D&D 5E Could D&D Die Again?

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Oh, I do! Excellent recommendation for lovers of post-apoc, imo.

It's a pretty extraordinary commentary on... well, lots of stuff. Church vs. state, how we interpret history, and much more. Quite powerful.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Generally, yes. Mostly because "ceremony" or "ritual" can mean literally anything that isn't exclusively utilitarian. Using the bathroom is a "ritual" in the archaeological sense because it involves specific sequence of behaviors and includes optional but socially-expected behavior (cleaning the seat if you stood to urinate, washing your hands, drying your hands, replacing the toilet paper roll if necessary.) Watering one's plants on a scheduled day is a ritual. Birthdays are ceremonial activities with a large subset of rituals involved (cakes and birthday candles, parties, gift-giving, being polite to the celebrant, reflecting on the past, etc.)

The problem is, in laypeople terms, "ceremony" and "ritual" are presumed to be inherently religious or at least superstitious in nature, which is inaccurate.

After a heavy Thanksgiving dinner, using the bathroom can be a religious experience. You may see God.

 

[bloodtide]

Well.....maybe no "die", but sure become "undead".

You don't need to be a financial genius to see a bad economy starting. People have less spending money, so they can't buy things like games. So sales will drop.

And...well, it's hard for a modern company to put out "good" content. A LOT of gamers were less then happy with the Spelljammer Scribble, for example. So, woe for 5.5E....

And the movie? Well, chances are it won't be so great. They could make it great, but then they would have to do things they don't like and are against.

But any way...so yea, D&D becomes a far background thing. People say "oh yea that game" or things like "Oh I remember that game...do people still play it?"

 

[Lanefan]

But any way...so yea, D&D becomes a far background thing. People say "oh yea that game" or things like "Oh I remember that game...do people still play it?"

So...1992 all over again.

 

[MichaelSomething]

If by "dying" you mean "no longer controlled by a megacorp" then let death come!

The sooner that happens, the sooner the game becomes driven by the gamers instead of the stock holders. We'll say what goes on at table without some new "product" contradicting us. No longer will professional designers tell us how to run our games. We can mold new players into our ways of playing without mainstream culture polluting their mindsets.

 

[Jack Daniel]

The only "D&D" worth a jot is the idea of the game; the lifestyle brand is meaningless. Even if WotC were to fold tomorrow and Hasbro were to shelve the IP indefinitely, D&D would live on in every retro-clone, Pathfinder, Castles & Crusades, etc.

 

[Davies]

"And everything that dies, someday comes back"

Maybe. "But maybe everything that dies, someday comes back."

 

[Vaalingrade]

If by "dying" you mean "no longer controlled by a megacorp" then let death come!

The sooner that happens, the sooner the game becomes driven by the gamers instead of the stock holders. We'll say what goes on at table without some new "product" contradicting us. No longer will professional designers tell us how to run our games. We can mold new players into our ways of playing without mainstream culture polluting their mindsets.

10e: Just sit and argue for four hours before going home angry or in the back of a squad car.

 

[Oofta]

If you're aware of what's going on with MTG if one D&D has that type of reception or similar bto 4E and if it goes out of print in a few years and if they go in a different direction with 7E then we can probably conclude it's a dud.

If that's combined with MtG collapsing (slump atm) things get interesting.

My main hypothesis is if One D&D is a dud combined with MtG money not being available to bail it out like paying for 5E development.....

You're assuming D&D needs financial support to survive. Seems like an odd assumption to me. Practically all the D&D products sell well, seeing numbers other RPGs can only dream of. Then there's the ongoing sales of the core books which continue to pay dividends long after they recouped their development costs.

There will be slowdowns in the future, but D&D is self sustaining. May not be a big ticket item for HASBRO as just an RPG. But of value to someone? I think it will still be around for quite some time.

Of course it may also just end up being another example of the Ship of Theseus, D&D in name only because it will continue to evolve and change.

But I don't think the sky is falling just yet, and won’t for a long time. It wouldn't even if they stopped publishing [edit: new] books tomorrow.

 

[Unwise]

I thought of another death scenario I have not seen mentioned, though I might have missed it:

• TSR3 bribes a judge (Is that the TSR version with the extremely overt racist in it? I don't want to besmirch mere scammers/fools by confusing them with nazis)
• WOTC lose their legal case and the TSR3 gets all the rights they are seeking.
• All D&D products are republished with explicitly racist eugenics theory baked into all of the racial choices. They use racist co-opted runic magic as the basis for all spell casting. All villains are caricatures of RL "undesirables".
• We burn down their headquarters and blame it on Antifa.