D&D 5E Long time players and 5e’s success

[bloodtide]

I really don’t think it reasonable for them to tailor the game to only long time players. Not even an expectation.

However, they have thrown a bone here and there and it is good enough for me.

I am reacting to mostly commentary here and elsewhere that suggests longer term players “don’t matter” for the company and that as a result, their opinion is not pertinent.

I call bullsh*t on that.

This is what the "corporate wisdom" tells them: don't just ignore the long term players (or fans). All that matters is the new players(fans)! Plus they would say the "old" people don't buy stuff. A lot of the short term gamers will buy anything with D&D on the cover. The long term gamers will lookat the contents of the product before they buy it.

5E is a good example of a mixed game for "everyone" with the lite easy rules and the nice "DM just make stuff up", And the 'hard to kill characters" balanced vs the gritty variant.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

This is what the "corporate wisdom" tells them: don't just ignore the long term players (or fans). All that matters is the new players(fans)! Plus they would say the "old" people don't buy stuff. A lot of the short term gamers will buy anything with D&D on the cover. The long term gamers will lookat the contents of the product before they buy it.

5E is a good example of a mixed game for "everyone" with the lite easy rules and the nice "DM just make stuff up", And the 'hard to kill characters" balanced vs the gritty variant.

What amazes me is how it pleases a lot of people but depending on who you ask it’s either too old fashioned or has changed too much.

My whole thesis is not that it is perfect but that it has not “abandoned” long term players by any stretch.

Incidentally, I totally respect people leaving for Pathfinder, 4e, Becmi, OSRIC, DCC…whatever.

I just do not think WOTC has ignored long term fans nor is done with them.

Are there things I don’t like with the new direction? Absolutely. But I know my options and don’t need to avoid reality to state my likes or dislikes.

 

[Older Beholder]

The only people I ever notice saying older players are irrelevant are the older players themselves.

 

[Incenjucar]

I mostly only grumble that the kids don't have it as good as we did back in the day with official content, but I'm so happy the indie space is thriving.

 

[MNblockhead]

I am not 50 yet, but it is not surprising. You either have kids or you are in the prime of your career and your time is limited. Also, you do not meet people like when you were younger. I am lucky enough that I can still easily form a group from folks who I have known for a long time but can you imagine a 50 year old sitting down to a table with a college kid?

Judging by some of the comments I have seen, the college kid would not go for it and there is not a lot in common there.

Yep. Do it all the time. Never had an issue.

Now that is usually me as a player. Maybe younger players would not to play in my games. But most older players would also not like to play in my games. I find personal play preferences matter more than age. Regardless of age, I'm not sure many players are interested in the hours-long combat and complicated politics that my campaigns typically contain.

 

[MNblockhead]

When we run the "kids" games, or when they run their own we do not apply our "rules" to them. The kids can play pretty much whatever races/classes they want, or we pick settings that fits better. Like we did an old school Spelljammer full on campaign so the kids could pick more funky races. We had a bugbear and a tabaxi, a construct and others, no problem, it was a super fun campaign.

But when we play without the kids, we set up the "worlds" with a lot more care to setting appropriate races/classes because we find that super fun and interesting.

We? In the 1980s I was part of a large group of friends in high school that were interested in TTRPGs. We had multiple campaigns in multiple systems. Some were highly restrictive to hew to the DMs vision of the world. Other were anything goes, string together a "campaign" from a various modules.

Since I've gotten back into gaming with 5e, I've run campaigns in highly curated homebrew settings with strict race and class limts, published WotC adventures with some limitations but mostly any official published options, and a gonzo campaign in a third-party publisher megadungeon with homebrewed character races (one character was a Worg, who ran into a curse giving her goat feet, and then contracted were-tiger lycanthropy).

Whenever I read these arguments I always find myself wondering incredulously whether such a large percentage of TTRPG gamers, of any generation, really limit themselves to just one style of campaign, year after year.

 

[MNblockhead]

It's fascinating to read these few posts from outsider perspective. I grew up in Croatia, good old Balkans. Land of chaos and insanity. My HS years were in early to mid 2000s.

Yes, D&D did attract fair number of geek guys who were into stem hs and also crowd from art hs. But most of people i played with were also into heavy/thrash/power metal, playing music, partying, had decent sucess with girls.

Other very popular rpg at the time, and my first ever, was V:tM. Goth/black/doom metal crowd mostly and decent amount of goth girls played it.

We never had that jock/geek stuff. There was divide by subcultures ( punks, skins, metalheads, football ultras, golden youth etc) but if you were hanging out in the hood, you would probably be ok with everyone. It wasnt uncomon to see metalhead, casual and skinhead chilling together at the park bench sharing booze.

No one gave a flying f if you had geeky hobies.

Metal-head gamers were a big part of the culture in the 80s in the US. At least where I grew up. It is another thing Stranger Things did a good job capturing. D&D brought together metal-heads, STEM nerds, and drama kids; three groups that didn't really interact much outside of the D&D games.

 

[MNblockhead]

See, here's the thing. Being bullied for liking D&D back in the 1980s doesn't give you a pass on how you behave now, particularly when it comes to inclusiveness and other forms of problematic behavior. Guys like Ernie Gygax got themselves into the public doghouse by saying stupid, transphobic things and then digging in even when friends and family tried to intervene and talk him down. People who do that get what they deserve because otherwise they'd serve as gatekeepers pushing even more vulnerable people than themselves away from the hobby.

I've been playing since 1981 and the hobby is far and away a lot more inclusive than it was when I started. There are many more women, many more ethnic minorities, and many more LGBTQ+ people than when it was mostly us white nerdboys. And they deserve the protection a strong push toward inclusiveness gives them even if it makes certain members of more privileged older generations uncomfortable. That's why I wear my rainbow logo Gamehole Con t-shirt (and support Alex to the fullest as he maintains a strongly inclusive convention). And if anybody has a problem with that or any of the queer kids playing at my table (or women, or minorities, etc), they had better dummy up about it while sitting in my game and behave themselves. Because if I catch one word about it, out they go with the rest of the trash.

I think gaming got more inclusive because society got more inclusive. But in the 80s, the D&D groups were far more inclusive than nearly any high-school clique I can think of (except, maybe, the drama kids?). Of course, take this observation with all the normal caveats about personal experience, regional differences, anecdotal evidence, etc.

 

[MNblockhead]

This thread is kind of interesting to me because I don't feel like 5e was built to cater to younger players, I'm 30 and it feels like it was built to cater to someone older than me and the 20/30 somethings that make up my extended playgroup and 2024 feels like as small a step toward something a little younger as possible and only because I've heard they're wrapping in the psionic subclasses and some other more magical options in core.

I feel like its built to cater to people who were teenagers before and towards the beginning of third edition or who would have nostalgia for the eighties maybe: low balance, low numbers of total character options, do-it-yourself sensibility, decidedly muted inspirations from anything like anime or current video games in favor of a nostalgic aesthetic in the artwork.

I felt like 4e, the edition I started with in my sophmore year of high school (2010), was the one actively built to appeal to younger players, we were very... unenthused when 5e was coming out, it felt like a huge step into the past, and while I played it for a handful of years for unrelated reasons, it eventually validated my feelings about it and I ended up being like yeah, should have listened to college me.

I'm in my early 50s and it is catering to me just fine. I would like to see the DMG offer more tools to run different styles of campaigns. The current DMG is rather light in the regard and fell pretty flat. I'm fine with bog-standard 5e D&D, but like to mike things up from campaign to campaign. There has been nothing WotC has published that has made me feel excluded or unable to run the type of game I want to run.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

The only people I ever notice saying older players are irrelevant are the older players themselves.

Yeah really. Anyone who thinks WotC is going to somehow not care about the group of people with the most discretionary money to spend, really isn't giving corporate greed enough credit