With all the layoffs is the 2024 rules revamp doomed. Is it going to be 4e essentials all over again or more like 3e to 3.5 where it’s just a QoL change?
Hytnpdnd: yes, we all know it will be another shit edition to /tg/. I want your take on if it will be a commercial and critical failure or success that keeps hasbro afloat a little longer.
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Critical failure, commercial success. Mostly because they have the brand recognition angle and they're going to keep the costs down by making interns, LLMs, and outsourced third worlders do all the work on the books. It's a grim future we're facing.
>It's a grim future we're facing.
It's grim mostly because it's Current Year and people still don't understand how to vote with their wallets. The vidya equivalent is how EA keeps releasing expensive pre-order packs for shitty games that turn out to not even be fully finished upon release. Why would they stop doing this if morons keep buying them? EA knows there will never be a point where the mindless consoomers will say "you tricked us the last 15 times, now you won't get our money until you prove the product is worth it" and so does WOTC.
The rational consumer is as much a myth as the rational voter, so wallets keep voting for garbage and we get what we fricking deserve.
>People still don't understand how to vote with their wallets
Its not 2008 anymore, sales are no longer relevant to the outcome of a company. The business world has taken some bad lessons from the recent crashes in real estate, credit and banking - they've learned that the state will bail them out infinitely at taxpayer expense, that capital investment is much more important than sales, that bad press is more persistent than good press, and that failed projects can be turned into tax breaks.
The day of voting with your wallet required that the majority of people in the first world had middle class wages, homes, equity and lines of credit. Now those people are a tiny minority, and sales are a tiny drop in the bucket for most companies. We were circling the drain a decade ago, but infinite monopoly funny money has forestalled the inevitable.
TL;DR If you want people to vote with their wallets, they must first have enough money in their wallets for their opinion to be worth something. Most people don't, so its not. Simple as.
They already have a playable 5.5 that's better balanced than 5.0, it's just a question of whether or not they can get it out the door without doing something catastrophically stupid to it.
Given their recent performance, not doing something catastrophically stupid sounds a little above their pay grade.
>They already have a playable 5.5 that's better balanced than 5.0
The playtest was significantly better than 5.0 so that really means nothing. What's your proof it's better anyways?
Yea, that happens a lot in this industry, the playtest will be fairly good and then someone who doesn't know what they're doing will decide that it needs to be completely different at the last minute. Same thing happens to movies. It can happen to videogames but it's less common because videogames are always behind schedule.
Some of the playtest materials look alright, but I agree that it's hardly a useful metric - especially since Crawford is a hack who basically has to be cajoled to recognize that shit like Savage Attacker or a +1 to attack rolls isn't a massive, gamechanging bone thrown to non-wizards.
These.
Strixhaven was probably one of the worst works of fictions I had the misfortune of ever reading.
The fact that despite this apparently it wasn't a total commercial failure proves to me that people eat up literal shit.
Like, holy shit, its so bad its "Draco in Leatherpants"-Tier.
>Nine-tenths of the book tells you to just make things up because the writers can't be arsed to actually tell you anything meaningful about the titular school
>The remainder tells you to resolve supposedly important events with a basic skill check or two
Anyone who claims Strixhaven was a good book is either a liar or a WotC partner.
I'm still mad.
Obviously the book was total garbage, but I don't understand why you'd be mad about it.
Like, did you expect the MtG cross-over book with WotCs moronic Hogwartz analogue to actually be good? It was never gonna be good. Even if there had been actual content in the book that fleshed out the setting the book would still have been trash because it's an inherently stupid idea. Not even the best RPG writers of all time could have made a good book from a foundation as rotten as Strixhaven.
Because a fleshed-out stupid book would at least have had some effort put into it. As it stands, the Strixhaven "book" is less an adventure and more a license to use the name Strixhaven for legal purposes.
It's going to be a critical success literally just because it will be the omega onions edition, no one will be allowed to criticize it because 90% of the characters in the art are black and it has an asian woman in a wheelchair on the front cover.
You say "no one" but dollars to donuts you'll be pissing and shitting yourself over it right here on /tg/.
IMHO there will be a big push in marketing apt in artificially recreating what has given 5e momentum, but will be half-assed and painfully transparent as always. There will be an hype that will peak relatively fast (1 or more year maybe) and then a normalisation period where the d&d userbase will fragment between legacy 5e (assuming kobold press pushes on with in pulling a pathfinder move) with some backport, derivatives and d&done™ (not that hasbro would care, the objective is to make d&d palable to new gen alpha toddlers and thatya shot in the dark in itself)
It's all so tiresome.
I just finished a year and a half long Curse of Strahd game. I’ve been playing every edition since 3e. I’ve seen WoTC go downhill for a very long time but it’s good enough and my friends know the rules so I don’t mind running it with plenty of houserules.
Every new edition is an interesting time to discuss D&D and what we predict will happen. Which is exactly what this thread is for, discussion.
>a year and a half long Curse of Strahd game
WTF. How often were you playing?
I've played Curse of Strahd twice as a player. As my first ever 5e game we knocked it out in 13 sessions. On my second run through with a group of experienced TSR guys we did it in 11 sessions.
I added quite a bit to it and we were playing relatively short sessions. We took our time with it and had a good campaign.
Ghostwalk was completely screwed by this which is a shame because with some tweaks it’s a very good setting. Realistically it wasn’t as big a change as people made it out to be but it was a bit of a pain so many people treated it like a new edition. I think they work fine together with some DM fiat. I played 3.5 mixed with pathfinder before and that was fine too.
>with plenty of houserules
Have you ever thought of making it your own system? I know WotC might get fricky with the license but, you know
It’s nothing special in terms of house rules. Just stuff like potions are a minor action, flanking gives +2 to hit instead of advantage, reactions are recovered at the start of your turn instead of at the start of the game turn. Simple stuff like that. I wouldn’t have the time or patience to make my own system and there are plenty of good generic systems when I get sick of D&D like genesys cortex etc.
I always imagined the layoffs happened *because* the developers were done with most of the 6e stuff so they could be safely fired. Is there a reason to think otherwise?
Hasbro is failing hard and needed to make drastic cuts for shareholders. The wish merch won’t even be bought by discount stores and from what I hear they have 3 very large warehouses filled with unsold toys. Maybe they’ll have to bury them all.
So cut executive salaries, then. It'll save millions, and it won't throw the future operations of entire subdivisions into doubt because there aren't enough actual employees to do the work.
>So cut executive salaries, then.
You don't know how corporations work, do you?
I do, hence why I find them disgusting.
These layoffs are AI related. It's affecting every industry.
That's way past coping
Amateurs will also have access to AI and make new OSR covers with paintings of "Elmore" with extra fingers, so there's that.
Boy, does that make a difference. Just looking at that fake old school art makes you want to play AD&D again, Wizards of the Cucks is stupid for not just trying anything to sell anything to the old crowd.
>muh AI
AI has nothing to do with corporations cutting useless commies out of every industry. moronic agitprop being forced into every product is not good for the product. moronic agitprop being forced into every product is not what the customers want. Honestly if AI can produce what customers actually want without some screeching obese pink haired tunnel rat forcing moronic agitprop into it, then so much the better. But AI is not replacing these "people" at the moment, they are being fired because they are fricking worthless and an active detriment to their employers and society at large.
Then my annoyance is that "we" have been saying these people are useless propagandists for years who are making bad products for years, and been told that we're racist sexist chuds for our trouble. Turns out vindication doesn't feel particularly sweet.
No, israelites will holocaust each other in an instant to steal/hoard/protect money, but will never admit that the goyim were right. See all the messaging whenever a narrative changes. "Oh you were never right about the vax not working, the science changed" "oh you were never right about blacks and defunding the police being moronic, all of these stores closing isn't due to crime it's due to racism" "oh you were never right about global warming being fake, every possible combination of weather is actually climate change". They're scumbag villains who will never admit they are wrong even as they completely change around to including your original position as somehow a point for their side.
Two more weeks until D&D is over!
>two campaign books that're heavy on the multiverse
I wonder if the people working on this kinda stuff currently realize and if they do how they feel about everyone everywhere getting sick of it and most of those things bombing?
I missed 4e entirely. What's the deal with 4e essentials? I played every other edition for reference if that helps contextually
it was a sloppy rebundling of 4e after it died, just before 5e came out. It was limited in choices, hard to use, and generally a far worse formatted 4e, in an edition that was bad to begin with
Impressive. Not a single statement in this was true.
It was simplified 4e with a sad attempt to win back 3aboos by having martials that only had basic attacks. In theory it was 100% compatible with normal 4e but most of the classes had scaling issues and couldn't keep up with mainline classes from midlevels onwards. On the plus side it had some much more interesting "tax feats," instead of the +to hit feats for weapons it had versions that keyed to weapon types (axes, spears, light blades, and so on) that gave a side bonus, like the Axe one let you re-roll 1s on damage rolls. It also finally corrected monster math in its monster books.
Yeah, this description is accurate. Previous butthurt anon take notes.
Essentials took the strictly better power creep bloat on player side to its extreme while noob proofing which removed any pretense of the game mechanically only having 2 classes thus felt like shitty simplified slop to idiots that didnt realize it from the start, but also fixed the math in the monster books because for once someone in WOTC took out a calculator (MM3+).
In other terms, imagine if the person that was doing the wording for serpent kingdoms or ideas for 5e tasha book was doing all the default monster calculations (and wording on how checks work) up to that point, but another guy gave half the epic handbook content at level 3 to the "casters"/the 1 caster class split across 8 skins.
They did redo the main base skin versions for the (2) classes that the game had up to the point to be simpler for new players with the strictly better upgrades being effectively automatic pickups and added vampire to make something play different instead of same set of abilities and ACFs but with some powers shuffled around between daily and encounter, but the difference with vamp was that it was shit or at best used for surge memes.
Also the skins now actually were to theme of the namesake class in prior eds (aka playing a wis-dex monk was a thing again instead of cha monk or a cha paladin not being crippled for not going wis/acting as the "other class" version of cleric to not frick yourself and the table for no reason anymore, even if some options existed in technically pre essentials power books).
The weirdest thing is them releasing all the 6e books months apart.
??? like they did with 5e?
>With all the layoffs is the 2024 rules revamp doomed
Doubtful. It's probably mostly done.
>or more like 3e to 3.5 where it’s just a QoL change
That's my sense. No big changes in the baseline math, just teaks to feats, classes, and a couple of new sub-systems.
>will be a commercial and critical failure or success that keeps hasbro afloat a little longer.
It'll probably be a critical success and a wet fart for everybody else.
I doubt that it will be an explosion of revenue. Even if people really liked it, Hasbro's issues are a lot wider and run a lot deeper than just D&D and magic.
I asked this in the 3.5e general, but I wonder how people would react if WotC created a sort of legacy brand under which they re-release cleaned up and reformated material for older editions.
I for one would think it kind of neat, albeit unnecessary since we already have all the old material anyhow.
As I answered in 3.5g, and will repeat here so other people can see it, many of the books are PDF only, you can't get them pod; and I have no confidence in current Hasbro "fixing" or "improving" them.
But bringing some of them back into print again and expanding the pod offerings, that might get them some old edition sales.
They might even be able to sucker somebody into paying for 2e and 3e ddb
Okay, but even just collating them could be something amazing. A lot of material spread across too many splats could be consolidated.
>a sort of legacy brand under which they re-release cleaned up and reformated material for older editions.
>HERE ARE THE CLASSICS YOU LOVE BUT WITH NEW ART AND F O R M A T I N G
>its ai slop with diversity quotas
>the game is drastically simplified
>it costs twice as much
You need the help of professionals. You don't remember what it's like outside.
>everyone who has critical thinking and memory of past events requires medication!
>Do not notice things or try to talk about patterns, just CONSUME
Frick off.
Schizophrenia is not pattern recognition Anon, please get help, there are people in the world who do care about you
>company does dumb shit
>geeeeee I wonder if they'll keep doing it?
Is not a difficult pattern. Stop pretending to express empathy while simultaneously advocating for a removal of agency via pharmaceutical intervention. Go buy some deadpool funko pops or something and get hit by a car.
No one buys those anymore, even normies. You'd know this if you had a life outside of posting on this toilet.
NTA, but my brother in law is still hoarding those ugly plastic frickers. There are people who still buy them.
You haven't spoken to anyone besides your mother in the last decade you balding obese troll
Literally zero people talking about giving you meds, spaz. Hit dogs will holler, huh?
>Nentir Vale Gazzette finally lives
>But at what cost?
>D&Done
why is this not D&D 6th edition?
Literally it's because of trademark disputes. They can't force you to pay for a license to make splats and other secondary products if they don't have a recognizable and unique trademark. A lot of people are just labeling things as "for 5e" without specifying and everyone gets what they mean, and that makes Hasbro so incredibly fricking pissed.
They don't ever actually call 5e 5e, do they? It just says d&d or dungeons and dragons?
Who, Hasbro? They use the whole thing a lot. I don't know if they have any kind of property claim on the oldest stuff, because TSR was such a shitshow.
No no. I'm asking if there's any official 5e stuff that actually calls it 5e or even 5th edition. I thought they have been going out of their way to not mention numbers, but the community numbered it anyways.
They call it (5th Edition) on the wizards site, D&DBeyond, and in their submission for consideration to industry awards. Here's an example: https://media.wizards.com/2021/dnd/downloads/PH-Errata.pdf
Oh. How about that. Alright. Thanks.
>f trademark disputes.
so its a D&D 6e but actually a 5.5 or something due to this trademark thing?
It's going to be a sixth edition of D&D. They aren't going to call it 6e, they're trying to call it something unique and distinctive enough that they can get their legal team attack dogs sicced on anyone who uses their trademarks without explicit permission. Is this, strictly speaking, legal? Absolutely not. Would they get away with it? Definitely yes.
What exactly is illegal about it?
NTA but IIRC you have a legal right to make products and say they are compatible with someone else's products.
>sixth edition of D&D. They aren't going to call it 6e, they're trying to call it something
as a client and fan of the game in general since the 80s, i have to say that the company has now become absolutely nothing more than a used toilet paper generator. It has been for some time but the shit is truly all over the place.
Victor became Viktra, they have no grasp even of the basics of the english language and they do not even intend to name D&D 6e as the Sixth edition but will do these legalistic gymnastics for some petty if any leverage on the market....
Let the franchise burn.
They’ve fallen pretty far. Fortunately there are plenty of new companies to take their place.
>people are just labeling things as "for 5e
they can call it D&D the abloobah version and people would still call it 6e and the next 7e and so on.
They want to use legalistic entrapment instead of actually working, this is why the game is a pile of junk at this point
Everyone will just say their supplements are ‘for 6e’ and the Hasbro lawfare rats will continue to seethe
I'm getting the sense that Hasbro lawyers aren't worth the money the company is paying them. They had to have known that the OGL bullshit would never have stood up in court, since the original OGL specifically guaranteed content protections into perpetuity even if Wizards introduced a new license to rescind the previous one. Anyone they tried to shake down would have simply pointed to the protection clause on the original document, and gotten Hasbro's case thrown out.
Because they're so D&Done
>3e to 3.5 where it’s just a QoL change?
This is not as true as people make it out to be; WotC insisted this is all it would be, and that everything would still be compatible, but a lot of the 3rd party people were pissed at how many changes there ended up being, and how WotC immediately changed their tune after the books came out to insisting all older works were invalid.
Also...
>from what I hear they have 3 very large warehouses filled with unsold toys.
If Hasbro dies from the same overhead that killed TSR, I would fricking laugh.
They were still highly compatible.
t. Didn't upgrade to Andy Collins edition until 2006, still used lots of 3.5 splat books.
Okay, unironically why would you not switch to 3.5, there was nothing that 3.0 did better than it.
Did you just not feel like spending money on the new books?
The conversion document is not complicated, and people still use un-upgraded 3.0 material in their 3.5e games.
>and people still use un-upgraded 3.0 material in their 3.5e games.
this is how you can tell someone actually plays games
>tfw I use un-upgraded 3.0 and 3.5 material in my 5e game
You can really just eyeball most things
It's a nuisance converting the math to and from 5e. But it's doable. When I still ran 5e, I never bought the 5e bestiary because I slimmed it and it was lame. I just used my 3.0, 3.5 and PF1 Bestiaries.
Mixing 3.0 and 3.5 is even easier. But I've considered combing through 5e's better rated 3pp / DMs Guild stuff for stuff to use.
Over half the magic items i give out in my 5e campaigns are from 3.5 because 5e magic items are universally boring and gay.
I’m the same. I have the magic item book from 3.5 and just adapt those items.
Magic Item Compendium 4 lyfe
Thank you upside satan, never had anybody accuse me of actually playing games.
That's what would most likely happen but also goes outside of the scope of the scenario I laid out.
As someone who played both 3e when it came out and then moved to 3.5, I can tell you the only notable thing 3.5 did was making rangers not utterly trash
It also fixed Haste, which was the main reason 3.5 needed to be written. Monte Cook broke the entire action economy with a single spell.
It fixed Haste wrong, though. It should have had a clause barring you from casting a spell with the extra action instead.
>making rangers not utterly trash
Eh improved some things, fricked a few for some reason.
I think they kinda unfricked the bards a it, though.
The fact that they reduced the ranger's HD really shows the mindset they were in, "We're going to pretend that the Fighter is a good class and that means other warrior classes can't step on the toes of the fighter".
I mean, there's a theoretical game where a fighting man can have o.k. skills and a few skill powers and a few spells and do alright, but that makes them impossible to optimize. The potential to cheese the fighter (with feats and equipment from multiple builds) is the only thing that makes it worth playing. If you make a jack-of-all-trades and balance it against the fighter it's going to suck.
>If Hasbro dies from the same overhead that killed TSR
i HOPE so. make D&D a generational brand, one company gets it, has initial success, then eventually burns it into the ground, and gets bought up by someone else, repeat. do it for the lulz.
Reminder that, if Hasbro ever calls it quits on the DnD brand and sells it to Paizo, then we'll get a 6th edition within 18 months, Golarion will evaporate down the memory hole (except for random elements that will somehow be migrated to Faerun), and everyone will pretend the prior 16 years of partisan b***hing never happened.
(Still won't be playable, but I'll take what I can get.)
Your masturbation fantasies have nothing in common with reality, anon. None of that is how the real world works.
I remember a thread about signs of hasbro possibly selling the dnd ip to tencent in the year of the dragon of all times but I’ll be honest; I don’t know a company that can handle the dnd ip and run it right.
Tencent or some other Chinese company could manage the brand well. Remember, the game books themselves isn’t profitable, it’s the video games and other adaptations that actually earn money.
Well, they gambled big on a movie that financially underperformed despite good reviews, and their attempts at handling the video game license only started paying off this edition when Larian hit the scene. If they were smart, they'd offer whatever it takes for Larian to make another.
>Good reviews
At this point good reviews usually means the critics were too scared to criticise the garbage film. Before the film came out they said they enjoyed humiliating the male characters which tanked interest in the film and signaled to critics if they criticised the film they would be targeted by the woke mob.
It actually did have good reviews, though. It's not like Kill the Justice League, where they claimed "despite positive reviews" after deleting scores of negative ones.
The film still sucked
https://www.cbr.com/dnd-movie-emasculates-leading-men-not-woke/
Proved me right lmfao
You really need more sources of news than your conspiracy websites, man.
Cry more?
Only one crying here is you.
>I'm not crying, you're crying
Confirmed for real salty tears
>If Hasbro dies from the same overhead that killed TSR, I would fricking laugh.
please dont tickle my pp like that
I've given up on WotC.
Looking at 3rd party stuff, and following the recent Mike Mearls posts on modding 5e which looks pretty decent so far.
Link?
>Hasbro
>commies
Bruh, this is late stage capitalism all the way through.
dafuq
That's /misc/brain for you. Sadly, it's terminal.
My real question is why does everyone need to keep buying the new crap? If you have old AD&D/3rd/3.5 ed/4th ed/5th ed, why COOOOONNNNSUMMEEE more garbage? You have the rules right there already. Hell, you could get these books at low prices. How many time are you trying to reinvent the wheel?
-Is it a power trip, trying to break the new set?
-Is it not wanting to ban the broken stuff you don't like from the older stuff?
-Is it that you like new AI CGI artwork?
-Is it the you love WotC so much to give them more of you money for their D&D app?
-Is it you love Critical Role or whatever they are called now and have to play the new stuff?
I am really confused and amazed at the same time at how many people gobble up this regurgitated shit that basically is "Roll dice to see if thing worked" but need new rules. I really want to understand this phenomenon of consuming this stuff.
>how many people gobble up
they are addicted to "updates" and "new" stuff. Blind, deaf and stupid.
I will assume you mean new editions of the core rules.
In which case, it's mostly teenagers and 20 thinking newer = better.
I finally picked up 5th in 2018 because it supposedly "fixed" problems I had with 3rd. It was a waste of money. A half-baked "fix" that introduced a bunch of worse problems instead, and with basically none of the good parts of 2/3.
Mostly these days I pick up self published setting content. Getting a PoD copy of Ed's new Thay book is next on my list.
>Have the rules already.
I could use a better sets of subsystems for construction projects / kingdom management / commanding armies / running businesses. But I do have *something*, yes. If a better subsystem for those things comes along, I would want to look it over and see if it would be better or not. Same for research and inventing and crafting and exploring. I have subsystems for this stuff, yes, but maybe someone will come up with a better version that will play better at the table.
And if they don't give me a better subsystem, yes, my old books aren't going anywhere.
I can't judge them, I thought it was a good idea to buy and paint miniatrues for D&D. I don't think many people appreciate the scale of such a project. After 32 years I am finally nearly done. 32 years. Some people I gamed with as a teenager when I started this project have died in the meantime. It feels like an accomplishment but also pointless at the same time. This, I think, may be the essence of D&D.
I hope you make a /tg/ thread and just post pics of all your minis in it. I'd look at them, likely in great envy. 90% of mine are unpainted, almost certainly forevermore.
I pirate all my books but checking out new content is fun on its own merit and it's much easier to get a campaign together for newer systems since it centralizes interests. If I was a spender I'd probably buy every new book
My group found that 5e addressed most of our serious issues with 3.5, without introducing any new issues of similar scope. We’ve done some tweaking, rewriting, and massive additions based on our experiences with previous editions of the game and other systems, but it’s served fairly well as a basis for what we play.
D&D is simply too big to fail.
>multiverse
>using sparkly as a descriptor
my eyes physically rolled so hard it stung
Honestly they should just stop trying to make D&D profitable. Sell the license, it doesn’t work in an internet-based ecosystem where you can just download a pdf and you’re good to go.
Used to be, they were allowed to just coast on the MtG money they brought in and use that to pay for everything, but then Hasbro decided every individual brand has to hit its own sales quotas.
>"Xbox"
>"Xbox 360"
>"Xbox One"
This is the dumbest naming convention I've ever seen.
>Hasbro: "Hold my beer"
>D&Done
Every individual and every company that publishes 5e material will publish new material, they will call it 6e or 6th and everyone will know its about DnD-ONE, they will also include 5e stats for backwards compatibility.
This will be an exercise in legalistic moronic vanity.
This is as stupid as a sheep/ram PC race. You will end up as extra-large lamb chops sooner or later.
Frick you, bariaur are great, they're one of the few races that can be Paladins.
>bariaur are great,
but when they meet fire elementals they turn into great lamb chops
>trying to make D&D profitable.
they could be focused on funding and consistently making computer games based on the D&D worlds like the older games and the Gold Box games etc. Modern games, systematically made using the settings. The computer game market is more profitable than the tabletop rpg market where books or pdfs are sold.
They could make a game for each setting that existed since the beginning, since the 80s, and just cycle through them, this would create a huge game collection.
Not necessarily with super graphics 3D or like BG3 for all of them.
An engine like the infinity engine, that is modern that they can use for 5 years and only then switch to a newer one.
But no, they would rather; not write 6 on the next D&D version which is the sixth and write ONE as they are busy filing the settings with LGBTQ+ material that is utterly irrelevant.
Get them a straitjacket, lock them up and let us end this. And throw away the keys.
Funnily enough, that approach brings with itself a level of self-feedback too, since.
Some people would play the game and want to play the TTRPG and vice versa.
That's how I came into D&D. Played Neverwinter Nights 2 and got instantly interested in the way the game mechanic's worked.
Over a decade later and I'm invited to a 3.5e group and am having a blast.
>That's how I came into D&D.
a colossal part of the D&D fanbase, the older guys, came from the 80s and 90s computer rpgs and vice versa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dungeons_%26_Dragons_video_games
they made for almost all settings, even 2 rpgs for Ravenloft.
This is why it was a horrible mistake to launch 4E while another company held the rights to D&D video games.
>it was a horrible mistake to launch 4E
well, that edition was a horrible mistake in general
Computer games are a market that generates more profit than rpg books sale to say the least.
If the Hasbro company sector that controls D&D was stable and competent they would have put out a foundational and good edition (lore-wise for all settings that would continue to be published, and also mechanically) 20 years ago and just made pen and paper adventures for it up to today with many computer games per year.
But they are just a bad joke.
Its amazing, really.
Imagine getting so much goodwill from BG3 and drumming up so much interest than then wotc just squanders it all.
Hasbro is slowly but surely reaching TSR levels of ineptitude.
The Atari frickery certainly didn't help. 3rd/3.5 was a mess of a system written by a talentless hack, but it got plenty of support in terms of videogames. 4e's launch happened right when Hasbro decided WotC couldn't fund D&D with MtG money alone, and when WotC couldn't hand off the license to studios who would actually do something with it. Then when they took a big gamble on developing a proto-VTT for it, the lead dev committed a murder-suicide, leaving them with nothing but a half-written pile of spaghetti code as their big moneymaker.
>they are busy filing the settings with LGBTQ+ material
Hello, based department? This is Captain Kino speaking...
Your entire post is the ramblings of an old man who doesn't understand either industry he's talking about. But I actually want to focus in on something, because it's important you understand.
>they are busy filing the settings with LGBTQ+ material that is utterly irrelevant.
Because it works. I know that you think it doesn't. It does. In order to grow the brand, D&D is going to need to attract new players. Easiest way to do that is to attract young people to play. And increasingly, being anti LGBT is seen as a repulsive and anti-social behavior that people don't want to associate with. And so, WoTC has made the correct decision to signal that they're pro-LGBT.
>>they are busy filing the settings with LGBTQ+ material that is utterly irrelevant.
>Because it works.
Works so well they're going under
>D&Done
so how does D&D 6e differ from D&D 5e mechanically, as i dare not ask lore-wise as that would mean even more Viktra. More complex, more simple? Or just a pointless mix-grill addition that will be invalidated as buggy within a few weeks or months?
>re-release cleaned up and reformated material
they would alter it and add a ton of Viktra-tier stuff.
shh, I am so close to memoryholing that forever.
>memoryholing that forever.
there is also Vladeska (another name that does not exist they pulled out of their brain damaged skulls), 5e darklord of Falkovnia.
the lore of the game is at this point toilet paper, used toilet paper. By a chipotle eating rhino.
the mechanics are in a state of flux and just chewed and re-chewed, edition by edition, regurgitated repeatedly and going nowhere stable.
Chasing its own butthole, which will keep on generating shit which is what the game has sadly become.
Its a mockery and an insult.
the main problem is that the company has no foundational element.
all the things that make something stable, they do not have it.
so they move along like a drunkard, stopping vomiting on the street. Peeing his pants and in street corners. Picking fights and then collapsing while talking to himself. Sometimes friendly and fun, but still stinking of piss and vomit.
This is not working.
From the amateur years, from the Original D&D up to the end of 2nd Edition we go to the pseudo-professional years of 3e up to today with 5e and 6e but they do not call it 6e, they might as well call it D&D mumbo jumbo version.
These people are idiots.
The game has never been handled by serious professionals on any level, financial or lore-wise or mechanically or in any other way.
This is why now we have this mess.
I assume "heavy on the multiverse" means there will be licensed crossover slop materials in the near future?
I suppose much like MtG, which makes picrel more and more immanent.
More crossover slop you mean. Forgotten realms and mtg have already been slapped together but that made sense since they were both fantasy. But I'm ready for the latest trending modern game to crossover or even worse some woke capeshit.
>But I'm ready for the latest trending modern game to crossover or even worse some woke capeshit.
That already happaned too.
Critical Role is essentially a capeshit adventure dressed in fantasy.
>capeshit adventure dressed in fantasy
I've never watched critical role and certainly don't intend to. What makes it capeshit? High fantasy games tend to have pretty strong characters but they aren't necessarily costume wearing warriors of justice with secret identities and super powers fighting crime.
>What makes it capeshit?
It's essentially Guardians of the Galaxy in fantasyland.
I have no idea what you're talking about but I'll take your word for it. I know too much about critical role already.
There you go:
>Guardians of the Galaxy
>Legend of Vox Machina (Critical Role)
Drive your own conclusions but you can't negate that the humor, the quips, the general tone, the frame, the character cast diversity, the similarities in archetypes (a couple essentially copypasted) are pretty much the same.
I am so fricking tired of multiverses.
This idea was already milked to death in the 90s in comics and then the normies discovered it and no one learned a thing that long-term it makes all your customers stop caring because there is zero emotional investment.
Its such a sight to behold to watch cinema, gaming etc make the same mistakes comics did 20 years later and not learn from its mistakes.
>heavy on the multiverse
MTG has had successful multiverse sets taking place in other properties.
D&D 5e had MTG, Rick & Morty, and Stranger Things crossovers.
D&Done will probably have a shit ton of licensed cash in books of other Hasbro properties.
D&D might as well be a knock off Disney property since it's just a mainstream consoomer product with a monthly subscription model.
D&D 5e was fun when it first released, but I already fully transferred over to a new game system and D&Done just doesn't sound fun.
Also the books are going to be 50% to 90% written by AI with AI art at some point, one day you'll buy a D&D book with two credits; ChatGPT-5 and editor/quality control John Doe from accounting.
What system are you playing, anon? I'm considering monkeying around with WFRP.
>D&Done will probably have a shit ton of licensed cash in books of other Hasbro properties.
I wouldn't be so sure. Remember that when Hasbro finally figured out there might be a market for GI Joe and Transformers rpgs they licensed them out instead of having the division of their own company that makes rpgs make them.
They started banning stuff like that after I had at least one or two threads complaining about all the social justice shit on the front page nearly every day. I pushed things too far when I started talking about buck breaking orcs and here we are.
>multiverse focus
Planescape is going to get more raped as a setting and you're going to like it chud.
Aren't they basically trying to rewrite Die Vecna Die for 5e?
I hope martials won't just be purposely gimping yourself
I got to play it once when I was like 15. I thought it was a great game but my current group just want to play 5e.
How did playing Polaris go?
Not everyone on this board agrees with you, oh no, it must totally be a shadow government and not just you being hopelessly out of touch
Most of the iconics were white and more than half half of them were male. They already had a white male (dwarf) fighter named Tordek, they had one iconic for each class, except for 'wizard' because they had a gnome illusionist in addition to Mialee. Corporate c**tweeds forced them to add a human white male fighter (early concept art for Regdar looked very mixed but the suits insisted he be white), that's why everyone hates Regdar, except for culture warriors. Sometime around 2012 you suddenly became aware that D&D was being made by people from Seattle and that was the first time anyone became offended on behalf of Regdar.
>Once we’re gone the homosexuals, attention prostitutes, and Black folk will leave too to be social parasites somewhere else.
Yes, I'm sure the other white men are all in secret solidarity with you, I'm sure that will happen any minute now.
lol
lmao
>c**tweeds
Just use normal swears you fricking twitteroid.
>that's why everyone hates Regdar, except for culture warriors
[Citation needed]. Most people were generally pretty indifferent to him (most players probably never even knew what “Iconics” were tbh.)
>Yes, I'm sure the other white men are all in secret solidarity with you, I'm sure that will happen any minute now. lol lmao
t. self hating white male
All the 3e iconics looked like shit, including this Regdar guy.
The paladin didn't suck just because it was a woman, it's more because she didn't look like a fricking paladin at all, and who knows what the frick was her armor made of or even what type of armor it was. The dwarf refused to grow a proper moustache for some reason, the halfling looked like a fricking kender, the wizardess was some kind of fugly off-color elf bootleg, the gnome looked like... whatever the frick he looked like, the monk was a random black girl outta nowhere as if the monk among the basic classes didn't already stick out like a sore thumb, the idea of having a half-orc as the iconic barbarian was already bad but he also looked ill, that ranger's armor and helmet looked impractical, all that just from memory. The art direction for 3e just wasn't all that great compared to 2e.
And literally no fricking one hated the Regdar guy because they not only didn't know about his "inclusion", but also because he made the most sense in an european medieval fantasy game played mostly by white men. Forced divershitty is stupid.
>fantasy races in dnd is woke
holy schizo, batman!
>same token low IQ shitlib post
>NPC sjw uses buzzwords to communicate their hive minds beliefs
holy based, irony is dead.
>Like Madame Web which just came out.
Or Barbie, or Guardians 3, or Across the Spiderverse, or Dr Strange and the Dimensional Immigrant. lol, you Black folk probably think the Mario movie was woke. Stay mad my friend.
Are you seriously saying Madame Web is going to do well at the box office? It’s going to do worse than Morbius.
>heavy on the multiverse
I can’t wait for the garbage multiverse trend to end.
Anon, the box of Pandora has been opened.
But at least we now have a pretty easy sign to tell which writing is trash.
Honestly at this point it doesn't matter, play something else. This is already dead
Appendix N is from a book written in 1979. This is not to dismiss it by nature of being old. This is to highlight the scale of time we are dealing with. It has been 45 years. If you played a version of D&D that contained appendix N, you are in your 50s. And you are no longer the target demographic.
In order for D&D to survive, it must attract new players. In order to do that, it needs to adjust and adapt to the changing market conditions - including the sensibilities of the consumer.
Now, despite WoTC's best attempts, the core demographic of D&D has remained the same - cisgender heterosexual white men in their teens and twenties. This has shifted somewhat (as WoTC's marketing campaigns have not been total failures at attracting more demographics), but the core remains the same. However, their sensibilities have changed. They, on average, are pro-LGBT - at least passively; potentially actively, but generally it's something that they are supportive of. The guy who is loudly anti-LGBT? He's the guy who doesn't get invited to play. He's the guy that people don't want to include when building a new group. He's the guy who's only interactions with the hobby is on /tg/. He is the nogamer. Because people do not like being around him, not even his fellow nerds.
This is what I need you to understand. The average, nerdy dude who makes up the core of the D&D audience wants these things. That's why WoTC keeps doing it. Do you think WoTC actually cares? No. The individuals within WoTC might. While he's on the other (and far more profitable) side of WoTC's team, someone like Mark Rosewater seems to genuinely hold pro-LGBT beliefs and not just be speaking as a company mouthpiece when he talks about it. But WoTC, ultimately, does not care. WoTC is a machine that's designed to turn intellectual property into return on investment, and the machine will act in accordance with those goals.
They pander because it works.
>they pander because it works
they're in the red facing insolvency/bankrupcy update the propaganda blud
Okay, assuming this is two users sharing a brain cell and not just one halfwit samegayging, let us - purely as an intellectual exercise - pretend that (you) are both right. LGBT+ representation doesn't sell.
Why then does every major corporation deck themselves out in rainbows every June, send contingents to represent them at pride marches and go out of their way to express a strategy you claim is losing money, when the fiduciary responsibility of a corporation is to maintain profits for the shareholder, and can face sanctions for failing to do so?
If Hasbro are failing, isn't it more logical to assume that they just aren't selling toys the way they used to? That people have been priced out of Magic cards, or lost faith in WotC due to their consistently disappointing releases? Especially given that you have yet to point to a single other company dragged down by this "DEI" boogeyman you all shit your frilly pink panties over?
Everytime I see posters like (you) all I can smell is (your) simmering resentment. The pandering isn't the problem. It's the fact that (you) aren't the one being pandered to.
Are you AI? You read like you're from pre-pandemic times. Your framing is outdated. This is a stale argument.
>That people have lost faith in WotC due to their consistently disappointing releases?
Gee I wonder about all the factors that led to this
>Why then does every major corporation deck themselves out in rainbows every June, send contingents to represent them at pride marches and go out of their way to express a strategy you claim is losing money, when the fiduciary responsibility of a corporation is to maintain profits for the shareholder, and can face sanctions for failing to do so?
Because ESG funding. Problem is the ESG funding isn't enough to counterbalance everyone abandoning these products anymore. I can't tell if you're a troll or just moronic.
to clarify for
and anyone else who didn't understand fully the point laid out in
>tl;dr
>ESG stocks encourage unprofitable changes in products, and the money is starting to run out now
ESG stands for Environmental Social and Governance and it refers to a factor in investing. In theory, it is supposed to encourage companies to be more environmental and nice by giving them better opportunities of investment if they act nice. In theory.
In practice, the fact that environmental and social factors are lumped together means that BP can dump tonnes of oil into the sea, put rainbows on everything in June and come out with a better ESG score than a small company who use recycled packaging for everything but don't have a woman on their board.
All this ESG score comes to play in certain investment bonds and stocks, which offer more investment capital to companies with good ESG scores. This means you're incentivies to put rainbows on your shit and put a Black person in every group photo for financial incentive.
What we're starting to see though, is that ESG investment works short term, but a lot of the product changes (i.e. wokening them) that encourage the investment is reducing sales from normal people and rightoids. The ESG stocks themselves are then not giving the performance hoped for or are losing money, so nobody except certain groups with near infinite money who want to influence social thought are wanting to do it any more.
>they're in the red facing insolvency/bankrupcy update the propaganda blud
You're an idiot. I do not have a gentle way to put that. You look at "failed to meet or exceed profit goals" and think "they're in the red." Magic The Gathering and D&D are both still profitable, just less than WoTC and it's parent company Hasbro had hoped. (this is actually a common trend in the market. People are starting to realize that pandemic growth was not the new normal.)
But once again, please understand: revering course on these decisions would do them no benefit. Signaling pro-LGBT sentiment gets them some positive social cache. Reversing course would have a disproportionately negative effect.
Signalling a positive position is good for sales. WoTC is just remarkably unsubtle about how it does it. I'm not saying it's optimal, but I am saying it's the correct move.
You're making a bunch of points that do not refute what I'm saying.
But let's address something. D&D is a product. And like all products, it will evolve with the market. If you do not like this reality, check out - stop buying new things. Stop caring. You already have your books, if you don't like the direction things are headed, hop off. They still work.
>D&D is not dead
Correct, it's thriving. 5th edition is a major success when talking about D&D as a brand. It's problem, per WoTC, is that its undermonitized. Which is WoTC looking at D&D as a brand and feeling they could milk more out of the license.
>OSR existing is proof that whatever bullshit you disingenuous sophists spell is false
Delusional. OSR is a very small segment of the market, catering to a small niche. I won't pretend that this niche doesn't exist - it does. But it's not going to be the kind of mass market success that D&D needs to continue being.
>For example i remember the supposed 90s ttrpg crisis and was anything but a crisis: lgs prospered
The bread and butter of the LGS in the 90s was the explosion of card games. But yes, the RPG market was more diverse. I actually liked the late 90s RPG scene quite a bit and I view the OGL as a fundamentally poisonous document that killed the RPG scene.
But this discussion is about dungeons and dragons and its market strategies. And thus, we should take a dispassionate look at what the moves WoTC should make are.
To be clear, I think that WoTC are going to fumble the bag somehow. I do not know how yet, but I suspect that their attempts to capture lightning in a bottle and make it so that 5e's unexpected runaway success dose not pan out with the revised ruleset (be it 5.5 or 6e)
>You're making a bunch of points that do not refute what I'm saying.
Not directly but i was pretty much implying a retort to your "scale of time" argument against the Appendix N. These pieces of literature are quite literally the foundation of the whole d&d structure which, i dare to say, still stands in the current d&d incarnation on a profound mechanical level. Sure, nud&d doesn't (immediately) have rules for dominions, mass combat, hirelings, etcetera but the heroics action is pretty much grounded in the pulp cliffhanger fiction of the '20s and just redressed (or to be more precise, pretend to redress because it's not even presented that way by the books) into comic books superheroics action.
Now ACTIVELY trying to change that will end in a completely different game, currently it's not there yet but there's an underlying design intent in going towards that direction, only the nebulous intent that wotc has in trying to make an univocal "d&d™ experience" is keeping these changes at bay (same reason they don't go for the abrupt removal of vancian casting but go for the halfway compromise of spell slots)
>Correct, it's thriving
That wasn't my point, i'm saying that the existence of d&d isn't necessarily tied to an editorial group or other entity producing materials. Even if wotc or anyone else didn't pick up the rests of TSR crumble d&d would be still existent in some form today, as it us the OSR scene.
I wonder why Hasbro's been losing money on D&D
>They, on average, are pro-LGBT - at least passively; potentially actively, but generally it's something that they are supportive of.
There's the big marketing mistake. "Yeah sure I don't mind them" doesn't mean "OH BOY I SURE WANT EVERYTHING BENDING OVER BACKWARDS TO ACCOMODATE A MINIMUM QUOTA ON EVERY PIECE OF MEDIA, REGARDLESS OF HOW POINTLESS IT LOOKS!"
Ok i'm not the other anon who sperged out but whoever implies that anything in order to "survive" has to change its fondamental nature is automatically in bad faith, because changing the core tenants of that something is on pair with killing and substitute it with something else only wearing the name of the predecessor. At that point leave it be and move to the new thing.
D&D is not dead, OSR existing is proof that whatever bullshit you disingenuous sophists spell is false. For example i remember the supposed 90s ttrpg crisis and was anything but a crisis: lgs prospered, there was way more fricking diversity in games and groups trying different things until wotc came "to the rescue" with 3e and the ogl, the aftermath of which made the hobby the barren wasteland of today.
>the aftermath of which made the hobby the barren wasteland of today
How so? I remember the whole d20 thing being really positive, like, sure a lot of stuff played the same, but there was a surge of variety of games using the system, some of those even later moved on to new or back to their original systems.
>but there was a surge of variety of games using the system,
Exactly my point, diversity was lost in order to "save" the hobby
>some of those even later moved on to new or back to their original systems.
What game? Mutants & Mastermind? It's literally Hero/EABA with the d20system stapled on, and that's the most diverse game that derived from that mess.
I was thinking more about the ones in the Horizon line, some original d20 modern games on Polyhedron, or how it might have popularized Legend of Five Rings or Call of Cthulhu.
I know Horizon: Grimm, for instance, eventually moved to its own original system.
Call of Cthuluh didn't need to be "popularized" because was up there among the most known games in the 90s, legend of the 5 rings didn't need the ogl wave anyway because its niche is specific enough and relevant enough on its own (there weren't much materials at the time, as today, about oriental games), other minor games switching core system doesn't mean much considering a lot of games existing before switched to the d20system grifter train (the very same CoC, BESM, etc...) and switched back afterwards. Again the hobby would have stayed afloat on its own maintaining its granularity, commercial prosperity only benefit companies, not endusers. Also a game not being published anymore is hardly dead, in the early 2000 it was already possible to get a frickload of pdf made from scans about old games.
>i'm not the other anon who sperged out but whoever implies that anything in order to "survive" has to change its fondamental nature is automatically in bad faith
What utter rot. "Fundamental natures" of games change and adapt with the generation playing them or die out. We don't live in China, where conservatives are obsessed with perfectly retaining the exact way a game has been played for 4,000 years in the interests of cultural hegemony, we live in a capitalist society driven by profit seeking. To suggest otherwise is nakedly incompetent.
Again with this homosexualry, a game changing its core functions becomes de facto another game altogether, there's no contentiousness here, it's a plain truth, the same way as in nature a new species branches off from a former one, sure, there's continuity but the differences are enough to make the new species stand on its own. The difference is that in nature both can keep existing in parallel as long as their respective niches exist while for you games HaVe tO ChANgE tO SuRVivE!!1!! which is utter asinine.
Saying also that old niches don't exist anymore is also a plain falsehood as i already stated in my previous post.
My, what a special brain you have.
1) you're arguing that there are no editions of games, that they're somehow completely different because they've changed in some way. This is both childish and hysterical. It's like suggesting an updated version of a Vidya is a completely different game just because they patched a few glitches. XBox wishes people were this stupid, they could milk them forever with software updates ..
2) if old niches still exist and are, a priori, totally existent outside of time and the generations that play them, then why aren't we playing lawn darts from the 50s? Shuffleboard from the 70s? Hell, how about Senet from the time of the Pharoahs? Do you think the Romans cancelled it due to a diversity policy? ... actually don't answer that, you look foolish enough.
3) "stating" something doesn't make it law, you aren't fricking Moses
>My, what a special brain you have.
Says the guy that is facing some sort of animus he's projecting on me because of sone trigger concept expressed in the discussion, but i have time to spare, so...
>1) you're arguing that there are no editions of games, that they're somehow completely different because they've changed in some way.
No, i never said that and i beg you to quote the exact post where i say so, i specifically pointed to CORE TENANTS not slight reworking of the same for update purposes.
>This is both childish and hysterical.
Yes i concur, i invite you to reread my posts and reflect again.
>2) if old niches still exist and are, a priori, totally existent outside of time and the generations that play them, then why aren't we playing lawn darts from the 50s? Shuffleboard from the 70s? Hell, how about Senet from the time of the Pharoahs?
A lot of nonsensical example when i already made the specific one: OSR. LBBs are form the fricking 70s yet there are still people jerking off to it with Swords & Wizardry or The Sword Hack or the White Box and that's just the oldest one, ad&d is still played this very days for example.
>Do you think the Romans cancelled it due to a diversity policy? ... actually don't answer that, you look foolish enough.
This little statement alone makes very apparent the source of your delusion, you already made a character out of me don't you?
>3) "stating" something doesn't make it law, you aren't fricking Moses
And here you go completely off the rails: wtf are you talking about mate?
I honestly stopped caring a long time ago. There are so many RPGs out there and there are so many that aren't difficult to learn or steal from that it's almost a why bother with D&D?
Even classic dungeon fantasy is done better in other, simpler, tighter systems. Higher fantasy was done better before 5E even dropped. I do like the wide variety of 3rd party and homebrew content that is always out there for D&D which does honestly improve the game (some of which is actually legitimately interesting and something I still haven't seen other games do yet), but it's just not hard to cobble together systems anyway. Especially with GPT now I can literally gang bang any number of systems together and create house rules for literally anything on the fly. Oh players want to do XYZ and my system doesn't have it? Hey GPT, generate up rules for X system with Y resolution mechanic that does XYZ (for better results, here's an example of XYZ in another system). Like, I'm sorry, these companies and products are dead to me. We literally don't need new RPGs, the only thing I consider buying is campaign and setting type books, because that's the only thing AI slop can't do well end to end, but I literally don't need new mechanics for anything. (And to be honest, that's where all the creativity in this hobby really was to begin with)