D&D General The Crab Bucket Fallacy

[Minigiant]

WotC has prioritized keeping it appealing to as many people as possible over making the best game they could for two non-consective editions now. It's what they do, and we're not going to change that.

Not even..It's nostalgia, not mass appeal.

5e has been prioritizing old tropes and old archetypes hoping to excite new fans who haven't seen them before.

But D&D 5e fans with experience with old editions have notvreceived much new. So if you aren't a person who enjoys playing the classics over and over....

 

[Maxperson]

You cannot simply say, "D&D is popular, thus absolutely everything it ever does must be good." But that's the argument I keep getting--including from you!

Other RPGs are designed to do one particular playstyle super well, or a grouping of similar playstyles really well. D&D doesn't do that. It works broadly with every playstyle such that it doesn't do anything really well, but does everything fairly well with a few easy tweaks by the DM.

I think that's one of the primary reasons that keeps D&D so popular. It broadly appeals to most people.

 

[payn]

Not even..It's nostalgia, not mass appeal.

5e has been prioritizing old tropes and old archetypes hoping to excite new fans who haven't seen them before.

But D&D 5e fans with experience with old editions have notvreceived much new. So if you aren't a person who enjoys playing the classics over and over....

You try level up, or PF2, 13th age, 4E again, Vampire, PbtA, anything by Free League, various Genesys offerings D&D is not the only RPG and its base offering is not going change in the near future. Climb outta the crab bucket Mate!

 

[Minigiant]

You try level up, or PF2, 13th age, 4E again, Vampire, PbtA, anything by Free League, various Genesys offerings D&D is not the only RPG and its base offering is not going change in the near future. Climb outta the crab bucket Mate!

I'm out the bucket. My games when I DM is a true mishmash. Like I said my game has Kryptonians, Jedi, Stand users,, and talking Bulbasaurs.

I advocate for others. For family and friends and strangest in the bucket

 

[Tony Vargas]

That is precisely the amount of offense the warlord should have. They’re still a warrior class. The back-line tactician is not the primary concept.

Extra Attack would make sense for more aggressive Warlords, like the Barvura. It'd fit as a sub-class feature.
Smite would definitely be off-brand.

Leaving Exta Attack on the chassis, in the 5e design paradigm, would make giving the class enough support capability difficult - the Paladin manages it due to tradition, while the Warlord faces stiff opposition for the misfortune of appearing only in the hated 4th edition.

 

[Oofta]

Extra Attack would make sense for more aggressive Warlords, like the Barvura. It'd fit as a sub-class feature.
Smite would definitely be off-brand.

Leaving Exta Attack on the chassis, in the 5e design paradigm, would make giving the class enough support capability difficult - the Paladin manages it due to tradition, while the Warlord faces stiff opposition for the misfortune of appearing only in the hated 4th edition.

Not everything is about people's dislike of 4E. There just isn't a big gaping hole in the archetypes that the warlord fills that hasn't already been subsumed into other classes.

 

[Oofta]

Again, no it does not. Being successful is far from being a good product.

Ask anyone who uses Windows. Drop a line in the WoW subreddit sometime. Being the BMOC--being by far the most-popular product in a given category--simply doesn't tell you that it's a decent product. Far too many confounding variables for that.

Windows was, and continues to be, the market leader for the consumer computer market because there are very few alternatives and most of them suck for what the people want. Do you remember the operating system for personal computers that IBM released? No? You don't remember it because it was terrible. I can't even remember the name. There are some alternatives (e.g. Linux), but other than MacOS none of them have ever been particularly popular because their biggest selling point is that they aren't windows. Meanwhile, despite multiple attempts, Microsoft hasn't been able to extend their consumer product outside of PCs. On the server side, Windows Server is competitive but Linux is the most popular by a significant amount. Popularity in a competitive environment does mean that the product is good enough.

In the TTRPG market there's even less reason for one game's dominance because there's less interdependence with other products (software for PCs) where we care about compatibility. Nobody is arguing that popularity means the design is "definitely and inarguably right", whatever that means. But D&D is an entertainment product, in a market with other products that hit approximately the same price points, difficulty and target market. If D&D weren't good enough entertainment for people, it wouldn't maintain it's market dominance and continued to grow year after year.

So yes, I believe that in competitive markets with plenty of options popularity, and just as importantly growth in popularity year after year is an indication of adequate quality. Bestest quality evar? No. I like the game and it works better for me than other games I've looked into, played one shots in or read about. But I, and dozens of people I've played with over the years, like the game.

It's my favorite version of the game and I've never found another game I prefer so for me it is a high quality product even if it is far from perfect. For others, based on the popularity and year after year double digit growth? Calling D&D "adequate quality" is not exactly singing it's praises from the rooftops.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Not everything is about people's dislike of 4E. There just isn't a big gaping hole in the archetypes that the warlord fills that hasn't already been subsumed into other classes.

Again, the warlord placed higher in class popularity polls during Next than a number of classes that made it into the 5e PH. There are, indeed, gaping holes in the range of archetypes playable in 5e. It'd take more than the Warlord to fill them. It'd take, well, class balance.

And we saw what happened the last time D&D tried implementing class a balance.

Windows was, and continues to be, the market leader for the consumer computer market because there are very few alternatives

The alternatives to D&D for the prospective new player just thinking about getting into it, are very few, indeed, because no other TTRPG has meaningful name recognition outside the hobby. People come to the hobby through D&D, if they don't like D&D, they most likely never get as far as the rest of the hobby, but they probably did, at least, buy a PH. That was true in the 80s fad, almost all of the intervening years (for a bit in the 90s it looked like between M:tG and TSR's mismanagement, D&D would be gone, and Storyteller, most likely, might have replaced it, making LARPs & Vampire-fandom crossover the main source of new players. What a freaky, Dark, world of TTRPGs that'd've been.
The current come-back is being led by D&D, because D&D was the fad in the 80s.

 

[Minigiant]

Not everything is about people's dislike of 4E. There just isn't a big gaping hole in the archetypes that the warlord fills that hasn't already been subsumed into other classes.

I disagree. The intelligent, wise, and charismatic aspects of weapons combat as well as leadership found most media is not really covered in 5e.

 

[Scribe]

I'm out the bucket. My games when I DM is a true mishmash. Like I said my game has Kryptonians, Jedi, Stand users,, and talking Bulbasaurs.

I advocate for others. For family and friends and strangest in the bucket

You have to understand, that many people are looking to play D&D, not whatever this is.