D&D 5E (2024) I think we are on the cusp of a sea change.

[Paul Farquhar]

Lots of magic, lots of D&D style monsters. Dragons, dwarves, you know general D&D stuff.

There is lots of magic and monsters in Conan, it's just that Conan himself never uses it. In both cases it is implied that magic and monsters are rare in the world in general, the protagonist has a job that makes it more likely that they will encounter them. The lack of short beardy people doesn't make a whole lot of difference that isn't made up for with snake people.

Plus it has the whole dark fairytale vibe

The stories have a dark fairy-tale vibe, not the setting.

I wouldn't say 5e does it especially well, I was thinking last night whilst playing Land Beyond the Magic Mirror was better than Witchlight, but that's subjective.

 

[Rune]

Correction: all alignment suggestions for character races. Alignment descriptions are still in the game, they're just generifying the lore.

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Crawford says that they just are changing beholder and mind flayer descriptions to indicate they might have more than one personality type, but still "tend" to be evil. They haven't released the MM yet, so we'll see what they do. Didn't realize that subtlety was required describing these big baddies, but I guess giant alien eyeballs from a 50s monster movie are people too?

I, for one, appreciate the subtlety. That’s the kind of thing I’ve been wanting in a monster description for at least twenty years. Bonus points if they give us a few examples for each monster.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If you take that argument far enough, there's been few games outside of D&D that are successful or influential at all. It doesn't change the fact that you still have to ignore the whole genre for the most part for your statement to be true.

How am I to answer that? What's your definition of major? No offense, but I'm really not interested in getting into a "no true Scotsman" argument here. Frankly, for a lot of people I don't think any of the PbtA games would be classed as "major", so its going to be a term that's fraught.

Because I'd argue at least Mutant Year Zero applies, and it came out in the early 2000's.

How narrowly do you define "dungeon"? They certainly often involve exploring ruins, and they don't intrinsically involve negotiation any more than D&D does. They certainly aren't "urban" which was part of your original post (neither, far as that goes is a lot of exploratory SF).

"I don't want a no true Scotsman argument"
"How narrowly do you define "dungeon"".

Come on. You can't have it both ways.

For goodness sake. You know you're wrong and playing with semantics for the sake of it. And you still haven't explained why we have to "ignore" post-apocalyptic - Apocalypse World and MYZ support my point, and if you think Apocalypse World isn't "major" and MYZ is, well, that's just funny.

There have been two times since the onset of D&D it wasn't the top dog (both of them arguable) and during both of those periods some of their competitors were class and level systems, too.

In the 1990s the number of competitors which had class/level was vanishingly small, and they were some of the less-successful competitors. The only major/successful one that lasted was RIFTS. There was Earthdawn in 1993 but I feel like it didn't really make much of an impact (though it was cool - and was basically the first attempt at what 3E was doing - genuinely "updating" D&D).

Again, some of that is market inertia and some of that is networking effect, but it still doesn't suggest more than a minority of the hobby had a significant issue with classes/races/levels as a model.

A very large minority and one that was still growing and indeed possibly an outright majority by the late '90s. 3E turned it around.

Possibly, though I'm not sure 13th Age supports that.

That was over 10 years later, and I think he'd changed his philosophy by then, or Heinsoo was the dominant influence, because very little of 13th Age jives with 3E approaches.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

My point was that at one time people getting into RPGs had littler or no structural expectations, but computer games did change that, and MMOs upped the reach of those pretty vastly.

That's precisely my point. But the reach of MMOs in the early-mid 2000s was nothing compared to the fact that virtually every game under the sun now uses progression systems, many of them derived distantly from D&D, most of them involving levels of some kind, many of them classes.

I mean, if you look at modern military shooters, games that are clearly FPSes, you see this - Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, for example, has XP and levels and classes (you change class but you have to level each separately IIRC). And it's not just them - I can't think of a single genre completely untouched by levels and classes now. Whereas, roll things back to 2010 (after 4E, before 5E) and the idea of having levels in a shooter seems really off to a lot of people and would have people classing it as an "RPG shooter" or something.

We're talking about a situation where the reach of MMOs is absolutely nothing in comparison.

 

[HammerMan]

I think that we are looking at as big a change in D&D "culture" as we saw in the fall of TSR and rise of WotC era. I'm confident we aren't like to see huge rules changes in 5.5 (I think backwards compatibility will be a thing, for example) but I think there are a lot of thing lining up for WotC to look at, and treat, D&D as a different thing in the very near future.

Now, just because I know some folks are going to make this argument: I don't think that was true of either the 4E or 5E transition.

4E was very much a mechanical sea change but the explicitly stated goal at the time was to "still play D&D." And 5E was a course correction, the exact opposite of a sea change. It drew heavily on GenX nostalgia and was working very hard to say "D&D is still D&D!"

I don't think that is true going forward. I think the intent is to very much alter the way the game is played (story first, etc..) and aimed at a new generation -- and that generation's values -- in a way it hasn't been since Basic and D&D cartoon days.

I hope you are right. A closer to 4e meets 5e rule set with flavor and fluff no longer beholden to older editions but a more modern sensibility sounds GREAT

 

[Paul Farquhar]

"How narrowly do you define "dungeon"".

5 ft. passages.

Anything less than that is only fit for halflings.

 

[HammerMan]

Can you elaborate on the above?
-- How are they going to make the game more "story first" without introducing new mechanics? Do you just mean including non-combat options for encounters in their published adventures?
-- What are the new generation's "values" and how will aiming the game at those values be a sea change? Do you mean non-auto-evil humanoids? A multitude of playable humanoids? Haven't we had that since the 2e humanoid book?

well I have already seen 2e-3e 3e-3.5 3.5-4e all take a more narrative stance and a more exploration/social interactions then what came before... 5e was weird because it stepped back in many ways from 4e to 3.5, but in others moved forward... I would love for 2024 to see more 4e stuff moving forward (Fleshed out playtested skill challenges please)

As for 'newer generations' inclusivity bigger, kill things for xp smaller is a big thing

 

[HammerMan]

I suspect very little of those setting releases will be "classic".

I have pushed for an Ultimate Forgotten Realms (not ultimate like the best Ultimate like the marvel imprint, basically a restart with fresh takes but classic ideas) like the 4e darksun book. Take the best parts of the setting, run them through a modern (both mechanic and story telling) eye set and redo from day 1... like back to the grey box.

I even had my own suggestions of player first by makeing NPCs like Elminster more in game friendly... (a 5th level bard chosen of mystra immortal could do all the story beats you need, and still need to hire the players without everyone asking whe he doesn't solo it... take some of the creepy old man out too)

I also suggested (remember this was 4e) adding in more movers and shakers that were martial to counter balance the high wizard stuff... in 5e I would do something like maybe make a Mystra pact warlock and have one of the big NPCs be that too...

 

[HammerMan]

The recognition that most folks just don't sit down and play for 8 hours at a stretch seems to have been a boon both to the older folk (who have jobs, families, and busy lives) and the actual play streamers...

And, really, the teens as well - there's so much competition for their time these days, that the long-session model probably doesn't work for them either.

man I remember 8-10 hour games...

If we can get togather for 4 hours now between kids,work, and stress it is amazing... so yeah cosigned...

 

[5atbu]

Moorcock

Yup, it's amazing how his influencer hobby has been completely obscured and forgotten.

Oh well at least it means he can be rediscovered later.