The "I Didn't Comment in Another Thread" Thread

[trappedslider]

asking for some forbidden knowledge

 

[Ryujin]

I wonder what the Venn Diagram overlap is between people who decry "postmodernist nonsense" and people who can define postmodernism...?

I visualize it as lookkng something like this:

View attachment 337288

I'm just wondering why the Canadian pizza franchise Pizza Pizza hasn't sued Little Caesar's over that slogan.

(Not really, but for purposes of this bit...)

 

[overgeeked]

I think sometimes its less that people are actively hostile to other people they're interacting with, so much as they're at war with trends or zeitgeists (because it makes getting the kind of game they want difficult or even, in practice, impossible) and the people they're arguing with are stand-ins for that (its pretty clear that's what's going on with a couple people I know of on here). Its still probably kind of not-useful, but I can understand how they got there; frustration is hard to deal with sometimes.

I think that's the crux of it right there. If there were enough people willing to actually play the various game systems that are made, then there wouldn't be a problem. The hobby is tiny in comparison to things like video games. And the rest of the hobby is a tiny fraction of D&D's size. Which makes getting players for non-D&D games incredibly difficult.

Take one example, indie darling Blades in the Dark. In a recent thread over on RPG.net someone shared Evil Hat's sales charts which made this point very clearly. Fred Hicks is great about being open with this kind of stuff. But the numbers are kinda depressing. Blades in the Dark is Evil Hat's top selling game of all time. Lifetime sales of Blades are just under 70,000 copies through all channels. The Kickstarter launched in 2015 and the book was released in 2017. Thanks to Roll for Combat we know that the 5E PHB is selling at least 2000 copies a week. So at a minimum in about 35 weeks the PHB alone outsells the lifetime (~6 years/~312 weeks) sales of Blades.

For a lot of people it's either 5E or nothing.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I wonder what the Venn Diagram overlap is between people who decry "postmodernist nonsense" and people who can define postmodernism...?

I always find it helpful, when encountering those people, to blink slowly at them and say, But I liked Gravity's Rainbow! What do you have against Thomas Pynchon, anyway?

It doesn't change any worldviews, but it does provide me some amusement. Which I am reasonably certain is the purpose of existence.

 

[trappedslider]

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think that's the crux of it right there. If there were enough people willing to actually play the various game systems that are made, then there wouldn't be a problem.

The challenge for a lot of us, though, is that this is a largely self-inflicted problem. Most people are able to play online in some fashion, ranging from the people who can do VTTs with all the bells and whistles, to playing on Discord, or even just playing by post or email. These other groups are available, and tools to find them are getting better and more broadly available all the time.

"I can't find any groups to play games other than 5E D&D" isn't accurate. It's "I can't find any groups to play games other than 5E D&D in the exact way I'd prefer." Which is a problem, sure, but a much smaller one, one that could be addressed by convincing some of your regular group to play online with you for a trial game or two and then maybe getting those folks to either convert others or start a smaller Blades in the Dark, or whatever, group.

 

[FrogReaver]

Wow! Your ignore list must be huge. I've been told that I'm one of the mist ignored people here, yet I only miss a few posts per page on average. Didn't miss a single one on the page I just quoted you on.

Hold my beer!

 

[trappedslider]

I think i just need to make more nudge to make that thread really go off topic

 

[el-remmen]

It doesn't change any worldviews, but it does provide me some amusement. Which I am reasonably certain is the purpose of existence.

This reminds me of how when people ask me what my favorite book is I don't say Moby Dick since I don't want to come off as pretentious. I say Absalom, Absalom instead.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think that's the crux of it right there. If there were enough people willing to actually play the various game systems that are made, then there wouldn't be a problem. The hobby is tiny in comparison to things like video games. And the rest of the hobby is a tiny fraction of D&D's size. Which makes getting players for non-D&D games incredibly difficult.

It isn't always difficult, but the population willing to play or even try games outside D&D is not evenly distributed, and even online play only helps so much here (because time zones and scheduling are still a thing). So people in one area may not have much of a problem and people in another, in practice, find it impossible.

Take one example, indie darling Blades in the Dark. In a recent thread over on RPG.net someone shared Evil Hat's sales charts which made this point very clearly. Fred Hicks is great about being open with this kind of stuff. But the numbers are kinda depressing. Blades in the Dark is Evil Hat's top selling game of all time. Lifetime sales of Blades are just under 70,000 copies through all channels. The Kickstarter launched in 2015 and the book was released in 2017. Thanks to Roll for Combat we know that the 5E PHB is selling at least 2000 copies a week. So at a minimum in about 35 weeks the PHB alone outsells the lifetime (~6 years/~312 weeks) sales of Blades.

For a lot of people it's either 5E or nothing.

Yup. And I can see how that could be awfully frustrating. I've mentioned before that if D&D 5e was my only option, I'd probably be out of the hobby pretty quick. And its not necessarily better for people who are more into the D&D-model, but 5e has gone the wrong way in various fashions.