D&D 5E Don't Throw 5e Away Because of Hasbro

[UngeheuerLich]

I definitely won't throw 5e away because of Hasbro. You can be absolutely sure of that.

You should sell it for a hefty discount or gift it to someone. So Hasbro won't only lose you as a buyer, but also money from another potential buyer.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Some trash box would be half full?

Who makes the trash boxes?

 

[Shardstone]

While I acknowledge and appreciate the sentiment... I'm still under the belief that trying to use the term '5E' as the designator for all non-WotC products that use the 5E game engine is only going to cause confusion and ultimately not accomplish the thing it wants to as well as it could.

Like it or not... '5E' and WotC-owned Dungeons & Dragons are linked irrevocably. And any attempts at speaking on '5E' products is going to get a large swathe of the people reading or hearing it to assume that WotC-owned Dungeons & Dragons is a part of that conversation. (General) you won't be able to say the former without the latter automatically being invoked. "This is a 5E product" will be assumed to be a product for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition (2104 or 2024) and the person has to be prepared to go through the effort of explaining "No, no! Not that! It's really...."

Now maybe that doesn't really matter to people at the end of the day? If so, then just keep doing what you're doing. But I do think it is telling that we actually have someone feeling the need to make a thread trying to tell folks that 5E and D&D are different... which insinuates quite easily that most people don't really think they are.

So I say don't try and swim against the current. Come up with a new term other than '5E' to use for all non-WotC-owned 5E game engine products, so there can be a natural distinction and break between them.

A rare thread where we are on the same page.

I like "The 5th Renaissance" or 5R, but d50 is good too.

 

[DEFCON 1]

A rare thread where we are on the same page.

I like "The 5th Renaissance" or 5R, but d50 is good too.

Heh heh, it happens! I don't think there's a single poster here on the boards where they and I haven't had in the past a knock-down-drag-out argument about one thing but are in complete agreement on something else.

 

[Retreater]

Honestly, even if every poster on this Board were to drop their 5e books in a trashcan and never run or play the game again, it wouldn't make a dent in Hasbro's fanbase or bottom line.
But if we were to actively promote indie designers, play different games, tell our friends about exciting new games, THAT would matter to those publishers.
Getting an ENnie is a big deal to many small publishers. I'm sure it's not even noticed by Hasbro. The same as getting reviews, articles on Sly Flourish and other sources.
Hasbro doesn't care about us. There are companies and small indie studios that would love our support, would interact with us as fans.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Putting this into context I refused to buy any books thanking the RPG Pundit and Zak S (new copies of the PHB no longer do). This didn't prevent me from running a 5e campaign for almost two years while owning precisely no 5e books.

 

[GobHag]

It's good that 5e is being thrown away actually. I think it's good that less people are playing DnD specifically.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Honestly, even if every poster on this Board were to drop their 5e books in a trashcan and never run or play the game again, it wouldn't make a dent in Hasbro's fanbase or bottom line.
But if we were to actively promote indie designers, play different games, tell our friends about exciting new games, THAT would matter to those publishers.
Getting an ENnie is a big deal to many small publishers. I'm sure it's not even noticed by Hasbro. The same as getting reviews, articles on Sly Flourish and other sources.
Hasbro doesn't care about us. There are companies and small indie studios that would love our support, would interact with us as fans.

Your comment brings up a very cogent point that I think can be extended a bit to help illustrate something that I think we should remain reminded of.

Indeed Hasbro does not care about "us" (the gaming populace) as individuals or people because as you rightly point out. Hasbro is a company/corporation (and a large one at that). An inhuman corp doesn't care about humans because the entity itself isn't human. And when we talk about "Hasbro"... we always think of Hasbro in that term- an inhuman and unfeeling entity with its own concerns-- an entity that indeed wouldn't care about "Ennie Awards" (or things like that) because awards are from humans recognizing other humans.

But I do think it is also important to remind ourselves on occasion that there are indeed humans within that inhuman entity of a corporation, and that we have to be careful not to mistakenly place our disdain for that entity onto those humans within it. Hasbro the Corporation doesn't care about receiving any Ennie Awards... but I'm pretty sure Christopher Perkins certainly appreciates it when a product he worked on is given a Gold. Indeed I expect all the individual humans within Hasbro that have an active hand in producing Dungeons & Dragons content care about not only the Dungeons & Dragons game, but also the community that surrounds it, including all of the d50 / "5E Extended Universe" products that are made by people who love the games and community as well.

It can sometimes be hard to remember that when (general) you are royally pissed off at the inhuman entity that controls the Dungeons & Dragons game and you spit fire at it, some of that fire is hitting the actual humans responsible for the game you proclaim to care about. So we should all work extra dilligently to make sure our aim doesn't spray too far and hit the people who don't actually deserve the fire.

 

[Shardstone]

So "d50?"

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Who makes the trash boxes?

Only one. Would not need to be that big. Maybe Hasbro themselves.