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I don't regard some of those outfits as professional. They're labours of love by part-timers and hobbyists, and the quality of the product reflects that. For instance, I find the layout and presentation of Frog God books to be so awkward and ugly that I've stopped buying them.

They weren't written by WotC, but I'm pretty sure they were edited, laid out, and formatted by the professionals at WotC. There's a lot more that goes into producing a professional-quality RPG book than writing it. And some of us value those elements.

You honestly think the D&D core books are being aimed at kids and families? That's not my sense at all. I'd be shocked if even 10 per cent of the core books were being sold to or bought for kids under 16. Just as I'd by shocked if anything more than a tiny portion of the audience of Critical...

That's my point. WotC's publishing tempo is driven by shareholders who expect a higher return on investment than moderately-sized RPG publishers like Paizo do. If the CFO said they needed to cut releases down to one a year, the design team would say aye-aye captain and spin it as though that...

There are RPG companies that design and publish many more books per year than WotC, even though they sell far fewer of each book published. And of course previous editions of D&D saw WotC publish many more books a year as well. Doesn't it seem odd to you that the biggest RPG publisher by an...

For my part anyway, that's not an arbitrary distinction. The overwhelming amount of content on the DM's guild is amateur, and it looks and reads amateur. One of the values WotC (and a handful of other RPG publishers) brings to the table is professional layout, editing, and document design. I'm...

I'd suggest there's a middle ground between 'flooding the market' and the release tempo WotC has employed for 5E.

It's about return on investment. I have no doubts WotC could profitably publish far more books than they have in the 5E era. Paizo hasn't lost money publishing far more titles to a far smaller audience in the last few years. But the strategists at Hasbro clearly want to maximize return with the...

Not the OP, but some content WotC can publish to support DMs who homebrew: Lairs Encounters NPCs Factions Caravans New monsters Plug and play settlements Content for adversaries like undead, dragons, etc. Maps Magic items Large-scale combat rules Yes, DMs can create these on their own, or...

Abandoning 4E's model of showing all monster capabilities in a concise stat block was a big step back for 5E. And sadly, it looks like PF2 eschews that DM-saving innovation too. 90+ per cent of adversaries and NPCs will have no role in the game besides 2-5 rounds of combat. Presenting those...

Sure. But unless the player is interested in reading the rules and noting or memorizing the myriad modifiers and conditional rules, you'll be walking them through all that (not to mention class abilities, spells, combat actions, conditions, etc.) on every roll forever. Which is what a lot of DMs...

Probably the thing most surprising to me about the D&D boom we're experiencing is that a game this complicated has found a mass audience. I'm also a long-time hobby boardgamer, and as that hobby boomed in the last decade, the great proportion of the growth has been in the lighter, casual...

Couldn't agree more. Most campaign books I've come across are about 60 per cent background which the PCs will never know about, 20 per cent anodyne filler, and 20 per cent actual content that the players will interact with. It's not clear to me if the issue is RPG book authors who really want to...

The historical medieval world was much more influential on early D&D (and fantasy fiction of the era) than it is today. You just have to read the 1E AD&D DMG to see Gygax was building the assumptions of the game on a foundation of 14th-15th century Europe and the Near East. The presumed tech...

How are people going to work themselves into a state of righteous outrage unless they ascribe malice as a motivation to those who express different opinions?

And each session is a level. So the default assumption is a 10 session, 10-level campaign. I think Schwalb's estimate of what a manageable campaign looks like is pretty bang-on.

Presenting clear instruction doesn't mean omitting fluff. It just means the rules content and the fluff aren't blended together in huge walls of text. Very, very few people are ever going to read a rulebook longer than about 12 pages. I know RPGs tend to attract hardcore gamers. But in...

RPG publishers are trying to server two masters: 1) Readers (often not participating in games) who peruse the books at their leisure for entertainment. 2) Players who need the books as rules references and play aids for tremendously complicated games (by tabletop game standards even 5E is a...

I guess I'm out of step, but I though the presentation of Essentials was the best I've seen for an RPG. I didn't have any thought of playing 4E until I came across the Essentials books at my FLGS. Flipping through them, I could look at a stat block and understand what the PC or Monster could do...

I think that's clearly WotC's strategy with 5E: grow the player-base dramatically, but expect far fewer purchases per player. In the leadup to 5E Mearls talked a lot about what the Next surveys taught them. And one thing he mentioned was things that appeal to hardcore players don't appeal to...