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I don't pay super close attention to the TTRPG space apart from what I need to run CoC or 5e, but I really enjoyed the 13th Age stonethief campaign a friend ran some years ago. when people say that everything it did well has been done better since, i'm genuinely curious what systems they're referring to, because I just don't know. I've heard of Shadow of the Demon Lord i guess so I'll probably look it up, but I assume there are others?
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Aug 14, 2022 19:07
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Darwinism posted:That is such a lovely cop-out. "Guys, we think it would be harder for us if we didn't rehire Tweet after implying that we wouldn't work with him anymore. But he will only be involved in the core product! You can trust us on that, right?" Warthur fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Aug 14, 2022 |
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Aug 14, 2022 19:23
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Shadow of the Demon Lord is decent as a streamlined mashup of 5E and Warhammer Fantasy; balance is bad but in a way that can mostly be isolated from the core system itself and fixed if you're patient enough. I don't know that it's all that similar to 13th Age though, it's still gridded combat and so on.
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Aug 14, 2022 19:31
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:every version of D&D has outsold the previous one. the market didn't "reject" 4E, 4E out-performed an edition which itself spawned such a huge wave of imitators and compatible games that it saturated the market 4e didn't outsell 3e/3.5, it had a more successful launch than 3e/3.5, at least, that's what the sources say, and then they stop talking about sales really quick Then in late 2011 they start talking about designing 5e. and that's three and a half years after launch, versus 5e's six and a half, and it's not going to be a complete system overhaul like 5e was..... 5e continues to have better and better years in terms of sales too, like "we did better than our year before which was one of the best years DnD ever had at WotC" things, something 4e never managed, even with, or maybe because of a much larger catalogue of releases. Admiral Joeslop posted:Avengers: Infinity War made less money than Endgame, obviously the market rejected Infinity War. Why are you comparing movies to tabletop RPGs? This is not an apt comparison. The comparison would be if, I dunno, for Phase 2, marvel decided to slay every single sacred cow they ever had and do everything differently, less Joss whendon-y, let's say. But, at the release of Avengers 1 they also made it legal to film your own marvel movies using their scripts but you had to change a bunch of stuff, so another company started releasing the "revengers" and it was just the first phase of the MCU with slightly different names and actors, and that became more successful than Marvel's Phase 2 by a huge margin, so they started just re-releasing rehashes of movies with even more whedon-stuff and every single villain was just Loki over and over. Which more or less makes the metaphor fall apart. If 4e and its design choices were so popular, why did they completely ditch it's combat system and go back to a more traditional and simpler game, making all of the really complicated rules modular optional things? Ghost Leviathan posted:The reasons for 5e's success had very little to do with the merits of its system. WotC got really loving lucky that podcasts had taken off. I mean, the most popular DnD podcast is critical role, and it didn't start for eight months after the 5e PHB was released. On top of that, 5e spent those first eight months in either the top slot for book sales on amazon, or in the top ten to fifteen, and critical role wasnt the juggernaut it was when it started etc etc etc etc so can we agree it was already successful? Or do you have a different metric for success? Remember that several of those months it was literally the only book for 5e out there, which is crazy to think about. Kurieg posted:The only group of people who were unserved by 4e were the people who were mad that "replace Fighter" and "Replace Rouge" were no longer spells on the Wizard and Cleric's spell list. And once Mearls was put in charge he made sure that martials were put in their place so they can sit there and think about their incorrect class choices while the Wizard jerks off with their leatherbound copy of Mordenkainen's big book of spells. I have a question for you - what do you think is the percentage of 5e players that know who Zak S and Mike Mearls are and make purchasing choices based on those people's actions? There's no trick here, I'm just curious what you think, you may have different experiences that I did.
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Aug 14, 2022 19:41
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O good, we've gone to the next step of dumbass grog talking points.
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Aug 14, 2022 19:48
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:If 4e and its design choices were so popular, why did they completely ditch it's combat system and go back to a more traditional and simpler game, making all of the really complicated rules modular optional things? Because the designers of 5E personally hated 4E and jerked themselves off over and over again about ignoring it to return "what feels like D&D" which to them was just 3.X with lip service about earlier editions.
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Aug 14, 2022 19:57
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Sweet, edition wars in the industry thread!
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Aug 14, 2022 19:59
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can't we just agree that no matter how much they sold all d&d editions share one vitally important thing, they fuckin suck lmao
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Aug 14, 2022 20:03
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:I have a question for you - what do you think is the percentage of 5e players that know who Zak S and Mike Mearls are and make purchasing choices based on those people's actions? There's no trick here, I'm just curious what you think, you may have different experiences that I did. No, but that doesn't matter. Prior to Zak S getting #MeToo'd, Mearls was active on Twitter, a lot, he was acting like the face of the brand, answering rules questions, behaving like a good old fashioned rock star game dev. But with Zak he had shoved the D&D Brand's hand on a giant open stove burner and just barely avoided getting burned. I have no idea what's happening behind the scenes but he's become less visible, less vocal, and they've actually put out poo poo like Tasha's Cauldron which does it's best to hurl racial essentialism into the garbage where it belongs as well as have archetypes that let non casters do a bunch of poo poo. Don't even pretend that something like Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel could/would have come out four years ago.
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Aug 14, 2022 20:07
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ItohRespectArmy posted:can't we just agree that no matter how much they sold all d&d editions share one vitally important thing, they fuckin suck lmao
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Aug 14, 2022 20:10
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BlackIronHeart posted:Sweet, edition wars in the industry thread! I'm not saying either edition is "better". I'm just, and specifically only talking about the business side. BECAUSE: ItohRespectArmy posted:all d&d editions share one vitally important thing, they fuckin suck lmao I definitely agree with this! I just like the very weird niche of business history and I find most people's perceptions on the success of a product is very near-sighted. I've never met a person irl who owned catan but you know. Catan sold a lot of boxes..and has never stopped. Dominion seems to have fallen off, but again, thats just how I see it. Is RGG doing well? I think warthur posted in the BG thread they were shutting down or something do maybe not! TheDiceMustRoll fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Aug 14, 2022 |
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Aug 14, 2022 20:11
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moths posted:Yeah, it's a huge bit of narrative power for the players and some DMs really really hate that. The only rub with Backgrounds was that there was, more or less no reason to every broadly distribute your backgrounds and instead go all in on one or two and make them apply as broadly as you can. It's not a major trap, but it can be an easy one to fall into without guidance in how to avoid it. Escalation Die is a good mechanic though TheDiceMustRoll posted:I'm not saying either edition is "better". I'm just, and specifically only talking about the business side. Every edition of D&D has financially performed better than its preceding edition. (Except maybe the 1st to 2nd transition?) Xelkelvos fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Aug 14, 2022 |
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Aug 14, 2022 20:17
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ItohRespectArmy posted:can't we just agree that no matter how much they sold all d&d editions share one vitally important thing, they fuckin suck lmao Frankly this thread right now is being more of a gatekeeping grog hive than the windmills it’s tilting at. Inside of a few pages you’ve had people argue that D&D players are stupid lessers who all play bad games and have no taste. What is wrong with you all? You should be ashamed of yourselves for this poo poo. Just because someone likes a different elf game doesn’t make them subhuman.
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Aug 14, 2022 20:29
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Really taking the "that game is bad" personally there eh?
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Aug 14, 2022 20:31
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Bottom Liner posted:Really taking the "that game is bad" personally there eh? More poo poo like moths saying that if you cared about good design you wouldn’t be playing D&D.
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Aug 14, 2022 20:46
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Arivia posted:More poo poo like moths saying that if you cared about good design you wouldn’t be playing D&D. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Aug 14, 2022 |
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Aug 14, 2022 20:53
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MadScientistWorking posted:I mean moths isn't wrong. It's a poorly designed game that doesn't have much going for it beyond name recognition. No. Insulting someone’s intelligence because of their choice in games is the kind of poo poo this subforum at least pretends to be better than. Grow up. You all can’t complain about grogs if you’re being gatekeeping shitheads of another kind.
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Aug 14, 2022 20:55
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Don't tie your sense of self worth to something you like? If you are personally insulted by someone calling a game bad you need to separate your identity from your hobby. In fact, if you care about good design it's beneficial to acknowledge flaws in things you like.
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Aug 14, 2022 21:00
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Not caring about good design doesn’t mean you’re stupid.
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Aug 14, 2022 21:02
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Also stating that 5e is better than 4e as an unequivocal fact based solely on profit margins and then telling people who liked 4e that they're refusing to acknowledge the flaws in a thing they like is honestly kind of insane? "Making less money than another thing" is a flaw now?
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Aug 14, 2022 21:13
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That's not even controversial or judgmental, Jesus. Prioritizing "Is this game well-crafted?" below "What is my group / favorite streamer playing?" doesn't make you some kind of doofus, it makes you a D&D player.
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Aug 14, 2022 21:13
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13th Age managed to thread the needle between keeping 4e solid tactical abilities while not needing a grid map (or even 5e/3e's wink wink nudge nudge you don't need a grid honest but you actually do) - that chunk of the engine is great with how interception and disengagement work. The bits that need work are class design (do a power-based fighter), icon dice (a heap of options here) and escalation dice (don't build powers that rely on the dice hitting 6 when most encounters don't reach it). Also backgrounds should be just pick 3 at +4/+4/+4 so you don't have the 'obviously all my points should be in the widest option' incentive.
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Aug 14, 2022 21:14
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It's really kind of wild that "why did 4E get shoved under the rug if not because it was a bad game everyone hated?" continues to get asked in a world where TV and movie producers studios regularly cancel and shitcan eagerly-awaited projects all the time due to petty personal reasons, office politics, and obtuse money-shuffling shell games. Why does Netflix constantly commission shows and then cancel them after a season? Why did Disney shelve Nimona, a nearly completed movie, after acquiring its production studio in a merger? Is Warner Brothers seriously claiming that the Batgirl movie was so much worse than anything else they've happily put out in studios that it had to be cancelled for its own good? Cmon man, this is basic stuff.
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Aug 14, 2022 21:27
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The reason I brazenly dismissed 13th Age is because even at the time there were a million RPGs with "do all the work yourself with our toolkit, we've helpfully provided the most cookie cutter setting possible for you to go wild with!" The classes were also largely dull as I recall, with boring abilities that you couldn't even use often. The background and deity system were outright laziness disguised as open-ended systems. Escalation dice were nice, and a d20 game that didn't just aggressively pretend it was gridless was also nice, but neither were something that required an entire, very boring game attached. Bottom line, there should be a setting injecting some kind of flavor and giving an overall direction to the experience. Otherwise you tend to end up with a $60 version of a one-page D&D heartbreaker. This is also basically why I don't like Dungeon World and try not to scoff at TG bringing it up like it's the cure for all ills at the D&D table. It takes about one session of DW for the novelty to wear off and then our table was back to searching for something with underlying structure again. It's harder to write compelling and interesting settings, and sometimes you end up with derivative things like Warhammer Fantasy with the serial numbers filed off, but even then you've got a real game world in front of you and something to spur the imagination, and not yet another blinkered attempt to reproduce the "ideal" D&D, how it felt when you were 13 in your friend's bedroom. Now it's possible I'm bringing my own baggage to this conversation and that's actually what people want/not quite what they get out of these over-long heartbreakers. In that case, to each their own, don't let me yuck your yum.
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Aug 14, 2022 21:30
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Arivia posted:No. Insulting someone’s intelligence because of their choice in games is the kind of poo poo this subforum at least pretends to be better than. Grow up. Literally who is doing that? That post was just saying D&D sucks, you seem to have invented someone to be mad at.
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Aug 14, 2022 21:34
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Kurieg posted:Also stating that 5e is better than 4e as an unequivocal fact based solely on profit margins and then telling people who liked 4e that they're refusing to acknowledge the flaws in a thing they like is honestly kind of insane? "Making less money than another thing" is a flaw now? idk who you're referring to, but I just said it sold more and was more popular, not that it was bettrr. TheDiceMustRoll fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Aug 14, 2022 |
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Aug 14, 2022 21:38
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:idk who you're referring to, but I just said it sold more and was more popular, not that it was better Your exact words was that 4e was "rejected by the market aggressively" which is about as inflammatory as it can get. 5e is popular and sold well due to a number of factors completely outside of the control of 4e, including both the rise of AP Podcasts and Stranger Things dragging D&D back into the cultural zeitgeist.
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Aug 14, 2022 21:53
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:every version of D&D has outsold the previous one. the market didn't "reject" 4E, 4E out-performed an edition which itself spawned such a huge wave of imitators and compatible games that it saturated the market as far as I know, 5e has yet to sell as many copies as 1e, so until it does the market has clearly rejected 5e
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Aug 14, 2022 21:55
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Bread sells more than tabletop games and thus we should open up bakeries instead of gaming, like fools and charlatans
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Aug 14, 2022 21:58
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Improbable Lobster posted:Bread sells more than tabletop games and thus we should open up bakeries instead of gaming, like fools and charlatans Bagels and Baguettes 3e are garbage recipes. 2e has superior water flower ratios.
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Aug 14, 2022 22:03
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We actually did have subscriber numbers for D&D insider during 4e, which showed a staggering amount of subscription revenue, as well as being highly ranked on Amazon's bestsellers list. A small and disproportionally vocal slice of the base rejected it. This is different than most grumbling fandoms because that demographic included the Mike Mearls.
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Aug 14, 2022 22:05
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Kurieg posted:Your exact words was that 4e was "rejected by the market aggressively" which is about as inflammatory as it can get. But DnD was a big seller by the end of 2016??? Like as I said earlier, DnD sold wellout the gate and it sold well before it was fully released. And markets reject good things all the time. People buying/not buying something is not usually an indicator of its quality. 5e has mass appeal. It's bland and broad, and now is just The Rpg you play. I love DCC but it will NEVER hit the level of popularity 5e did, or even 4e really. That don't make it bad, lol. (Also I would say 5e's biggest factor to its success was how the first year and a bit they sold books at distributor prices. My FLGS sells 5e books for 70 bucks and I paid about 35 in 2014/15 for mine, straight from amazon.ca)
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Aug 14, 2022 22:05
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We might as well be talking about how many Fast and Furious DVDs Vin Diesel owns because we don't have those numbers either.
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Aug 14, 2022 22:10
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As long as we’re dropping edition war hot takes ITT I’d like to say it drives me absolutely nuts that mage the awakening will never see another book because someone decided to try and rehab the version of vampire with the racism clans
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Aug 14, 2022 22:14
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Berkshire Hunts posted:As long as we’re dropping edition war hot takes ITT I’d like to say it drives me absolutely nuts that mage the awakening will never see another book because someone decided to try and rehab the version of vampire with the racism clans Yeah, they killed the nWoD because the old one has "more rband recognition". And then half-assedly try to make V5 more like Requiem anyway.
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Aug 14, 2022 22:24
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I was working at a big LGS when 4E came out. It sold very well for several years until WOTC became very obviously uninterested in it. It sold a lot more than 3E did at the end of its run. This is of course a small sample size but it's more data than I've seen in the thread thus far.
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Aug 14, 2022 22:27
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MonsieurChoc posted:Yeah, they killed the nWoD because the old one has "more rband recognition". That's actually true though, at least for the market segment a video game company cares about. Remember that they cared so little about the Tabletop game that they let them gently caress it up badly enough to cause an international incident. Not that they did better on the video game front though, those are a total mess as well.
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Aug 14, 2022 22:29
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Okay I cannot find a source for this but I'm given to understand that Johnathan Tweet's talking about "race science" may go back to him adopting a mixed-race child and being told by doctors that they'd have to look out for certain genetic disorders more common to black populations. (Maybe sickle cell anemia I don't know.) And that probably got him thinking "Wait so your race does matter? Why aren't we talking about this?" And of course the reality is more complex than that, because genetic distribution is also influenced by cultural and social pressures, but Tweet may have been on a "did my own research" thing or he may just be very bad at talking about it. I don't think it absolves him but it may actually be genuine ignorance rather than the feigned ignorance of most "just asking questions" types. It's possible anyway. Rob Heinsoo has been kinda silent on this which disappoints me. Like I think 13th Age is close to a good idea of what 5th edition should have been- it's still very simplified and streamlined from 4e but consistently so, allowing for actual Theater of the Mind instead of "no forced movement but spells still have geometrically defined AOEs." The one drawback in that regard is that it's explicitly aimed at experienced GMs and doesn't have the typical advice on running/preparing games as a result. And yeah it could use improvement. It's sort of a shame is what I'm saying because I think there's room for it- both Pathfinder 2e and Advanced 5e/Level Up, which are emerging as the big "want D&D but better" alternatives, have a lot of fiddliness I don't want to deal with. But, yeah, their being weird and evasive about Tweet's involvement is turning people off.
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Aug 14, 2022 22:46
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Ultiville posted:I was working at a big LGS when 4E came out. It sold very well for several years until WOTC became very obviously uninterested in it. It sold a lot more than 3E did at the end of its run. Eh, you can see the same pattern in Youtube game playlists or the availability of early entries in some comic and book series - people drop off as a thing goes on and jump on when new thing starts. 4e would have to have aggressively poo poo itself to not sell better at its start than 3e did at its end.
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Aug 14, 2022 22:51
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:But DnD was a big seller by the end of 2016??? Like as I said earlier, DnD sold wellout the gate and it sold well before it was fully released. And markets reject good things all the time. People buying/not buying something is not usually an indicator of its quality. 5e has mass appeal. It's bland and broad, and now is just The Rpg you play. What metrics are you using here? Raw PHBs sold, profits off of raw PHBs? Cause that seems like a spurious measurement of popularity or success. 1) Markets are always, always, growing and prices always go up. 2) There were a lot of other 4e books to buy other than the players handbook, I have 7 player facing 4e books that came out in the first year and a half of it's release. The first 100% for players 5e book didn't come out until 2 years after it's release.
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Aug 14, 2022 22:55
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