D&D General Chris just said why I hate wizard/fighter dynamic

[doctorbadwolf]

If you think about it though. It's not ridiculous.

Almost everyone of the most successful games in TT, VG, and BG are the firsts ones to make a decent version.

Think of almost every top game. Then think of how many surpassed a successful predecessor in the same genre.

Really only happens in strategy games that have different foci.

"If you aint first, you're last" - Ricky Bobby

WoW came after and surpassed EverQuest, which was perfectly playable but not as simple and hind-brain satisfying as WoW.

Board games are in a big enough renaissance that I won’t comment on them.


However, assumption (contrary to how things tend to actually work) of superiority of the first iteration of a thing isn’t a huge component of why D&D 5e is soaring outside of the region of the rest of TTRPGs, in popularity right now.

D&D is the primary driver of Hasbro’s profits. Less than 10 years after D&D was in danger of being shelved.

Trying to tie that primarily to “first mover advantage” is absurd. It’s popular because 5e has a fun, easy to understand, satisfying, play experience, both in character creation and in active play.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I'm saying D&D is HUGE and people are playing D&D because it's popular that's what everyone knows. so you don't have to teach the majority of fans a new system and you can weave in homebrew and houserules easier.

It's sunken cost.

I mean many fans literally rather play a copycat system in PF than learn 4e or give it a chance.

Pedantic nit pick incoming .....
It is not a sunk cost it is a network effect.
Because everybody knows D&D then learning D&D leverages the network of existing D&D players to get a game.
Having learned Dragon Warriors in the nineteen eighties and insisting that every play Dragon Warriors is a sunk cost.

 

[Oofta]

It does,

4e "failed" because it changed too much too quick in order to "fix" it. And you litterally had to buy more books and learn new ideas. Hell it was too much for even the designers and they didn't have enough time to design it full before getting it out.

However 4e was a better level based, class based, team based dungeon crawling simulator with dragon enemies than any other edition. However it came too late and was too different for its ideas to either take over as or became the skeleton of D&D.

I would say that it proves the point that D&D is not popular because of sunk costs. They changed so much that it was a different game altogether with some of the same imagery and labels. It didn't have the same broad appeal even if it had some good ideas. I ran or helped run a couple of game days in a major metro area. We had a big uptake initially with 30ish people playing in each of them once a month. It slowly dropped off because most of the new people we had attracted simply didn't stick with it.

For me, and most people I've played with, 5E "feels" like an evolution of D&D. It makes it quite clear that the D&D label isn't enough. The races and monsters, the setting and fluff can't carry the weight. It's the tone and style of play that matters.

None of this is saying that 4E was bad. If it had been released as it's own standalone game I think it could still be one of the popular alternatives. From a TTRPG perspective it could be successful. Just not as successful as 5E D&D.

 

[Oofta]

My conversation was never on quality becuse I wasn't edition warring.

My point was that 4e had a different focus and ended up creating a different kind of game. However because it was not only not the FIRST edition and came out 30+ years after Dungeon crawling TTRPG, 4e would have to be the best freaking game ever to counter sunken cost.

And it wasn't.

5th edition's success is mostly due to leaning into sunken cost. 80% of it is copying old ideas and taking concepts from poplar media and gamer culture. Fans didn't have to learn much and video games of the last 30 years did the heavy lifting.

Borrowing ideas from previous editions is not "sunken cost". You're using the phrase wrong. Ideas were taken from previous editions because they were popular and worked. One of the reasons 5E is successful is because they took what worked from previous editions (including from 4E) and with a lot of feedback from players made a game with mass appeal.

 

[Minigiant]

I would say that it proves the point that D&D is not popular because of sunk costs. They changed so much that it was a different game altogether with some of the same imagery and labels. It didn't have the same broad appeal even if it had some good ideas. I ran or helped run a couple of game days in a major metro area. We had a big uptake initially with 30ish people playing in each of them once a month. It slowly dropped off because most of the new people we had attracted simply didn't stick with it.

For me, and most people I've played with, 5E "feels" like an evolution of D&D. It makes it quite clear that the D&D label isn't enough. The races and monsters, the setting and fluff can't carry the weight. It's the tone and style of play that matters.

None of this is saying that 4E was bad. If it had been released as it's own standalone game I think it could still be one of the popular alternatives. From a TTRPG perspective it could be successful. Just not as successful as 5E D&D.

That was my point.

So much was changed that mechanically it was a different game and got brickwalled by sunk cost.

It's why ultimately casters are a forever problem for D&D as the fandom won't accept major change to the D&D wizard and cleric concepts.

 

[Cadence]

None of this is saying that 4E was bad. If it had been released as it's own standalone game I think it could still be one of the popular alternatives. From a TTRPG perspective it could be successful. Just not as successful as 5E D&D.

A point made recently about 4e in particular was the huge number of pre-orders it had. I'm guessing that was almost entirely due to it being "Dungeons and Dragons", and gave it an instant pool of folks with books they probably felt, at least a little, that they should try out.

Pathfinder took another route to get that player base - being really similar to a version of D&D.

What percent of the non-D&D branded games are ones that directly ride D&D's coat-tails (OSR, PF, d20, 13th age, similar OGL products)? How popular is the biggest fantasy one after branded D&D and those derivatives?

 

[Micah Sweet]

My conversation was never on quality becuse I wasn't edition warring.

My point was that 4e had a different focus and ended up creating a different kind of game. However because it was not only not the FIRST edition and came out 30+ years after Dungeon crawling TTRPG, 4e would have to be the best freaking game ever to counter sunken cost.

And it wasn't.

5th edition's success is mostly due to leaning into sunken cost. 80% of it is copying old ideas and taking concepts from poplar media and gamer culture. Fans didn't have to learn much and video games of the last 30 years did the heavy lifting.

And that is why big changes in 5.5 or 6e from WotC are not going to happen. Heck, the relatively minor changes they are making are riling up much of the old guard. The kind of stuff people are asking for in this and other recent threads is never going to happen from the IP holder.

 

[Aldarc]

This isn't the place to relitigate the edition wars, unless you're that anxious to get the thread shut down.

I wish people would heed your advice rather than trying to get further barbs in.

 

[Cadence]

Thinking about fighter revisions, did I hear right that there were increased non-combat resolution activities in Strixhaven?

Are there any mechanics there that the fighter falls behind on, or are they all pretty neutral?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Thinking about fighter revisions, did I hear right that there were increased non-combat resolution activities in Strixhaven?

Are there any mechanics there that the fighter falls behind on, or are they all pretty neutral?

I'm curious about this too. From what I heard, it was less mechanical and more descriptive.