Quote from: Stegosaurus;1079537I guess that depends on what you mean by "D&D". I feel like we're already living in a post D&D world. I like D&D 5e for what it is, but after reading through the OD&D booklets I don't see how it's the same game. It's a tangentially related ttrpg with the same brand name.

Welcome aboard Stegosaurus!

As I see it, 0e-2e was D&D, then WotC made 3 highly different RPGs with the name D&D. [I am NOT debating quality of the games, just that they were notably different from each other] The entire hate around 4e was not its design, but the fact it was named D&D when so many gamers associated the name D&D with either TSR D&D or 3e. I greatly enjoyed 4e, but it should have been been called Dragonstrike! or Dungeon Storm! and released as its own game line while WotC did 3.75 instead of letting Paizo eat its lunch.

Quote from: Omega;1079565Bemusingly quite a few of the indie and 2md tier comics have gotten cartoons and even movies. For a while they were more present than Marvel or DC.

Omega, I stand corrected. I totally forgot about most of those movies which is shameful because I absolutely love the Rocketeer.

Quote from: Motorskills;1079582Something that has raised 7 million dollars is going to raise eyebrows outside the hobby, and will (eventually) have a direct impact on the hobby itself.

I agree.

As a teen, I found the D&D cartoon extremely cringeworthy, but over the years, I've met numerous gamers who saw the cartoon and then found the hobby. Much like the old D&D video games brought in players. I've been a 40k player since the early days and over the decades, I've met plenty of 40kers who first learned about the universe via video games, not even knowing a tabletop game existed.

If the CR Animated Series is halfway decent fantasy entertainment, it will probably draw some level of new players. If its a quality Netflix show? Maybe even translated into other languages? Then its reach could be monumental.

Quote from: S'mon;1079552What's the SJW Total Fertility Rate? Around 0.1?

They don't have children themselves, they indoctrinate other people's children in the schools. It worked really well on the millennials, but luckily Gen Z seems to have wised up to the fact  that the SJWs are actually The Man trying to put a boot on their throats.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1079261Without D&D, the hobby will be so small that no one will even try to make an RPG. It's happening how where the biggest game store in Dallas, Madness, went from 8 shelves of RPG products, down to 4, and is now at just 2. All in about 10 years. Most of their RPG section is miniatures.  The same thing happened to comics which is how half the size that it used to be.

Meanwhile, the boardgame section has grown to fill all that space.

The future of RPGs is some split between boardgames and video games.

Is that really an indication of a declining popularity in RPGs, or just a reflection of the fact that:

• The vast majority of RPGs are now produced through Kickstarters that leave little, if any, stock for stores
• The era of the supplement bloat promoted by the the original OGL are over, the trend is now for fewer (but more expensive) books in a game line
• Many more people are playing D&D than they were, and so the 'vital lines' for a store have been compressed down to a smaller number

My own FLGS has similarly switched a lot of shelf space over to board games, but that's because board games have become popular enough that they can attract custom off the street. Meanwhile RPG books are ordered directly for the people that want them (they still have 5-6 shelves of RPG books).

To me it feels like we are in a gaming renaissance, not a downturn. Four new gaming stores have opened in my city in the past decade. I can't keep up with the number of interesting kickstarters, and when I look at Actual Play forums I don't even recognise half the systems being used.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1079608They don't have children themselves, they indoctrinate other people's children in the schools. It worked really well on the millennials, but luckily Gen Z seems to have wised up to the fact  that the SJWs are actually The Man trying to put a boot on their throats.

Agreed. Although my son says only he and one other boy in his class are 'conservative' (ie more right wing than me).
Still, Youtube and Meme culture are having a big impact.

Thank you.

To be fair, I kind of get Pundit's point. The thing is, it's definitely not mutually exclusive and it changes with time. There have been times in my life where I would say my enjoyment of the brand has been entirely reading novels. Other times, I spent hundreds of hours learning the rules, creating characters, creating worlds and adventures, and then playing the game with friends. I won't deny that my enjoyment of these products is primarily reading rule books at this point. I'm not a college age kid with friends interested in the hobby. I'm a middle aged man with problems and few friends. That said, I would like to believe that my opinions on the actual game have merit since I have actually played various editions of the game and read rule books for fun. Other fans of the brand like my wife have zero interest in the actual game anymore. Or rather, they would only play it if they had friends that wanted to play it. They don't want to read rules. They don't have any interest in the systems. They just want to do something social with friends. They would be better served by a simple system like Swords & Wizardry Continual Light.

However, it is an unfortunate fact that many of these low interest gamers are incredibly vocal online and more than happy to fill out surveys that will influence the direction the hobby takes. They've latched on to the D&D brand and they won't let go even if there's twenty game systems that will suit their needs better. It's why I myself have wished for an even simpler D&D 5e in hardcover! It's why I've argued with people that the free basic rules are a better game for most people than the fully fleshed out features in the core books! There needs to be an official Basic Dungeons & Dragons for fans of the hobby that have a very different interest in the game than hardcore gamers. The sickly starter set isn't a solution.

The irony of this all is that I could point to dozens to other systems that are perfect for them.

They don't care because...

It's not D&D.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1079593Welcome aboard Stegosaurus!

As I see it, 0e-2e was D&D, then WotC made 3 highly different RPGs with the name D&D. [I am NOT debating quality of the games, just that they were notably different from each other] The entire hate around 4e was not its design, but the fact it was named D&D when so many gamers associated the name D&D with either TSR D&D or 3e. I greatly enjoyed 4e, but it should have been been called Dragonstrike! or Dungeon Storm! and released as its own game line while WotC did 3.75 instead of letting Paizo eat its lunch.

Thanks. I want to be clear that I don't particularly dislike any edition of the game. I kind of like them all for what they are. I just feel like they aren't the same game. I see why they keep calling it "Dungeons & Dragons". It makes them money. One thing I will argue about endlessly though is how most editions were actually mismatched games for the vast majority of people that buy the books. It's not that the games aren't great with the right people. It's that they're not the right game for Bob, Joe, and Jane that want to drink and hangout with friends without doing homework. The worst experience was when I was a mature student in college. D&D 3.5 was out and we played it. The time wasted on preparing the game, character creation, and learning the rules was absurd.

The next time I get enough interested people in a room together I'm not wasting their time with bulky systems.

I'm going to pull out Holmes or S&W Light.

Quote from: Stegosaurus;1079650Thanks. I want to be clear that I don't particularly dislike any edition of the game. I kind of like them all for what they are. I just feel like they aren't the same game. I see why they keep calling it "Dungeons & Dragons". It makes them money. One thing I will argue about endlessly though is how most editions were actually mismatched games for the vast majority of people that buy the books. It's not that the games aren't great with the right people. It's that they're not the right game for Bob, Joe, and Jane that want to drink and hangout with friends without doing homework. The worst experience was when I was a mature student in college. D&D 3.5 was out and we played it. The time wasted on preparing the game, character creation, and learning the rules was absurd.

   WotC intended to position D&D as the "experts' roleplaying game," back in the 3.0/3.5 era, but their plans for a bunch of leadup games for younger players fell through.

  But D&D has a long history of being mismatched not only to its audience, but its own support material. 2E and 4E were probably the worst eras for this.

Given the huge influx of new players, most of them casual gamers or non-gamers, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a streamlined, more accessible iteration of D&D published in the next 2-3 years. I'd expect it would be more character and story based, with much simpler combat rules.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1079656WotC intended to position D&D as the "experts' roleplaying game," back in the 3.0/3.5 era, but their plans for a bunch of leadup games for younger players fell through.

  But D&D has a long history of being mismatched not only to its audience, but its own support material. 2E and 4E were probably the worst eras for this.

Interesting. I didn't know this about 3.0. I do know when I started with AD&D 2e I went straight to the hardcover books. It was way over my head at the time. I had zero introduction to the hobby. I had never played it before those books. I envy people that started with something like Holmes or B/X. I recently acquired a copy of Holmes and I really love it as an introduction. It's a shame TSR messed with the original draft so much. They made it much more confusing than it had to be.

Quote from: Stegosaurus;1079667Interesting. I didn't know this about 3.0. I do know when I started with AD&D 2e I went straight to the hardcover books. It was way over my head at the time. I had zero introduction to the hobby. I had never played it before those books. I envy people that started with something like Holmes or B/X. I recently acquired a copy of Holmes and I really love it as an introduction. It's a shame TSR messed with the original draft so much. They made it much more confusing than it had to be.

   My friends and I started with a 1E PHB, 2E DMG and Monstrous Compendium, and some bits of tradition from some older relatives of theirs. It was a mess, but we muddled through. Getting a hold of the 2E PHB eventually was a big help, and I remember having positive impressions of the Big Black Box when they acquired a copy.

Quote from: Haffrung;1079657Given the huge influx of new players, most of them casual gamers or non-gamers, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a streamlined, more accessible iteration of D&D published in the next 2-3 years. I'd expect it would be more character and story based, with much simpler combat rules.

I suspect they'll try and mess it up in some quite bizarre way.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1079453If DC and Marvel vanished, comics would be fine.

If you don't believe me, visit a comic book shop and check out what the 2nd tier / small press are doing. Bet you find something you enjoy.

Given that 10% of these stores are closing a year, soon they won't be existing for the Indies to sell their books.

Off topic:  The Direct Market for comics is dead.  If Marvel and DC vanish, so will comic stores that don't dip into something else, like Board Games.  Will the comic industry also be dead?  The major titles may survive, especially the Marvel ones, as Disney is not afraid to shovel out it's IP to other companies for they sweet, sweet licensing money.  Which is effectively free money for the owners, it's why gaming companies like EA are allowed to retain them for at least a decade, despite their products being lackluster.  Marvel has already started an experiment by giving a Child friendly version of Spider-Man run to IDW, testing the waters to see if Marvel needs to be it's own company, rather than an IP farm like most of their other properties.

As for Entriest destroying D&D, that depends on what they can get to change.  The last two WoTC adventure books had a genderfluid nature druid (NO!  Nature Gods are about nature, and promoting a mental illness kills breeding potential, stop!  Get some help), a homosexual couple of Genasi smiths.  And I believe a couple of homosexual behind the screen moments in Mad Mage.  All of which to be honest are completely necessary, as most players won't even care about these NPCs to even bother with them beyond the surface interactions.  It's like that convenience store clerk you go regularly for your incidentals.  You might see him/her every time, but for the most part you know, or care about, nothing of their lives or interests beyond some small talk.

Quote from: Stegosaurus;1079667Interesting. I didn't know this about 3.0. I do know when I started with AD&D 2e I went straight to the hardcover books. It was way over my head at the time. I had zero introduction to the hobby. I had never played it before those books. I envy people that started with something like Holmes or B/X. I recently acquired a copy of Holmes and I really love it as an introduction. It's a shame TSR messed with the original draft so much. They made it much more confusing than it had to be.

The term 'System Mastery' was thrown about during that era, which implies knowing the system well enough to mangle it into something functional within the rules.  Which requires memorization and higher function deduction.

Greetings!

I often wonder why it seems to be *so* important for these SJW's to have characters that are homosexual, or trans. And also they have this screeching, sobbing need to have all of these adventures and supplements show *representation* of homosexual, and trans characters.

When you are supposedly playing some heroic character that crawls through dungeons fighting monsters and taking their loot--how is it in any way relevant who or what the sobbing SJW character likes to sleep with? Who really gives a fuck how "feminine" or "masculine" that you choose to "present" today? What relevance to the rest of the group, or the campaign world, is it whether such a "gender-fluid" character happens to feel feminine or masculine today?

How is that relevant to, "Hey, fuckstick, pick your warhammer up and attack those orcs waiting for us down the hallway!"

I think it is all way too much lip-biting and narcissistic navel-gazing that so many of these SJW's essentially want, they essentially demand--that the game is not being about adventure, plunder, and fighting monsters--but instead must be focused on their sexual identity, their sexual activities, and their constant, drama-filled social relationships with the nebulous community--which, in D&D, is at least theoretically medievalesque, and primarily focused on survival in a harsh and brutal world. But these SJW's all seem to want to make the entire D&D campaign culture somehow focused on themselves, prancing around and insisting that everyone be profoundly interested in such a character's social life and their own deep-seated psychological and family drama.

Really seems very strange to me for people allegedly, supposed to be playing a game.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

The Hobby has Participants, and Supporters.  Some people are both.