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

[Ruin Explorer]

Change is never linear. Fashions are like a roller coaster (keeping things like Class vs. Point Buy at significant arms length from more social questions).

I wouldn't say a roller-coaster because that loops. Likewise not like a pendulum, because that comes back to the same place. More like change is fashions are a large and highly irregular boulder rolling down a mountainside and sometimes things break off and permanently alter it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Ironically I think this influx may actually like some things some people consider "passé", particular highly-specific/themed classes rather than generic classes, and are highly likely to prefer race/class/etc. to points-buy-based or classless/few-broad-classes systems.

So the same as its been for 40 years? If a lot of people didn't like classes, presumably D&D wouldn't have been as successful this long even with the network effect. Those who aren't that fond of that are used to being in the minority here.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

How will that change it? I think it's going to be a lot less about rules and combat. More roleplaying to solve problems. Less dungeons and more urban/political intrigue.

This is kind of amazing because it's basically "More like how Ruin has been running things since 1989".

Also arguably - "More like every single other major TTRPG that wasn't D&D published after about 1990".

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is kind of amazing because it's basically "More like how Ruin has been running things since 1989".

Also arguably - "More like every single other major TTRPG that wasn't D&D published after about 1990".

I think you have to ignore the whole post-apocalyptic genre to say that, and at least its an incomplete statement when talking about plenty of SF games in general.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

So the same as its been for 40 years? If a lot of people didn't like classes, presumably D&D wouldn't have been as successful this long even with the network effect. Those who aren't that fond of that are used to being in the minority here.

Not really.

D&D did become far less successful in the 1990s, kind of tired of this new thing where people pretend the 1990s didn't happen. Classes were absolutely part of that problem.

And in the early 2000s, with 3.XE, it took a very different approach to classes, one which made classes very simplistic in a way that 4E and 5E didn't. It really felt like if Tweet had been completely off the leash we'd have seen the classes collapsed down and several deleted outright.

What people like now seems to be different - they come to TT RPGs with existing expectations about classes, which wasn't really the case in earlier eras. It makes narrow and specific classes and subclasses perhaps more palatable than in any previous era.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think you have to ignore the whole post-apocalyptic genre to say that, and at least its an incomplete statement when talking about plenty of SF games in general.

How so?

I'd also point out "ignoring the whole post-apocalyptic genre" in TT RPGs is um, pretty funny, because there have been remarkably few successful post-apocalyptic RPGs, much less influential ones. We're basically talking Apocalypse World, where the system was influential not the content, Gamma World, Twilight 2000 (kinda) and After The Bomb. Maybe RIFTS? But that's really something else.

EDIT - In fact apart from Apocalypse World, which is absolutely 100% "about those things" (talking and problem solving over fighting, particularly), and "major RPG" because of it's insane influence, has a major new post-apocalyptic RPG been published after 1990? Not an update, a new IP. Gamma World was 1978. Twilight 2000 was 1984. After The Bomb was 1986. I can't think of any major other ones. Legacy: Life Among The Ruins is lovely, but it's not major.

EDIT EDIT - I guess we could try Tribe 8 as major and post-apocalyptic? But again that's absolutely about what has been described. Indeed it's a particularly good exemplar.

Am I missing the point? Were you saying post-apocalyptic supported my point? Because it seemed not. What games are you thinking of?

And even those seem to fit the model you're saying they don't. They're typically more about problem-solving than combat. They don't typically feature dungeons. They often feature negotiation.

 

[Malmuria]

Grumpy Old Man Here (as if you couldn't tell by the avatar...).

Witchlight and Strixhaven do seem to point to a shift away from Conan/Fafnr & Grey Mouser and other "pulp"/LotR mercenary gaming and more towards more modern YA fictions. Basically the stuff their target demographic has grown up and been influenced by, just as we were back in TSR days). Not just in the subject matter, but tone. I get a sense of less concentration on the "exciting fight" and more on the "interesting and unusual encounter/interaction", as well as "tell me a story" instead of "wander around this weird place and pull levers to see what happens". Doesn't bother me and I do enjoy it so far, so long as they don't start trying to insinuate that strapping on armor and delving into the local dungeon to kill monsters is badwrongfun.

A series of "interesting an unusual encounters" could easily describe all of the planescape modules from the 90s.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

A series of "interesting an unusual encounters" could easily describe all of the planescape modules from the 90s.

All of the good Planescape modules maybe lol.

I played at least one which was more like a series of "dull and slightly off encounters"!

 

[Reynard]

I think they already have adapted, with how Adventures are formatted. 5E backed it's way into being optimized by streaming at the right time.

I don't watch a lot of streams. Are people streaming WotC adventures, and if so how do those streams differ from homered streams?

 

[Mercurius]

Here’s the other thing. The “community” isn’t what you think it is. There is such a breadth of different ways people play, and probably always has been, that people seemed to always be kvetching over it.

Yep. Which is why targeting for any specific set of "values" or trying to capture the "latest trends" leads to problems. I mean, it is one thing to broaden the scope of what D&D is, quite another to say "D&D is now about Y and no longer about X."

I'm reminded of some advice a literary agent gave, which is not to worry about trends, whether your work fits in with it or not (or worse still, trying to adjust your work to a certain trend that you have little or no interest in). In fantasy literature, new trends generally don't mean a sea change as much as they are a broadening of what fantasy means. The old stuff doesn't go away. So for instance, when "grimdark" became the thing, it wasn't like all of a sudden all other tones of fantasy stopped being published. There might have been a few years where grimdark took up a larger percentage of market share--at least apparently so--but then the wider genre adjusted and integrated grimdark as another thematic sub-genre.

Furthermore, people change. A person's values and worldview at 30 or 40 is probably (hopefully!) not the same as it was when they were 16. This ties into another reason why going for the current trend is not recommended: by the time you get to publication, things might have moved on.

Or to put it another way, I think the best way forward is "both/and" not "either/or." Meaning, you can play traditional style D&D and kill things and take their stuff, or if you want to roleplay magic masquerade balls and academic politics, we'll provide that too. D&D is now big enough for a big umbrella approach.

But for that to be successful, two things have to happen:
1) WotC has to honor the big umbrella, and publish a range of thematic offerings.
2) The fan-base has to accept that not every product was written with them in mind.

I think the former is more likely than the latter.