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TTRPG lines have made a decided shift toward fewer releases. I think Paizo is the only company still doing monthly, physical releases for a game line. There are a bunch of reasons for this: Back in the day, distributors really liked product lines that had monthly releases. A line meant a...

It zoomed up after the release date, and then bounced up near 100 once stores started selling out. From what I have heard, it sold out at UK Games Expo on the first day. Looking at Amazon and Barnes and Noble, it looks like both chains are ordering more books. I suspect that this is selling...

It's really tricky to ask people to learn a new mechanic that does something the game already does. That goes double if the procedure is different but the net result is the same.

Doing some semi-necromancy to say I 100% agree. They're so easy to run, they actually cash in on the idea that adventures save me time.

I’ve run several adventures from both collections, and they’ve always been a blast.

Looking through the SRD, I appreciate that even thought I don't know the rules I get what the abilities and powers are supposed to do. The jargon is clear enough, and the wording intuitive, that even if I don't know the specifics the general nature of the ability comes through.

I’m not looking to start an Eberron campaign, but I love this product format.

I'm not sure it was malice so much as a move away from dungeon delving and the wargamer-level detail that Gygax liked to put into products. I have trouble believing that, given the resources involved, it was pure spite. The City of Greyhawk boxed set came about a year later, and that is one of...

I'm not sure it's that simple. He moved to LA in 1983 IIRC, and came back to Lake Geneva for good in '85. He had the money that he could've gone back to LA, but he didn't. I really don't think that writing TTRPGs was Gygax's dream. He was 36 when D&D came out. He was already in his 30s when he...

Here is what I want to see: A really good D&D starter set. I have high hopes for the new set coming out this fall. It looks great. I would LOVE to see the design team at WotC take a lot more risks and really embrace D&D Beyond as a place where they can experiment with smaller, more focused...

I don't see D&D as a good measure of success. It's so huge that I don't think anyone entering the TTRPG business should use it as a yardstick. If anything, it can be a distraction. What we do see now is a path for solo devs or smaller companies to establish a niche, connect with their players...

I think the difference now is that prior to the current era, you had to make a big investment up front to get your game out there. You paid for art, design, management, printing, warehousing, and everything else, then figured out if you had a success. You could sell a fair number of books but...

Exactly! When people talk about the weakness of the TTRPG business (only one person buys, DMs make up a lot of stuff) they are also describing its strengths.

So what does that all mean for the hobby? I think we're entering the age of D&D-likes, games that take one aspect of D&D and magnify it or specialize the rules set. The hobby is big enough now that there is a critical mass of people who want specialized versions of D&D. I think we're seeing that...

It's been really interesting tracking things over the past few months. A few things I have observed: D&D Beyond usage is up. If you look at the forums, you can see how many people are online and how many of them have accounts. The number of active users online has been consistently high over...

Exactly. Hearing the different angles in a forum also gives me a broader view of the issue. It's also very useful as a designer to see how people interpret and use rules.

I like arguing about rules on forums so that I don't have to argue about them at the table.

Great point. I think we'll end up seeing a hidden condition for that reason. Right now, you have to reverse engineer the conditions for hiding to get what is probably the answer.

Agree on invisible still muddying the waters, but I think it's a good step forward. I actually like see invisible as a spell that counters stealth, but I am not crazy about a low level spell being a hard counter to one of the rogue's core tricks. I think if you nest invisible into hidden...

That would be kind of funny. It reminds me of the episode of Frasier where Frasier and Niles plot and scheme to get into a secret club. When they finally worm their way in, they find another, even more secretive, club within the secret club. "Shh! Don't tell anyone, but we fixed the ranger..."