session 0, although I have my preferences.

Darrin Drader · May 23, 2022

Lack of sales does not automatically indicate lack of quality. The inverse, in a competitive space, is rarely true.

There are cases where my personal assessment doesn't align with popular culture, but you are right in the vast majority of cases.

Darrin Drader · May 23, 2022

i will respectively disagree here. Low quality work can out sell high quality work when the low quality has money/name backing it.

Reviews typically sink those products. When anticipation is high there are a lot more eyeballs on it once the product is released. If it's poorly done, people notice and word gets around.

Oofta · May 23, 2022

GMforPowergamers said:
i will respectively disagree here. Low quality work can out sell high quality work when the low quality has money/name backing it.

That's fine, I don't think there is a way to define quality in many cases. However, looking at previous editions, with most editions there was a boom and bust cycle. While nobody has good info on how well D&D sold in the TSR days (not even TSR) if we look at 3.0, it sold well at first. The sales dropped off quickly, and they had to release 3.5 in an attempt to resuscitate and fix it. Then, according to the people who worked on 4E, that version was rushed out more quickly than they would have liked because sales were not meeting company goals.

We don't see that pattern with 5. I largely credit the extensive playtest and development period and overall design decisions, although other serendipitous factors also of course come into play.