D&D General D&D's Utter Dominance Is Good or Bad Because...

[Oofta]

I think that there is an essential problem with this analysis (and with what @Reynard is presupposing).

Design does not exist in a vacuum. Design has a purpose. In other words, something can be perfectly designed (in some abstract sense) but not be well-designed for a particular use, or for the market.

Imagine the car market in the United States. I can rightfully say that the Porsche 911 manual coupe is a beautifully designed car in the abstract, and even for me. I could argue that it's a much better designed vehicle than the Ford F-150.

But for a variety of reasons, the Ford F-150 is a better-designed vehicle for the American market, in terms of consumer preferences. It's a pickup truck, which people like. It's an automatic transmission. It's less expensive. It has better cupholders. And so on.

This isn't to say that the design of 5e is perfect, but when people argue about the design of 5e vis-a-vis other games, they often forget two major things-

1. It's not designed to be any TTRPG. It's designed to be the current version of D&D, which has it's own advantages, and drawbacks, when it comes to designing the product.

2. It's designed to be as widely appealing as possible, not to be the "best" or most "cutting-edge" or controversial. That's why, for example, the designers approached 5e (and the most recent revision) with a lot of humility, sacrificing aspects that might be "better" to the designers in order to appeal to more people.

A lot of the time, I think that people forget that designing a product, especially a mass-market product, necessarily involves compromises. To quote Hemingway, "Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place then come down and shoot the survivors."

Wait, you're telling me the Porsche 911 manual coupe doesn't have cupholders! Dang, I'm going to have to call the dealer and cancel my order so I can order a truck. Thank goodness I dodged that bullet!

P.S. Speaking of dodging, Dodge trucks have cupholders too, right?

 

[Wolfpack48]

Wait, you're telling me the Porsche 911 manual coupe doesn't have cupholders! Dang, I'm going to have to call the dealer and cancel my order so I can order a truck. Thank goodness I dodged that bullet!

P.S. Speaking of dodging, Dodge trucks have cupholders too, right?

So I guess you want to fight over whether D&D is the best designed game in general? Suppose that's for another thread, but that'll be a brawl I suspect. And for the record, I think D&D is a well-designed game (in general).

 

[Swanosaurus]

I tired of the 5E is a mediocre game and that the rules has little to do with it's success. Typically followed up by "But Stranger Things! Critical Role!" Which, true those things certainly didn't hurt. But 5E was growing rapidly before Stranger Things and D&D during previous editions had just as much exposure over the years in entertainment such as The Big Bang Theory. Mercer and company switched to 5E from PF because they felt 5E flowed better, which is a big selling point of the game.

Are there many factors to 5E's success? Of course. But if it were a poorly designed game, I see no way it would see the continued growth. All the pieces were there for 4E, there wasn't a sudden cultural revolution over the course of a couple of years.

So if you basically agree and are just weighing the ingredients differently, why do you choose to be offended (or "tired of")?
Frankly, I'm tired of people acting as if 5e was the pinnacle of RPG design solely because it caters to a dominant idea of what RPGs should look like. I totally accept that it is a great game for a great many people, probably for the majority of role-players, but personally, I don't get why anyone would want to be boxed in by classes, levels and special abilities or bother with the magic and "twice a day" bookkeeping; that's not saying that any of this is bad in itself - it's just that none of it serves a purpose for what I want out of role-playing, and it all comes with a lot of rules overhead that, to me, is superfluous. But it seems that everytime you point out that you prefer how any other system is designed, someone will tell you to leave you alone with that and stop attacking D&D.

D&D is dominant. It's fine. But sometimes it feels like there are D&D fans who are offended as soon as the existence of other RPGs is even mentioned, let alone the possibility that inherent absolute merit might not be the one and only reason for its dominance.

 

[TwoSix]

I think that there is an essential problem with this analysis (and with what @Reynard is presupposing).

Design does not exist in a vacuum. Design has a purpose. In other words, something can be perfectly designed (in some abstract sense) but not be well-designed for a particular use, or for the market.

Imagine the car market in the United States. I can rightfully say that the Porsche 911 manual coupe is a beautifully designed car in the abstract, and even for me. I could argue that it's a much better designed vehicle than the Ford F-150.

But for a variety of reasons, the Ford F-150 is a better-designed vehicle for the American market, in terms of consumer preferences. It's a pickup truck, which people like. It's an automatic transmission. It's less expensive. It has better cupholders. And so on.

This isn't to say that the design of 5e is perfect, but when people argue about the design of 5e vis-a-vis other games, they often forget two major things-

1. It's not designed to be any TTRPG. It's designed to be the current version of D&D, which has it's own advantages, and drawbacks, when it comes to designing the product.

2. It's designed to be as widely appealing as possible, not to be the "best" or most "cutting-edge" or controversial. That's why, for example, the designers approached 5e (and the most recent revision) with a lot of humility, sacrificing aspects that might be "better" to the designers in order to appeal to more people.

A lot of the time, I think that people forget that designing a product, especially a mass-market product, necessarily involves compromises. To quote Hemingway, "Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place then come down and shoot the survivors."

I think that's the sticking point (and maybe a bit of a sematic issue). If something is designed to perfectly meet its goals, but those goals are "broad acceptance and marketability", rather than "be the best X possible", does that mean its design is good?

Like you said above, you (and presumably all of us) can recognize features of the Porsche that obviously exceed that of the Ford F-150; it's why you used it in your example. If we're not complimenting the design of the Porsche in comparison to the F-150, what metric are we recognizing as being better?

 

[Oofta]

So I guess you want to fight over whether D&D is the best designed game in general? Suppose that's for another thread, but that'll be a brawl I suspect. And for the record, I think D&D is a well-designed game (in general).

I never said that they were the best designed. I'm sure there are games out there with fantastic designs that never see much success. Good design is not a zero sum game, good design doesn't guarantee success. Poor design though? Poor design will doom a game no matter what else it has going for it.

This all started from statement that public playtests were just PR and that the design of the game is not at all relevant to the success of the game. That's what I disagree with. I think the public playtests for 5E helped shape the game and is part of why it's as successful as it is. My personal opinion is that 5E is the best version of D&D ever and, yes, for me it's a better design than any other game I've looked into for the type of gameplay I want. As an example, for other people something based on PbtA will be a better design but I wouldn't want to play more than a one-shot or two using that system.

 

[Shardstone]

Honestly, I think people overlook the fact that you can play D&D and take out most of the rules for players who aren't rules heavy without really impacting the game for the rest of the table, who can still use those rules.

If you honestly only want to roleplay or hang out with friends, it doesn't matter your class, just attack, use a cantrip, sometimes look up a spell for funsies. If you are serious, you can get deeper into the mechanics and at least have a passable time.

This is something so many other RPGs fail to understand, and what virtually all discourse overlooks. It'll talk about, idk, Critical Role, streaming, name recognition, etc -- and all of these are legitimate -- but people keep playing the game and introducing others into the game because the game accomadates a huge swath of players and doesn't break in doing so.

We can talk all day about the encounter day and class balance, but casuals do not care about that. Most people do not give a flying monkey's tail whether warlock and fighter and wizard feel exactly perfectly balanced throughout an encounter day; they care whether the class at least works, does a little bit of fun stuff, and if they can have at least one cool, big moment every few sessions.

PF2E doesn't do this well. Warhammer doesn't do this well. OSR games doesn't do this well. These games require some kind of thinking, either mechanical (for PF2E), or narrative (for OSR). But in 5E, I can roll up a warlock, fire eldritch blast, maybe drop a hunger of hadar or something, and feel good about myself. Then I can roleplay a little bit, roll some dice, and we're good. I don't have to figure out how to navigate a deadly dungeon with a 4 HP character while trying to figure out how my rope, rusty dagger, and bucket can be used to take out 20 orcs. I don't have to set up a mechanical combo with two other players in a highly balanced fight. I just have to hit my buttons and roleplay a bit. Easy.

I don't think most people in this thread will agree with me, and I think that's because most of you legitimately just do not understand how big this is for people. Yes, OSR games are great, PF2E is great, but they legitimately aren't as easy to play as 5E is, no matter how many rules they have or don't have or how well laid out the books are.

 

[Wolfpack48]

This all started from statement that public playtests were just PR and that the design of the game is not at all relevant to the success of the game. That's what I disagree with. I think the public playtests for 5E helped shape the game and is part of why it's as successful as it is. My personal opinion is that 5E is the best version of D&D ever

I'll agree with that -- 5e's success was due to a bunch of things, but design and playtesting (and player engagement) was definitely key.

 

[Oofta]

So if you basically agree and are just weighing the ingredients differently, why do you choose to be offended (or "tired of")?
Frankly, I'm tired of people acting as if 5e was the pinnacle of RPG design solely because it caters to a dominant idea of what RPGs should look like. I totally accept that it is a great game for a great many people, probably for the majority of role-players, but personally, I don't get why anyone would want to be boxed in by classes, levels and special abilities or bother with the magic and "twice a day" bookkeeping; that's not saying that any of this is bad in itself - it's just that none of it serves a purpose for what I want out of role-playing, and it all comes with a lot of rules overhead that, to me, is superfluous. But it seems that everytime you point out that you prefer how any other system is designed, someone will tell you to leave you alone with that and stop attacking D&D.

D&D is dominant. It's fine. But sometimes it feels like there are D&D fans who are offended as soon as the existence of other RPGs is even mentioned, let alone the possibility that inherent absolute merit might not be the one and only reason for its dominance.

I'll repeat what I just said above. This all started from statement that public playtests were just PR and that the design of the game is not at all relevant to the success of the game. That's what I get tired of hearing. I don't put D&D on a pedestal, even if I happen to enjoy the game. But the design is absolutely essential to supporting the cultural zeitgeist that has propelled it to numbers we've never seen before for any TTRPG.

 

[Alzrius]

Wait, you're telling me the Porsche 911 manual coupe doesn't have cupholders! Dang, I'm going to have to call the dealer and cancel my order so I can order a truck. Thank goodness I dodged that bullet!

P.S. Speaking of dodging, Dodge trucks have cupholders too, right?

And on a totally unrelated note, make sure to see the fireworks over the Statue of Liberty. BOOM BOOM!!!

 

[Swanosaurus]

Honestly, I think people overlook the fact that you can play D&D and take out most of the rules for players who aren't rules heavy without really impacting the game for the rest of the table, who can still use those rules.

Of course, if no one at the table is into rules-heavy, that means there's no reason to pick up D&D5 just to ignore two thirds of the rules.