D&D General D&D: Literally Don't Understand This

[Mannahnin]

Yes, I get it, but please lets just make it plain.

Point me to the 5e PHB sections which are clear call outs to Avatar, Anime, Minecraft, and League of Legends.

Instead of Howard, Moorcock, 3e, Drizzt, and the like.

Let me backtrack the thread for a minute to try to untangle the misunderstanding a bit.

I think the basis of the game now lacks identity to deviate from…

I get it. The kids don’t care…maybe some get inspired by it. And as such, they can support the new releases (I will here or there). And it’s just one world of many and all that.

But the base “look” and assumptions are a turnoff for me. If it all sells well, that is moot for the company.

That is a good point. Helps me to understand the way I feel about this topic.

It's got a basis. It's just not the same basis that it was.

Again, the most popular fantasy works today are Minecraft, Avatar, anime and League of Legends. That's all a basis.

It is not the same basis as what today's young fantasy fans' parents and grandparents liked, but pretending it doesn't exist is bizarre.

Ok, so here's what Whizbang was saying, in context, what he was responding to.

Warpiglet and Lakeside were opining that maybe current D&D lacks a fantasy identity to make discrete but limited deviations FROM. Whizband was suggesting in response that a current fantasy (in D&D and outside of it) cultural baseline DOES exist, but it's just a different one from, say, the 1960s and 1970s pulp fantasy baseline which Expedition to the Barrier Peaks was a deviation from.

(Edit: Although as an adult with better familiarity with the pulp fantasy canon than I had as a kid, I realize that Expedition is much more IN keeping with that genre than in deviation from it. It clashed more with the post-Tolkien, Lester del Rey-invented division between the Fantasy & SF genres than it did with the pulp stories Gygax was inspired by, which mixed the two more promiscuously).

Yes, I was saying what @Mannahnin was explaining better: The young audience that makes up the majority of 5E players, per WotC, is interested in modern fantasy stuff.

And the fact that D&D PCs and NPCs don't look like did in the 1E era is a reflection of that audience's tastes. Most of today's fans don't care about Thomas Covenant, etc., any more than I cared about The Worm Ouroubos when I was their age.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm honestly surprised they've so far avoided the temptation of a Fighter subclass that can throw their shield around all willy nilly.

Blizzard weren't able to restrain themselves: Avenger's Shield

(It's a very, very satisfying ability to use, for the record.)

 

[Gradine]

So, someone who doesn't like high heels in D&D doesn't like women?

Me trying to find where I or anyone else said that:

Less glibly, no someone who doesn't like high heels in D&D doesn't necessarily hate women; and I wouldn't call this in a vacuum evidence of the sort. I can't say I find this strawman particularly compelling;

I generally don't like to assume people are intolerant.

Oh, I love to give people the benefit the doubt. But for some us, seeing the red flags (and in general listening to people when they tell you who they are) is a survival mechanism.

 

[Jaeger]

... As mentioned earlier in the thread, it's a piece of D&D art which can capitalize on a new Taylor Swift reference, and it comes from a Radiant Citadel adventure. So it is indeed selling D&D.

"...from a Radiant Citadel adventure." Not a selling point.

The Radiant Citadel book was one of WOTC's worst selling recent offerings. The wider fanbase didn't even really want it.

And the point stands:

It is a completely ridiculous way to "sell" a game called Dungeons and Dragons.

So, someone who doesn't like high heels in D&D doesn't like women?

Unfortunately, it increasingly seems that that is exactly the kind of bad faith conflationary inference that people seem to be trying to make if you happen to have an opinion that they disagree with around here.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

But generally I feel that world building in D&D worlds has always been disjointed, often combining with different things without rhyme or reason. It might have gotten somewhat worse recently, but I am not even so sure about that.

If anything, I think it's gotten better. I love Mystara, but it's about the silliest of kitchen sink settings. There's simply no way all those cultures jammed next to each other like that would look the way they do, even with immortals fixing climate patterns, etc. Nowadays, there's a desire for at least the appearance of naturalism.

 

[Gradine]

Blizzard weren't able to restrain themselves: Avenger's Shield

(It's a very, very satisfying ability to use, for the record.)

No joke, if WotC finally caved that would immediately be my next PC

 

[Tonguez]

OK, so we are in agreement that 5e is not inspired by minecraft, anime, league of legends, or Avatar?

Then I must have misunderstood somewhere along the line.

One thing that you learn if you ever study fairytales or folklore is that all Oral stories are contemporary to the time of their telling - RPGs are also an oral storytelling space visualised via 'fantasy exotica' but where the actual content is contemporary to what the participants know.

So all those things are influences even if they aren't explicitly referenced in the books

 

[Mannahnin]

"...from a Radiant Citadel adventure." Not a selling point.

The Radiant Citadel book was one of WOTC's worst selling recent offerings. The wider fanbase didn't even really want it.

And the point stands:

It is a completely ridiculous way to "sell" a game called Dungeons and Dragons.

I mean, you've been on Twitter, or at least seen social media-savvy companies capitalize on it and making pop culture references, right?

Taylor Swift has an enormous fanbase, largely of Millennials. She's not my thing, but it seems reasonably plausible to me that there could be a good overlap in fanbase between folks who like her and folks who might like Radiant Citadel.

 

[dragoner]

As someone who has played since the 70's, just because D&D looked like it was meant for the back of a custom van (which were cool) doesn't mean it's going to stay that way, actually odd if it did, because it would lose its reference point. Radiant Citadel is good, if different, which is good too.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I mean, you've been on Twitter, or at least seen social media-savvy companies capitalize on it and making pop culture references, right?

Taylor Swift has an enormous fanbase, largely of Millennials. She's not my thing, but it seems reasonably plausible to me that there could be a good overlap in fanbase between folks who like her and folks who might like Radiant Citadel.

Also, every social media manager in the US was making Showgirl jokes this week. Social media professionals are their own community. Sometimes, they're talking to each other, rather than customers, with some of their posts.