Your table is YOUR table.

[Theory of Games]

The beauty of our home games is that table is our sanctuary.

Naughty word what everyone else thinks

 

[VHawkwinter]

In the history of D&D, TSR/WotC have spent far more time taking the game away from directions I wanted the game to go than they have spent taking it in a direction I wanted to go.

As such, they've gotten a lot less money from me than they might have considering the amount of time I've spent playing a game inspired by the game they make but which isn't compatible with so many of their ideas.

For my part, I'd love to have companies that made things that catered to my tastes and I buy products from those that do, but I'd rather buy more than I do because it would imply that I've saved my own time in favor of paying someone else for theirs and I'd consider that a worthwhile trade.

But, well, I'm out of luck. WotC left me behind somewhere around 3.5e and not even full hand of things they've published since then have appealed to me or been purchased.

You make a lot of sense. I think WotC fell off around ~2005, and spent the last 20 years mostly experimenting with other stuff, and when I got WotC / Hasbro products, I've usually regretted them. (The Menzoberranzan setting rerelease between 4e and 5e and Elminster's Forgotten Realms were both pretty good, as was Lost Tales of Myth Drannor but those were very atypical products).

 

[VHawkwinter]

There's an obvious corollary to this, though... The farther that the game migrates from the tropes that we recognize and desire, the more justified we are in saying, screw it, I'm not a customer anymore.

Yeah, that's where I'm at. I might buy an occasional self-published Ed Greenwood Forgotten Realms book or some of those organised play adventures on DM's Guild, but that's about it for me for D&D branded stuff. Official D&D has put out one product I really liked since the end of 2012. It was Lost Tales of Myth Drannor - which only had a limited print run for GenCon and I had to order it PoD.

Speaking of which, I'd love to see some good data on adoption rates of 5.5 vs 5e. I'm 100% sure that it's not available yet, even if WotC have some early read on it. But I'm really curious. Certainly from my own perspective, it seems that WotC and the Greater Seattle RPG industry in general has been catering to a smaller crowd than they used to, and another crowd that's more vocal every day is calling them out for being left behind. But loudness on the internet never was a good gauge of what people generally are actually doing, so who knows? Most likely, all of these controversies aren't even on the radar at all of most gamers.

Of course, there could be other reasons why gamers are delaying purchase or adoption of 5.5 vs 5e that aren't related to internet controversies too.

It's not really about the internet controversy for me. I got off the 5e bus five years ago after intense disappointment with 5e (I didn't grab it when it first came out, I only grabbed it in 2018). I skipped 5e because while it made changes, none of the changes it made looked like they would fix any of my problems with 5e - and their take on the setting that was the main draw of their particular system for me specifically - playing the RPG that matched those old novels and comics and videogames I like - has just been generally bad, for a long time.

So I think it's bad mechanically, and bad setting-wise - and wasn't getting anything out of it five years ago. When I read the changes (I haven't played or run it), there are a few changes I liked worse, certainly, but nothing came up that made me thing I would like it more.