D&D 5E Crystal Ball: A year in, how do you think 5E will unfold going forward?

[Kramodlog]

Probably the market of people who want all that stuff without the need of a scientific calculator to go with it...

Heh. Next thing you'll tell me is thaco was complicate. Its math a 12 years old can do.

 

[sidonunspa]

As an aside, we don't need an OGL

::: points everyone over to necromancer games :::

https://www.froggodgames.com/5th-edition

see all those books? not one S&D.... and all of them are now part of the OGL pool of content to draw on.

that's why there is no real motivation by WoTC to publish an OGL, we all ready have one.

 

[Nellisir]

Adventures are bad when they are slim 32 page products that don't have much relation to each other, if any. They are much better when campaign-length hardcovers. The adventures that Dancey repudiated are a far cry from the adventures WotC is making the centerpiece of storylines. You'll notice that those kind of adventures are exactly what WotC are not producing.

Refresh my memory. How many hardcover adventure paths has WotC put out to date? Do you have sales figures on them?

Furthermore, to date WotC has produced exactly 2 types of product, so I wouldn't read too much into that.

If I had to guess, I'd say production costs have more to do with the lack of 32 pages modules than desirability or connectedness.

 

[Nellisir]

I think MS Word and Photoshop are both fine examples. The latter, especially - Photoshop is so laden with arcane, jargon-ridden features as to have an oppressive learning curve, when most folks can get by with, say, Paint.NET for day-to-day use.

I'm of the opinion that no one alive actually understands all of the features of AutoCAD. It's become an attempt to do all things for its audience under the umbrella of one program. You can easily focus on one portion of it and learn that, but there are a lot of different parts in it that have been added over the years, including retaining older commands and features for the sake of backwards compatibility.

 

[Parmandur]

Heh. Next thing you'll tell me is thaco was complicate. Its math a 12 years old can do.

Thaco, yes; the mess of modifiers in 3.x gets to be too much ( no experience with Pathfinder, but I assume it is the same). After going 5E, couldn't imagine going backwards.

 

[Benji]

Perhaps where you are at. I worked at a small community college until a couple of years ago and still take classes there in the evening. I also work at several elementary schools, two charter schools, two home school/school hybrids (edit: I forgot about one). At the college, in one semester, I found about two dozen kids in three departments (multimedia, culinary and computer science) that played D&D, Warhammer, Dark Heresy, and Vampire. There was little overlap between individuals and groups. They were playing with friends from work or whom attended other schools. None of them learned from parents.
At one of the hybrid home school/elementary school (I forget the term they use), there is a weekly game club where they play D&D one afternoon and another rpg another day. Several of the elementary students with whom I work with at regular schools also play. At some of the schools, the afterschool D&D club is run by one of the competitors for the company with whom I contract.
I also know of schools on the east coast that also have gaming clubs at elementary schools and junior high schools (those are run by some game designers and others working in the gaming industry often at their children's schools).

I'd agree with this assessment. I've run games in store for a while now and my players were of a younger generation than I was. They came to play after learning from some girl/guy they played computer games with. I've recently started working at an FE college (16-18) and in the first month I heard three references to fifth ed.

 

[Parmandur]

I'd agree with this assessment. I've run games in store for a while now and my players were of a younger generation than I was. They came to play after learning from some girl/guy they played with. I've recently started working at an FE college (16-18) and in the first month I heard three references to fifth ed.

The fact that so much of the crunch is free appeals very much to the younger demographic. Which is also the target demographic for long term brand development.

 

[Staffan]

So, is the reason "Jury Duty" keeps coming up because he's been sequestered, or being held incommunicado, or something? Because I've never gotten the impression that jury duty would prevent someone from working in the evenings.

Evenings are not for working. Evenings are for enjoying. If I was forced to take a leave of absence from my job due to something like jury duty (which we don't have here in Sweden) and my boss wanted me to work in the evenings to compensate, I'd tell him to shove it.

 

[Parmandur]

Evenings are not for working. Evenings are for enjoying. If I was forced to take a leave of absence from my job due to something like jury duty (which we don't have here in Sweden) and my boss wanted me to work in the evenings to compensate, I'd tell him to shove it.

Yeah, that's how jury duty works in the US: it's time away from work, there is even a stipend. If financial hardship can be proven, dismissal from serving is possible. But whoever it is, is not able to work for the duration.

 

[Morlock]

So, is the reason "Jury Duty" keeps coming up because he's been sequestered

Yes.

Yyyyeah, baby! That's where my psionics book is, I know it.

He at least better have the conversion rules fine-tuned, or his @$$ is mine; he's got a whole jury with nothing better to do than playtest it!

This is what Wizards gets for hiring Lawful game designers. I can get out of jury duty in 5 seconds flat just by being honest about my opinions.