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<blockquote data-quote="RealAlHazred" data-source="post: 8396126" data-attributes="member: 25818">I have a little experience with this facet, having run Adventurers League games for conventions and hobby shops for several years. In League play, there is a heavy emphasis on the Rules As Written, precisely because people otherwise unknown to one another must play together at these events. Few people can bring their whole regular group to a convention, and even when they do why would they pay money to play an adventure with the same people they play with for free? In order to level the playing field for convention play, an emphasis has been put on running the most recent incarnation of the RAW, and de-emphasizing DM creativity in rules creation. DMs are still encouraged to make up encounters to fill areas where the module authors or playtesters didn't think to push the boundaries and an edge case crops up, with a table doing something unexpected. That's fine and a joy to see happen. However, as with any system, once you have a system in place someone will try to game it. Some people feel that they &quot;win&quot; when they have ruined someone else's experience, either with their own skill at character creation or with some item or benefit they have derived from another scenario. So, a lot of effort is put in to smooth out wrinkles and make it possible to accommodate as many people of differing playstyles as possible.However, if you check out Dragon+ articles, Wizards goes out of their way to encourage new and different things in people's home games. They love it when somebody Twitch streams their home game where everybody is a member of a Victorian England occult society adventuring on a Sword &amp; Planet version of Mars, or whatever. Because that drives D&amp;D into people's headspace, and that's just good advertising. People complain that &quot;D&amp;D&quot; is synonymous with &quot;RPGs&quot; in the minds of many non-gamers, and it is -- they've spent a lot of advertising dollars to make it so, because that's just good marketing. They've put a lot of &quot;OSR-adjacent&quot; optional rules in the DMG to try to cater to a more OSR-style of play. They are also big on emphasizing inclusiveness, and representation, and a lot of other things; they may be a little more hit-and-miss on those. But the signs seem encouraging to me. And I don't even do D&amp;D as my main RPG.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="RealAlHazred, post: 8396126, member: 25818"] I have a little experience with this facet, having run Adventurers League games for conventions and hobby shops for several years. In League play, there is a heavy emphasis on the Rules As Written, precisely because people otherwise unknown to one another must play together at these events. Few people can bring their whole regular group to a convention, and even when they do why would they pay money to play an adventure with the same people they play with for free? In order to level the playing field for convention play, an emphasis has been put on running the most recent incarnation of the RAW, and de-emphasizing DM creativity in rules creation. DMs are still encouraged to make up encounters to fill areas where the module authors or playtesters didn't think to push the boundaries and an edge case crops up, with a table doing something unexpected. That's fine and a joy to see happen. However, as with any system, once you have a system in place someone will try to game it. Some people feel that they "win" when they have ruined someone else's experience, either with their own skill at character creation or with some item or benefit they have derived from another scenario. So, a lot of effort is put in to smooth out wrinkles and make it possible to accommodate as many people of differing playstyles as possible. However, if you check out Dragon+ articles, Wizards goes out of their way to encourage new and different things in people's home games. They love it when somebody Twitch streams their home game where everybody is a member of a Victorian England occult society adventuring on a Sword & Planet version of Mars, or whatever. Because that drives D&D into people's headspace, and that's just good advertising. People complain that "D&D" is synonymous with "RPGs" in the minds of many non-gamers, and it is -- they've spent a lot of advertising dollars to make it so, because that's just good marketing. They've put a lot of "OSR-adjacent" optional rules in the DMG to try to cater to a more OSR-style of play. They are also big on emphasizing inclusiveness, and representation, and a lot of other things; they may be a little more hit-and-miss on those. But the signs seem encouraging to me. And I don't even do D&D as my main RPG. [/QUOTE]

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