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By younger he meant college age players - younger than the 30-something and 40-something players who dominate online forums and conventions. Still, the massive early 80s boom was fueled by players even younger - 10 to 14 year olds. I doubt that demographic represents a significant part of the...

The people who post here (and on the WotC forum, RPGnet, the RPGsite, etc.) are not representative even of older players. Most people who play D&D do not read forums and debate the minutiae of the game; they just show up and play like they do for a boardgame or a poker group. That's as true of...

Sure. And I haven't suggested writers never use altriusm as a hook for adventures. I just don't want it to be the only option, or the default. An adventure that consists of a bunch of encounters that have to happen in a specific order, where the motivation is saving the kingdom, is usually a...

For you. People play D&D for all sorts of reasons. Exploring, finding cool stuff, and powering-up is a pretty standard fare, not just in D&D, but in fantasy CRPGs. If the only way to play Skyrim was to go around selflessly saving villages from dragons, it would have a much smaller audience.

Absolutely. The vaults of the dragon lords are said to hold the fabled Orb of the Elder Wyrm. A sphinx will grant lost knowledge to supplicants, but only if they prove themselves by bringing all six heads of the hydra who lives in the Caverns of Dread. If the lost sword of the paladin Glentar is...

That's the key. The PCs need to stick together because they're threatened by a force that's even more evil, and more powerful. Many Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay campaigns operate under that principle. The PCs are unscrupulous, selfish, untrustworthy bastards, but they're up against insane cults...

Agreed. Since my players, as a rule, aren't interested in saving the village/city/kingdom, or running errands for powerful lords, the background stories to 90 per cent of published adventures are useless to me anyway, and only get in the way of using the setting content. I don't buy adventures...

Maybe the 5E DMG will include a random story generator. But WotC would be shooting themselves in the foot because I suppose nobody would ever need to buy an adventure again.

But the default story hook these days - "villagers are threatened by humanoids/undead/dragon, you must save them!" - is no more sophisticated. At least greed has the merit of being genuinely appealing to players. I'd guess many players take the 'save the village' hook just because they're...

Of the six people in my D&D group, I am the only one who reads about the game online. In fact, there's maybe one other guy who even knows the publisher is WotC. Everyone else just shows up and plays, much like a poker group. The amount of time they spend thinking about the game away from the...

D&D is about a lot more than deploying resources. There are a hundred thousands movies of the Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl generated in a hundred thousand imaginations aided by the descriptive powers and improvisation of tens of thousands of DMs. All unique. All spontaneous. All...

I'd hazard that most potential buyersof HotDQ have never heard of the Adventurers league. If you're some guy who heard about 5E because it was mentioned in Wired magazine, and you bought HotDQ on Amazon, why the hell would you know about organized play? Or Tyranny of Dragons? Not everyone is...

When we talk of railroads and scripts, it's worth considering the different forms they come in. There's the railroad of the linear series of adventures, where you complete one chapter and then move on the next. Clear out the steading of the hill giant chiefs, and it's on to the glacial rift of...

That's the crux of the issue. Some people regard the need for someone at the table to adjudicate and make rulings to be a weakness that should be patched with rules. Others regard it as a strength, and the primary appeal of tabletop RPGs.

WotC are more than a little inconsistent on the matter. They warn against playing evil PCs, then publish whole settings books like Menzoberranzan and Heroes of Shadow that are all about running wholly evil parties. In fact, it's the middle ground shades of grey parties, who have mercenary or...

What you call padding - looser layout, bigger fonts, more white space, bigger illustrations - is a document design choice. Document design is evolving towards that looser, more airy style not because of financial considerations, but for readability. The publishing and design industries have...

Pleasant surprise: Random tables Disappointing: Not nearly enough examples of play.

Jargon helps people in the 'in-group' communicate. It impairs communication with non-experts. In any forums where people are trying to communicate with non-experts, jargon should be excised. In fact, prompted by clarity laws (and lawsuits), most governmental and corporate bodies in the anglo...

By those terms, when did high fantasy begin as a genre? The 80s?

Presumably the D&D Next playtests showed that most participants were okay with rules-light D&D that de-emphasizes the grid, even if that isn't the way they've always played. The WotC devs have said how surprised they were that the preferences expressed in the playtest polls differed from those...