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Message: <blockquote data-quote="doctorbadwolf" data-source="post: 9162463" data-attributes="member: 6704184">I find the opposite. “Where does it stop?” Always has the same answer. “It stops when it going further doesn’t make any sense, feels bad to most people, and/or isn’t plausible anymore.”Experience has taught me more and more that the slippery slope is basically always a fallacy. I can picture a time where citizenship requires military service and people who don’t do so can’t vote, and military requirements are manipulated in order to be used to keep certain groups from ever becoming major voting blocks. I don’t actually think it will happen, but we are all people who imagine things as a hobby, here. And to echo someone else, what is a microtransaction, in this context? Does it cost more per…idk page of text iguess…than a full book, thus manipulating you into spending more money than you realize over time? Does it somehow make your PC more powerful and have more agency? Or is it just buying the Grung on ddb because they only exist as a result of an extra life charity game featuring them and so haven’t ever been in a print book, or buying just the magic items from Tasha’s because it’s the only part you want? Sure, but is it actually plausible? I really strongly don’t think so. Well…I hope you understand that when you tack this onto the end of a post replying to me at length with arguments…I’m still gonna respond to those arguments. If you decide not to engage further I get it, though I think it’s an interesting conversation without ever needing to get pedantic. How we each are defining the term microtransaction is an important distinction in order to understand the arguments the others in the conversation are making.For my part, while technically I guess any small transaction that isn’t the whole game or a sizeable expansion for it is technically a microtransaction, the common usage IME is more specific. That being, 1) a transaction that either manipulates the buyers perception of cost vs value as compared to “full” transactions, or 2) that gets money from buyers by way of promising “pay to win” benefits like buying higher build points in an MMO with build points* on the fairly benign end (imo) or exclusive gear or other game artifacts that make your character significantly more powerful and thus make the game easier for you than it is for others who can’t afford to pay to win. 1) I can see happening, but not particularly successfully. Too much of the game is out of their hands, the fans are too vocal and ready to rhetorically skewer even small creators much less big corporate ones, and it’s just vastly too easy to just get the digital exclusive $8.99 super-tabaxi pc race without paying for it. 2) I would posit is not only implausible, it may be impossible, for wotc to accomplish with D&D at all. Even if they lock the vtt down like crazy, people will just use other vtts, and someone will make a more open version that uses the SRD and makes it easy to add homebrew PC options and monsters. Outside the vtt, the DM can veto anything. That fact you payed 9 bucks for it doesn’t matter, and if the DM is fine with it in general or sees an easy balance tweak, they’ll just make a homebrew version based on a pirated screenshot they found on tumblr and add it to their game.</blockquote>

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