D&D General Ben Riggs interviews Fred Hicks and Cam Banks, then shares WotC sales data.

[Lanefan]

To go to a convention alone, pretty groggy. To go to a panel like this? Super groggy.

And posting on a forum like this is... ???

(I'm assuming you're using "groggy" in a denigratory sort of way here, as that's how it reads)

 

[Dire Bare]

As always, there is a LOT of "having your cake and eating it too" in this thread. What WotC does doesn't matter, at the same time that it is super important that D&D matters. Etc. No one plays or buys other games (relative to the numbers that play D&D), but at the same time innovation is from other companies. It is just dancing around.

And to reiterate: all I said is I want an actual new edition of D&D because 5E has been around for 10+ years and (for me) is old and boring and I WANT the official D&D to be the game I want to play. That's all.

What WotC does is important for the hobby and for many fans.

What WotC does doesn't have to determine what you are playing at your table.

Both can be true.

WotC does innovate within the current edition of the game, both before and after the 2024 revision. Other companies have innovated upon the 5E ruleset, and many others have created even more innovative and different games for us to play.

As others have stated, be careful what you wish for. Eventually when we get a true "6th Edition" . . . you might love it or maybe you might hate it. But either way, wishing for something many people enjoy to fail so that you get something different is a tad selfish.

 

[TiQuinn]

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 will know the difference, I'll discuss the specific system I'm using.

When I talk about the hobby mostly I say "I publish books for tabletop roleplaying games like D&D" and they get it.

What I'm mostly getting at in this discussion is that I think its healthier to lean on WOTC as a publisher of great RPG products along with lots of other publishers instead of depending on them to lead the way.

I like D&D 2024 a lot. I obviously like 5e overall a lot. I also like Dragonbane and 13th Age and others. So when I want a different flavor than 5e, I'm not waiting for WOTC to do 6e and I have no need to rely on them making 6e into any sort of system I want to play because I already have more systems to play than I know what to do with.

I know that our group has settled in on Shadow of the Weird Wizard as our fantasy system for the foreseeable future. All of the classic D&D character tropes are present. All of the abilities are somewhere in the many character options and paths available. It’s tactical enough without feeling cumbersome. I’ve said that it feels like D&D if someone took the game, and recreated it without the burden of any kind of holdovers or baggage from previous editions.

I like the feeling that there’s an official branded D&D game out there - I think having that being part of the greater community is a plus, as long as it’s making fans of that game happy, but I also don’t feel compelled to play it to satisfy my fantasy gaming itch.

 

[Dire Bare]

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 publicly traded company who might just sell it to the Saudi public investment fund to make a new mobile game out of it.

I love D&D! Both the game, the larger hobby, and the brand. I don't think that is misplaced, it's been an important part of my life since I was a kid in elementary a LONG time ago . . .

But I do think that folks put too much onto the game and the company that publishes it, an entitlement for D&D to be what they want it to be rather than what it currently is, and getting all bent out of shape when those things don't match. That's not healthy.

 

[SlyFlourish]

the player-base of all those games in aggregate is a rounding error in comparison to that of D&D itself. They're a non-factor.

Not at my tables and not among those who follow my nonsense:

Dungeons & Dragons Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook Poll Results

In October 2016 I ran a Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition survey of 6,600 dungeon masters to better understand how DMs prepare and run their games. I wasn't happy to stop there, however. Since then I'v...

slyflourish.com

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 D&D 5e.

Just because D&D has the big market doesn't mean we shouldn't shine the light on all the other games that might give us another flavor of this fine hobby.

If we think D&D is dominating the whole RPG industry, let's get the word out!

That was my whole intention for my post. Why lament that D&D isn't making a new version when instead we can look at the huge spectrum of other D&D-influenced RPGs, many from actual D&D designers who were unburdened by Hasbro's various marketing pushes?

 

[Lanefan]

I am not sure how a complete lack of innovation in the industry leader could be good.

Sometimes things get to the point where further innovation beyond very minor refinements isn't going to make it any better, and the best course is steady as she goes.

Put another way, if it ain't broke why even bother trying to fix it.

And I say that as someone not a fan of current WotC design.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I’ve said that it feels like D&D if someone took the game, and recreated it without the burden of any kind of holdovers or baggage from previous editions.

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. These are the same designers who made 3rd, 4th, and 5th edition! But for some reason those games aren't D&D enough? I'd argue they might be more D&D!

 

[TiQuinn]

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. These are the same designers who made 3rd, 4th, and 5th edition! But for some reason those games aren't D&D enough? I'd argue they might be more D&D!

What I feel these games are missing at the moment are simply the settings, which IMO, are just a matter of time in coming. I want to see setting specific paths and options for it.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I love D&D!

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 to some changes with Dragonbane, Shadow of the Weird Wizard, and 13th Age in future campaigns I plan to run. I loved my Shadowdark campaign and that really felt like classic D&D to me. It still does. On Saturday I'm running my halloween Ravenloft game with Shadowdark because I think Shadowdark does a much better job capturing the feel of that adventure than 5e does.

I'm not bashing D&D here. I think it's great. I also think other RPGs are also great and I don't want my happiness of RPGs to be determined by a single profit-driven company. For me, it's not, and I'm just here proselytizing my happiness with the larger RPG hobbies.

You know the John Belushi sweater in Animal House that just says "College"? I want one that just says "RPGs".

That's my brand.

 

[SlyFlourish]

What I feel these games are missing at the moment are simply the settings, which IMO, are just a matter of time in coming. I want to see setting specific paths and options for it.

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 hard for a publisher to make enough money to really put into a book what it deserves.

So only WOTC can really put out killer Forgotten Realms books and I'm all grumpy because they threw in two areas into the new Forgotten Realms campaign book that I already bought from them twice in the past ten years – Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate. That feels like a missed opportunity that can't really get rectified because only they can really make another book like that and this is the one we got. I would have loved to replace Icewind Dale with Thay but whatever. I'm getting what I'm getting.

The books still look good though.