Yeah, but that's not "fracturing the community", that's your DM "fracturing your friendship".
D&D 5E MCDM to revisit the Illrigger.
jgsugden
Legend
6E is essentially in the bag. MCDM will have no impact on it. Further, they're not phoning 6E in. They're going to try to make the best game they can. Competition is not a magic salve, and it doesn't really work as you're suggesting and create magic improvements.
When the game starts to see decreasing revenue below expectations, Hasbro will squeeze it. They will shift entirely into short term benefit strategies to get as much money from it before it runs dry - and then they'll essentially shelve it. Why put money into a game that will compete with your money makers, right? Why spend time developing 10 product lines for $2 million each when you can get get the same revenue by driving people to one that you spend $3 Million on?
The RPG community is much better served by one dominant core system that everyone builds on rather than having a bunch of different base systems in a similar way to it being better to have one set of roads that everyone supports rather than having a bunch of different private roads that don't connect. You want to have a functional base for use that everyone can use rather than trying to get your foundational bases from a half sozendifferent sources.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Most names are silly until we get used to them, then they're suddenly classic.
After all, the term "barbarian" has nothing to do with raging, "artificer" is just an old synonym for "inventor" or "craftsman" (which itself is literally just "crafts" + "man"), "ranger" tells you diddly-squat about what the class does beyond wandering around in non-civic places which is something every character does, and "rogue" is literally just a word for a person who does dastardly or underhanded things.
Check out the Atlas of True Names sometime. The vast majority of place-names are so pedestrian, etymologically, you'll wonder how anyone ever thought they were impressive!
It's not 6e. It's 5.5e. They've done a minor balance pass over the existing classes, rewritten a few spells, and kept CR and most other monster rules nearly completely unchanged. "Backwards compatibility" means they can't actually make the clean break--and so we will be bound to decisions made over a decade ago, under vastly different circumstances, for a decade to come.
Edit:
Also, you seem to be mistaken about what parts of Hasbro are making money right now. Spoiler alert: Wizards IS making money. And, at least if actor testimony is to be believed, there's a sequel for the D&D movie in the works.
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SakanaSensei
Adventurer
Sarcasm: I keep telling people that every video game could have just been Skyrim mods. Why do people even want to play other games?
If you want to play horror, sci-fi, mysteries, survival, cyberpunk, demi-god levels of power, etc., 5E is probably not well suited to what you're trying to accomplish.
jgsugden
Legend
I'll tell that to Ravenloft, Beyond the Barrier Peaks, Dark Sun, Eberron, AD&D, etc.
On a more serious side: I do favor other systems for other genres of RPG. I consider that quite a different thing than trying to run multiple different rule sets for similar fantasy storytelling.
GURPS is the system I prefer for my Westerns, Spy and Future (Aliens, Traveller or Gamma World) games. The non-heroic advancement in power is a better fit for those genres. I also prefer systems with primarily ranged combat to have a more robust ranged combat system than D&D.
However, I would not use it for fantasy. Why? The core GURPS magic system feels too 'Tolkien' to me with flashy parlor tricks instead of great magics. The combat is more specific in many ways, which doesn't facilitate high heroics and fantastical improvisation. So I am ok spending the time to know this additional system because it gives me something significantly distinct - despite not being able to run my D&D style games in it.
However, I have not spent the time to learn Pathfinder. I know it is a great system, but it doesn't do anything substantially different than D&D. Why would I want to learn it when I've invested so much in D&D? The answer is because I have friends that want to play it. They - for various reasons - some related to gameplay, some related to corporate politics - prefer a non-WOTC game. However, when they've invited me to play, I fake it and pick up a few things, but I do not have the level of knowledge in the rules there that I have for D&D, and because of that I make bad decisions in game. I am an A to A+ student of the rules for D&D, but a D student for Pathfinder. That has impacts.
What happens when our community splinters in 2024 between D&D, Daggerheart from Critical Role, MCDM from Colville, Tales of the Valiant / Black Flag from Kobold Press, and Pathfinder? Each has their fans. We're not likely to lose many more from D&D to Pathfinder, but there are many here that are more Critical Role fans than D&D fans. There are many that will prefer the stylings of MCDM or Tales of the Valiant. What that will lead to is different Game Masters running different games in different systems and a lot less rules knowledge at the table. That results in delays, chaos and frustation. For some groups: instead of a year to learn and really master one rule set we'll spend five years sampling several rule sets and not really mastering any of them.
We're better served by creating a single platform on which to tell fantasy RPG stories and then all capitalize upon it to build our businesses than to try to have the community learn new games for each game master.
Blue
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
There are a huge number of worthy competitors to D&D out right now. The only thing these have is a bit more media presence and a bit less history and existing player-base.
Everything you worry about has already happened. Several times. And hasn't been bad.
For example, you talk abotu having multiple D&D-esque forum here. But really, what we don't have is robust, many-active-member forum talking about very non-D&D games. Story Now games, things like PbtA with rules for player authorial control, limited GM powers, non-traditional DMing - these meet resistance and end up not having the type of support and discussion at ENworld that D&D and it's relations have. But there are other places we can go to talk about other games.
jgsugden
Legend
What is different here is the other thing I listed - the names behind the competition. D&D has never had this level of well known challengers with loyal fanbases taking away from their player base. There have been a lot of other RPGs out there, but only the Pathfinder / 4E split ever threatened D&D. Imagine if Pathfinder had started with a loyal fanbase like Critical Role's fanbase ...
Us arguing about it on Enworld is not going to change anything. We'll just have to see what happens, but I think Colville, Critical Role, Kobold Press, etc... are killing the golden goose.
I suspect you’re right. I suspect Hasbro wants to go fully digital (no more books) using subscriptions. And in-house video games, though so far Dark Alliance - which I think sucked but technically was functional - is the best they have to show for massive spending across multiple studios.
Maybe the WotC layoffs are intramural corporate revenge for Renton showing up Pawtucket, by helping Larian create a monster hit unlike anything the owned studios could do.
Or maybe I’ve been watching too much “Slow Horses”.
As for shelving D&D, yes, I think that’s a real possibility too.
So, back to th thread topic - good luck to MCDM, I guess?!
Excited to hear the class is getting revisited. I think it has some cool ideas but it doesn't play nicely in most adventuring days in my experience, and it's not as exciting as was hoping. Their recent psion and beastheart have been a lot more engaging, so I hope Illrigger v2 comes out more like those.
