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Stepping away from all the other stuff we've discussed, what would this new D&D look like? If you were in charge, what would a new version of D&D have that you'd want?

I argue WOTC isn't in a position to really innovate. 5e is great but aside from a few things like Advantage, I'm not sure it's an innovation and more of a refinement. Mike Mearls reguarly posts on his patreon (he just posted about the problems with legendary resistance today) about the...

Yeah! I have a whole other set of complicated feelings about the new Forgotten Realms books. These are books that only WOTC can really publish. Sure there's the guild but the cut is so high and the limitations so great that outside of books like what Keith Baker has done for Eberron, it's really...

I love D&D too! 5th edition D&D is my favorite version of D&D I've played in 40 years. I even love D&D 2024 and said so in my review of the various 5e core books. I just don't think we need to count on Hasbro to continually make the next best RPG. As much as I love 5e, I'm really looking forward...

That's exactly what it is! Robert Schwalb worked on D&D 5e and he didn't like parts of how it was going so he left and made Shadow of the Demon Lord (the precursor to Shadow of the Weird Wizard) which is what he wanted D&D to be. Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet did the same thing with 13th Age...

Not at my tables and not among those who follow my nonsense: https://slyflourish.com/facebook_surveys.html#2025gamesotherthan5e More than half of the 3,300 players and GMs I surveyed often or almost always play games other than D&D 5e. Four of five at least occasionally play games other than...

Yep! All two of them =) According to Ben Riggs, it was so bad Hasbro considered selling D&D off. You're obviously free to love the brand all you want. I think that love is misplaced and I'd warn others against putting so much emotional connection to a brand owned by a multi-billion-dollar...

I go back and forth on whether this is good or bad for the hobby but I'm happy with my little logic gates in my head. If I'm talking to someone outside the hobby, it's all D&D or "like D&D". If it's inside the hobby, I talk specific system names.

That isn't really up to us, though, is it? Not only do we have almost zero control over Hasbro's decisions with the future of D&D but given some of the whackadoodle ideas of what the next edition of D&D should be I've heard, I wouldn't count on its success if we did have control over it.

I like to consider how many pages are spent on what sorts of things. There's a lot more lore in the player's book than I would have expected, which is great for me. Campaign Book Running the Realms, 6 pages Adventures, 32 pages! Dalelands, 45 pages! Icewind Dale, 38 wasted pages Calimshan, 32...

I was talking to my wife about this deciding where I thought the D&D term mattered and where it did not. If I'm talking to someone on the street about my hobby, I'll just say D&D even if its Dragonbane or Tales of the Valiant or 13th Age. They won't know the difference. If I talk to someone who...

At that point aren't you just chasing the owner of the trademark though? What's to say the group who buys the trademark are any better than the designers working on other flavors of fantasy RPGs? I just don't see how the actual D&D logo matters that much to each of us individually. Brand...

For me, I separate D&D from WOTC and Hasbro and extend the bubble of "what is D&D" out to other games too. All the eight games I mention are flavors of D&D as far as I'm concerned. The trademark and the brand are legal separations but the spirit of D&D is within all of those games. I recommend...

Hang on, let me find my old drum in the closet. Here it is! bangbangbang. There are tons of awesome RPGs being designed by tons of awesome designers, many of whom worked at WOTC on previous versions of D&D, we can enjoy instead of worrying about what a new edition of D&D would be like (hint, it...

D&D 5e (probably D&D 2024). Lots of subclasses, lots of options with multiclassing, easily hackable into new stuff for the foreseeable future. Shadow of the Weird Wizard (I haven't played it yet). Thousands of character options in a single volume for a lot of replayabiliy. FATE Acccelerated...

The Asmodee announcement with the LOTR license was enough of a push for me to buy One Ring and Moria at Gamehole Con (along with delicious PDFs backed up on my 7-5-2 backup system).

I think its pretty cool. I'm hoping they update their SRD and release it under CC. Their SRD is still under the OGL, which is fine and all, but it'd be nice to have it under the CC for the future-proofing of the game and the hobby in general.

The bigger deal, I think, is WOTC adding arbitration to settle disputes into the license. Arbitration almost always favors their client (in this case WOTC) and can be used in any lawsuit between the company with the TOS and a client who accepts it. In one recent case, someone died at one of the...

There’s tons of new 5e content coming out daily!

We heard that 2024 sold faster than D&D 2014 (or anything else) but not that it ever sold more. It certainly sold more in its first year, so far, but that's to be expected given how much bigger the TTRPG hobby is now. I wouldn't bet that the 2024 sales curve stays similar to the 2014 sales...