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<blockquote data-quote="Haffrung" data-source="post: 8142280" data-attributes="member: 6776259">That runs contrary to everything the designers at WotC have said about 5E. In the leadup to the design, they carried out the largest market research of the player-base in RPG history. Their findings, which they explained in interviews and panel discussions during the development of Next, is that most players don’t care much about the numbers on their character sheets, they care about the stories at the table. Those exact words were expressed many times.They also admitted that this came as a surprise to them, and confirmed that the assumptions D&amp;D developers had made about their audience were mistakenly drawn from forum culture, where hardcore hobbyists are overrepresented. They concluded that the crunch hardcore gamers can’t get enough of is a barrier of entry to the much larger casual base of the market. So they made a deliberate choice with 5E to limit the crunch, following a strategy of selling one book each to a large audience, rather than selling a bunch of books each to a smaller audience.Seems like that strategy is working so far. For every crunch-loving optimizer grumbling about not having enough options, there are two or three players for whom the PHB is more than enough. I‘d wager sales numbers of the PHB vs other books would back that up. It’s also why I doubt we’ll ever see an Advanced Player Guide or PHB 2 - it’s in the interests of WotC to keep the intake of the player-base as broad as possible rather than cater to the hardcores at the top of they pyramid.To add my own anecdote to the conversation, out of the six people in my group, only myself and one other player owns more than the PHB. And these are all people who have been playing D&amp;D for 15+ years.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Haffrung, post: 8142280, member: 6776259"] That runs contrary to everything the designers at WotC have said about 5E. In the leadup to the design, they carried out the largest market research of the player-base in RPG history. Their findings, which they explained in interviews and panel discussions during the development of Next, is that most players don’t care much about the numbers on their character sheets, they care about the stories at the table. Those exact words were expressed many times. They also admitted that this came as a surprise to them, and confirmed that the assumptions D&D developers had made about their audience were mistakenly drawn from forum culture, where hardcore hobbyists are overrepresented. They concluded that the crunch hardcore gamers can’t get enough of is a barrier of entry to the much larger casual base of the market. So they made a deliberate choice with 5E to limit the crunch, following a strategy of selling one book each to a large audience, rather than selling a bunch of books each to a smaller audience. Seems like that strategy is working so far. For every crunch-loving optimizer grumbling about not having enough options, there are two or three players for whom the PHB is more than enough. I‘d wager sales numbers of the PHB vs other books would back that up. It’s also why I doubt we’ll ever see an Advanced Player Guide or PHB 2 - it’s in the interests of WotC to keep the intake of the player-base as broad as possible rather than cater to the hardcores at the top of they pyramid. To add my own anecdote to the conversation, out of the six people in my group, only myself and one other player owns more than the PHB. And these are all people who have been playing D&D for 15+ years. [/QUOTE]

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