D&D General Why Enworld should liberate D&D from Hasbro

[AlViking]

...

There has been no edition of the game that folks didn't housecleaning up, down, and sideways.

Used to be that was seen as a feature, not a bug.

Some of us still see it as a feature and one of the reasons we still play the game, especially when for various reasons we have limited options.

 

[Desdichado]

Goodness, no, it is not. Much the opposite, Gary's original vision is very much a thing of its time, and times have changed.

D&D is like going toa modern club dressed in your best 70s Disco togs.

More like modern D&D is a very niche, weird club while older D&D plays with timeless themes... admittedly with some 70s and 80s baggage in how exactly its presented. Even the mantra of "5e is the best-selling edition of D&D ever" isn't accurate at all; Basic (admittedly, I'm playing a little fast and loose with what counts as basic, but Ben Riggs did so when he presented the data, so there it is) outsold it by considerably more than 2x. And 1e AD&D sold about as well as 5e if you round a little bit.

 

[bedir than]

More like modern D&D is a very niche, weird club while older D&D plays with timeless themes... admittedly with some 70s and 80s baggage in how exactly its presented. Even the mantra of "5e is the best-selling edition of D&D ever" isn't accurate at all; Basic (admittedly, I'm playing a little fast and loose with what counts as basic, but Ben Riggs did so when he presented the data, so there it is) outsold it by considerably more than 2x. And 1e AD&D sold about as well as 5e if you round a little bit.

Do you have citations for this?

 

[WinningerR]

Even the mantra of "5e is the best-selling edition of D&D ever" isn't accurate at all; Basic (admittedly, I'm playing a little fast and loose with what counts as basic, but Ben Riggs did so when he presented the data, so there it is) outsold it by considerably more than 2x. And 1e AD&D sold about as well as 5e if you round a little bit.

Neither of those assertions is even close to true.

 

[aiouh]

(...)
Yet here some are, posts and arguments worried about stopping me instead of stopping Hasbro.
Enworld has the knowledge to repair the rules, run the games, and punish the munchkins.
Enworld could save more games in a single year then WOTC could in a hundred.
WOTC is failing this game and its players. Thousands of games die every day while Enworld rule is resisted.
Or do those games not matter to you?

Getting back on topic:

Who are the munchkins and why do they deserve punishment? What should the punishment look like?

 

[Cergorach]

I also don't know why we have to put so much weight on Hasbro for our RPG fun time. There are so many awesome RPGs with so many different feelings and flavors going on. Let's elevate those!

Here are some that have my attention that run a wide range of playstyles in the fantasy RPG world

• Shadowdark
• Dragonbane
• Shadow of the Weird Wizard
• 13th Age
• Cairn
• Daggerheart
• The One Ring
• Land of Eem

I know, there are other games, besides D&D... Things like The Spire/Heart, Mothership, etc. are still on my wishlist to play with my group. And I suspect that a Pathfinder 2e would serve well as a replacement for D&D, but none of your options and the games I mentioned are actually D&D. And that's what we're discussing here.

Many of us have (unhealthy) attachments to D&D, for most of us it's perfectly fine to either play the most recent version or an older version. So why care about WotC in the first place, they either make something you like, you use something you liked from the past or you move on to something else... You could play with the PF2e rules perfectly fine in Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, or even Planescape IF you really wanted.

I personally find something like 'Daggerheart' a populist abomination. The worst I do is share my view when someone else absolutely has to tout it as the best thing since vanilla ice cream. Overall, I just ignore it, just as with many of the things I do not like about D&D and WotC/Hasbro. Not trying to change them, let people and companies be what they want to be. Not trying to buy them to destroy them, etc.

Overall, late last year, I was seriously considering pushing within the group to skip D&D 5e 2024 and move to PF2e, there was even some independent interest in PF2e from within the group. But after we collectively got our hands on the new PHB, we decided to move after we talked it over amongst ourselves.

D&D is like going toa modern club dressed in your best 70s Disco togs.

in a Beegees voice Oh Yeah!

Old things always come back in vogue, it's just that a lot of the old baggage is no longer appreciated. Something a lot of folks seem to forget...

 

[Gradine]

 

[Cergorach]

More like modern D&D is a very niche, weird club while older D&D plays with timeless themes... admittedly with some 70s and 80s baggage in how exactly its presented. Even the mantra of "5e is the best-selling edition of D&D ever" isn't accurate at all; Basic (admittedly, I'm playing a little fast and loose with what counts as basic, but Ben Riggs did so when he presented the data, so there it is) outsold it by considerably more than 2x. And 1e AD&D sold about as well as 5e if you round a little bit.

Data from: D&D Historical Sales Data

In all, TSR had five items that sold over a million units each:

1. AD&D Players Handbook, 1st edition (1.57 million)
2. AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, 1st edition (1.33 million)
3. D&D Basic Set - Moldvay edit (1.26 million)
4. AD&D Monster Manual, 1st edition (1.16 million)
5. D&D Basic Set - Mentzer edit (1.1 million)

Additionally, another 6 products sold over 500,000 units apiece:

1. AD&D Player's Handbook, 2nd edition (776K)
2. D&D Basic Set - Holmes edit (639K)
3. D&D Expert Set - Cook/Marsh edit (619K)
4. AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, 2nd edition (543K)
5. AD&D Monster Manual II (541K)
6. D&D Companion Set (537K)

The three D&D Basic Sets combined sold about 3 million units.

Apparently D&D 5e 2014 PHB had sold 1.6 million copies with one year still left in distribution IN JUST THE US BIG BOX RETAIL STORES. And then you add in all the DND Beyond direct and digital sales, all the VTT sales (which weren't around in the Basic, 1e, and 2e eras).
Source: D&D 5E (2014) - 5E Lifetime Sales in North American Big Box Stores Revealed

D&D was pretty darned popular in it's time, but per book 2e sold worse then 1e, and worse then Basic. I don't have hard numbers from WotC itself, but to me it seems that if from just the big box retail stores 5e was already doing so well two years ago, just adding global sales, small game store sales, digital sales, direct sales, etc. together, chances are good that 5e (2014+2024) outsells even the combined Basic box sales. I still have my red Dutch D&D box, I still have my AD&D 2e PHB, I actually don't own a physical version of the 5e 2024 books, just the digital versions for FVTT.

Reality doesn't change because you try to shout loud enough...

 

[Umbran]

Even the mantra of "5e is the best-selling edition of D&D ever" isn't accurate at all; Basic (admittedly, I'm playing a little fast and loose with what counts as basic, but Ben Riggs did so when he presented the data, so there it is) outsold it by considerably more than 2x. And 1e AD&D sold about as well as 5e if you round a little bit.

You're going to need some evidence behind that if you want folks to accept it as correct.

 

[Umbran]

More like modern D&D is a very niche, weird club while older D&D plays with timeless themes...

What, exactly, do you think makes it weird?