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

[Micah Sweet]

And that's great. It's good when all of us are able to distinguish our opinions and feelings as being personal opinions and value judgements versus stating things as an empirical "truth". It makes discussion for all of us overall easier-- because we can save a lot of time no longer needing to disprove someone's statement of "empirical truth" when it actually isn't and is just a personal preference.

I really wish more people would be clear about that. I try to make it known that I'm talking about my preferences.

 

[Oofta]

Which I read as "what you want from RPGs is marginal, please leave me alone with it, no one but you and your two friends are interested in that."

I'm not begrudging anyone their D&D style fun. There's lots of aspects to it that I like (though I prefer to find them in Troika! and DCC, which do a better job at distilling them). But lots of people not already into RPGs these days to think they know what RPGs are - they're D&D, and if they're not interested in what is presented as D&D (power fantasies and eclectic, over-the-top fantasy trappings, heroic "class" archetypes, levelling until you're a demi-god), you've often already lost them. And that is a pity.

You can say that you prefer games other than D&D without saying that it's a bad thing that a lot of people happen to enjoy D&D.

 

[Micah Sweet]

@Snarf Zagyg posts their "newsletter" here on the message boards almost every month! We've got like over a dozen of Snarf's pieces of RPG literature for us to peruse at our leisure, LOL!

Quite true, and I very much enjoy them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You can say that you prefer games other than D&D without saying that it's a bad thing that a lot of people happen to enjoy D&D.

True, but it can be a bad thing personally if a large majority of the people in a community you're part of like and mostly talk about a thing you don't care for all that much. Does that make sense?

 

[TwoSix]

You can say that you prefer games other than D&D without saying that it's a bad thing that a lot of people happen to enjoy D&D.

Or to get even further nuanced, you can state that you wish people enjoyed D&D less and other games more, without actively wishing they didn't like D&D.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I really wish more people would be clear about that. I try to make it known that I'm talking about my preferences.

I mean I do too, if for no other reason that I think it's a good habit to have... but at the same time pretty much all of us should know by now that everything said here on these boards IS strictly personal opinion and thus we don't "need" people to say it. It's implicit with just posting on a messageboard such as this.

But I will say I do occasionally enjoy it when someone makes a strident post where they give the impression that what they're saying IS an "empirical truth", because it's a lot of fun to post back telling them why I think they are so incredibly wrong.

 

[Swanosaurus]

You can say that you prefer games other than D&D without saying that it's a bad thing that a lot of people happen to enjoy D&D.

Yes, definitely!
The one thing I lament is a lot of people thinking that RPGs=D&D.

 

[The Soloist]

Rear propulsion cars used to be dominant. Not anymore. People still drive cars.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean I do too, if for no other reason that I think it's a good habit to have... but at the same time pretty much all of us should know by now that everything said here on these boards IS strictly personal opinion and thus we don't "need" people to say it. It's implicit with just posting on a messageboard such as this.

But I will say I do occasionally enjoy it when someone makes a strident post where they give the impression that what they're saying IS an "empirical truth", because it's a lot of fun to post back telling them why I think they are so incredibly wrong.

Good point. Thank you.

 

[Oofta]

As someone who DM/GMS a group of mostly people introduced to RPGs via 5E and had them try other games and genres., Trust me. Getting them to "scale down" from 5E is rough. We've tried everything from Vampire to Shadowrun to Cthulhu to AD&D to Walking Dead to The One Ring etc etc etc.

And while yes I can only tell you about MY group, believe me, scaling down is hard for some of them. One of players, if whatever character she's playing in whatever game is about as powerful as her 5E Dwarf Druid, she's generally not happy.

Which is probably why they all liked Vampire tM, because you are powerful compared to humans.

So ... people who play D&D don't like other games ... is not exactly a ringing endorsement of those games.

Which is what I just don't get. Your player really enjoyed playing their dwarf druid. Why is that a problem? Given a choice, shouldn’t they play what they want?