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

[MerricB]

This is probably one reason why this question (the original question of the thread) is really difficult to answer. Dnd 5e is a lifestyle brand by itself. It both brings people into "the hobby" but equally prevents a lot of them from exploring too far past its horizons.

I'd say "lifestyle" applies to RPGs in general, just because of the amount of investment it takes to play any one of them.

Even for explicitly short-run RPGs, there's a lot of investment you need to make to run them.

As opposed to, say, board games and computer games.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Okay, now let's look at some Kickstarter numbers... these are the number of backers of these RPG projects:

2012: 13th Age: 13 True Ways (expansion) - 846
2013: Fate Core - 10,103
2013: Numenara - 4,658
2013: Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition - 3,668
2013: CoC: Horror on the Orient Express - 1,374
2014: The Strange - 2,883
2015: 13th Age in Glorantha - 1,249
2015: Runequest Classic edition - 2,176
2015: Mage: The Ascention 20th Anniversary - 3,926
2016: 7th Sea Kickstarter - 11,483
2017: Numenera 2 - 4,185
2018: Strongholds & Streaming (5E supplement from Matt Colville) - 28,918
2018: The Expanse RPG - 5,714
2020: Root RPG - 6,495
2020: Deadlands Weird West Savage Worlds - 4,973
2020: Stargate SG-1 - 6,415
2021: The One Ring 2nd Edition - 16,596
2021: Kindoms & Warfare (5E Supplement, Matt Colville) - 19,033
2021: Coyote & Crow, the RPG - 16,269
2021: Conan RPG - 4,352

Kickstarter launched in 2009, btw. Can anyone think of some good projects from 2009-2014 to add to the list? Or even later ones?

(I find it interesting that the biggest kickstarters for non-D&D products are mostly in the last year or two).

Dates are projected release dates, btw - finding the actual date is a bit trickier, so I didn't bother.

Cheers!

2012: Tenra Bansho Zero - 1704
2012: Dungeon World - 2455
2013: Ryuutama - 2056
2013: OVA - 2319
2013: Deluxe Exalted 3rd Edition - 4368
2014: Fragged Empire - 1265
2015: Shinobigami - 1526
2016: The Dark Eye - 1619
2016: Invisible Sun - 1846
2017: Torg Eternity - 2282

(Dates are when the KS launched)

 

[Don Durito]

Yes and no.

Deep investment in literature, or folk tale, or legend, isn't normally see as problematic. Get deeply enough invested and you might get a job in a humanities school!

When folk tales and legends have all been commercialised, what are people to do? They can treat their cultural life as a mere accessory (like many other commercial products) but that's a bit alienating. Or they can become deeply invested in a commercial product, with all the unhappiness and vulnerability to exploitation (sorry, really effective sales pitches!) that flows from that.

That seems a strange question given D&D has the SRD and a huge DIY homebrew community.

There's surely absolutely no need to be overly concerned with WOTC or official D&D.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That seems a strange question given D&D has the SRD and a huge DIY homebrew community.

There's surely absolutely no need to be overly concerned with WOTC or official D&D.

The question always is, for all the homebrew component, how big a percentage are their for organized play and not much else? Its an ongoing discussion over at its cousin Pathfinder's place.

 

[cmad1977]

Not a burn so much as how it feels to me. "The GM can decide you get to do something if he feels like it" has never been decent substitute for, you know, mechanics as far as I'm concerned.

That’s… not how 5e is run though…

 

[MichaelSomething]

That’s… not how 5e is run though…

It isn't? Is it not how DM judgement works?

 

[pemerton]

That seems a strange question given D&D has the SRD and a huge DIY homebrew community.

There's surely absolutely no need to be overly concerned with WOTC or official D&D.

The question always is, for all the homebrew component, how big a percentage are their for organized play and not much else? Its an ongoing discussion over at its cousin Pathfinder's place.

There's another aspect to it too.

Humans are social beings. Part of what it is to participate in cultural life is to share ideas, meanings, and experiences with others.

If the relevant ideas, meanings and experiences are available only by paying WotC, well that's what people will do! I mean, Marvel/Disney seem to have worked this out to a degree of $billion+ success stories that makes the old-fashioned time-and-motion experts - the ones who really got mass production of consumer goods off the ground - look like amateurs.

Of course there's an avant garde. Perhaps they go and see the odd Marvel movie (or play the occasional game of 5e D&D) but critique it; perhaps they spurn it altogether. The avant garde is always in a difficult position, because they risk being defined by the mass culture they're positioned in opposition to; and really going all out (like a full-fledged hippy, or Andy Warhol) is a hard, hard commitment to follow through on.

I live near a street that was genuinely edgy when I was a boy, and then had a reputation for being edgy that attracted people to it for the first decade or so I was an adult, and that now has lost most of its edge: a street can't keep its edge when the main market for the retailers on it are people who want to experience some edge on a day trip. That doesn't stop me from still going there from time to time. I just complain about how it used to be better!

Any avant garde will always be subject to these same sorts of pressures, given that mass consumerism as the basis of economic life isn't going anywhere in a hurry. So the idea of a mass RPG with indie sensibilities is probably always going to be unrealistic. (And when some bowdlerised version comes along, some of us will play it but complain about how it was better when it was coming out via independent publication from Luke Crane's basement.)

I'm not offering a justification of fan outrage at the latest tweak to the colour of the hem of Elminster's robe in a FR product. And I'm not saying that there is no such thing as better or worse. But the broader phenomenon, of a fanbase in a strange dependency-yet-ownership relationship with a commercial purveyor of entertainment, and a community split between a "mainstream" and an "indie" set that exhibit their own tortured dynamics, isn't that surprising in my view.

 

[cmad1977]

In practice as a player I feel that throwing a curveball at the GM in combat they have to adjudicate just adds too much to their cognitive load. With everything else that the GM has to worry about, having me suddenly announce I want overturn the wooden table and use it to push the enemies out of the room is clearly a headache.

.

…..

What are you talking about? That sounds awesome!

 

[Thomas Shey]

That’s… not how 5e is run though…

Not the first time I've heard that claim about such things.

 

[cmad1977]

It isn't? Is it not how DM judgement works?

It really isn’t. I feel bad if you’ve been in a game run that way.


Edit: I mean…

No more so than any other game. I don’t understand the question maybe.
“Can I do x?” Or “I do x” Is something asked/said in many games.