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

[Retreater]

On pretty much every ‘scandal’ - read ‘thing some folks don’t like’ - involving WotC, the fanbase has gotten what the majority seemed to want. OGL confirmed and expanded, new edition scaled back to a 5.05, AI art banned. Y’all don’t know when to take a win.

In my case, going to watch the D&D movie was contingent on how they handled the OGL situation. I saw it three times in the theater.
And even though I don't like Hasbro's policies or D&D's general direction, I've picked up POD stuff on DMs Guild, a Hero Quest expansion (from Hasbro), and the steeply discounted stuff from Ollie's.
I have a general malaise about 5e D&D. I'm not excited about any of the recent products. I downloaded the first playtest packet, but I can't seem to care about the 2024 release. The last product I wanted to use immediately in my game was 2017's Tomb of Annihilation and Xanthar's Guide. Six years without "something cool" and promises of more of the same (or worse) isn't something that gets me riled up to play. However, I bought most of the stuff regardless, because "it's D&D."
So, it's easy for me to say that I'm not buying more products right now. Put the blame on the designers - or maybe it's the direction of the higher ups who shape the business model, but I've found most of the products to be pretty much worthless to my needs.
But what I've seen from Deck of Many Things to Spelljammer all the way back to stuff like Descent to Avernus, the products just aren't "good enough" to come to my game.
They'll win me back if they continue having good practices AND producing stuff I want.

 

[TheSword]

In my case, going to watch the D&D movie was contingent on how they handled the OGL situation. I saw it three times in the theater.
And even though I don't like Hasbro's policies or D&D's general direction, I've picked up POD stuff on DMs Guild, a Hero Quest expansion (from Hasbro), and the steeply discounted stuff from Ollie's.
I have a general malaise about 5e D&D. I'm not excited about any of the recent products. I downloaded the first playtest packet, but I can't seem to care about the 2024 release. The last product I wanted to use immediately in my game was 2017's Tomb of Annihilation and Xanthar's Guide. Six years without "something cool" and promises of more of the same (or worse) isn't something that gets me riled up to play. However, I bought most of the stuff regardless, because "it's D&D."
So, it's easy for me to say that I'm not buying more products right now. Put the blame on the designers - or maybe it's the direction of the higher ups who shape the business model, but I've found most of the products to be pretty much worthless to my needs.
But what I've seen from Deck of Many Things to Spelljammer all the way back to stuff like Descent to Avernus, the products just aren't "good enough" to come to my game.
They'll win me back if they continue having good practices AND producing stuff I want.

It sounds like that’s products not suiting your needs. Which is fair enough. You aren’t expected to like what you don’t like, and WOtC aren’t obliged to make stuff just for you.

I personally really like Keys from the Golden Vault, it’s excellent and innovative, and our long time group is really looking forward to playing Phandelver. Perhaps 2021 and 2022 weren’t to my taste but they’ve more than made up for it with 2023. I also really like the changes I’ve seen so far in the play tests as well so excited by 2024.

All that said, at least your criticisms are based on your playing experiences, rather than just going on the attack despite never playing and having no intention of playing the 5e game.

 

[Retreater]

I personally really like Keys from the Golden Vault, it’s excellent and innovative, and our long time group is really looking forward to playing Phandelver.

I picked up Keys from the local library to run a quick one-shot for some friends coming over for an unexpected session. It seemed a little intricate for that purpose.
I'd love to get some good, old-fashioned site-based design. D&D seems to be bad at producing that.
Contrast it with the @SlyFlourish Lairs book I just got in a Bundle. I could run it with minimal prep, the group knew what was expected and had a great time. That's the kind of stuff I like to see.

 

[TheSword]

I picked up Keys from the local library to run a quick one-shot for some friends coming over for an unexpected session. It seemed a little intricate for that purpose.
I'd love to get some good, old-fashioned site-based design. D&D seems to be bad at producing that.
Contrast it with the @SlyFlourish Lairs book I just got in a Bundle. I could run it with minimal prep, the group knew what was expected and had a great time. That's the kind of stuff I like to see.

They are generally site based. It just isn’t a move from room to room kicking doors down and killing the occupants - though there is plenty of that as well.

It could be used for a one-shot but it would have to be a long session. I wouldn’t want to do them in less than 5-6 hours of play (not including character creation). Murkmire Malevolance is a brilliant intro adventure though - with a bit of everything in it.

The irony is that I don’t think anyone is producing ‘perfect’ adventure campaigns. We’ve been lucky enough to see a couple of amazing ones from WotC like Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation and now we are expecting this every time. I play a lot of 3pp campaigns and there are great ones out there but I don’t see them as substantially better than WotC ones - they’re just pushing different buttons with theme and style that make me want to play them.

 

[Stormonu]

Spelljammer really felt phoned in, and coming on the heels of Tasha's really made me disappointed with Hasbro/WotC. Dragonlance was fairly good, but Van Richten's ... shouldn't have been in the way it came out - it couldn't decide if it wanted to reboot Ravenloft or continue what had been and suffered for that. Recently however, I hadn't planned on picking up Planescape and found myself quite pleased with it when I did.

I really feel like the height of 5E was around the time of Xanathar's, and its been fading slowly ever since. Some of the offerings have been good, but at least for me they've been more miss than hit recently.

I've long sworn off that I'm picking up the next edition of D&D, but that's not because I hate Hasbro. I'm just frankly tired of cycling to new books when someone gets the bug to tweak a game system I'm already comfortable with. I eagerly went from 1E to 2E, and 3E was long overdue for me (though 3.5 was waaay too early and unnecessary). I balked at 4th, but 5th was the edition I never knew I wanted. I'm unwilling to move on from it, and despite anything Hasbro the company does, I'll be with 5th for some time to come - even if it means I don't follow where Hasbro takes it. I still have, and will continue to use, my 2014 books & the mass of 3rd party products I've collected.

 

[Retreater]

The irony is that I don’t think anyone is producing ‘perfect’ adventure campaigns. We’ve been lucky enough to see a couple of amazing ones from WotC like Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation and now we are expecting this every time. I play a lot of 3pp campaigns and there are great ones out there but I don’t see them as substantially better than WotC ones - they’re just pushing different buttons with theme and style that make me want to play them.

I'd be very happy to just get shorter adventures (closer to 32 pagers) we used to get. Something where I don't have to prep for hours to run it. Maybe it can be a one-shot - or maybe it would take a few sessions? Even the Keys adventures seemed to require a lot of prep to understand how to run the heists. Also, they didn't evoke an exciting adventure structure (for me). It's like, sneak around, trick people, avoid being noticed, don't fight anything. Hardly what you want to play for most beer and pretzels groups.

 

[Sulicius]

I never bought every book from WotC that I didn’t need, and that hasn’t changed. My players haven’t been interested in 5e products by other publishers, but I have used many already.

One of my biggest problems is that people use WotC stuff more, and so the community makes great reviews and guides on how to improve their products. Not so much for other publishers.

I have been burned by quite a few of those other purchases. Tome of Beasts 3 is all sorts of badly implemented into Roll20, and when I gave our druid some of the beasts as wildshape options, I was faced by a giant mantis shrimp that stunned without having to hit. I ran a Chaos Raptor encounter that was painful to run because it gimped my players action economy.

Does that mean that everything WotC publishes is balanced? Hell no! But at least the community learns and teaches others how to handle those.

There is a huge amount of 5e content released every week, and I see people recommending others to “support” them. Supporting means buying. And so you buy something and experience yourself the pain points in it. Strongholds & Followers almost broke my enjoyment of a campaign because it didn’t work with how my players play the game. People hardly ever criticize the content, and my guess is that it is less interesting on social media to do so. And then more stuff is released and we are given another heartbreak supplement that fulfills dreams, but has little usability. We should support them! Buy product, don’t look back.

In my online circles I read a lot of people just have a backlog of 5e content they don’t even remember they have. I don’t have the money to spend on stuff I don’t use. I find it a bit distasteful.

At least with WotC content I know for sure people are critical about everything, and it gets used and talked about. That is why I will keep buying some of their products. I don’t have any responsibility about keeping the hobby afloat. It is not up to you to buy stuff just to feel better.

Don’t tell me what to buy. You don’t see in my wallet. If you want to impress me, give me a campaign from a non-WotC publisher that has been enjoyed by as many people as Curse of Strahd.

 

[Retreater]

There is a huge amount of 5e content released every week, and I see people recommending others to “support” them. Supporting means buying. And so you buy something and experience yourself the pain points in it. Strongholds & Followers almost broke my enjoyment of a campaign because it didn’t work with how my players play the game. People hardly ever criticize the content, and my guess is that it is less interesting on social media to do so. And then more stuff is released and we are given another heartbreak supplement that fulfills dreams, but has little usability. We should support them! Buy product, don’t look back.

I haven't tried Strongholds & Followers (despite purchasing it). I'm guessing many others haven't either. In my group we're just discovering how bad the kingdom management subgame in Kingmaker for PF2 is - I've heard that James Jacobs admitted it wasn't playtested at all before making it into the book (and it shows!)

I have been burned by quite a few of those other purchases. Tome of Beasts 3 is all sorts of badly implemented into Roll20, and when I gave our druid some of the beasts as wildshape options, I was faced by a giant mantis shrimp that stunned without having to hit. I ran a Chaos Raptor encounter that was painful to run because it gimped my players action economy.

Yeah, I don't like the Kobold Press stuff either. Maybe it works if you only use their overpowered options, but the stuff is not balanced at all to base 5e.

Don’t tell me what to buy. You don’t see in my wallet. If you want to impress me, give me a campaign from a non-WotC publisher that has been enjoyed by as many people as Curse of Strahd.

My issue is that - yes, Curse of Strahd is amazing. I've run it twice. I have players who have played it multiple times since its release. In my opinion, it's leagues above the other adventures published for 5e (even the pretty good Tomb of Annhiliation is a distant second). I don't expect anything to rival Curse of Strahd, whether produced by D&D or a 3PP. But where do you go after you've run it (in my case, multiple times)? It's been nearly a decade of 5e, and many of us want more content.

 

[MockingBird]

I've been happy with the majority of WotC adventures. I either mine them for ideas or use them as is. There's been very few that I've said "na, I'm good". I've never ran an adventure, one shot, etc that didn't need prep. I don't think "perfect" adventures exists, if they do please let me know. I wonder if anyone asks themselves "what was cool/good about this book" and instead hyper focus on the parts they don't like.

 

[Clint_L]

So let's help them see it differently!

I guess I feel like you're suggesting we have a responsibility to educate people about the right way to look at 5e. I don't see any reason for me to be trying to convince other people to see 5e any particular way. I don't have beef with D&D.