D&D (2024) What could OneD&D to bring YOU back to D&D? (+)

[payn]

The only people I find that love 5e are new players... BUT even they have a habit of stretching out and finding other systems (not normally other editions of D&D but that isn't never) they like more... and like my experience most find that others in there groups like different things better.

At the game shop that closed right before covid lock downs I had introduced a woman to 5e, and she ended up DMing for the first year of covid online, and then she got her group back in person... and she wanted to use Fate, and another wanted to use Essence?(I might have that name wrong) and another wanted to use Fudge (that I though that and Fate were the same shows what I know) and 2 wanted to stick with D*D... so they all stuck to D&D until her group fell apart only about a month ago. She is now trying to get a Fate group together with very little luck, but she has been invited to a Vampire V5 game I am trying to suggest she at least try.

of the slightly less then a dozen people I know that I brought into ttrpgs (all through 4e or 5e D&D) that didn't stay in my group but kep[t in touch this is not an abnormal story... they get into D&D want to branch out and find it hard to agree on what to branch too...

HOWEVER the biggest exception to this is a young man who was in the same group as that young woman when I introduced both to 5e.... he ended up playing in a 5e game for a bit then switched to running an OSR retroclone. I have not talked to him in over a year but last I heard he had a table of 6 players plus himself doing a OSR game.

I think the barrier, in my experience, is folks thinking they have to drag their D&D group over to another game. When I branched out it was always a combination of interested existing players and a search for new interested fans of other systems. If you limit yourself to the same folks, its not likely you will ever get to play something outside the collective interest.

 

[billd91]

The only people I find that love 5e are new players... BUT even they have a habit of stretching out and finding other systems (not normally other editions of D&D but that isn't never) they like more... and like my experience most find that others in there groups like different things better.

There are a lot more old veterans who love 5e than you think.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I think the barrier, in my experience, is folks thinking they have to drag their D&D group over to another game. When I branched out it was always a combination of interested existing players and a search for new interested fans of other systems. If you limit yourself to the same folks, its not likely you will ever get to play something outside the collective interest.

the thing is (for me) that as I get older I have less and less time to hang out. In my 20's I could have 5 different groups of friends with 5 different hobbies and still see and interact with all of them.
I am in my (lets call it mid) 40's, go back 15 years and I could have a board game group, a card shop group, 2 different Larps (one in door year around 1 outdoor sprin/summer only), 3 or 4 TTRPG games running (sometimes just a bunch of 1 shots like Pokethulu furry pirates and kobolds eat my baby, sometime deadlands, rifts, D&D) and little over lap between them and 0 overlap that was for all of them... and still date (occasionally) and play some basketball and do the chores my mom insisted I do, and still work.

Today I am in 2 nights of games, if we are going to do cards or board games it is on those nights INSTEAD of gaming... trying to do a 1/month game has proven to be impossible to schedule.

Why is that, because we own houses/condos... we have major Significant others (spouse or fiancé or at least long term living with) some of us have kids, and those that don't have kids adjacent (nieces and nephews) and the 'chores' are less assigned and more "I need to get this done" even the chores for the live alone ones are no longer "Gee I could not do laundry this week and wear these pants" for the most part.

So if I take my buddy Linda as an example... she didn't want to play 5e at all. So I have not seen or talked to her outside of facebook in almost 3 years... she still got a save the date for my wedding next May, and she messaged me her and her husband wouldn't miss it... but if we had still been playing 4e she would talk to us weekly.

another example is a friend that came BACK for 5e. Jim didn't like 4e. To this day he would prefer PF/3e. He though had found as his groups for PF broke up he didn't have a steady game... he came back and missed us all. He wanted to hang out. I saw him SLIGHTLY more during 4e and early 5e then I have Linda now (I mean no coivd helped but also his older brother stayed with our group for 4e/5e)


I don't know maybe it's just me, but I find I CAN'T keep 3 or 4 different groups of friends going in my 40s where I could have kept 10 groups in my 20s

 

[payn]

the thing is (for me) that as I get older I have less and less time to hang out. In my 20's I could have 5 different groups of friends with 5 different hobbies and still see and interact with all of them.
I am in my (lets call it mid) 40's, go back 15 years and I could have a board game group, a card shop group, 2 different Larps (one in door year around 1 outdoor sprin/summer only), 3 or 4 TTRPG games running (sometimes just a bunch of 1 shots like Pokethulu furry pirates and kobolds eat my baby, sometime deadlands, rifts, D&D) and little over lap between them and 0 overlap that was for all of them... and still date (occasionally) and play some basketball and do the chores my mom insisted I do, and still work.

Today I am in 2 nights of games, if we are going to do cards or board games it is on those nights INSTEAD of gaming... trying to do a 1/month game has proven to be impossible to schedule.

Why is that, because we own houses/condos... we have major Significant others (spouse or fiancé or at least long term living with) some of us have kids, and those that don't have kids adjacent (nieces and nephews) and the 'chores' are less assigned and more "I need to get this done" even the chores for the live alone ones are no longer "Gee I could not do laundry this week and wear these pants" for the most part.

So if I take my buddy Linda as an example... she didn't want to play 5e at all. So I have not seen or talked to her outside of facebook in almost 3 years... she still got a save the date for my wedding next May, and she messaged me her and her husband wouldn't miss it... but if we had still been playing 4e she would talk to us weekly.

another example is a friend that came BACK for 5e. Jim didn't like 4e. To this day he would prefer PF/3e. He though had found as his groups for PF broke up he didn't have a steady game... he came back and missed us all. He wanted to hang out. I saw him SLIGHTLY more during 4e and early 5e then I have Linda now (I mean no coivd helped but also his older brother stayed with our group for 4e/5e)


I don't know maybe it's just me, but I find I CAN'T keep 3 or 4 different groups of friends going in my 40s where I could have kept 10 groups in my 20s

I hear that. I find if I got the itch to run anything, I have to find the time and the people to play it. Nothing gets easier. Maybe there will be a gaming retirement community? Player turnover might be entirely different in that situation...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

There are a lot more old veterans who love 5e than you think.

I don't "think" anything about the numbers over all I am shareing my personal experience and you can't 'correct me' on my personal experience unless you are here with me

let me show what you THINK you are correcting here...

The only people I find that love 5e are new players...

I find... Aka it doesn't matter if I am the outlier or not (and be honest neither of us know who is and who isn't)

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I hear that. I find if I got the itch to run anything, I have to find the time and the people to play it. Nothing gets easier. Maybe there will be a gaming retirement community? Player turnover might be entirely different in that situation...

my buddies (current and those now just on FB/text) joke all the time that when we retire we will be back to gaming 4-5 times a week

 

[Ahks]

The only thing that would bring me to the new services is if they encourage 3rd party content and provide ROBUST tools for homebrew and external rule sets.

What WotC does now is exclusionary, insular, and monopolistic. [I'll just delete these 15 more lines of rant I typed up and spare everyone my opinions]

 

[ART!]

My group has been playing 5E weekly since January 2017, and we have a blast, but things about the game have started to bug me - especially now that I'm DMing again.

I honestly don't know. A new setting, maybe - but it would need to be something genuinely new, and even then I'm not really in the market for a new setting so may well just ignore it.

Only thing that might tempt me back to D&D would be a fantastic Dark Sun book. It's the only D&D setting or lore I've ever liked, and I like it a whole lot.

What I'd really like more than anythign else is a really good setting book. Not an overblown adventure with some setting information in it, but an honest-to-God full blown setting book.

A new or retooled older setting is something that would get me excited, too. I think the rules would need more ways to dial things up and down - and more variant rules options - to be able to make this work. Dark Sun's S&S vibe definitely appeals to me. Theoretically, their new multiverse approach should make new setting books more likely.

System-wise, I'd like a game that really includes the 3 pillars of play and ways to interact with those pillars outside of skill checks and spells.

Stronger support for exploration and social pillars, particularly for non-spellcasters.
More compelling and dynamic monster design.

100% agree!

I want systems for social and exploration play that have enough weight/heft that they warrant their own encounter builders - or better yet an encounter building tool that can switch from exploration to social to combat.

And a system that had more dynamic monster design would play right into that.

Make a rules lite system to accompany their young adventurer's guides

I think I would rather play that than the full rules!

Make it possible to get third-party publisher material in DDB and whatever VTT they release.

This would be amazing, and would be a big selling point for me and my group.

1) Make my life as a DM easier in terms of prep.

5E is one of the prep-heaviest modern RPGs, because you've got encounters (which should be balanced), NPCs (who don't have a great shorthand method), situations (with a real lack of generic systems to support that), traps, treasure/loot, and any monsters that are novel require a lot of effort to put together (unlike, in say, 4E's DDI where I could slap together a novel monster in literally 5 minutes - and it would work, mathematically and tactically).

Sweet Lord, yes. I find it kind of mind-numbing, really. See my comments above about a dynamic, multi-pillar encounter builder.

 

[Clint_L]

5e already did bring me back to D&D on a regular basis. Keeping me here...hmmm. I'm pretty invested as is. I'm not looking for big changes to the game; that would probably lose me. If the VTT is really good and intuitive to use, that could give me another avenue to find games if my current ones dry up.

Actually, scratch that; here's what I would like to see: WotC making a much bigger investment in the social side of D&D. I'm talking hosting/sponsoring regular fan gatherings all over the place. Have employees whose sole job is to foster community engagement and outreach in different regions, including making contact with all the FLGS and making sure that folks have ways to access the D&D community, if so inclined. Yeah, I don't think what is needed are drastic changes to the game, I think what is needed is much better commitment to the community.

 

[Emerikol]

Let's take a break, if for only one thread, from discussing corporate policies, the fears about the OGL changing, and monetization. I think what has brought most of us to this forum is a love of the hobby and (more than likely at some point) a love of D&D.
Not gonna lie, I'm burned out on 5e as a rules set. I think that's why I've been down so much on the playtests and direction of OneD&D - it's not changing enough to revitalize my interest.
When I saw the previews for 3.0, 4e, and 5e, each was different enough from its direct predecessors that I got excited for the changes. I don't feel the same way about OneD&D, even though I still get excited about new games from other publishers.
If you're a lapsed player - or simply a burned-out one like me - what would you like to see to get you excited?

I never adopted 5e and disliked 4e. I really haven't liked WOTC or it's approach to gaming since the 3e era (even 3.5e was a rip off). So I have little intention of picking up 5.5e. The new style of D&D just isn't the sort of game I'm looking for when I roleplay. They didn't address some key concerns when making 5e and that is why I abandoned the game at that time. When I heard about all their fantasy race alignment crap, I felt a distinct satisfaction that I had not bought into their system.

I suppose if Gary Gygax suddenly arises from the grave and WOTC decides to sell the whole game back to him I will check it out. Or some equivalent of that outcome.