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

[Micah Sweet]

Good to know you know how the playtests are handled and the internal motivations behind them. I guess all public feedback is just gathered for PR by every company that has something to sell?

Innovation isn't inherently good. There are any number of "innovative" games out there that never sell significant amounts. D&D 4E was quite innovative, it was also far less successful than 5E. At a certain point, the proof is in the pudding. With one version of they game they did radical, but "innovative" design change based on ideas from a small number of vocal fans and the game sold well at first and then dropped off rapidly. The next version? Best selling TTRPG ever that vastly exceeded expectations and continued to grow for a decade.

The difference was that 5E did extensive public playtests and gathered feedback from the broader public. Just like they are doing now. I'll take public playtests and polls* over so-called innovative design, thanks.

*polls never reach the majority of the target audience, that doesn't mean they can't be informative.

That's why options, and optional rules, are good things.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's core is very well designed. Some of its components are a little wobbly, and its CR/XP/Encounter system is bonkers. It is missing some components of D&D that I prefer to have, but that doesn't make the design bad, just incomplete.

Why do epople think i said 5E was not well designed, or even not good? I did not say that.

Just @Oofta I think. They're very sensitive to perceived attacks on WotC 5e.

 

[Oofta]

I tend to agree with you that the best games for casuals are "push-button", with recognizable tropes for choices.

5e does this reasonably well, yes. It could be better for that type of play, of course. Off the top of my head, stats would be modifiers (or roll under), all checks would just be ability checks (with bonuses to certain types of checks based on background/race/class), nothing like proficiency bonus so you don't add two numbers to checks, and a simplified spellcasting system without levels.

It's always going to be a balancing act. I played a one page game Honey Trap(?) with my brother in law and it was incredibly easy to pick up. It was also something I would never want to play for more than an afternoon's diversion. There's no such thing as perfect balance of course much like there is no such thing as perfect design.

 

[Oofta]

I see very few people saying that 5e is not a good design - only that the difference between its popularity and the popularity of other very good games is one of market fit rather than design quality. I honestly do not understand why people feel the need to put it over other games. Why it cannot just be one good game in a sea of good games. Moreover, what I really have trouble comprehending are people who treat all roleplaying games as if they were a specialized subset of D&D despite phenomenally different models of play, roles for participants, structures of play, reward models, etc.

Are people really putting it over other games or treating all TTRPGs as subsets of D&D? I've certainly stated my preferences now and then, but they are just my preferences. I may not understand all the technical nuances to different styles of play but I don't assume other games work the same any more than I think checkers and chess are the same despite using the same board, much less Monopoly being a subset of chess.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

I fully admit that ease of use is not a high priority for me.

 

[DarkCrisis]

As I've noted elsewhere, exception-based design can be easy and (if done competently) at worst harmless when you have a simple game; there's only so much to keep track of, so the fact there's plenty of it not made to a common metric is innocuous. Once you're starting to get into a more complicated iteration of that game, that lack of common metric begins to require keep track of more and more special-casing.

One thing that strikes me funny is one of players prefers 5E over any other RPG, but can't remember half of what her character can do. I don't get it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

One thing that strikes me funny is one of players prefers 5E over any other RPG, but can't remember half of what her character can do. I don't get it.

Do they have a lot of experience with other RPGs?

 

[Corinnguard]

Are people really putting it over other games or treating all TTRPGs as subsets of D&D? I've certainly stated my preferences now and then, but they are just my preferences. I may not understand all the technical nuances to different styles of play but I don't assume other games work the same any more than I think checkers and chess are the same despite using the same board, much less Monopoly being a subset of chess.

It should be design quality over market fit. You could have it where a RPG company spends a large amount of money on a RPG, and it bombs because it's design didn't meet our expectations. It's quality is somehow lacking. Then you could have another RPG company spending not as much money on their RPG, but its' done with quality in mind. They hired the best art designers. They hired people who knew how to fix the flaws in a previous edition and improve what already worked. They listened to the fans. Etc.

 

[Shardstone]

I fully admit that ease of use is not a high priority for me.

You are not, by any definition, casual.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Do they have a lot of experience with other RPGs?

Sort of. We've done various short campaigns of other games. Less rules (like Shadowdark) she feels less powerful. Different game kind of the same problem(s) just in a different way.