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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9637286" data-attributes="member: 18">Yes, and 4E, for that matter.3E, for example, did actively perverse and hostile-to-the-playerbase stuff like intentionally designing in "noob traps" and so on because the guy in charge of 3E thought that was cool and fun - and that was what a lot of 3E's design was - whatever Jonathan Tweet thought was cool, without any research to check if it actually was! Luckily he and his team were mostly on-beam initially (at least for the first 2-3 years). But I really think that aside from the art direction (and the d20/OGL thing, which was Ryan Dancey's baby), that was more luck than judgement.4E made massive changes to D&D and I don't think the designers really considered how well those changes, especially stuff like ditching the OGL and big lore changes would actually go down with the playerbase. It was designed to succeed, but the mechanism of success they expected to engage (digital) didn't actually work out, and they hadn't attempted to maximize popularity.Both also were designed to absolutely pump out splatbooks to maximize potential sales (or that was the thinking).5E was designed on a different principle - I've referred to it as the "apology edition", because that's essentially how Mearls said they approached it - they very intentionally tried to build a very broad church (but a modern one under the hood) and to get back lapsed 3E/PF players, without driving away 4E players, and made accessibility and simplicity and not messing with players nor pumping out splatbooks important. Indeed, 5E really has gone light on splatbooks compared to 2/3/4E. Fundamentally 5E is pitched at the largest possible audience for D&D in a way no previous edition was (1E and 2E weren't operating at the same level of intentionality, design-wise, because it wasn't really yet "a thing"). 5E was also freer because it didn't have the expectation from WotC of "high sales", ironically enough. 4E had been required to make $50m/year in revenue - it never did - and WotC said they'd kill off D&D if it didn't. But they relented, and essentially let 5E exist just to keep the IP going, and to make some money without investing heavily. And of that actually turned into them making crazy money compared to previous editions!</blockquote>

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