A lot of products have been "innovative" in the past and nobody wanted them. If you want something different there are plenty of options, innovative is not always better.
D&D General Ben Riggs interviews Fred Hicks and Cam Banks, then shares WotC sales data.
- Thread starter darjr
- Start date
A lot of products have been "innovative" in the past and nobody wanted them. If you want something different there are plenty of options, innovative is not always better.
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 compromises they had to make to stay true to D&D.
There's so much innovation happening in TTRPGs outside of things coming out from WOTC. How long did it take a D&D book to mention safety tools? The D&D Starter Set is the first set to omit ability scores and just include bonuses, an ancient and largely useless holdover. WOTC definitely lags behind other RPGs who are able to move much faster, try more interesting concepts out, and break away from 50 years of tradition. Daggerheart, for me, is a great example of the innovation we can find in RPGs with damage thresholds, story-based turn order (whatever you think of it), quick-build character folios, hope and fear mechanics, and so on. And even in Daggerheart's case, they took a lot of this from other RPGs which they reference in the beginning: Blades in the Dark, 13th Age, Cypher, and so on.
WOTC can't truely innovate because they're as big as they are with the 50 year legacy. They're far more bound to the past than any other RPG publisher. They'd never make a product like Mork Borg or Ironsworn. They're in no position to.
Parmandur
Book-Friend, he/him
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?
Reynard
aka Ian Eller
Is it more or less selfish than wishing for something to remain the same that many people want to see evolve?
darjr
I crit!
I would say so at this point. For them to change the current version has to fail. Probably pretty badly. That’s def not good for many of the folks at WotC.
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Clint_L
Legend
I don't want D&D to wildly innovate. I think its inertia is a feature - there's a lot of value in having a common denominator for the hobby. It brings people in, and gives smaller, nimbler creators something to innovate from. One of my favourite aspects of 5e is that it felt familiar to someone raised on 1e. It's a safe brand.
I want innovation in the hobby, but I don't think it should be coming through D&D.
I want innovation in the hobby, but I don't think it should be coming through D&D.
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billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
When you're got an entertainment product that's meeting your needs and doing a reasonably good job of it and, more importantly, you like it, major innovation for the sake of innovation becomes overrated.
TwoSix
Programs in KOBOLD
I mean, 99.9% of the news is about things I have no control over; that doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions about it.
dave2008
Legend
more (selfish)?
