WotC WotC needs an Elon Musk

[Lanefan]

In a word: bullpoop.

There is this myth that D&D in the past was some grand test of grit, skill and luck.

Not a myth, but also not as extreme as the following quote:

You sent dozens of PCs into the dungeon wood chipper and eventually you ended up with a group of hyper paranoid 2nd level PCs who would steal every item worth a gold piece, avoid almost any action with even a whiff of risk, and were the 2nd biggest source of henchmen paychecks aside from monarchy and evil overlords.

Risk mitigation, resource management, and making a buck. Sounds like adventuring to me.

That's not how the game was played for the majority of its lifespan. It was played like Dragonlance.

By those who bought into the Dragonlance style of play, and our experiences probably vary greatly there.

Adventures were fairly linear, highly narrative,

Other than the DL series, there wasn't much narrative in most 1e adventures; and the DL adventures are pretty much pure railroads. There was some linear design now and then, but I see that as poor adventure writing rather than something worth praising.

2e adventures leaned a bit more into the narrative, often by giving loads of backstory that I'd have to strip away so I could fit the adventure into my own setting and its emergent story/stories.

and focused on the PCs doing epic things and fighting powerful monsters.

D&D has always been about fighting powerful monsters. The "epic things" piece is entirely optional.

 

[Lanefan]

I've been playing at least weekly since 1983. I never had a character get past 7th level until 3e. Now a character that doesn't make it past 7th level(In games that don't restart at that point) is almost as rare as chupacabra or unicorn.

I got a character to 11th in 1e in the 1980s. I got another character to 11th in 3e in the 2000s. It took until the 2020s, again in 1e, for me to get one to 12th; with two 11ths right behind him.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm not trying to knock your preference (there is no one true way), but as a player I would hate running more than one character.

At a time, or cycling them in and out (i.e. play one for an adventure, flip it for another for the next adventure, etc.)?

In 1e characters are simple enough that I can usually handle running two at once; and often prefer to do this if I can 'cause I know all too well that I'm probably gonna kill one of 'em off in no time, and having the second means I can still play.

I found in 3e running two side-along became bloody difficult after about 6th-8th level as they got more and more complex.

 

[Oofta]

I'm glad you have a ruleset you like, but you're acting like your way is objectively better and everyone should just accept your point of view. The 1e style is a perfectly good way, played by many still today.

The "kill 'em all let the players sort it out" style of play is one I've only ever seen once, and I've been playing since the 70s. We didn't come from a wargamer background, we came from Tolkien, Lieber and Howard. Across multiple DMs in multiple states, the body count was fairly low and we told stories of epic-ish adventure, not killer death trap dungeons. I think you're coming from a very unique background that even back in the day was a minority from my experience.

That one killer DM? Only ran one game because all the players hated it. There's nothing wrong with different styles and opinions, but most people acknowledge when they are in the minority. D&D is already a niche game, they aren't going to cater to a small minority in a niche any more than they already have. If you want a gritty game there are already optional rules in the DMG for lingering injuries, slow healing and so on.

The killer game isn't inherently better or worse, but it was never particularly popular. It would make no sense to continue to push killer dungeons as the default when it's not what the vast majority of people don't want. I don't think the majority of people ever wanted it from my experience.

 

[Oofta]

The problem for me Oofta is that it was an advertised design goal, like it or not, and I can forgive them for the DMG lacking in those expected modular options, but what exactly has WotC done since to make good on that promise?

We constantly look at 3pp product to satiate our wants because honestly WotC, I feel, has no clue.

One person talking off the cuff about pie-in-the-sky plans that never saw the light of day is not "advertising". There's very little benefit with fairly large risk to push alternate rules. That's okay for 3PP products, many of which are hobbies or just part of a diverse portfolio. But WOTC would hurt the core brand if they push "official" rules that don't work for most people. Meanwhile Joe the Designer can develop something for those niche players and if they sell a few thousand copies they're happy and their target niche is happy.

WOTC isn't developing a boutique game or bespoke rules. WOTC is the mass publisher who, fortunately for those who want something different, fully support those people who want to cater to the minority. Rules don't have to come from WOTC to be good.

 

[Oofta]

I always think of Monte Cook and his "promise" of modularity, when I see people criticize the developers for "corporate speak", or for not specifically laying out all their plans for the OGL and 3PPs, before they have even finished writing the rules.

For a brief moment 5E had a developer who didn't speak in "corporate speak", who spoke plainly and passionately about him goals and plans for his vision of the game. He spoke off the cuff, without carefully choosing his words, and he spoke about what he saw as the ideal game of D&D. Fully modular, you can swap out any part with a wide range of different options. You can also play any style of character you want, from a 1st edition fighter, to a 3rd edition wizard, to a 4th edition fighter. You can also play all of the different types of characters at the same table, and they will all be balanced. He promised the world. Who doesn't want the world?

Unfortunately it is a lot easier to promise the world than to deliver it is to deliver it. Sometimes no matter how cool something sounds at first blush, it just doesn't end up being possible because of certain constraints like time, money, page space, complexity, etc. Even if something wasn't actually possible from the start, people are still going to blame you and accuse you breaking your promises if you fail to deliver. Is it any wonder that the developers tend to be a bit cautious and rehearsed when speaking publicly about the future of the game.

To somehow bring things back on topic, it kind of sounds a bit like a certain famous billionaire, with his self-driving cars by the end of the year(a claim make yearly, for the last decade), or his highspeed, vacuum tube Hyperloop(which ended up as a low speed tesla running down a tunnel dug by a second-hand Chinese sewer tunnel borer).

So no, I don't think that D&D needs a "visionary leader" to lead us boldly into the future.

(Proof reading this I realized, that while trying to be clever and tie things back to Elon, I was meaner to Monte Cook than he deserves. I might not like some of his games and his game design theory, but he is certainly no Elon. He is certainly passionate about D&D and I have not heard anything bad about him personally. I just don't think a large corporation like WotC is a good fit for him. He seems much happier running his own company.)

Long ago when I was still new at software development I learned some hard lessons on communication. One of those was that it is incredibly easy to overpromise. You get on a new project, you're excited about it and want to make everyone happy. The problem is you get a little carried away and then the next thing you know you're chatting about some alternatives the group has been brainstorming about and the customer takes it as a "promise".

In addition, according to an interview with Monte Cook, when he originally joined he thought they had planned on a much larger team and a much larger scope for the initial release. Apparently there was a change of plans at some point and project budgets and plans were scaled back. It happens, and in this case I think it was the right decision since it led to the growth we are still benefiting from today. If the game had been more modular it also would have been more complex and difficult to grasp. The success of 5E caught everyone by surprise, I don't think we would have seen the same growth with a less focused game.

So the team may very well have been excited about a game with much broader scope. But when you actually get down to the nitty gritty of how to implement those ideas, try to turn white board concepts into something functional, reality sets in and you realize it just isn't going to happen. Meanwhile, I can capture the essence of most of my old (non-4E) characters. They don't use exactly the old rules, but the old rules were incompatible enough that I don't see how they possibly could.

Last, but not least, most people playing D&D today have never played an older edition. This idea of playing characters from older editions would have gained them nothing while simultaneously making it tremendously difficult for the rules and a DM to balance out everything.

 

[Remathilis]

I'm glad you have a ruleset you like, but you're acting like your way is objectively better and everyone should just accept your point of view. The 1e style is a perfectly good way, played by many still today.

I'm arguing that D&D itself found my point of view was more popular back in the 80's, and the bulk of D&D's history is a mishmash of rules that promote one style of play and supplements and modules that support another. As the game has gotten more redesigns, it has attempted to resolve that conflict, much to the expense of the older and less played method. Objectively better? Whose to say? The style of play that's been dominant for 30+ years? Absolutely and I have no problems with the game continuing down the path it forged long ago.

As stated, there are plenty of retro games that aim to recreate that style Gary intended, but D&D abandoned it long ago.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That style of play (perfectly good as it is for many people—that aren't me) didn't even survive (as being the default style) the full length of 1e, either. The Hickman Revolution and all that (which happen a year or two before I started playing BECMI & 1e in late '86). Increasingly narrative modules were becoming more common and were setting the stage for 2e.

It did survive; it was just quickly joined by other styles. You folks are acting like 1e style play just died decades ago.

 

[Oofta]

It did survive; it was just quickly joined by other styles. You folks are acting like 1e style play just died decades ago.

Actually I'm saying that in my experience, it was never a given going back to the 70s. It certainly wasn't widespread in the 80s or later. There have always been multiple ways of playing. We just had to work around the game rules to play the game we wanted, whether we realized it or not.

Fortunately there are now many options to play different styles. The most popular style
Is supported by the mass market WOTC published rules and are not what you want without using the alternate rules provided in the DMG. For other options you can easily look to OSR or to other options.

There have always been multiple styles. There still are, but there are more options than ever to support those styles.

 

[codo]

I'm arguing that D&D itself found my point of view was more popular back in the 80's, and the bulk of D&D's history is a mishmash of rules that promote one style of play and supplements and modules that support another. As the game has gotten more redesigns, it has attempted to resolve that conflict, much to the expense of the older and less played method. Objectively better? Whose to say? The style of play that's been dominant for 30+ years? Absolutely and I have no problems with the game continuing down the path it forged long ago.

As stated, there are plenty of retro games that aim to recreate that style Gary intended, but D&D abandoned it long ago.

D&D abandoned primarily focusing on that style of games and became the most popular rpg ever. Seems like a good decision to me.

The people who get to decide if a play style is "objectively better" or not are the players who buy the game. And the players have spoken in resounding numbers that 5e is a success. I am sorry but a strategy of abandoning 5e and going back to to focusing of the playstyle popular in the 80s, that helped bankrupt TSR, by the way, is not a winning strategy.

Luckily WotC is not the only company making rpgs. There is the OSR, an entire movement of game designers focusing on the style of game you enjoy.