D&D 5E (2024) In Interview with GamesRadar, Chris Perkins Discusses New Books

[TwoSix]

If you go that route it would be easier to make all “class features” a la carte so player can simply build the character they want instead of being limited to what the designers can come up with.

Don't threaten me with a good time.

 

[overgeeked]

And wide popularity IS a metric of quality. It's not the only metric, but it is certainly worth consideration.

It’s typically an inverse relationship. Appealing to the lowest common denominator is not a sign of high quality.

 

[Distracted DM]

You can consolidate down to two, and just have mage and warrior, with being stealthy or good at skills just one build option among many.

Yeah it's funny to think that originally there wasn't a "thief," and in adding the thief class they actually REDUCED what the other characters were capable of doing.
"oh well if the thief has a 50% chance to pick locks or pick pockets, or to scale sheer walls.. I guess my fighting-man can't?"

 

[TheSword]

It’s typically an inverse relationship. Appealing to the lowest common denominator is not a sign of high quality.

I disagree. Something being exclusive doesn’t make it better. That’s just another form of marketing.

5e isn’t lowest common denominator. It’s riding the bell curve high.

There are plenty of things I’d like to change about 5e but none of them are big enough to make 5e worse than any other edition or clone. Not even close. If half of those things improve in the new release I’ll be a happy man.

 

[TheSword]

Significant elements of the game (like exploration) changed beyond recognition between the final playtest and publication. Another example is the sorry fate of the original playtest sorcerer, and its replacement by a tepid simulacrum that seemingly no-one wanted, for reasons we don't understand. Everything I've heard from playtesters suggests that WotC were more interested in making a game that 'felt like D&D' than a game that was actually good.

As for arbitrariness: no, good design is intentional. Every part of a game should be that way for a reason. In the case of 5e, the reason for many, many design choices seems to be 'it's tradition'. The entire druid class, for example, is basically a fetish. Why isn't the druid a type of cleric? Why don't they wear metal armour? Why do they use sickles? Why is the druid the shapeshifter, instead of a dedicated shapeshifter class? Because the druid is a grab-bag of self-referential D&Disms, all of which are important to the game's brand. The ranger has the same issue, only worse, because a large chunk of ranger players actively hate that it has magic (an arbitrary component that doesn't fit the fantasy), but rangers must have magic, because its tradition. That's before we get into the nuts and bolts stuff, which isn't any better.

It’s ok for things to just work. You don’t need to make a meal of the small stuff… and those issues are small stuff. They’re minor details, and not clear cut by any stretch of the imagination. Plenty of folks would disagree about level of problem with sorcerer and ranger. Or judge by different metrics than power.

Ultimately designers have to make decisions. It isn’t design by committee. Playtests are just that… tests. They aren’t a manifesto commitment or a pledge.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Playtests are to find out if people want things like detailed rules for exploration. As far as the basis for rules being arbitrary? The fact that we use a D20 was basically because Gygax found some funky dice and wanted to use them for his Chainmail system. About as arbitrary as it gets. You have to start somewhere, and you start with arbitrary ideas and then see what sticks. Some things (like the sorcerer) were likely rejected because of the feedback they received.

You personally liking something they ended up not including is no reflection on what the majority thought.

You personally not liking something they ended up including is no reflection on what the majority thought.

 

[Mercurius]

In the same way you can say that the popularity of Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings movies, the MCU, video games, numerous other fantasy adjacent pop culture also contributed. Of course they did!

And yes, I said just that. Just as I said that ST wasn't the only factor, just possibly the largest single, identifiable one. But I agree that we cannot know that with any degree of certainty.

But 5E was seeing double digit growth before Stranger Things, there was no bump whatsoever in the growth trend after the show. I could just as easily say that restoration of US diplomatic relations with Cuba* contributed to D&D's success because that also happened in 2014. Correlation doesn't show causation. In this case there's not even correlation.

*Thank you google for "what happened in 2014", although I've got to say most of the results skewed really negative.

Again, we have a different view on this - on the influence of ST on 5E's popularity. I know you're trying to make a point, but muddies it a bit when you say that you could "just as easily say that restoration of US diplomatic relations with Cuba"...that's clearly nonsense. And "correlation doesn't show causation" is an overused rhetorical point that obfuscates that correlation can be related to causation. In other words, some correlations do have a causative influence.

I will say again that I may be overstating ST's importance, but to say that it wasn't--at the least--a significant factor is kind of, ahem, strange (imo). But again, we can agree to disagree on this.

 

[Mercurius]

By 2016, Mearls said 5E Core had outsold 3E, 3.5 and 4E...combined.

Really? You could be right, and I could be misunderstanding the trend line, or at least how much of it was a post-2016 spike. But this doesn't negate ST being a major factor, as we do know that the major popularity of early 5E became stratospheric around 2018 or so.

 

[overgeeked]

Really? You could be right, and I could be misunderstanding the trend line, or at least how much of it was a post-2016 spike. But this doesn't negate ST being a major factor, as we do know that the major popularity of early 5E became stratospheric around 2018 or so.

Exactly. I think it's mostly a pride thing that gamers cannot accept that Stranger Things and Critical Role brought about the resurgence of D&D into pop culture. 5E was popular before ST and CR, yes. But it was popular with gamers. People already in the hobby flocked to the game. It was going to be dominant within the hobby regardless. But the breakthrough into another pop culture / fad moment is a direct result of both Stranger Things and Critical Role.

 

[Jer]

Really? You could be right, and I could be misunderstanding the trend line, or at least how much of it was a post-2016 spike. But this doesn't negate ST being a major factor, as we do know that the major popularity of early 5E became stratospheric around 2018 or so.

I wouldn't discount the effect of Actual Plays on the hobby. Podcasts had been doing APs since sometime in the late 00's (Acquisitions Inc was in, like, 2008 I think? I don't know if there were earlier ones) and the switch from 4e to 5e made it easier to do podcasting around a game since it was far more theater of the mind than previous editions. The Adventure Zone started in 2014 coming off a fairly popular parent podcast in MBMBaM. Critical Role started in 2015. There was also a podcast boom in the early '10s (2013 or so) right as 5e was being released.

Not to say that the APs caused the popularity boom on their own, but they certainly fed the fire. Seeing people playing the game leads to interest in the game - and that's true whether you're seeing people playing at a public table in a college dorm or game store or seeing it on a YouTube stream.