D&D (2024) No Appendix N Equivalent?

[Maxperson]

The whole focus of the 2024 DMG is on making the game your own. Which means ALL rules are optional rules, so singling out specific rules as optional makes no sense. 1st edition took the same approach.

That is wrong. There's a rather HUGE difference between saying, "Oh, it's all optional, go ahead and make up a bunch of rules" and "All the rules are optional and you can make up your own, but we've also included a bunch to help you out in case you need them."

A lot of people aren't confident enough to make rules, and a bunch more wouldn't think of some of the options the 5e DMG included, but would happily use them if they were in the book. Others will have some issue with the rules as they stand, but not enough to want to risk unbalancing the game by making new ones. Yet more will have some issues, but not enough to go out of their way to find/make rules that aren't already listed.

The 5.5e DMG blundered with the removal of the optional rule section.

 

[Parmandur]

I work at a university, and I can tell you that this is decidedly not true. Cozy has never been bigger among that age group, and considering the state of things (at least here in the US) I can foresee it expanding in influence.

More to the point, dark and gritty has not made any kind of significant comeback within that age group. I think there's a definitely a drive of nostalgia towards that aesthetic among Gen X or even older Millennials, children of the 90's and all, but I gotta tell you, I'm an older Millennial, and I just celebrated my daughter's tenth birthday and my seventeenth wedding anniversary. Young adult, we are not.

That matches my own observations, as an elder Millenial who still juuuuuust falls in the under 40 crowd.

 

[Maxperson]

And people wonder why I don't want a section in the books promoting this kind of behavior.

Fantasy already has enough gatekeepers without giving them more turrets to man those gates with.

There is no gatekeeping with an appendix n. None. It doesn't exist.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

But I think further out from that, it’s the 5e system that can do these other genres versus actual D&D, which is still fantasy based. There’s a reason Alien RPG or Mothership is a thing. You won’t find a cleric class or a wizard class, let alone subclasses. They have to be sci-fi classes and at that point it’s a 5e compatible game but not D&D itself, IMO.

There's no such thing as a "5E system", though, is there? There's just a wide variety of dissimilar products which call themselves "5E compatible" or the like, where the actual degree of compatibility varies wildly.

Even if there were, the stuff that makes 5E bad for stuff like sci-fi horror goes way deeper than just the specific classes/subclasses. Levels are also bad for that, linearly increasing HP (or really significantly increasing HP at all) is bad for that, the way D&D approaches skills is arguably bad for that, 5E's very orderly combat system (including ambushes being nigh-worthless) is bad for that. I could go on.

There's a reason that Alien and Mothership don't take much from 5E. About the only thing Mothership takes is Advantage/Disadvantage because it's an incredibly useful concept - that's the one long-lasting design impact 5E is going to have had on TTRPGs.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Oh, i get that. But, again, that's not how people have chosen to take the list. Far too many people have seen these lists as proscriptive. THIS is what D&D is about. Which, again, has been weaponized repeatedly in discussion. Like @Older Beholder mentioned, people losing their poop about Harry Potter inspirations. Or, Magic the Gathering influences. Or any of a bunch of other influences that aren't shackled to the corpses of dead authors.

That's the thing, isn't it - people have always claimed that there is a One True D&D. Probably from the very beginning, people were arguing the Sacred Texts. But to fix something in place is to ossify it.

More to the point, dark and gritty has not made any kind of significant comeback within that age group. I think there's a definitely a drive of nostalgia towards that aesthetic among Gen X or even older Millennials, children of the 90's and all, but I gotta tell you, I'm an older Millennial, and I just celebrated my daughter's tenth birthday and my seventeenth wedding anniversary. Young adult, we are not.

And that is one of the things I wonder about, if GRRM ever finishes Winds of Winter. The state of fantasy has changed dramatically since the last time he released a book; how will people receive it? A lot of the tropes haven't aged well.

 

[Gradine]

I remain very skeptical - I know people in that age group and a bit younger and I don't see that aesthetic being very popular anymore, but much grimier ones. It's possible that the US/UK differences (the UK has always been far more grime-friendly) plus the fact that the majority of university students are going to be wealthier and thus insulated from problems somewhat (unless we're talking a community college or similar) play into this, but I feel like you're seeing what you want to see. I also question whether the world going to hell is going to make people double-down on that aesthetic - historically that hasn't been how young people have reacted in such situations, but history isn't always a guide here.

I would argue that it is you who is seeing what you want to see, but then we all inevitably end up in silos in the end. The idea that university students are wealthier than average might be a UK thing; our students are driving themselves deeply into debt for a mere shot at digging themselves out poverty, and the idea that they are isolated from societal problems is an outright absurdity.

As is the historical contention that the sign of the times doesn't tend to drive the youth to opposing aesthetics. Again, maybe this a US thing, but we have never been more prosperous than the 90's and early 00's, which was also the hotbed of darker and edgier and Christopher Nolan comic book movies (the failure of the original DCU being that Nolan's aesthetic sensibilities did not keep up with the youth culture). Cozy was the buzzword in the late teens; I wonder what was happening in the US then?

You see, youth culture is always going to drive itself in the exact opposite direction of the world around them. In an era of unprecedented optimism, the kids buy Lobo comics and Game of Thrones novels. In an age of proto-fascism and despair, they turn to Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing. This is why it is referred to as "counter-culture", after all.

 

[Parmandur]

And that is one of the things I wonder about, if GRRM ever finishes Winds of Winter. The state of fantasy has changed dramatically since the last time he released a book; how will people receive it? A lot of the tropes haven't aged well.

That's a big "IF" there, lol.

I don't think he has a lot of drive to finish it, after his ending got torn apart by yhe fandom and he can still plausibly blame the showrunners.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I would argue that it is you who is seeing what you want to see, but then we all inevitably end up in silos in the end.

Sure it's possible I am, or we both are, or neither and we're seeing different things. Don't disagree.

The idea that university students are wealthier than average might be a UK thing; our students are driving themselves deeply into debt for a mere shot at digging themselves out poverty, and the idea that they are isolated from societal problems is an outright absurdity.

No. Sorry. The fact, and I emphasize that word, is the majority of US university students come from better-off backgrounds relative to Americans in general. Sure, they then get absolutely mega-loaded with debt, which is a huge societal problem (and a problem for them), but that's different from their backgrounds, and as a whole are absolutely more isolated from societal problems than the average American whilst they are at university.

For example:

How Wealth, Not Just Income, Shapes College Access and Success

For decades, income has been the lens through which researchers and policymakers examine economic inequities in higher education. However, a new report by the Institute for Higher Education Policy explores an underexamined factor in college access and success: wealth. Breaking the Cycle of...

www.ihep.org

I don't want to get into the politics of this as this isn't the right place for it, but it's just not right to claim college students are some sort of even/egalitarian/meritocratic cross-section of US society (which appears to be your position - I can't see any other position you could be advocating for if you're denying they're typically from better-off backgrounds, unless it was that they were typically from worse-off backgrounds, but that seems unlikely to be your position, especially as it's obviously untrue).

There are obviously also plenty of students who are from less-wealthy backgrounds (like my wife - who is American - who came from a single-parent family, and had zero support from her extended family, even active hostility, to her going to university), but as a whole, university students in the US represent, for perhaps obvious reasons, the wealthier segment of the population.

You see, youth culture is always going to drive itself in the exact opposite direction of the world around them. In an era of unprecedented optimism, the kids buy Lobo comics and Game of Thrones novels. In an age of proto-fascism and despair, they turn to Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing. This is why it is referred to as "counter-culture", after all.

Counter-culture has always been a simplistic misnomer, and this is obviously untrue because people, particularly young people, as a whole started getting less wealthy and seeing fewer opportunities in the '90s and '00s, as opposed to earlier in the 20th century. This is demonstrable economic fact. That you're claiming the exact opposite is wild, but to argue it in detail would require getting into US political and economic history, and again, this isn't the place for that.

 

[Vaalingrade]

There is no gatekeeping with an appendix n. None. It doesn't exist.

There is in the community and they use the Appendix N as part of it. Either to hold up certain works as necessary and part of the One True D&D or as proof that D&D has fallen off due to the influence of 'lesser' works.

As usual, people conflate a thing being X as opposed to it encouraging or being used for X.

 

[Vaalingrade]

that's the one long-lasting design impact 5E is going to have had on TTRPGs.

Giving a name to something Pathfinder did first and better?