D&D 5E I think we can safely say that 5E is a success, but will it lead to a new Golden Era?

[Mercurius]

No. I am asking @Mercurius if that is the metric - because that is basically the only evidence put forward to enable us to "safely say that 5E is a success".

Pemerton, you and I have had a couple go-arounds before and I think they always tend to boil down to us having very different cognitive styles. For instance, you want more exactitude than I do; in this case, you want to define a single "metric" that I am using to state that 5E is a success so far, and I can't give you that single metric. Or rather, I have given some general phrases but they haven't satisfied you, they aren't exact or singular enough.

I'm totally fine with this difference that may, perhaps, always lead us to an impasse, but I thought we might as well get it out on the table and not expect that we'll change each others minds. But I do appreciate conversing with you, partially because of our difference in cognitive style.

Mercurius is writing as if, at this time in 4e's rollout, we could already tell that it would be a "failure", despite the fact that it was successfully selling a lot of books, because the Alexandrian wrote a blog attacking it for "dissociated mechanics" and for not being a RPG.

No, I don't think we could have predicted it would "fail."* Dial back six years and I think WotC could have turned the ship around, or least gotten a few more years out of 4E. In other words, I don't think it was inevitable in the summer of 2008 that WotC would no longer be publishing 4E books just three and a half years later.

(*Again, just so I'm not accused of bashing 4E, what I mean by "success" and "failure" has nothing to do with its merits as a game; it has to do with a variety of factors such as its embrace by the community and the life cycle of the edition)

But here's the point you seem to brush aside: How many books an edition sells in the roll-out is only one metric of success, and perhaps not even the most significant one in terms of long-term success - 4E being a case in point. All editions sell a lot of core rule books, that's partially why we see new editions. But in terms of succcess, sustainable success, is how the edition does in year two and three and four...and remember, 4E stopped publication three and a half years in.

My own assertion, made upthread and repeated here, is this: if the opinions of the Alexandrian and other online "pundits" are crucial to the medium-term success of any edition of D&D, then the market is small enough and that the overall goal of growing RPGers has failed. Contrast the LotR movies, which did not depend for their success on the opinions of a handful of Tolkien purists.

Not really a fair comparison there, Pemerton. The LotR movies have a far wider appeal and viewership than D&D.

Anyhow, I'm not really talking about the pundits. I'm talking about what I called upthread the Faithful, or the Hardcore Few. People like you and I that just love D&D and RPGs, that will probably always love them (even if we don't play them). It isn't even only the long-timers, but could be people that got into five, ten years ago. "Lifers." I know that I've gone through periods of four or five years at a time without playing D&D (c. 1995-1999, c. 2003-2007), but still paid attention to varying degrees, even bought books when I didn't plan on using them. I mean, the chances that I actually play Monte Cook's new RPG, The Strange, are very small, but I'm spending $40 on the book anyway - it just looks too intriguing not to check out and browse through every one in awhile (although my wife is trying to get me to whittle my RPG collection down to a shelf or two!).

I don't know how many of "us" there are, but I imagine in the six figures somewhere - a couple hundred thousand, maybe? I also imagine that if you're reading this, or even posting on EN World, you're probably one of the Faithful/Hardcore Few. The pundits are just especially loud and vociferous in their views. But our views matter - the tone and tenor of EN World and RPGnet and the Wizards forum matter, because I think we are representative--at least to some degree--of the Hardcore Few.

Any new edition is almost guaranteed to sell a few hundred thousand copies of the core rulebooks, if only to the Hardcore Few. That's a given. But whether or not an edition is a "success" depends upon
1. Whether those Hardcore Few keep buying books (which tells us how well the community embraces the edition),
2. whether lapsed players are drawn back in,
3. How many new players get into the game,
4. How many books are selling in year 2, 3, 4, etc.

I'm sure there are other factors, other metrics, but those are some at work.

And again, please let me be clear: "success" and "failure" have nothing to do with how good the game is. It has to do with perception, which translates into results in the medium and long-term. In this context, just about any edition of D&D will be a short-term success if only that lots of core books will sell and people will be generally excited about a new edition.

4E was a short-term success. Medium-term it was a mixed bag, but veering towards the negative. Long-term it was a disaster.

With all this said, I will rephrase what I said in the OP: my sense is that there are encouraging signs that 5E will be more than just a short-term success, at least more so than 4E was (in the medium and long term). Of course we don't truly know yet, but things look promising. And again, this doesn't mean that 5E is inherently a "better" game than 4E, but that the community perception is generally more positive than it was c. June, 2008.

 

[Siberys]

My experience was quite different than yours. {snip}

It's anecdotal, but I recently introduced a player to 4e using a slayer, and it went a lot smoother than your argument would imply. Now, he had played 2e and 3e before, so that might have made him more receptive to some of the concepts, but this thread has posited that as an impediment to teaching 4e, so I don't know if that would support or hinder your case.

But everything you listed? Give them a quick run-down of their character beforehand - "Do this if you're hurt, this lets you hit harder, this is how many squares you move" - and then explain it to them more fully when it becomes relevant. Each concept - at least in my particular case - took one or two sentences, perhaps repeated once down the line. Incidentally, that's how I'd teach a character for any game, but 4e really is consistent and made an effeort to conserve its rules-space - and that is very helpful to new players.

That new player thought he wouldn't like 4e, either, but now he really looks forward to our weekly game. I think it has more to do with the people teaching the game, honestly; he tried 4e once before and totally failed to grok it, and now he's fighting tactically like it's the most natural thing in the world. Someone who doesn't "get" or doesn't like a game is going to pass their frustration with it on to their students, intentionally or not, and someone enthused about a game can pass that enthusiasm on, too.

 

[Imaro]

It's anecdotal, but I recently introduced a player to 4e using a slayer, and it went a lot smoother than your argument would imply. Now, he had played 2e and 3e before, so that might have made him more receptive to some of the concepts, but this thread has posited that as an impediment to teaching 4e, so I don't know if that would support or hinder your case.

But everything you listed? Give them a quick run-down of their character beforehand - "Do this if you're hurt, this lets you hit harder, this is how many squares you move" - and then explain it to them more fully when it becomes relevant. Each concept - at least in my particular case - took one or two sentences, perhaps repeated once down the line. Incidentally, that's how I'd teach a character for any game, but 4e really is consistent and made an effeort to conserve its rules-space - and that is very helpful to new players.

That new player thought he wouldn't like 4e, either, but now he really looks forward to our weekly game. I think it has more to do with the people teaching the game, honestly; he tried 4e once before and totally failed to grok it, and now he's fighting tactically like it's the most natural thing in the world. Someone who doesn't "get" or doesn't like a game is going to pass their frustration with it on to their students, intentionally or not, and someone enthused about a game can pass that enthusiasm on, too.

Well in all fairnes essentials classes like the slayer came pretty late in the life cycle of 4e... And we're a deliberate effort at simpler 4e classes.

 

[Mercurius]

IMO, not at all. I don't think the time had anything to do with it. There is always going to be the "making me buy new stuff" complaints and all. But 3E had seemed to have run its course with a lot of people. (Total tangent, but PF still today seems more popular than 3E *seemed to be* 3 months before 4E was announced. I think there are several reasons for this)

Sounds like an interesting tangent! But I'm wondering if this is along the lines of what I was talking about with regards to perception, and not necessarily true in terms of numbers. Without putting words in your mouth, I'm wondering if one of the reasons you imply is the health of the Paizo community, that it is closely knit, and Paizo seems to have found a good balance in terms of the type and number of products they produce (despite grumblings I've heard recently about bloat, even though PF seems far less bloated five years in than 3.5 was at the end of its cycle...that's an interesting thought, that PF has been around as long as 3.5 was before 4E was published).

Now this is where I do agree. But it isn't any one thing. For me personally it was strongly about the gamist/simulation issue. But I know there were others who didn't care about my issue at all, but were bothered by the issues you list, or others. And 4E, particularly early 4E, had a strong "this is the way" approach. Remember that the idea of vast numbers of new players were going to flood into the hobby was key and there was vast praise for everything being set in a simple form for new players, and moreso for new DMs. So breaking out of the molds was looked down upon. Expressing a esire for more complexity was actively criticized as being a selfish means of thwarting new players for your own benefit.

I think part of the "this is the way" approach had to do with the online tools, that for instance Character Builder couldn't really accommodate house rules all that well. 4E seemed to be the first edition of D&D that the existing products seemed to discourage house ruling. I know this was never explicit, or even implied in any way - but it was more of a "the medium is the message" thing.

There's a French phrase, trop de choix tue le choix, which means "too much choice kills the choice." I think this is what happens with bloat, but perhaps especially with 4E's character builder, and perhaps also AEDU. Having a menu of options makes it difficult to improvise away from those options. Having hundreds of feats to choose from makes it hard to choose, except towards the route of optimization.

The bottom line of all that was that there was a strong sense of correctness for a core fanbase and there were large numbers of people unhappy for a widely diverse range of reasons. But the reasons didn't matter. There was a lot of negative language targeted at anyone who complained, for whatever reason. And, yes, a lot of the complaints were in harsh terms from the start. But it doesn't take long at all for harsh words in both directions to completely lose track of how it started.

It was a jumbled mess and it lingers on still. To be honest, I've been on both sides of the field. I've never been an intentional edition warrior, but I have argued with people that 4E was "real D&D" if you wanted it to be, and also argued that the mechanics of it made it hard to engage theater of mind and thus it veered a bit too far from "real D&D" for me.

I just wish we could not throw the baby out with the bathwater, and am hoping that the 5E DMG incorporates some of 4E's strengths into its modular options.

 

[Siberys]

But here's the point you seem to brush aside: How many books an edition sells in the roll-out is only one metric of success, and perhaps not even the most significant one in terms of long-term success - 4E being a case in point. All editions sell a lot of core rule books, that's partially why we see new editions. But in terms of succcess, sustainable success, is how the edition does in year two and three and four...and remember, 4E stopped publication three and a half years in.

Not to speak for Pemerton, but I think the point is, ultimately, wouldn't that make this thread /massively/ preemptive? I mean, if how we judge a game's success is how well it's doing down the road, shouldn't we wait until we're actually down the road before declaring it a success?

And I think that ties into the fact vs. belief thing from Tony Vargas - yeah, 4e was canned three and a half years in. That doesn't necessarily mean it was doing badly by any sane rubric - to paraphrase from upthread, 4e made less than 50 mil/year, so it "lost" to the 11-mil/year competitor. It could have been doing /better/, perhaps even by a wide margin, than PF, and /still/ been canned! The whole bit with fact vs. belief was, per my reading anyways, about how your phrasage makes a number of not-necessarily-true-or-relevant value judgements.

With all this said, I will rephrase what I said in the OP: my sense is that there are encouraging signs that 5E will be more than just a short-term success, at least more so than 4E was (in the medium and long term). Of course we don't truly know yet, but things look promising. And again, this doesn't mean that 5E is inherently a "better" game than 4E, but that the community perception is generally more positive than it was c. June, 2008.

Like I said earlier, I think that regardless of how you frame it, the whole thread is way too early in the edition's lifespan to be useful. Also, I think at least part of it is based on faulty assumptions regarding 5e's true popularity. Response has IME been, to beat a dead horse, lukewarm; most reviews I've seen have been "This is pretty inoffensive overall, but I already have a game that caters to my needs better than this. Maybe if we can't agree on something else." That doesn't sound like a healthy place for a new edition to be. Now, maybe I just live under a rock and am missing out on some flood of positive reviews, but I like to think I cast a wide net as concerns gaming-related news, so I'm not sure.

 

[Siberys]

Well in all fairnes essentials classes like the slayer came pretty late in the life cycle of 4e... And we're a deliberate effort at simpler 4e classes.

Right. But the post I was quoting was about how even the Slayer would be complex to teach, so how late in the cycle the Slayer came is totally irrelevant.

EDIT: Though I suppose it could explain why my player didn't "get" 4e the first time he tried it. I think that's a stretch, though. The only additional rules he'd have had to have learned were dailies, and I'm certain he got what 1/day meant right away concerning his magic items. Like I said, I think this has more to do with the people teaching him to play than the game itself.

 

[Mercurius]

Not to speak for Pemerton, but I think the point is, ultimately, wouldn't that make this thread /massively/ preemptive? I mean, if how we judge a game's success is how well it's doing down the road, shouldn't we wait until we're actually down the road before declaring it a success?

Of course it is in a definitive way, but this is a discussion forum, my friend! But the key is "so far." So far things look pretty good. I've never said that things might not change down the line. And also, I was comparing it to 4E around the same time - the summer of 2008, when the edition wars were already raging.

And I think that ties into the fact vs. belief thing from Tony Vargas - yeah, 4e was canned three and a half years in. That doesn't necessarily mean it was doing badly by any sane rubric - to paraphrase from upthread, 4e made less than 50 mil/year, so it "lost" to the 11-mil/year competitor. It could have been doing /better/, perhaps even by a wide margin, than PF, and /still/ been canned! The whole bit with fact vs. belief was, per my reading anyways, about how your phrasage makes a number of not-necessarily-true-or-relevant value judgements.

I'm sorry, but this just sounds like "If you don't have facts, don't bother saying anything." This isn't a court of law my friend, it is a discussion board! The point is to discuss things, to speculate, to have fun. Not every perspective needs briefcase full of facts to back it up.

A nitpick, though - I'd prefer to talk perceptions, observations, and impressions rather than "belief." Belief implies a strong adherence to a particular view. I'm not taking that approach, but playing with perceptions, observations, and impressions.

Anyhow, I'm a bit confused about something. If 4E was actually a success, as you seem to imply here ("by any sane rubric"), why was it canned?

Like I said earlier, I think that regardless of how you frame it, the whole thread is way too early in the edition's lifespan to be useful. Also, I think at least part of it is based on faulty assumptions regarding 5e's true popularity. Response has IME been, to beat a dead horse, lukewarm; most reviews I've seen have been "This is pretty inoffensive overall, but I already have a game that caters to my needs better than this. Maybe if we can't agree on something else." That doesn't sound like a healthy place for a new edition to be. Now, maybe I just live under a rock and am missing out on some flood of positive reviews, but I like to think I cast a wide net as concerns gaming-related news, so I'm not sure.

What do you mean by "useful?" The usefulness of this thread is to shoot the about D&D!

As for 5E's true popularity, we're both making assumptions, right? Why are mine more faulty than yours? All I hear you saying is that my impressions are wrong and yours are right. But are they? Or maybe we see what we want to see? I mean, why is it that some see this lukewarm response to 5E and some see overall positive regard? Which is it?

As you say, it is too soon to tell. Certainly it is mixed so far, but I maintain that there is more positive than negative. I agree that there isn't as much excitement and overwhelming positivity as there was with 3E, but I also don't see nearly as much negativity and edition warring as there was with 4E.

 

[Siberys]

How does that lead to actual discussion though? That just seems like a setup for a bunch of drive-by "I feel this way" posts. That's what I mean by "useful." I'm pretty certain that's not an unreasonable tack to take on a discussion forum, even if we are just shooting the . I certainly am not taking any of this personally, but thoughts have structures you have to hang 'em on, y'know?

As for why 4e was canned - easy. It didn't live up to Hasbro's unreasonable-for-the-industry brand standards. Full stop. That had absolutely nothing to do with how popular 4e was at the time relative to any other successful TTRPG, and that's why people like myself - and Tony Vargas, I believe - take issue with characterizing it the way you have earlier in the thread.

Yes, we're both making assumptions. Your claim is "my impression is that it's successful." Mine is "It's too early to tell for all but the most meaningless values of successful, and I have some anecdotal evidence to the contrary." That's not a straight "You're wrong," that's a "show me why you think you're right," with a touch of "I disagree with some of your prior reasoning." Because we're having a discussion instead of just shooting our opinions at a wall, right?

 

[Tovec]

I Have Cometh.



I think we're in agreement here, with the bottom line being what I put in bold.



Successful D&D movies would bring greater interest to the game. Maybe not another wave of 20 million, but probably some lapsed players from the 80s and 90s would wander back and take a look, although I think the holy grail is more of a new, young generation falling in love with the game. That's where movies are hugely important.

Right, but assuming the movie is good and assuming that brings in a new generation, lapsed players, and anybody at all - all the way up to and surpassing 20 million - has no relationship to the goldeness of the edition that we are playing. The movies being good will reflect well on the game, the game I think will have little-to-no reflection on the movies.

Also, does no one else worry about Drizzt being too dark? I mean there was a huge stink with a black actor for Heimdall in the Thor movies. And now we're talking about making a new DnD movie centered around a inky-black character who comes from an evil race of inky-black characters? I'm not saying depictions of Drow are racist, I'm saying that people will call racism and it will taint the movies.
Plus I am a fan of DnD and have been playing it for about a decade now and I know relatively little about the drow with two blades. Is that we're banking on for making it a DnD movie a success?

Concerning name recognition in general: it would help if DnD names were pronounceable which by in large they're not. I can spell most things with little issue (at least close enough that people are going to understand what I mean) but getting actors who likely have no background in this hobby to say stupidly made up proper nouns correctly seems like an issue all in itself. Getting them to say those nouns without also sounding like they have no idea what they mean is another hurtle - something I noticed heavily in the DnD movies that exist. You can tell they are just saying words and have no context for them in a wider sense beyond what is in the script. This goes contrary to what any DnD group does by default. Take a look at the marvel movies (again) and think of them saying "chitauri" and how it worked. Now imagine if they threw in extra, generally useless, place names, character names, race names, powers, etc. and everything just starts sounding super fake.

 

[Siberys]

Wasn't there something recently about Ice-T flipping on his agent because he was scheduled to narrate an R. A. Salvatore audiobook and totally did not get it?