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

[Micah Sweet]

The goal of the game is to have people buy it. The way to do that is to make a game people enjoy. If something makes the game more enjoyable for the target audience it is therefore not a flaw.

I thought the target audience was everybody.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You aren't randomly throwing marbles or showing up at random locations hoping to find a game. I just don't see what the issue is.

People also don't have unlimited time that they're willing to wait to find a game. Those that do that often end up dropping out of active gaming in general, either because of demoralization or other things filling the time. If you don't see some parallel there, not much point in going around again.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Those publishing non-DnD games.

I think you're optimistic thinking they will either; they mostly don't even have a way to know with any certainty.

 

[Thomas Shey]

no, not a mystery, just a theory I disagree with. Neither of us has sufficient evidence to show anything conclusively

People have indeed acted like they didn't understand the position before. If you aren't one of them, it wasn't directed at you.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I thought the target audience was everybody.

I'd have to be particularly critical to assume the designers of D&D think their actual target audience was literally everyone who might get into the hobby. That would require a degree of naivete I'm unwilling to ascribe to someone without strong evidence.

 

[Shardstone]

Can we agree that everything on enworld is an opinion? Then we can stop deflecting discussion by saying smth is an opinion,

 

[Hussar]

Can we agree that everything on enworld is an opinion? Then we can stop deflecting discussion by saying smth is an opinion,

No what's happening though. Pretending that an opinion is a fact is not the same. Having an opinion is fine. It's pretty much key to the discussion when trying to come to some sort of understanding. Just because someone holds an opinion does not mean anything without being able to support it with facts.

 

[Oofta]

My thesis is that broadly speaking the people that want to enjoy D&D will, so public playtests are irrelevant at best, and potentially harmful.

We all know your thesis. I disagree. Public surveys and tests have been used to help design products for a long time. We can also look at the history of D&D and compare versions that had surveys and playtests which strongly indicates that it works. In addition, people assigned to the project stated that they read the results and took them to heart.

D&D 5E is the best selling TTRPG ever. It doesn't need a complete overhaul, it does not need significant "innovation". They have everything to lose by making big changes and little or nothing to gain. So yes, they are going to make minor changes to improve the system instead of redesigning it.

 

[Oofta]

I thought the target audience was everybody.

That's not possible.

 

[Corinnguard]

I thought the target audience was everybody.

Basically it's you can please some of the people some of time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time. Any good designer is going to know this and try their personal best to get the former over the latter.