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Like I said in my first post on this thread; WotC has largely judged their audience correctly... Gygax assumed a lot of underlying knowledge from his reader for sure. And he didn't help matters when the PHB came out edit a year before the DMG... I'll do my best. There is of course a degree...

Neither did I. I had to have it pointed out to me - but once you know it's there, you see how it is implemented throughout the system. Gygax never explicitly spells it out. He just assumed a certain level of wargaming background, and that 'people' would see what was "obvious" LOL... That...

If I tell you that you are not as smart as someone like Stephen Hawking; is that an insult? Not saying that the TSR creatives were all world building Stephen Hawkings! LOL... An exaggerated example for sure! But we do have two groups of creatives, separated by enough time, to be able to make a...

If it was just tidying up the lore around Kender or gully dwarves, and not having the company of the lance save everything before the PC's do anything, there would be a lot less commentary. But that's not what WotC is doing. They are giving DL the Nu-Ravenloft treatment: When you start to...

Your alternate hypothesis has a flaw in your core assumption: https://www.enworld.org/threads/tsr-settings-sales-numbers-from-ben-riggs-starting-with-lankmar-maztica-al-qadim-and-planescape.689912/ Yes, we have sales data: So why then did they pick one of the more naughty word selling settings...

"Original" does not mean that the product is actually good. Execution matters. Not only is the base idea derivative, but the cultural/political setup in the Radiant Citadel itself is contradictory and nonsensical. Tolkien + this thing, would have been an improvement.

This is a symptom of a larger issue... Not seem. They either truly do not care. Or, they are incapable of doing anything else.. In my opinion: This is the ultimate truth here. I believe that the current group of writers and freelances employed by WotC are straight-up not as talented as...

By that standard Chaosium sure put out a lot of not-editions of Call of Cthulhu in its day. Exactly. Is D&Done a shift in gameplay the way 2e to 3e, to 4e, to 5e, was? No. But the idea that is what has to happen to qualify as a new edition is an artifact of WotC's Post TSR D&D design...

This is a BIG part of WotC's plan to put the D&D IP over as a 'lifestyle brand'. And they have a ton of money invested in this. How these shows/movies hit or miss will determine how much more $$ will be willing to toss at D&D IMHO. It will also be interesting to see how D&D as a TT RPG gets...

WotC is absolutely banking on that - except, with like everybody... Last time I saw someone break things down it was a bit better than 2:1 in favor of MtG. Evidently Richard Garfield was an Alchemist that figured out how to turn slips of cardstock into crack cocaine... Ohh - Found it: From...

Something like that will never, ever, be allowed to happen again. You will also never ever see a module written by just one author with their name on the front ever again. Even when they had the setting contest, they made sure to buy out the top three - ensuring that the really good stuff will...

Ed is fine. He has done plenty of promotional stuff for WotC; I'm sure he got paid... If they were smart they'd do a setting Boxed set like the Essentials set. In my opinion; the setting guides should not have any greater page count than what is in the starter set. 32 page gazeteer, 68 page...

D&D has been "bailed out" no less than 3 times: There was the Williams takeover - she evidently brought cash with her. There was the WotC takeover, because even under Williams TSR did not change its fiscal ways enough. Then there was the flip from 4e to 5e. Which was crazy. Because 4e did...

This is the reason I can't find a copy of CUTTHROAT: The Shadow Wars RPG - Literally mission impossible. Lots of indie proto d20 systems went away never to see the light of day again... I wonder why they don't put them out as PDF's? What harm could it do at this point... To this day MtG...

Agreed. The solution to something being "unfun" seems to always be to remove any limitations rather than to properly understand why a given mechanic isn't working as expected. And WotC has the opposite problem of PvP Class/Faction based CCGs - whenever anyone has ever hinted at imposing limits...

There are some very interesting youtube videos and articles out there about game design from a video game perspective. Do a search with the phrases: Players will optimize the fun out of a game How Game Designers Protect Players From Themselves All of WotC's D&D survey's have been very player...

This is why it is better not to plan but let such things evolve organically. You get the exact same effect, with less effort, and even better - less wasted effort. And the player the 'curveball' is now a feature that you riff off of - not a bug that destroys 'plans'. (Not that said plans...

Never plan a "Big Adventure". What you are doing is great - A GM should never be able to plan more than 1 session ahead. Maybe 2... Because you never know what your players are going to do. If you have an established locale, and a few adventure hooks - then you are off to the races. "Big...

That was very charitable. I was very uncharitable after watching the postmortem videos linked to in this thread, and marveling at the 5e's designers cognitive dissonance over their own design goals. Along with the issues you listed. Stuff like Mearls going on how they wanted to make combat...

Mort fixed this for you: Yes, he is your friend. But sometimes RPG's with friends just doesn't work out. Yes it S.U.C.K.S.... But you need to look at it as ripping off a band-aid: A quick sharp pain now in exchange for much less ongoing pain down the road.