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

[EzekielRaiden]

"you can only be disappointed if you allow Wizards to dictate what DnD is to you."

Well, that's sort of what I have been trying to highlight in this thread at a few points.

That is, people have gotten rather used to seeing it as D&D dictating to other people what D&D is--and that dictation being in line with the way they want things to be. But now, they see something they don't like, whatever it is, whatever the reason for the new thing may be, whatever their reason for not liking it may be. That means D&D is no longer dictating to other people what D&D is, it's dictating to them what it is. That is upsetting.

Hence why I have said that D&D has to provide official support for the things a given poster values, because otherwise those things aren't part of (that is, have been cruelly excluded) from the game. Things the poster does not value, on the other hand, are only given official support as an extremely generous olive branch, because nobody has ever been prevented from doing a thing in D&D solely due to a lack of official support.

It's a fundamental asymmetry I see a lot, and one I do my best to avoid. E.g., that's why I favor full-throated support for "novice level" rules, while making "1st level" a relatively low-stakes, low-lethality experience, so as to honor the desires of players who love "zero to hero" while still giving totally green newbies a smooth on-ramp so they don't get pushed away by crazy high early difficulty/lethality.

This picture is cool, what's it from?

I am not 100% sure, but I believe it comes from the 5e PHB.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

This picture is cool, what's it from?

The 5e Dungeon Master's Guide. It's the first image in Chapter 1: A World of Your Own.

 

[Hussar]

Well, that's sort of what I have been trying to highlight in this thread at a few points.

That is, people have gotten rather used to seeing it as D&D dictating to other people what D&D is--and that dictation being in line with the way they want things to be. But now, they see something they don't like, whatever it is, whatever the reason for the new thing may be, whatever their reason for not liking it may be. That means D&D is no longer dictating to other people what D&D is, it's dictating to them what it is. That is upsetting.

Hence why I have said that D&D has to provide official support for the things a given poster values, because otherwise those things aren't part of (that is, have been cruelly excluded) from the game. Things the poster does not value, on the other hand, are only given official support as an extremely generous olive branch, because nobody has ever been prevented from doing a thing in D&D solely due to a lack of official support.

It's a fundamental asymmetry I see a lot, and one I do my best to avoid. E.g., that's why I favor full-throated support for "novice level" rules, while making "1st level" a relatively low-stakes, low-lethality experience, so as to honor the desires of players who love "zero to hero" while still giving totally green newbies a smooth on-ramp so they don't get pushed away by crazy high early difficulty/lethality.


I am not 100% sure, but I believe it comes from the 5e PHB.

Yeah, to kind of jump off this point, I think I agree with what you are saying. Look at the racial ASI discussions. So many people get tipped over by the fact that racial ASI's are no longer fixed. The player can choose where to put those numbers. Which means, yup, you can have halflings and gnomes as strong as dragonborn or half-orcs. Totally true.

But, it also ignores the fact that now it's up to the table, rather than the game, to decide if that's something they want. Before, sure, you could ignore the rules, if the DM let you, but, by and large, players would choose a race based on the ASI that fit with their class. It wasn't heavy handed and you could play against type, but, there was always the pressure there to mix and match race with class that fit a specific archetype. So, Dex races became Rogues and Rangers, Strength races become barbarians, so on and so forth.

Thing is, now you can absolutely still play to archetype. There's nothing stopping you. But, now, instead of it being forced on everyone, it's a choice. Do you play to archetype or not? You don't have to. There's nothing stopping you from choosing to completely ignore archetypes and play something new.

And, the big part of that is this is simply a continuation of what has been going on in the game since the very early days. Way back when, you had hard level limits and hard restrictions on what race went with what class. You absolutely could not play a dwarven magic user. Full stop. 2e relaxed a lot of these restrictions, then 3e chucked them out the window. Now, 5e, is just continuing the same trend of allowing the players to choose instead of dictating what your game should look like.

What I don't understand is why that's a bad thing.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

What I don't understand is why that's a bad thing.

I too am mystified by this.

As you say, all it's really doing is moving stuff from "fixed in rules" to "table choice".

Given most of us play with extant groups, it's unlikely to change much unless we already wanted stuff to change and were just failing to do so because it was too much of a sacred cow. Interestingly this was where literally all my groups were at. Not a single player or DM objects to the idea of letting you choose stats, but equally none of them had overruled the previous stat assignments. So I think it's got to be a very good thing in terms of freeing people up to do what they want.

The only real fully-rational, non-aesthetic argument I've heard against it is that, in theory, players might just only choose the most optimal races. But in the groups that have started doing this, I haven't seen that, and decades of D&D experience shows at least 80% of players are mostly picking races they think are "cool", rather than "optimal". Otherwise pre-Tasha's D&D would have been wall-to-wall Mountain Dwarves with Strength classes, when in fact they were almost weirdly rare. And post-Tasha's should be nothing but Elves/Dwarves, but at least from what I've seen, there are fewer of them than ever before!

It's going to be interesting, as time goes on, to see what mix of races we see when fully freed from the tyranny of racial stats. Especially to see what happens with humans. I bet, if anything, they get slightly more popular.

 

[Minigiant]

I dunno bout you guys but I starting playing D&D as a mid teen in da city and we more or less D&D Gang Warfare as we used it as a safe way to let out our gangsta fantasies. Sword and Sorcery was too grungy and if someone got dirt on my +1 Jordans, they were going to wish i just stabbed them.

Eastside Bats Forever, baby.
Northside Cats suck.
Southside Rats are snitches.

Yeah, to kind of jump off this point, I think I agree with what you are saying. Look at the racial ASI discussions. So many people get tipped over by the fact that racial ASI's are no longer fixed. The player can choose where to put those numbers. Which means, yup, you can have halflings and gnomes as strong as dragonborn or half-orcs. Totally true.

But, it also ignores the fact that now it's up to the table, rather than the game, to decide if that's something they want. Before, sure, you could ignore the rules, if the DM let you, but, by and large, players would choose a race based on the ASI that fit with their class. It wasn't heavy handed and you could play against type, but, there was always the pressure there to mix and match race with class that fit a specific archetype. So, Dex races became Rogues and Rangers, Strength races become barbarians, so on and so forth.

Thing is, now you can absolutely still play to archetype. There's nothing stopping you. But, now, instead of it being forced on everyone, it's a choice. Do you play to archetype or not? You don't have to. There's nothing stopping you from choosing to completely ignore archetypes and play something new.

And, the big part of that is this is simply a continuation of what has been going on in the game since the very early days. Way back when, you had hard level limits and hard restrictions on what race went with what class. You absolutely could not play a dwarven magic user. Full stop. 2e relaxed a lot of these restrictions, then 3e chucked them out the window. Now, 5e, is just continuing the same trend of allowing the players to choose instead of dictating what your game should look like.

What I don't understand is why that's a bad thing.

Because a good percentage of the population likes to feel they are the main target audience. I won't even say it's that this is a natural human reaction. Not automatic, but very common. Some don't want to share. Some want 7 slices to your 1. Some 5 to 3. Some 4 to 4. Some don't care as long as they get the most. And many are fine with not the target.

You see it in many fandoms. The thing become popular and suddenly people don't want to accommodate newcomers.

And it gets funny when it interacts with the desire to be popular. You get fans who both wants their thing to get popular but don't want to do anything that people outside the group would like.

Although I am in the minority that believes 5e's success was a lot of luck. 5e catered to every group but so weakly. It heavily relies on the group or DM doing the heavy lifting due to the slow publication schedule and few variants. So it really feels like exaggeration when it comes to the fight over the pie.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I too am mystified by this.

As you say, all it's really doing is moving stuff from "fixed in rules" to "table choice".

Given most of us play with extant groups, it's unlikely to change much unless we already wanted stuff to change and were just failing to do so because it was too much of a sacred cow. Interestingly this was where literally all my groups were at. Not a single player or DM objects to the idea of letting you choose stats, but equally none of them had overruled the previous stat assignments. So I think it's got to be a very good thing in terms of freeing people up to do what they want.

The only real fully-rational, non-aesthetic argument I've heard against it is that, in theory, players might just only choose the most optimal races. But in the groups that have started doing this, I haven't seen that, and decades of D&D experience shows at least 80% of players are mostly picking races they think are "cool", rather than "optimal". Otherwise pre-Tasha's D&D would have been wall-to-wall Mountain Dwarves with Strength classes, when in fact they were almost weirdly rare. And post-Tasha's should be nothing but Elves/Dwarves, but at least from what I've seen, there are fewer of them than ever before!

Formally, you'd have seen Mountain Dwarves for all Strength classes, and Half-Elves for pretty much all other classes, especially if they're Cha based. A few variant tieflings and yuan-ti and such, and of course Variant Human.

And...yeah that's not really a thing. Dwarves of all stripes pretty quickly fell out of the top 5 if they'd ever been there to begin with. Elf and human have remained up there, but we've seen short-term surges of things like goliath, half-orc, etc. And dragonborn, one of the weakest races in the 5e PHB, slowly climbed up to overtaking tiefling--and their rise of popularity completely predates both Tasha's AND the updated Fizban's options.

It's going to be interesting, as time goes on, to see what mix of races we see when fully freed from the tyranny of racial stats. Especially to see what happens with humans. I bet, if anything, they get slightly more popular.

Honestly, I don't expect things to change too much. Dragonborn being split into three subraces will cause them to appear to fall in favor, but collectively they'll hold their own or possibly even cement their position. The top 3 (if you lump subraces together) will still be Human, Elf, and Half-Elf, either in that order or in Human, Half-Elf, Elf.

 

[JEB]

Hence why I have said that D&D has to provide official support for the things a given poster values, because otherwise those things aren't part of (that is, have been cruelly excluded) from the game. Things the poster does not value, on the other hand, are only given official support as an extremely generous olive branch, because nobody has ever been prevented from doing a thing in D&D solely due to a lack of official support.

It's a fundamental asymmetry I see a lot, and one I do my best to avoid. E.g., that's why I favor full-throated support for "novice level" rules, while making "1st level" a relatively low-stakes, low-lethality experience, so as to honor the desires of players who love "zero to hero" while still giving totally green newbies a smooth on-ramp so they don't get pushed away by crazy high early difficulty/lethality.

Right, and it would also be nice if they emphasized in the 2024 rules that you can always jump right to level 3 (or higher) if you want to bypass that on-ramp.

Along these lines, this is one reason I think they've hit a solid middleground with alignment - it's still right there for those that like it, but they made it even clearer that a listed alignment is only "typical" and that you can pick whatever you want. Plus the approach as seen in Witchlight of explicitly having different typical alignments for different variants, like the new bullywugs. If they spend more time emphasizing this in the 2024 Monster Manual, it'd help even more.

And I hope they'll include archetypal suggested ASIs in the 2024 PHB, in addition to the default floating ASI, to accommodate the crowd who likes to have some guidance on that front (and wants something other than class optimization). Plus lore alternatives, to demonstrate how your world can embrace or differ from the default assumptions.

In short, the more the core game can support multiple demographics and gameplay styles, the better.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The top 3 (if you lump subraces together) will still be Human, Elf, and Half-Elf, either in that order or in Human, Half-Elf, Elf.

Yup, which is the same as in most MMORPGs, regardless of whether they're particularly optimal in said MMORPGs. Cue Marilyn Manson's "The Beautiful People".

 

[deganawida]

I’m not sure that it’s aimed at me. This isn’t something which I can articulate well, but it seems that 5e doesn’t leave enough imaginative space for me. I’m not speaking of weird classes or monsters or settings here, but in my ability for my creativity to be expressed with in game results. I’ve mentioned before, but I’m a chandelier swinging type of player, one who is always looking at the environment described by the DM to get my advantage, and not at my character sheet to see what skills, abilities, or feats I have that will allow me to do things. While 5e is better at “rulings, not rules”, it still pales when compared to TSR-era D&D games. I do have fun with 5e, but it’s not my preference.

I’m also still salty over the changes from the Next packets that I ran into 5e. I still think Next (at least, the ones I had) was the superior design to anything else WotC has ever released via a vis D&D. Le sigh.

 

[beancounter]

Man, all this talk of older art got me thinking how cool it would be to have a special run of Core books illustrated with all the old art.

I'd buy that in heart beat.

Amazon.com: Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana: A Visual History: 9780399580949: Witwer, Michael, Newman, Kyle, Peterson, Jon, Witwer, Sam, Official Dungeons & Dragons Licensed, Manganiello, Joe: Books

Amazon.com: Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana: A Visual History: 9780399580949: Witwer, Michael, Newman, Kyle, Peterson, Jon, Witwer, Sam, Official Dungeons & Dragons Licensed, Manganiello, Joe: Books

www.amazon.com