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In the mid-late 1990s I very much suspect most of the people still playing were hard-core nutballers i.e. the opposite of casual. Most casuals had long since drifted off, many of them to M:tG

The only case I can present is anecdotal, which I know you'll dismiss out of hand. Of such few people who were still playing D&D in the late 1990s, I have to assume our crew was at least somewhat representative or at least somewhat common: that being, people who started in college/university...

There's also the hosting piece, which in home games IME also falls on the DM 99% of the time. For common stuff, the DM ideally should have it nailed. For anything else, the trick is not to know it but to know where to quickly look it up. Have the rulebooks close to hand (or in pre-opened tabs...

And in so doing you're dredging up faulty data - data that IMO was manipulated to help WotC make the exact point you're making - to help prove your point. Irrelevant.

There are self-driving cars and all sorts of other types of cars as well. Trucks and vans are not cars; they're trucks, and vans. So reading, discussing, and listening about other systems isn't enough to give perspective? To turn the hose of hyperbole around, that's like saying only those who...

We found 3e fairly similar to 1e: it works OK till about level 9 or 10, then starts to wobble, and by the low-mid teens the wheels come off. The biggest difference between 3e and 1e in that way is that 1e is vastly more tolerant of different party sizes and variances than 3e, which almost...

And I see the same with most TTRPGs - they do essentially the same things as any other TTRPG. Hey, that about sums up how we built the game system I use; and though it still ain't perfect (probably never will be) it does me more than well enough. :) For the person who did all that work on it...

For me it's a mix. Some parts of prep* I really enjoy, other parts are a serious slog. Running at the table has a higher "really enjoy" ratio but there's times when it too can be a serious slog. * - including post-game logging, recordkeeping, etc. as well as pre-game prep.

There's about a gajillion different makes and models of cars out there. I've owned the same car since 2009 and it's more than good enough for what I need it to do, 99% of the time (the other 1% usually involves things I want to haul not fitting in it). And yet I think I'm still allowed to hold...

Fair enough for one's own cooking at home. I think a better analogy here, though, is a restaurant. If I'm running an Italian restaurant with a big sign outside saying "Fine Italian Food Here - Come Get Some!" then it's pretty obvious that Italian food is what you're going to get here, which...

Siiiigh. Yet again I have to point out that the survey you're quoting threw out all data received from any respondent aged 35 or over, which just happens to be the cohort most likely to be involved in longer-running games. The cynic in me says this was very intentionally done in order to skew...

Part of it also depends on how you see the physics of magic working in the setting. For me, I see magic as a force of physics similar to gravity etc. only it's malleable by living creatures who know (or have been taught) how to do so; thus the casting of any spell involves three steps: 1 -...

Level doesn't have to be a purely-metagame element in the slightest, and can very well exist in the setting. All it needs is that some sort of in-setting training is required in order to level (which IMO should be the case anyway). There's real-world examples* of "levels" all over the place...

The left-hand graph has a rather large and glaring flaw, as it implies that exactly 0% of the player base is 46 or older. Such is not the case.

If you lock them all into having levels and classes and so forth, then sure; I'd agree. What I want as DM is something that says in hard numbers "this creature, on average, is as strong as the strongest possible human, as smart as the average bag of hammers, not very wise, has average...

How many of those campaigns were intentionally run as open-ended though, i.e. without a set "completion" point? I've been running the same campaign for 17+ years now and there's still no end in sight; hard to call it "fizzled" after that long even if it for some reason stops next month.

For me at least, it's because I view D&D as being more an adults' game than a kids' game.

I love it, only when it's truly wild and unpredictable - wild surges from an interrupted spell doing weird things, or broken magic items releasing their enchantments in ways unintended, that sort of thing. I have about 400 different possible entries (a few of which amount to "make s**t up") on...

Part of the problem is that we're a diverse lot; and one DM's "mistake" might be another DM's "best practice", with both of them running games their players greatly enjoy. Thus, there's always going to be objections from somewhere to published advice around something as...

Indeed, but giving them stats anyway allows for quick and easy comparison with characters. Simply saying Giants are tough and resilient isn't enough; saying Giants average Con 24* is way more useful, and by extension provides their Con save bonus etc. without it all having to be written out in...