I believe they are doing that for all the people that have joined 5e since it became popular shortly after it was released (a large group to be sure). It is not, however, the same group of players the game was designed to attract when it was designed and originally published. That group no longer matters to them.
Yes. Been playing that way since at least 2017.
Don't equate yourself with that population. If you think WotC is not interested in keeping their audience and having it move to 1DD, and are instead creating 1DD for some new audience, then I have no idea what you are smoking.
If they lose one grognard for every 10 new players they gain, it is a worthwhile tradeoff to them
As a member of the population it was created for, I object to this statement. I quite like the direction the game is going in. The population it was "designed for" was a broad church and remains so. This is a game where new features and mechanics get to go through a popularity contest before adoption.
That is my take as well. One good thing in my book is that Black Flag will be on all kinds of VTTs, while for 1DD I am not so sure about the future support. Heck, it already supports fewer than BF will from the start (according to the announcement). Presumably it will also include more of the class related stuff in its licensed material, which is another plus in my book, if maybe not one that is all that marketable.
First of all, I am absolutely part of that population. I had given up on 4e years before, and 5e brought me back. That's the definition of 5e's original audience.
There are always exceptions to any trend, and people always trot them out to refute a point.
Grognards, by their very nature, have stuck with the game for decades, and quite likely have bought a significant portion of the offerings being put out during that time and/or brought many other people into the hobby who themselves became consumers, at least for a time. Grognards are, in other words, the vital few.
Yes you are, never said otherwise. But you are one in a diverse group, not a representative of the entire group. So if WotC does something 80% like, 15% don't care and you find yourself in the 5% then they still act in the interest of that population, even if it is not in yours.
No idea, I personally think that ratio is very generous to you
Any that become DMs
It becomes a bug if they acquire those new players by making it a "tradeoff" for grognards, as the post I replied to characterized it. Far better to not make it a tradeoff (even if that means drawing in slightly fewer new players; a minor reduction in short-term growth to encourage long-term growth, if you will), at least as much is reasonably possible; the debate is whether or not that reasonable possibility is what we currently have, or if it should be something else.
Not sure about the vital bit. Grognards to me have played the game a long time and do bring people into the game, but that game is by now OSR, not 5e, and it has not happened with 5e first either, they already did move away with 4e or even 3e. Some hung in there, some maybe came back for 5e, but it is not the game for them, which is why all they do is complain about how the game goes in the wrong direction and relive the good old days. That does not sound like a person that brings people into 5e, or not many at least. They might bring people into TTRPGs, but that is not the same thing.
I suppose that depends on your definition of what constitutes a grognard, since I've seen the term thrown at people who were playing as recently as 4E, and certainly at people who are nostalgic for 3.5. In that light, I'm not sure I'd characterize them all as OSR adherents.
This is where I disagree. It seems to be that there's a high degree of permeability between different tabletop RPGs of the same genre, particularly with regard to casual players, and that permeability most benefits the largest and most-popular game (i.e. the Skaff Effect), which is unquestionably D&D. While keeping the grognards in closer orbit to D&D certainly benefits WotC more, I don't think there's a zero (or negative) effect to their playing D&D-esque games. (Which I suppose serves as an excuse for why WotC feels like they can afford to near-totally ignore grognards, though I still think that's a fairly shortsighted view; this is an area where WotC absolutely could have their cake and eat almost all of it too).
I have no doubt those things generated visibility and interest, but you generally need to have a group that you're playing with in order to create sustained engagement. Of course, you could abet that even without a group by also making the books interesting to read on their own (what Mike Mearls rather pejoratively called "lonely fun").
I don't think it's the either/or that you're making it sound like here (or at least, that's how it sounds to me; if I've misread you, I apologize). These things exist on a continuum, and you can move a little in one direction without it being some sort of stark alteration between "old and busted" or "new hotness."
Unless of course you're not young and they've moved on from you.
If that second sentence is what you are saying, then I am not sure how it follows from the Kobold Press post. OGL is not mentioned anywhere, and what is mentioned does not have anything to do with that controversy
