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So I am working on a spreadsheet for work, so I had a moment to throw the Google trends data on D&D on to a sheet. I think the movie really distorts things. It's trending down for the past couple of years, but I think that's mainly due to the movie providing the highest peak in search interest...

It shows that even the biggest TTRPG is pretty small compared to the biggest video games. It's why Hasbro is going after that market.

Interesting to think about the overall activity around the game. What if we dig in a little deeper for specific elements of the game? Here's D&D Next versus OneD&D: It's pretty interesting to see how those curves look so different. The blue one matches my experience. I was very confident in...

The D&D movie is a good example of why fan sentiment matters. Did the OGL directly hurt the movie? Maybe. You can't be sure, but when you make a $150 million bet on something, you want to ensure that you have as many things running in your favor as possible. Remember that the OGL received...

Hasbro is $4 billion in debt, and not a single dollar of that came from WotC. But, I expect it'll be WotC that pays down the lion's share of it.

I think there is a path were WotC creates a new, professional tier license attached to D&D Beyond, that goes something like this:: If you follow this license, your stuff becomes eligible for D&D Beyond if it hits X sales threshold. You give us: Annual sales reports A 2% royalty on annual...

I think there is definitely sub-cultures forming, and I think you're right that D&D Beyond is a hub for a specific group of people. The danger is that the business follows the same path as Nike, mistaking temporary shifts during COVID as a new normal going forward...

One thing to keep in mind about the OGL is how it impacted specific parts of the ecosystem. TTRPGs need GMs to run them. A news story might only reach 20% of your total audience, but if it reaches 75% of your DMs you're in deep trouble. Compounding things, DMs tend to be far more tuned in than...

I'd expect to see a bit more of a goldrush mentality, with larger publishers jumping in with big products. Fundamentally, the OGL pushed people like Kobold Press to create their own games. They're now interested in getting you to buy a competing product, rather than something for D&D. As...

To be clear, I never expect D&D to ever fall behind another game. It's just too ubiquitous. The point about shifting demographics is a great one, and highlights the fundamental shift we're seeing. The audience is very different, and far more diverse, than in the past. That gives me hope that...

So I went back and crunched the numbers to convert XP to a an approximate CR based on PC level. If you are converting a 5e adventure to the 5.5 guidelines, you can reverse the XP multiplier to figure out the gap.

Looking back at it, I realize that the final battle of Sunless Citadel is probably the worst example to use. If you just use the XP multiplier as a guide, then it's pretty clear how to scale an encounter upward to work in 5.5. You literally just use the multiplier and apply that to the number...

Agreed. The talked about keeping the CRs the same but changing the numbers. A much simpler approach would've been to up the CR numbers, then adapt the Xanathar's Guidelines or simplify the DMG ones. That's why I think they double corrected. It feels like one team tinkered with monsters, and...

Let's take a look at the final battle in The Sunless Citadel. Per the module, the characters should be 3rd level when they have this fight. The NPCs and monsters - Belak, Sir Braford, Sharwyn, the giant frog, and three twig blights - add up to 775 XP. Under the 5e model, the number of monsters...

Thank you so much for pointing that out! Completely missed it. I have some errands to run, but when I get back I'll do a little more analysis with that in mind.

Going back to the level 12 encounter, let's pit a party of 4 12th level characters against 4 critters of equal XP value. In 5.5 that's very easy. We have 4700 xp per character. That's roughly 4 CR 9 creatures. In 5e, it's trickier. We have to halve the monsters effective XP to stay within the...