D&D 5E Is 5e's Success Actually Bad for Other Games?

[darjr]

I thought the point of the OGL was to create a monoculture, by incetivizing third parties to make material that worked with D&D.

Yea, sorry.

Focused on D&D yes but also a growth in the number of companies and third parties. Not just a canibilzation of what was already there.

 

[overgeeked]

3) The success of indie games like Dungeon World but particularly Blades in the Dark (which can teach people to successfully run Skill Challenges because the tech and GMing principles and player Best Practices are similar).

If you could point me to something laying this out, it would be appreciated.

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

If Critical Role, as presently formulated, were to jump ship from 5e and start playing Mouse Guard or Blades in the Dark or Stonetop…

Does anyone actually believe that the new game that Critical Role is playing wouldn’t suddenly see a significant uptick in their purchase and play?

Zeitgeist and stigma in macro culture is such a massive feedback loop. In TTRPGs? It’s overwhelming.

Was their a surge in Vampire after the one-shot they did?
Or a burst of interest in Savage Worlds and Deadlands after UNDEADWOOD?

 

[darjr]

Was their a surge in Vampire after the one-shot they did?
Or a burst of interest in Savage Worlds and Deadlands after UNDEADWOOD?

Yes, as far as I know.

Though the bump wasn't as big as with COC.

edit: OK I can't find the article now, so I'll walk this back.

edit of edit: I have to say, this is a good point. Huh?

 

[Mort]

If Critical Role, as presently formulated, were to jump ship from 5e and start playing Mouse Guard or Blades in the Dark or Stonetop…

Does anyone actually believe that the new game that Critical Role is playing wouldn’t suddenly see a significant uptick in their purchase and play?

Zeitgeist and stigma in macro culture is such a massive feedback loop. In TTRPGs? It’s overwhelming.

Question,

Did deadlands reloaded see any spike in sales due to Critical Role?

They devoted some significant play time to it (some 8 hours) so it certainly received a lot of exposure.

Edit: ninja'd 2 posts above.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Um, no. That's not it at all. Missed the target entirely. And that's a weirdly hostile response you've got going there. I'm not a crazy stan for any of the games I listed; they were just the first games that came to my head for exemplary design in OSR, Neo-Trad, and Storygames respectively.

I can't speak for anybody else in this thread, and I am aware that my personal views may be fringe. I am not the biggest expert on rules design, so while I have issues with D&D 5e's mechanics, don't take my opinion as an authoritative source. But I will say that WotC made too many concessions to the 1e and 2e fans when making 5e, and threw out the best parts of 4e in a panicked attenpt to rehabilitate their image, leaving certain parts of 5e a lot more kludgy and lacking clear design vision than they could have been. But no, that's not the primary reason as to why I don't like 5e; and as a game, I don't hate hate it. I'd be willing to sit down with some friends and play or even attempt to DM if that was what was on the table. But no, time to be completely honest about why I don't like 5e.

The primary reason that I don't like D&D 5e and WotC is because I'm a queer POC anarcho-communist who trusts rainbow capitalist corporations as far as I can throw them. WotC may talk a big game when it comes to diversity and a healthy work environment, but their actual track record leaves much to be desired. I'd rather give my money to small studios that don't have long and storied histories of abusing their workers and exploiting their labour. Or better yet, to small-time solo creators or small teams who pour their heart and soul into their artistic works, through which they give voice to their struggles, their dreams, their identities. A lot of these solo creators are among the working poor or are on disability, and many of them are also queer and/or BIPOC. Some of them are making TTRPGs because it's their artistic passion despite the risk of poverty, while others are already struggling and making TTRPGs as a side gig is how they've chosen to try and make ends meet. Both types of these creators could use my money and my attention far more than WotC does. Some of them do in fact work on third party products for 5e, because that's how the game is; I won't begrudge them for that. But who is the primary beneficiary of their work: the creators themselves, or the brand of D&D that WotC has built?

That is what I mean when I say that D&D and WotC are stifling its competitors in the industry. Indie creators struggling to get by and get noticed is a fact of life in almost every creative sector under a capitalist economy, but it's particularly bad in the TTRPG space. D&D as a rules system is... fine. D&D as a creative work still has many problematic elements that it needs to confront; and I would go so far as to say that the entire subgenre of heroic fantasy that it codified is built on a rotten foundation of White supremacy. But D&D as a brand is the 800 lb gorilla sucking all the air out of the room, exceptionally so even for a market leader in a creative industry. The media it creates and commissions to endorse itself, and the fan culture and loyalty it cultivates, all lead back to it. It is a machine that feeds itself, with the unspoken goal of acquiring more and more of the market share to generate more and more profits and install itself more and more as as a reified institution in the minds of consumers. Such is the way of things for all large corporations under capitalism; I doubt that Winninger's management will radically change things for the better, nor would it be in his interest to.

So that's how it is. I don't like 5e not because I have a list of games I think are inherently better and that 5e is lowest common denominator trash; no, that's not the reason I don't like 5e. I don't like 5e because the world can be split into two categories: those who work, and those who own; and I'd really like to see those who own get taken down a notch. It's not ego, it's politics. It can get personal, but the personal is the political. Always has been, no matter how hard those who own have tried to convince you otherwise.

You’re right on the edge of a “no politics” ToS violation, especially your closing paragraph. Let’s rein it in a bit, please.

 

[Manbearcat]

Was their a surge in Vampire after the one-shot they did?
Or a burst of interest in Savage Worlds and Deadlands after UNDEADWOOD?

Question,

Did deadlands reloaded see any spike in sales due to Critical Role?

They devoted some significant play time to it (some 8 hours) so it certainly received a lot of exposure.

Edit: ninja'd 2 posts above.

I don’t know, but again, this is why “as presently formulated” was a necessary clause here:

* Mercer GMing.

* Same cast.

* Long term campaign play.

The seduction of power fantasy and character connection/advocacy and story imperatives doesn’t do anywhere the same cultural work in a 4-8 hour interlude as it does in a multi-year visual media span. People connected to Critical Role because of some alchemy of all 3 of the above + D&D + the subversiveness of “making TTRPGs cool” (at the population level, subverting orthodoxy has always been seductive to people under 30 without children and therefore without that evolution-driven longing for stability and structure to raise those children driving their interests) and this was MAXIMUM ORTHODOXY SUBVERSION (making TTRPG mainstream and cool was a HELL OF A TRICK given it had been shunted off into the nichest of niche territory and super-not-cool…for 40 years) at exactly_the right_time.

 

[Manbearcat]

If you could point me to something laying this out, it would be appreciated.

The proper way to run Skill Challenges or Closed Scene Resolution with Win/Loss Con?

DMG2e does a solid job but the best 4e instruction was (a) in RC (RCs discussion of Fail Forward, Change the Situation/dynamic framing and re-framing, Success With Complications was quite good), (b) sprinkled about Dragon Mag articles, and then you’ll find the best of it in indie games like Dogs in the Vineyard, Burning Wheel/Mouse Guard/Torchbearer Conflicts, Cortex+, Strike!, and PBtA and FitD games with Clocks.

 

[Aldarc]

My guess is the 4e resurgence is multivariate:

1) No present scorched earth campaign by edition warriors hell bent on a misinformation campaign and making the hobby an insufferable, miserable place at all costs.

2) 5e’s success brining interest from younger gamers who first tried 5e (and are therefore untouched by prior zeitgeist and cultural conflict).

3) The success of indie games like Dungeon World but particularly Blades in the Dark (which can teach people to successfully run Skill Challenges because the tech and GMing principles and player Best Practices are similar).

4) (Actual) Online Tools…the kind they were hoping for 4e at release.

For Matt Colville, he has also talked about 4e encounter design, interesting monster design vs. bag of HP, and cool naughty word for martial characters.

 

[darjr]

For Matt Colville, he has also talked about 4e encounter design, interesting monster design vs. bag of HP, and cool naughty word for martial characters.

I think he’s wrong about 5e. For instance stated that 5e can’t do tactical combat, though that was an off the cuff statement in the middle of a stream, I won’t hang onto it, just an example.
He does sure like 4e, and I do think he has driven a lot of the recent interest in it.