D&D 5E How Many 5Es Can There Be?

[Doctor Futurity]

Yeah, there are people who don't like describing D&D-style play as "D&D" when talking about other games, but I'm not sure what a good alternative would be.

Anyone watching a game of Pathfinder or Shadowdark would immediately recognize them as being incredibly close relatives of D&D.

Arguably even T&T and Dragonbane are in that camp….but both skew to a different feel and style of play thanks to different core conceits in their rules.

 

[SteveC]

I think it needs to be said, in Christopher Lambert's voice:
"There can be only one."

But to be serious: I think the gaming community can support several. Back in the day, there was TSR, Judges Guild, and Mayfair Games a little later. I think all three of them would have flourished more if not for eventual lawsuits. And there were many, many other games like Arduin, that were known a bit less.

In 2024? I think there's room for a number of moderately popular D&D alternatives. Especially if they can make them compatible with the new Edition's rules where you can just bolt on a new class or rules system.

But, and this is a big but, VTTs make things more difficult. It will be tough to put all of the different rules together with D&D for online gaming. And since that's what I'm pretty much going to be doing, that makes it more difficult to figure out in the end. I think if you have a VTT that can easily put different rules together, that would be something special.

 

[Autumnal]

As Joe Bob Briggs, says, “I’m surprised I have to explain this to you people.” The answer is, obviously and uniquely,

1 <= N < X,

Where N is the number of viable games of type T and X is the number of such games.

Now that’s that settled completely, let’s get a snack.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I just double-checked the syllabus. There wasn't supposed to be any math in this class.

 

[Autumnal]

Be fair. It’s not very useful math, at least.

 

[MichaelSomething]

To quote Darkseid,

"As many as it takes."