D&D General D&D Loyalty?

[DarkCrisis]

I'm loyal enough I'll buy the core 3 of 5.5 because brass tacks it's easier to find a game of current D&D then anything else and I'd like to be prepared incase my current group falls apart.

I'll play 5.5 if push comes to shove. Even run it maybe if Im really hard up. My preferences lie elsewhere though, like other games or AD&D or OSR.

 

[The Soloist]

On further thought, I'm loyal to D&D BX 1981. It's the game I always fall back on when D&D nostalgia hits. Very easy to play in solitary mode.

 

[TheSword]

There is a stickiness. I’ll support DnD for longer than I probably should because of goodwill.

However there is a limit (read 4e).

 

[OB1]

I'm loyal to people, not products or companies.

I choose to play D&D because I find it a good fit for what I'm looking for to spend 4 hours every other week or so with friends playing a game that sparks the imagination. I played it off an on through the 2e and 3e eras, but 5e was the first edition that was easy enough to learn and rich enough to keep playing regularly over the last decade. I'll likely switch to 2024 core because it feels like it will continue to be that and because the playtest has already sparked my imagination, though I could just as easily keep running 2014 for the next 30 years. I haven't come close to exhausting the possibilities with it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

How loyal to D&D are you?

Depends on the edition. I prefer SR5e and your "cousins" to certain versions, and TBH, old-school D&D is often confusing and just...designed for play that I find actively un-interesting.

 

[Zardnaar]

Depends on the edition. I prefer SR5e and your "cousins" to certain versions, and TBH, old-school D&D is often confusing and just...designed for play that I find actively un-interesting.

Fair enough.

I like a lot of old school but consider myself a neo grog as there's a lot of hood stuff on modern editions. I don't hold them up as the ultimate D&D.

Sometimg like 2E with modern mechanics and unified ability scores would be getting close to thst ultimate D&D.

 

[Nightfly]

Sort of loyal to D&D. But Hasbro is making me regret that.

I probably would have bought the 5.5e books next year, even though physical books are kind of superfluous nowadays, because I like having books. But I do not like supporting the company that makes them, especially at this time.

It makes me a bit sad that I actually like 5th edition a lot.

 

[Ancalagon]

I'm loyal to "D&D" in the generic sense of "fantasy ttrpg more or less rooted in one of the editions of D&D."
I'm not at all attached to official D&D settings or products, and am slightly turned off by D&D as a lifestyle brand.

I mean D&D is a "lifestyle" - buuuuut that doesn't mean I want buy D&D mugs or something - WotC is deluding themselves as to what the lifestyle means - it means we spend a lot of time playing D&D and arguing about D&D on the internet

 

[Corinnguard]

I mean D&D is a "lifestyle" - buuuuut that doesn't mean I want buy D&D mugs or something - WotC is deluding themselves as to what the lifestyle means - it means we spend a lot of time playing D&D and arguing about D&D on the internet

It probably would be a lifestyle if we had the virtual reality tech as seen in the live action movie Ready Player One or the animated Sword Art Online or .hack// anime series.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's unfortunately close to a fantasy heartbreaker even, in the sense of making some changes you approve of, but not really seeming to have a vision.

I mean, this shouldn't really surprise anyone. 5e does not have a mechanical vision. Its vision is, and always has been, centered on marketing. That is why they pretend that mechanics are trivial to design, while claiming that feel is extremely difficult. Early on in the Next playtest, there were inklings of an actual mechanical vision: modularity as it was originally presented, the playtest Sorcerer and Warlock actually making flavor and mechanics go hand in hand, the noble but likely untenable idea behind "Specialties," their excitement about the "tactical combat module" that ended up being pure vaporware, etc. All of these things had to be retreated from, for two key reasons. One, they had dithered about with basic-level stuff for far too long, blowing at least 18 months of playtesting time while making almost no progress (e.g. it took nearly the entire 2+ years of public playtesting to get just the Fighter class, and we never saw a second attempt at Warlock nor Sorcerer before launch). Two, counter to Mr. Mearls' statements, they realized that designing many of the things they had claimed to be making would be very difficult, so they had to continually retreat from their vision until all that remained was "do the thing that is sufficiently popular."

I genuinely don't think 5e set out to have no design vision, but the overconfident and frankly languid attitude toward actual rules design painted them into a corner. As you noted elsewhere, several things changed rather sharply (and in both our opinions, not for the better) between the final playtest packet and official 5e. Most of what we know as 5e today only came into existence within eight months of its publication date. Not hard to have a muddied or absent vision when there was such a rush to get the final product out the door.