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

[MerricB]

Let's talk about all the RPGs that came into prominence between 2008 and 2014 - and especially 2012-2014 - when D&D 4E was around and proving it wasn't a particularly popular version D&D - leaving a large slice of pie on the table for people to take.

We actually have a period where D&D wasn't so prominent (while still there) - so what happened then?

 

[Aldarc]

Next time I make a Rogue I'm going to name him Robber Howard!

Cool. I'll make a warlock named Michael Moorgold.

Yeah - improving within the bounds of one's own setting is one thing, but I find dming-as-illusionism boring both as player and dm. What strikes me, though, is the way that dnd-inspired video games start by trying to imitate aspects of table top play, but over time the language ("open world") and conventions of play start to inform how dnd is played. From what I hear I guess 4e was the apotheosis of this in some ways, intentionally or not. Justin Alexander had an interesting tweet about this:

Regardless of whether Justin Alexander is right or wrong about Matt Colville's take, I've grown increasingly more skeptical of Justin's own takes the more that I read and re-read his takes on 4e, disassociated mechanics, and a range of other issues. I think his analyses work well if you are already coming at the game from a certain angle (i.e., his preferred way of playing games), but lack a certain substance and value outside of that. Based on some of his recent tweets, Justin Alexander still has a massive chip on his shoulder regarding 4e, which is admittedly not entirely relevant to this point here.

That said, "open world" and "sandbox" are actually both terms that have their origins in the video game community before being brought into TTRPG speak. There are likely more, but sometimes people have a tendency to imagine that they have always been using terms as part of their parlance, when it has only been incorporated within a more restricted time frame.

I do agree that we will definitely see far more influence of video games into D&D. 4e is not the end of it,* nor was it the beginning. I saw a fairly large number of big and indie TTRPG designers buzzing about Hades.

* IMHO, 4e played substantially less like World of Warcraft and far more like Final Fantasy Tactics with Magic the Gathering elements, and watching Matt Colville's 4e stream using Fantasy Grounds also reminded me a lot of Divinity: Original Sin 1 & 2.

 

[pemerton]

if a something is popular, it may be worth investigating the reasons.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but--why? There are all kinds of things that are popular but can still be contrary to what you're trying to do with a game.

I agree with Thomas Shey here. If my goal is to sell a product into a market in large quantities, then investigating the reasons for something being popular may be worthwhile.

But if I am trying to design a RPG that will deliver a certain experience I value or think is worthwhile, then it seems a pretty open question whether or not the popularity of some other RPG is relevant. Especially in the case of D&D, it seems unlikely that there are many RPG designers around who don't have at least a passing grasp of how it works.

 

[pemerton]

What strikes me, though, is the way that dnd-inspired video games start by trying to imitate aspects of table top play, but over time the language ("open world") and conventions of play start to inform how dnd is played. From what I hear I guess 4e was the apotheosis of this in some ways, intentionally or not. Justin Alexander had an interesting tweet about this

Regardless of whether Justin Alexander is right or wrong about Matt Colville's take, I've grown increasingly more skeptical of Justin's own takes the more that I read and re-read his takes on 4e, disassociated mechanics, and a range of other issues.

Justin Alexander's account of 4e is not very insightful.

I've played a lot of 4e. It plays like 4e with all the system strengths fully realised (classes with levels; fortune-in-the-middle hp and saving throws; orc-to-Orcus campaign setup that mirrors a gonzo cosmology), and all the bits that push against these strengths (pseudo-simulationist approaches to non-combat resolution; broken spell load outs at mid-to-high-levels; tensions around rest cycles; the fact that it is easier for a peasant than Conan to recover from taxing exertion) stripped out.

I don't play video games and so can't make any direct comparison. But some of the people I played 4e with have played a lot of WoW and Diablo. I don't recall them remarking on any particular resemblances. The tightness of the rules expression and use of keywords clearly owes something to MtG (presumably the same is true of this feature of 3E, which is very similar to 4e and contrasts with AD&D), but the actual play never remind me very much of MtG, except in the loosest sense that in both games you have a finite set of resources that you can from time-to-time replenish.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yeah - improving within the bounds of one's own setting is one thing, but I find dming-as-illusionism boring both as player and dm. What strikes me, though, is the way that dnd-inspired video games start by trying to imitate aspects of table top play, but over time the language ("open world") and conventions of play start to inform how dnd is played. From what I hear I guess 4e was the apotheosis of this in some ways, intentionally or not. Justin Alexander had an interesting tweet about this:

The thing about computer games is it forces human DMs to think about what they are actually doing, in order to automate the process. Although I'm pretty sure the use of flow charts in adventure design goes back to the 1970s.

Now, there are issues with my pet hate - Jargon. it leads to confusion when people think they are talking about the same thing, when they are not. "Open World" is particularly miss-used when applied to computer games. An Open World CRPG typically has an on rails main plot, and lots of on rails sub plots, with the only freedom being what order to do them in. This leads to the emergent behaviour of players doing the most trivial sounding tasks first, and putting off the most urgent (such as, you are dying) until last. I remember people getting upset about the Pathfinder: Kingmaker CRPG: "I put off solving this serious problem for a couple of months whist I did trivial stuff AND SH*T HAPPENED!!!!!".

I would call "illusionism" jargon too. DMing is pretty much all illusion. Players point at a village on the map "we go there". DM quickly details the village, and creates the illusion that is was their all along. DM rolls a 5 on the wandering monster table and suddenly there was an Ettin passing through the region.

 

[Aldarc]

I don't play video games and so can't make any direct comparison. But some of the people I played 4e with have played a lot of WoW and Diablo. I don't recall them remarking on any particular resemblances. The tightness of the rules expression and use of keywords clearly owes something to MtG (presumably the same is true of this feature of 3E, which is very similar to 4e and contrasts with AD&D), but the actual play never remind me very much of MtG, except in the loosest sense that in both games you have a finite set of resources that you can from time-to-time replenish.

I am involved in several TTRPG playtests. I don't know if it's against the NDA to discuss it, so I won't mention the game or creator. But they were asking about the formatting of spells and presented two options: (1) one with a block of natural language and (2) a second with tight, cleaned-up text. The playtesters OVERWHELMINGLY (+95%) preferred option 2, and the designer flat out explicitly said that they were worried because of the negative reaction people had to this sort of formatting in 4e.

 

[Don Durito]

Let's talk about all the RPGs that came into prominence between 2008 and 2014 - and especially 2012-2014 - when D&D 4E was around and proving it wasn't a particularly popular version D&D - leaving a large slice of pie on the table for people to take.

We actually have a period where D&D wasn't so prominent (while still there) - so what happened then?

I'm not sure about that period, but the earlier period in which D&D wasn't doing all that well, the late 90s, was one of the most fertile and creative times in the history of rpgs, with many games released then which are still around in some form to this day: Deadlands, Seventh Sea, Legend of the Five Rings all the White Wolf games etc.

 

[Thunder Brother]

I can really only speak to my own experience, for whatever it's worth. I only started playing ttrpgs in late 2018 after being invited to participate in a 5e campaign. Since then I've played a decent amount of DnD but have also taken an interest in other games and systems. It's thanks to the wider DnD community that I was able to discover Pathfinder, The One Ring, the Artesia comic series (the source of my avatar), as well as Runequest and the fantasy world of Glorantha (which I'm completely enamored with). I also plan on introducing my friends and players to CoC, Pendragon, and Free League's Alien RPG.

Basically I would probably have never gotten into ttrpgs if it wasn't for DnD, and while my experience may not be typical, if only a small percentage of DnD's massive audience takes an interest in other games, the boost would be substantial.

I do kind of wish that DnD's present market dominance wasn't so great, because I do fear that it's massive popularity and strategy of trying to appeal to everyone may hurt its identity in the long-term.

 

[Aldarc]

Let's talk about all the RPGs that came into prominence between 2008 and 2014 - and especially 2012-2014 - when D&D 4E was around and proving it wasn't a particularly popular version D&D - leaving a large slice of pie on the table for people to take.

We actually have a period where D&D wasn't so prominent (while still there) - so what happened then?

I saw one tweet recently where someone said that 4e did more for the indie creative scene than 5e ever did. I think I can see why:

This is when we see OSR pick up, including Stars Without Number (2010), Dungeon Crawl Classics (2012), and Beyond the Wall & Other Adventures (2013).

Eclipse Phase and Fiasco both came out in 2009. Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World, the basis for the Powered by the Apocalypse system, was first published in 2010. Cortex Plus was published in 2010 (e.g., Smallville, Leverage), though due to ownership changes, it later gets repackaged as Cortex Prime in its 2017 Kickstarter. So is Green Ronin's Dragon AGE RPG system (2010), which will become Fantasy AGE (2015). Luke Crane's Mouse Guard was published in 2010.

Cubicle 7's The One Ring Roleplaying Game was published in 2011 as was John Harper's Lady Blackbird (2011). The PbtA-derived games of Dungeon World (2012-2013) and Monsterhearts (2012) are published during this time.

Then there was what feels like an eruption of games in 2013. Fate Core came out in 2013. Monte Cook's Numenera came out in 2013. Tweet and Heinsoo's 13th Age came out in 2013. Fantasy Flight Game's Star Wars Roleplaying Game, which is the precursor of the Genesys System, was also published in 2013. Luke Crane and Thor Olavsrud's Torchbearer was also published in 2013. Robin Laws also published Hillfolk during this time (2013). Free League's Mutant: Year Zero system debuted in 2014.

A lot of current popular game systems of the indie or non-D&D scene have their origin during this time period, with a few exceptions, such as Blades in the Dark (2016), though it was basically a PbtA hack that became its own thing, much like Ironsworn (2018).

Edit: Names and formatting, so it's less a block of text. Also added the games @Manbearcat mentioned.

 

[Manbearcat]

I saw one tweet recently where someone said that 4e did more for the indie creative scene than 5e ever did. I think I can see why:

This is when we see OSR pick up, including Stars Without Number (2010), Dungeon Crawl Classics (2012), and Beyond the Wall & Other Adventures (2013). Eclipse Phase and Fiasco both came out in 2009. Apocalypse World, the basis for the Powered by the Apocalypse system, was first published in 2010. Cortex Plus was published in 2010 (e.g., Smallville, Leverage), though due to ownership changes, it later gets repackaged as Cortex Prime in its 2017 Kickstarter. So is Green Ronin's Dragon AGE RPG system (2010), which will become Fantasy AGE (2015). Cubicle 7's The One Ring Roleplaying Game was published in 2011. The PbtA-derived games of Dungeon World (2012-2013) and Monsterhearts (2012) are published during this time. Fate Core came out in 2013. Monte Cook's Numenera came out in 2013. Tweet and Heinsoo's 13th Age came out in 2013. Fantasy Flight Game's Star Wars Roleplaying Game, which is the precursor of the Genesys System, was also published in 2013. Luke Crane's Torchbearer was also published in 2013. Robin Laws also published Hillfolk during this time (2013). Free League's Mutant Year Zero system debuted in 2014.

A lot of current popular game systems of the indie or non-D&D scene have their origin during this time period, with a few exceptions, such as Blades in the Dark (2016), though it was basically a PbtA hack that became its own thing, much like Ironsworn (2018).

I’m not claiming causality, but Lady Blackbird, Mouse Guard, and Torchbearer also released during 4e’s period.

That era was enormously fertile ground for indie game development and release.