D&D 5E D&D and who it's aimed at

[TwoSix]

You mean mongrelgummi!

Isn’t that what you get when you leave your bag of gummy bears in the car on a hot summer day?

Not that I eat gummy bears, of course, I’m an adult.

 

[Vaalingrade]

You can't possibly have read it and arrived at this description.

Judging books by less than their covers is what adults do!

 

[payn]

Isn’t that what you get when you leave your bag of gummy bears in the car on a hot summer day?

Not that I eat gummy bears, of course, I’m an adult.

Likely unintended, but the Harabo ad for their gummies actually highlights this discussion nicely.

In American culture there is this idea that there is a hard divide between kid stuff and adult stuff. Adults shouldn't be silly and/or engage in kid things. So there is a push to make non-serious stuff serious, so its acceptable. So, now everything goes through this process like videogames, anime, and RPGs of going from kid stuff to adult stuff.

A lot of how that works is starting by marketing to teens and then those teens grow up. They remember how fun it was and it goes from robots always missing each other to actually dismantling each other in combat. I mean there is no way you cant argue Bayformers was for 35 year olds', as much, if not more, than teens. Meanwhile, boomers are shaking their heads at these child adults and their fun. Not realizing they subjected them to all this stuff as parents lol.

Anyways, I think content can be silly or serious, or whatever. It doesnt have much bearing on the activity and how it is seen as serious or not. Some folks may argue that silly content infantilizes RPGs, but honestly, it just seems like they are trying to add weight to their preference against such content. Could also be a knee jerk reaction to bad experiences as a younger RPGer and the treatment that they received. Who knows?

 

[Maxperson]

Is "disneyfication" seriously a controversy here? Like, seriously?

Sometimes. The game HAS been becoming less violent/bloody/gory/deadly over the years. Which is what Disney does. It takes a story and removes or lightens a lot of the more serious or controversial stuff before retelling it. That's why a lot of people refer to what WotC has done as Disnifying D&D.

 

[Maxperson]

I wouldn't say that 5th Edition's content is being "Disneyfied" or "aimed at unborn infants" so much as it's being defanged and cleaned up to make it more palatable for a broader audience.

That's exactly what Disney does, though. It takes old fairy tales and other stories, defangs them and cleans them up in order to make them more palatable for a broader audience, and then releases a movie about it.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Some folks may argue that silly content infantilizes RPGs

And throw big boy grownup tantrums about it!

 

[FallenRX]

Why does being grumpy about new products mean that we're old or we've "aged out" of D&D?
I think there's an adorableness to more recent releases that I don't like. But I also disliked Rime of the Frost Maiden, which had only like three adorable components

Spoiler

(the frost spirits, the whale, and the baby squid monsters)

At this point I don't even think I could describe what I would want in a 5e product.
Maybe a suitably generic collection of 30ish page adventures (akin to Tales of the Yawning Portal). Or a solid campaign against traditional opponents (akin to Red Hand of Doom).
To me, most of the more recent stuff seems like nonsense.

"Maybe a suitably generic collection of 30ish page adventures "
Wait, that's what candlekeep Mysteries was, and you hated that.

 

[Retreater]

"Maybe a suitably generic collection of 30ish page adventures "
Wait, that's what candlekeep Mysteries was, and you hated that.

Candlekeep Mysteries was more like 5 page adventures with one thing to do. It was closer to a One Page dungeon than a Sunless Citadel or Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh.

 

[FallenRX]

Candlekeep Mysteries was more like 5 page adventures with one thing to do. It was closer to a One Page dungeon than a Sunless Citadel or Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh.

Ahh, i see now, you want smaller tight modules like the older days. I actually agree.

 

[Retreater]

Ahh, i see now, you want smaller tight modules like the older days. I actually agree.

Yes. This head cold (allergies?) is kind of fogging up my brain. Hard to put into words what I'm meaning.

I've liked the content the best when it's been more tightly constructed rather than an entire 1-12th level adventure (like Rime of the Frost Maiden). If it's going to be an epic campaign, then I want it very thematic (such as Curse of Strahd) compared to a sandbox with little unity. Because in that case you're still getting a bunch of 5-page dungeons that are only very loosely connected.