D&D 5E The Mainstreaming of D&D

[Yora]

What are your preferences/aesthetic preferences? Is it a particular prior edition? Or other games currently on the market?

A shift that I am seeing with Dragonlance, the 2nd Edition of Forgotten Realms, and Mystara is the adoption of an aesthetic that feels very idyllic and quaint. With stockings and feathered caps, and happy round-cheeked villagers having a faire outside the big white castle with colorful banners on the spires. It looks like Erol Flynn's Robin Hood or Prince Valliant. You get the impression of a happy paradise that got temporarily inconvenienced by a Dark Lord nuisance and his orc pests.

Gone is the sense of frontier communities in constant struggles against the horrors of the savage wilderness. Dark Sun was a return to those sensibilities, but it stands out as being that one edgy thing given it's own corner where it wouldn't bother anyone else.

3rd Edition traded the stockings for spiky pauldrons, but overall there was little change.

 

[RFB Dan]

3rd Edition traded the stockings for spiky pauldrons, but overall there was little change.

I liked the 3e art style better when it was being used on stage during the Shout At The Devil era Mötley Crüe concerts.

 

[Blue Orange]

I unironically have and wear this shirt:

I feel like you might need to grab one, too. 'Cause honestly, that's what this feeling is. We're D&D Hipsters, the lot of us.

Bit of a thread-necro, but...is that supposed to be Velma? With the glasses and the orange clothing and hair...? It would be on-brand...

 

[Steampunkette]

Bit of a thread-necro, but...is that supposed to be Velma? With the glasses and the orange clothing and hair...? It would be on-brand...

Nope! Just "Some Hipster".

Though when I bought that shirt I kinda looked like her, too. Not the cartoonishly waifish waist or the shelf of boobs, but orange hair, glasses, long face, and recurve bow.

 

[Campbell]

I'm having trouble seeing how D&D was ever this weird transgressive thing, particularly post AD&D Second Edition. Like in the broader context of our hobby the game has always been the safe, conservative (in terms of design ethos not politics) choice. The game we all traditionally leaned into when we could not decide what we wanted to play. It's our equivalent to watching NCIS or Law and Order.

I don't mean that negatively by the way. Those shows are entertaining. So is D&D. They're just like safe.

 

[Scribe]

Same as what Games Workshop has done with its Warhammer races.

Which is near universally seen as amusing, at best, by anyone who's been in the hobby for an extended period.

It's Eldar, and Orc, and Goblin (git will suffice...).

 

[Blue Orange]

I'm having trouble seeing how D&D was ever this weird transgressive thing, particularly post AD&D Second Edition. Like in the broader context of our hobby the game has always been the safe, conservative (in terms of design ethos not politics) choice. The game we all traditionally leaned into when we could not decide what we wanted to play. It's our equivalent to watching NCIS or Law and Order.

I don't mean that negatively by the way. Those shows are entertaining. So is D&D. They're just like safe.

In the 1980s, there was a big panic over satanism and D&D, with conservative religious figures saying it was teaching kids to practice the occult. Where I grew up in NYC this never really came up, but I've read people in more conservative areas of the country had D&D banned at school, etc.

Those tanar'ri and baatezu? They were renamed from 'demons' and 'devils' because of this. The assassin class and half-orc race (this is well before anyone dreamed of calling them 'ancestries') were removed.

Rock used to be the music of youthful rebellion, now it's your dad's or granddad's music.

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.” --FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Your point is excellent, though; TSR, then Wizards, and then Hasbro, as a major corporation, pitch their stance to whatever they think will be best for the bottom line. A lot of their stances on political issues (on which I really don't want to say anymore) probably have more, IMHO, to do with where they think the 'center' is at any given time than any actual convictions on their part.

The reason it takes over the hobby is network effects; until the pandemic you wanted to play in person with a group of people, and if D&D has half of the market and the next one down is Call of Cthulhu with 15%, well, if there's ten roleplayers in your area you've got 5 people for a D&D game, maybe one or two to run Call of Cthulhu, and finding someone else to play, say, Palladium or Ars Magica may take some travelling.

(Most recent figures I could find: D&D 5e strengthens its market share)

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

While second edition was more careful in how it presented itself at first (until you got to Planescape, anyway, but by that point everyone had moved onto worrying about Marilyn Manson, albeit not for the reasons they should have been), but one thing to keep in mind is that, to the average person in small town America, they wouldn't have known what a second edition was. It was all still D&D. The shadow James Dallas Egbert III cast was long, as was that of the Satanic Panic.

But things have finally changed. Now you can have a giant adventure about the Nine Hells and nobody's burning the books and claiming that they can hear real devils screaming.

I'm having trouble seeing how D&D was ever this weird transgressive thing, particularly post AD&D Second Edition. Like in the broader context of our hobby the game has always been the safe, conservative (in terms of design ethos not politics) choice. The game we all traditionally leaned into when we could not decide what we wanted to play. It's our equivalent to watching NCIS or Law and Order.

I don't mean that negatively by the way. Those shows are entertaining. So is D&D. They're just like safe.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure, the game plays fine with fewer encounters. But following the DMG guidelines will consistently grind characters down, if so desired.

The problem is that many players don't enjoy a constant grind of encounters, and many GMs don't enjoy running them. Also, the dungeon is about the only place where that encounter density is realistic. People get into what should be dangerous situations in other places too, but they dont feel dangerous unless you get the 6-8. Basically, the game is designed around a style of play many players don't want to engage in.

 

[Parmandur]

The problem is that many players don't enjoy a constant grind of encounters, and many GMs don't enjoy running them. Also, the dungeon is about the only place where that encounter density is realistic. People get into what should be dangerous situations in other places too, but they dont feel dangerous unless you get the 6-8. Basically, the game is designed around a style of play many players don't want to engage in.

How many is "many players"? How does it compare to the number of players who do like that style, or the number who don't want to push to the max and don't care of that means the game isn't deadly?

And again, the game works just fine with fewer encounters, it will just won't be challenging if players aren't challenged, or deadly if characters aren't put I'm danger. Axiomatic stuff, really.