NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haffrung" data-source="post: 6360870" data-attributes="member: 6776259">Makes sense to me. But there's an RPG forum meme out there that people don't really play D&D because they like it, but because they don't know any better, or they're hidebound, or they have no choice because it's so popular. I feel bad for people who have always disliked D&D but felt they had no option but to keep playing it. But they're deluding themselves if they think they're representative of the hundreds of thousands - even millions - of people who have played and enjoyed the game for decades. People play D&D because they actually like it.RPG forums also attract a lot of people who love discussing game design and theory. It's kind of a sub-hobby of playing RPGs. Most of the people in the RPG design sub-hobby think D&D is objectively a poorly designed game. It frustrates them that the flagship game in the hobby is, in their opinion, incoherent and mathematically unsound. It seems obvious to them that a mechanically re-designed D&D would be an improvement, and thus more popular.Personally, I disagree with the theorists because I don't share the belief in objectively superiour RPG design. Furthermore, I don't believe most players engage with the system anywhere near as intently and analytically as RPG theorists like to believe. These 'objectively superiour' design principles are largely irrelevant to many gamers - especially casual gamers. WotC focused on 'feel' in the 5E playtests because they're quite correct that feel is the foremost experience of the game for most D&D players, not mechanical structure and numerical balance. 4E was a system-up game design. WotC clearly believes that was a mistake, in hindsight. 5E is something of a throwback, because WotC believes that - contrary to what RPG forum theorists have been saying for years - gamers quite like D&D already, and don't feel it needs a substantial redesign.</blockquote>

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