D&D 5E 5e and the Cheesecake Factory: Explaining Good Enough

[Oofta]

I managed a hobby shop for 6 years. Popular is absolutely not a good indication in hobbies. Far too many times someone would stick with a brand/option they knew when there was a product that did what they claimed to want better but required learning something new.

Popularity is a terrible metric for anything other than measuring how popular something is. There's usually a host of other reasons that aren't the same for everyone in that calculation.

Sounds like something a movie critic would say. A lot of movies get panned by critics, yet at the end of the day the only thing that really matters is does the audience enjoy the movie. Sometimes a movie will have a big opening weekend because of expectations but then drops off quickly. But a movie that opens well and keeps going strong? People judge it as a good movie.

Same with games. With 5E, unlike previous editions that sold well at first, there wasn't any initial popularity followed by quick decline. Instead we have year-in-year-out growth. To me, that means people judge it as a good game.

Maybe you like the art-house version of TTRPGs. That's fine. But year in year out growth with no other TTRPG nipping at their heels? You don't get that with a bad game. People continue to buy the game because they have fun playing. I can't think of a better definition of good than that.

 

[Umbran]

Really, I love 5e. But it's not even my favorite "High Fantasy D&D-like game", much less displacing all other games for all other genres.

5E is not the best at anything. I don't think it's even the best all-rounder (or even close).

Yeah. It's plausible-shading-to-probable that whatever the popular thing is got something right, but that isn't really an argument that it's good.

You folks (not just the ones quoted here, but others as well) talk about "good" and "best" as if they are some objectively definable things that everyone else should also respond to - as if you all actually agreed about what those things were.

You talk like "favorite" isn't something determined by more factors than just the system. And that, if you'd have your druthers, you'd only ever consume your one favorite food, watch your one favorite show exclusively - and that if it isn't your favorite, it can't be totally awesome anyway.

You talk like this is still the 80s, and finding out about other games is still hard, and that the small game companies aren't currently experiencing a renaissance of kickstarter products and players for those products like never before.

You folks look to be going to significant rhetorical effort to deny, reject, downplay, discredit, or deflect the idea that D&D... might actually be a good game.

I find that interesting.

 

[billd91]

Isn't there a joke that occasionally pops up here speaking to that idea that 5e is everyone's second favorite edition?

For some like me - I have about 40 years of D&D experience and have played every edition from Holmes to 5e (including PF1 and 2) - it's my favorite edition.

 

[TwoSix]

You folks look to be going to significant rhetorical effort to deny, reject, downplay, discredit, or deflect the idea that D&D... might actually be a good game.

D&D is both a good game and yet has a popularity that isn't correlated with its overall quality. I mean, 53% of all games on Roll20 are D&D 5e, but I don't think 5e is better than every other RPG put together, as those metrics would indicate.

Its popularity is dependent on factors that are outside of its design, and there's no harm in trying to tease out what those factors are.

 

[TheSword]

The fact is that people do change games. They change all the time. It isn’t the case that 50.4% of people play D&D and the remaining 500 RPg games are constantly cycled between by the 49.5% everyone else.

Yes people don’t like change, an obvious truism. Yet people still change jobs, homes, cars, partners and TTRPGs. Not liking change does not explain D&D’s popularity.

 

[fearsomepirate]

I think 5e's easily the best edition of D&D, and there is no obvious runner up. Just being the only edition that doesn't fly apart after 8th level or so due to the LFQW problem gives it that honor.

That said, I can definitely agree there are particular types of things it doesn't do particularly well. It's definitely not even the best D&D for granular charop tricks, let alone the best RPG. The game structure doesn't fit any kind of narrative that isn't a journey from the mundane to the fantastic. It's definitely combat-centric, and concepts you could make entire games out of are, in D&D, a simple ability check.

 

[prabe]

You folks (not just the ones quoted here, but others as well) talk about "good" and "best" as if they are some objectively definable things that everyone else should also respond to - as if you all actually agreed about what those things were.

You talk like "favorite" isn't something determined by more factors than just the system. And that, if you'd have your druthers, you'd only ever consume your one favorite food, watch your one favorite show exclusively - and that if it isn't your favorite, it can't be totally awesome anyway.

You talk like this is still the 80s, and finding out about other games is still hard, and that the small game companies aren't currently experiencing a renaissance of kickstarter products and players for those products like never before.

You folks look to be going to significant rhetorical effort to deny, reject, downplay, discredit, or deflect the idea that D&D... might actually be a good game.

I find that interesting.

I don't disagree with your general point, but A) I enjoy the hell out of 5E--running two campaigns--my comments about my ideal game having little in common with it notwithstanding; and B) I was talking in a more general sense about popular things: restaurants, music, books, movies--I wasn't talking (or at least thinking) about 5E as I wrote it.

I also think there is perhaps a difference between "favorite TRPG" and "favorite food" that your analogy ignores or fails to capture. There is a difference between "my favorite food is steak so I will eat steak 21 times a week" and "my favorite TRPG is D&D 5E so I will use the two evenings I can scrape out every two weeks (two every-other-week campaigns) for TRPGs to run campaigns in it."

OTOH: Touché.

 

[billd91]

Its popularity is dependent on factors that are outside of its design, and there's no harm in trying to tease out what those factors are.

This may be a nitpick based on your phrasing and how it can be read, but its popularity isn't completely independent of its design either.

 

[prabe]

This may be a nitpick based on your phrasing and how it can be read, but its popularity isn't completely independent of its design either.

Yeah. It's possible that "Its popularity is at least in part dependent on factors outside its design" is a more accurate phrasing, here.

 

[TwoSix]

This may be a nitpick based on your phrasing and how it can be read, but its popularity isn't completely independent of its design either.

Yea, that wasn't my intent. I was thinking about it more as my teenage sons are still my "dependents", but they're certainly not wholly dependent on me anymore. D&D 5e's success is dependent on factors that are unrelated to its design; that doesn't mean its design isn't a strong factor in its overall popularity.