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So essentially, the Ennies are the independent small-press RPG awards. Any reason they don't just call them that? It is strange that the six or seven largest RPG publisher recuse themselves from the only RPG industry awards. It would be like if the only movies nominated for Academy Awards were...

I see a lot of comments about challenge, decisions, and reward. Which is all well and good. But isn't one of the draws of RPGs their capacity for drawing us into fantastic settings? I know this isn't the case for a lot of gamers, but when I'm in a good RPG session, I'm making a vivid...

I think that's part of it. Some players want D&D to play like a fantasy novel. Some want it to be more like an exploration expedition or commando strike. D&D is a big tent that supports several playstyles. The expedition pillar is a nod to a particular style. However, exploration does serve a...

But WotC did carry out polling and testing on a huge scale (by RPG standards) for Next. And they said the results overturned some of the accepted wisdom in the hobby as to what gamers wanted and enjoyed. D&D 5E reflects the largest market analysis of RPGers performed in the history of the industry.

We don't know how extensive or accurate WotC's market analysis is. They might know about broad buying trends and preferences by demographics, etc. But to get information about what people actually want in RPGs, and how they play them, they need to poll gamers on a large scale. As far as I...

The Indiana Jones example is a good one. Watch the opening act of the movie. Everything Jones does up until he runs through the dart trap is in exploration mode. Exploring the landscape, examining the map, examining the poisoned darts and identifying them, finding and identifying the shrine...

That's exactly what WotC's braintrust was thinking when they embarked on making 4E a game for a new generation. Turned out the new customers didn't come anywhere close to outnumbering the ones they lost with such fundamental changes. When they want back to the drawing board for D&D Next, they...

The tone might have been dismissive, but it's a legitimate remark. If you dislike 70+ per cent of a game's core elements, then maybe the game isn't for you. If enough new people in the hobby dislike those elements, there's the opportunity for a new game to cater to that market. I know there...

Yes, there are new gamers coming to D&D with different expectations. Yes, some of those expectations were formed by a changing fantasy fiction landscape. And many seem to be more interested in deep PC backgrounds and social role-playing than was typically 10 or 20 years ago. But let's not kid...

I haven't read the whole thread, so apologies if this has already been asked. What is the purpose of having different playable races in a fantasy RPG?

I'd be curious to see the data on this. Are ethnically homegenous countries psychologically homegenous as well? And how does this psychological diversity manifest in racial groups - is it innate or cultured? If it's cultured, then I would expect it would fade through assimilation. So, if this...

Sorry, but you don't seem to understand how business works. The RPG industry isn't a command economy, with deep-pocketed overlords at the top assigning low wages to underlings out of greed. It's mostly made up of many very small companies - typically a founder and 2-5 employees - who scrape by...

Since there's no evidence of egregious profit-taking (or in many cases, profit-taking at all) in the RPG industry, then any increase in wages will have to come from buyers paying higher prices. Do you think RPG publishers would all sell as many books if they charged 25 per cent more for them? If...

I hope that before WotC makes any substantial changes to the game, that they do so after the kind of widespread polling and market analysis that they carried out in the leadup to D&D Next. Because one thing they learned in that market polling is that the opinions and preferences expressed on RPG...

Most D&D campaigns involved enormous amounts of slaying. The suggested default is 6-8 encounters per long rest, with the majority of those encounters concluding with piles of dead sentient beings: ogres, bandits, owlbears, lizardfolk, hill giants, harpies, cultists, and goblins. By the time a...

Trying to interrogate D&D with modern real-world morality is a fool's game. There may be RPGs out that that wrestle with ethical issues in a nuanced way. D&D isn't one of them. The main thing you do in the game is kill sentient beings with swords, axes, and fireballs. For fun and profit...

That's the question, isn't it? When you get to my age, you realize the two things - what you'd ideally wish for an RPG campaign, and what's likely to actually happen - are entirely different. And you learn to prepare for the latter rather than the former. I would ideally like D&D campaigns to...

When it comes to adventures, long experience as a DM almost certainly helps. 20+ years is probably unnecessary. But I think most people aren't turning out top-rate homebrew adventures until they have at least 5 or 6 years of experience of running the game and creating adventure under their...

The notion that these culture war struggles are white men vs marginalized groups is tidy and attractive. But it's not borne out by reality. Progressive activists are disproportionately white. The great majority of marginalized groups do not hold woke beliefs when it comes to language and culture...

y Numbers matter. A not insignificant number of people steer clear of games like D&D because of their occult and demonic associations (including, presumably, religious people of colour). Same with violent content. If the tolerance of making people uncomfortable with RPG fantasy content is...