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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 8633268" data-attributes="member: 59082">Yes, true - but it was, in my view, an attempt to update D&D to a more contemporary context. And as I said earlier in this thread or another, a lot of this was Jonathan Tweet, who worked on Ars Magica with its clear dice roll + attribute + skill mechanic, and also Talislanta, which also had a really clean and simple d20+ mechanic.By the end of the 90s, D&D was a rambling, anachronistic heap - loveable, of course, but messy. I think the main impetus behind 3E--from a design perspective--was to clean it up and update it. And of course with that core d20 mechanic, we had the d20/OGL "revolution."It isn't only about raw sales, though - it is also about the cohesion of the D&D community. 4E fractured the base unlike any edition before or since. And I wouldn't blame Paizo - Pathfinder was a response to 4E's mixed reception, not a cause of it. In other words, they filled a need: for folks who were basically happy with 3.5 and wanted 4E to be a revision of it, not a revolution.And of course this is supported by the fact that 5E essentially brought the band back together, and a large part of that was through going back to a more "traditional" version of D&D, at least relative to 4E. Pathfinder diehards kept their subscriptions, but I'm guessing a lot of them were more amenable to playing 5E than they were 4E (not to mention retro-cloners, etc). With regards to cultural forces and celebrities, I was referring to 5E. There's still a mystery of how 5E became the phenomenon that it is, and I'm saying those are factors. Back in 2008, there was no Critical Role, no sexy True Blood stars sharing videos of D&D uber-rooms or having Tolkien geek-offs with Stephen Colbert. And, I would argue, there wasn't the same thirst for it in the younger folk - they were happy with their Nintendos and iPhones and Warcraft. Fast-forward to 2014-18 and we have a different cultural climate - for whatever reasons. I'm not saying that the celebrity factor was primary, but it helped - and was part of a rising tide.Clearly we'll never know, but my point is that if A) the bulk of D&D's current base are people who are new to it with 5E, and thus younger, and B) there was a cultural/generational thirst for an organic game of story and imagination in 2018ish that wasn't there a decade before, and C) most of the folks who had a problem with 4E were older/long-time players, then D) 4E might have done just as well as 5E, at least as far as the new generation of players is concerned.</blockquote>

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