D&D 5E Casual player responses to DMs planning to avoid WotC 5e/1DnD rules

[Starfox]

As a GM for some casual players and some who are not, my comment is that it is very much up to me. THey will play what I GM. The main contender for us is a homebrew game I wrote but which is quite complex - it is a level game but without classes. I have liked what I've seen of One D&D so far, so I would like to go that way, but after this debacle I may not feel this an option. Black Flag is so fare an unknown quality.

 

[Velderan]

My group who largely doesn't follow stuff like this finally started talking about it after a couple people saw people discussing it on Reddit. General vibe seems to be WotC is gross and no one is so committed to 5e they won't switch games and some options were tossed out with Pathfinder 2e being mostly discussed. There were concerns about how much crunch is in it compared to 5e, so we'll see. For the most part, switching would probably come down to what does someone want to GM for since we'll have fun with whatever as long as we can still tell bad jokes while playing. Since I'm next up to DM a 5e campaign, I'll probably pick up a Pathfinder 2e book at some point to see how much of a headache it would be switching over.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

While I'm sure the more casual players I play with would switch systems if I and other "alpha gamers" in the groups really pushed for it, I don't want to make people buy new books just so we can struggle through a new system where the DM lacks system mastery. But I also am no longer boostering for WotC products.

So I think what is actually going to happen for the more casual 5e gamers in this sort of situation is that, whereas before they were encouraged by their groups to not just own the PHB but also get Xanathar's or Tasha's to really have more options, now the leading voices at the table in terms of purchasing are going to, on average, be much more oriented towards "oh you don't need to buy that, here, just borrow mine". And generally the mood is going to be much less "this is our game for the long haul" and much more "this is our game for now", and, where the rub comes for WotC, when 5.5 comes out there will be nobody pressuring the more casual players to buy it, and groups that would have otherwise bought PHBs and "given it a try" will give it a pass. The dedicated 5e groups will just keep on 5eing with the stuff they already own until their resident alpha gamers fall in love with one of the 5e semi-clones that will inevitably arise in the coming years.

At least that's how I see it going for the book based groups. I don't really understand people's relationships with D&D Beyond well enough to begin to theorize about the dynamics of how the groups and casual players plugged into that service will adapt to WotC's heel-turn. In any case I think it is now much more the future of D&D than it was before, because I think WotC has just absolutely neutered their book-selling business.