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

[GMforPowergamers]

This hasn't been true since 3e and maybe 2e(can't remember when it started). There were populations of good drow, not just the rare defector.

2e
my first experience with drow included Cunningham's books that included good drow to the naked sword godess

 

[Maxperson]

2e
my first experience with drow included Cunningham's books that included good drow to the naked sword godess

Thanks. It's been forever and a day, so it's hard to remember sometimes which edition something started in.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Full disclosure: I love horror movies, but Hereditary scared the crap out of me like no other movie before or since. I rewatched the ending the next day to help me get closure on what I had watched. I loved that movie… but years later I still can’t watch it again. Even hearing a certain song or catching myself clicking my tongue are enough to put me on edge. That film doesn’t do jump scares, it does visceral terror.

While we're veering off-topic, just want to note that Hereditary has a couple of the best jump scares in any horror movie. And not the cheap, cat-jumping-out-of-the-pantry kind!

 

[Willie the Duck]

To me the two things I've bolded here are one and the same.

I've always maintained that D&D is best designed for and "aimed at" college-age people and above, both in content and in level of writing/prose; and if kids want to play it anyway that's fine too but they're not the intended market.

Defanging it and cleaning it up just makes it boring.

I think the target demographic of AD&D was high school and up. 12 would have been a little young to be a target demographic, but Gary probably wouldn't turn away kids that young(and I think his kids played at those young ages), though he probably would have modified his games a bit and perhaps not included harlots in those games. He'd probably have that same expectation of DMs at large that ran games for younger kids.

I don't think OD&D and early AD&D had a target audience. It was more like a bunch of nerds discovering something fun and new, and wanting to share it with whoever was interested. Once bigger money got involved, and especially once a corporate vibe took over TSR, things like target audiences became more center stage.
The big difference now is that D&D is mainstream.

Gary initially assumed that the people who would want to play D&D would be the same wargamers (not monolithic, but mostly college-age and older) who played Chainmail. They found out within the year of publication that this wasn't going to be the case. Gary, having no specific druthers against including other age groups in his buyer base (his kids played, after all), would have loved to capitalize on this. He/TSR just weren't exactly good at it (they ended up doing so, but my personal experience says they could have done better, as I had lots of friends try it, but then drop out before becoming lifelong fans/customers). I alluded to this in my first post -- AD&D obviously had the prostitute table and exposed female nipplage that post-oD&D basic/classic line D&D didn't have, but they were otherwise predominantly the same beast: same lethality (possibly slightly less lethal in AD&D, what with bigger hd and negative hp and bracers of protection on the MUs, etc.), same insta-kills, same game built around play assumptions people not in EGG's immediate circle often didn't realize they were supposed to play, etc. Sure later 2e put on a paper thin veneer of 'paladins and princesses' thematics and Bruce Heard era BECMI had it's fair share of flying castles and such, but overall neither the mechanics nor the thematics changed much despite the realization that the game wasn't being sold far and away majority to adults. If Lanefan cut their teeth on that era of gaming, I can see why they might prefer that style.

However,... as others have mentioned, that 'aimed at adults' game never (even in '74) was particularly serious, mature (or immature, it should be noted), stoic, or anything else. Sure elfgames and flumpfs, but also monsters built off dime store kaiju monster toys and gelatinous cubes and dwarven thrower hammers which were clear allusions to Marvel's Thor and trap dungeons that make no sense except as funhouse challenges for PCs. It's the same adults and adulthood who would go see Star Wars dozens of times and argue if Bakshi's Wizards was a better fantasy film than Krull. FWIW, all the things levelled at WotC D&D here were initially levelled at D&D by wargamers -- and before D&D, Chainmail was the recipient of these barbs for including a fantasy supplement (were as real grown ups were supposed to want to replicate the battle of Waterloo or Agincourt).

Well let me check out what's coming out then...

Spoiler: spoilered for size

View attachment 155832View attachment 155835View attachment 155834View attachment 155831

Yup, back to my OSR games I go. Have fun with your totally grown up D&D...

There never really was a golden age of D&D seriousness. However, that doesn't mean that there isn't a tonal or visual shift. I think you've just stirred an idea in my mind -- this later 5e period hasn't been disney-ified, is has been Simpsons(or Doug, or Adventure Time)-ified, with a hefty dose of Ghibli-ification as well. I think TSR-era D&D represents kind of a fantasy overlay on the dun-colored past that movies sometimes project on the medieval and renaissance eras, whereas this modern era is bright with pastels (and playable races of colors not seen amongst IRL humanity). That is definitely something, and something upon which one can have a preference. It's not, however, something where one is grown up and the other is not.

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.

The game is still about fighting and killing opponents (minus the times you instead evade or negotiate with them, just like every other edition), and each every case the blood and gore exists in the storytelling ability of the DM. The only thing that has changed is the lethality. It is true that the game (can*) be much more readily survivable than TSR-era D&D. Since the OSR has come out and people have started to wax nostalgically about various aspects of ye old days, I've noticed a lot of people talk favorably about the funnel. What I remember of gaming and the discussion around gaming (including online with USEnet and later AOL and stuff) is that this was one of the most-frequently-complained about aspect of the game, or more frequently the thing that got addressed by houserules such that it wasn't the case (starting with max hp at L1, starting at level 3, etc.). Regardless, that's one single thing that WotC D&D has done in comparison to TSR that Disney sometimes does sorta (lots of deaths in Disney narratives, even if not a lot of onscreen gore). I don't think that's really what people tend to mean when they say Disnified.
*Again I'll harp on the notion that 5e has very well-explained rules right there in the DMG for ramping up the difficulty when desired is a perfectly reasonable way to have a game with varying difficulty, and that the default being set to easy means very little.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

However,... as others have mentioned, that 'aimed at adults' game never (even in '74) was particularly serious, mature (or immature, it should be noted), stoic, or anything else. Sure elfgames and flumpfs, but also monsters built off dime store kaiju monster toys and gelatinous cubes and dwarven thrower hammers which were clear allusions to Marvel's Thor and trap dungeons that make no sense except as funhouse challenges for PCs.

Man, the foundational presence of gelatinous cubes really does just bodyslam the notion that D&D started out serious. Well played.

It also happens to be one of the reasons that, even as a kid, I dropped D&D right away, and landed on Call of Cthulhu. Now those were some oozy monsters I could respect!

 

[dave2008]

I do know I have no interest in Critical Role from trying to watch a couple episodes and having had bad experiences with the influence it's had on one of my former groups (my wife's DM fell under the spell badly and kicked her out of the group because she wasn't "streaming quality.")

I have no interest in CR either, never watched the show and couldn't really get into the cartoon. However, I will say their setting books have been interesting and this looks like it is too. I would try to separate the show from the RPG products they produce.

Additionally what's keeping me from playing/running 5e is the implementation on VTT. I was doing ok on Roll 20, but we shifted to Foundry. I have no 5e content on Foundry, and to get it, you have to buy it on DND Beyond and (questionably) port it using a module. It's like a back door hack that's not guaranteed to work, and support can (and has in the past) get pulled at any point.

A5e is on Foundry - so there is that!

 

[Retreater]

I have no interest in CR either, never watched the show and couldn't really get into the cartoon. However, i will say there setting books have been interesting and this looks like it is too. I would try to separate the show from the RPG products they produce.

To me it would be like trying to run a Star Wars game without having seen the films. Plus, getting random players on the Internet for VTT play would significantly increase the chances of getting players with different expectations.

A5e is on Foundry - so there is that!

I need to pop back on and see how the development is going. The last time I was on it was kind of a blank character sheet with no compendium information, and everything needed to be manually entered. Which would be a lot of extra work for me, in addition to writing and planning adventures.

 

[Irlo]

I played a lot of AD&D and I honestly don’t remember it as having “fangs” that have been filed down in newer editions.

 

[Zardnaar]

If someone says disneyfication I take it to mean aimed at a younger crowd.

There's nothing like the 3E era "adult" type content so yeah that's lacking in 5E.

Doesn't bother me it's not there but they're playing it safe so everything in some ways is kinda bland. There's advantages to that as well so six of one half dozen of the other

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There's nothing like the 3E era "adult" type content so yeah that's lacking in 5E.

I think you're confusing juvenile edgy nonsense with "adult" content.

3E had what, The Book of Vile Darkness? Anything else? And the BoVD was basically a 14-year-old edgelord's idea of what "adult" or "mature" content looked like.