Explain why it's more popular than your favorite system without going on an unhinged rant about normies and/or zoomers
Explain why it's more popular than your favorite system without going on an unhinged rant about normies and/or zoomers
Explain why it's more popular than your favorite system without going on an unhinged rant about normies and/or zoomers
I dare you to make an educated guess.
Because my favorite system is one that my friends and I cobbled together and haven't publicly released.
This though it was pretty much just our DM with us playtesting it and giving feedback/ ideas.
What's so cool about your systems
it makes fun times with my friends.
It's the only rpg with TV commercials.
Marketing, monopoly, market presence...
My favourite system is still a popular one with probably more (official) sourcebooks than 5e (SW FFG) so idc
>My favourite system is still a popular one with probably more (official) sourcebooks than 5e (SW FFG) so idc
FFG Star Wars kind of cheats though, by having its core rules essentially repeated in 3 books. There is no reason for Edge of the Empire, Force & Destiny, and Age of Rebellion to be three separate books when ninety percent of their rules content is the same.
Still, we'll count them anyway. By my count, FFG Star Wars has had 38 hardcover releases, I think?
5e D&D has had:
>Player's Handbook
>Dungeon Master's Guide
>Monster Manual
>Volo's Guide to Monsters
>Xanathar's Guide to Everything
>Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes
>Tasha's Cauldron of Everything
>Fizban's Treasury of Dragons
>Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the >Multiverse
>Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants
>Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide
>Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica
>Acquisitions Incorporated
>Eberron: Rising from the Last War
>Explorer's Guide to Wildemount
>Mythic Odysseys of Theros
>Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft
>Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos
>Hoard of the Dragon Queen
>Rise of Tiamat
>Princes of the Apocaylpse
>Out of the Abyss
>Curse of Strahd
>Storm King's Thunder
>Tomb of Annihilation
>Dragon Heist
>Dungeon of the Mad Mage
>Descent into Avernus
>Rime of the Frostmaiden
>The Wild Beyond the Witchlight
>Call of the Netherdeep
>Shadow of the Dragon Queen
>Phandelver & Below: The Shattered Obelisk
>Tales of the Yawning Portal
>Ghosts of Saltmarsh
>Candlekeep Mysteries
>Journeys through the Radiant Citadel
>Keys from the Golden Vault
>Quests from the Infinite Staircase
>Spelljammer: ADventures in Space
>Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse
>The Deck of Many Things
I count 42; do you count 42? I do.
Anon said sourcebooks, not adventures. From your list there are 20 (19 if you only count Mordenkainen’s once, since iirc monsters of th multiverse is a reprint of tome of foes and vgtm but without all of the flavor text)
>not adventures
Distinction without a difference given the way 5e publishes its adventures. Princes of the Apocalypse had multiple new races and something like 50 new spells in it, for example.
>There is no reason for Edge of the Empire, Force & Destiny, and Age of Rebellion to be three separate books when ninety percent of their rules content is the same.
If they made a combined rulescyclopedia of all 3 in one book, I'd buy it.
>There is no reason for Edge of the Empire, Force & Destiny, and Age of Rebellion to be three separate books when ninety percent of their rules content is the same.
The point is that you only need to own one to run a game
You really only need the PHB and MM.
Because it holds cultural weight. There are plenty of media properties that reference D&D from the 80's onward, that's counting the anti-D&D propaganda of the Satanic Panic. It went from a niche within the niche of wargaming to what it is toady. You don't hear about other systems like this because they don't hold any cultural weight.
>without going on an unhinged rant about normies
Alright, I'll leave it at that.
/thread
not saying the other responses ain't making pretty good points, but I feel like this is pretty much it.
Explain why it's more popular than your favorite restaurant without going on an unhinged rant about normies and/or zoomers
Cheap, fast, convenient. D&D is not any of those things.
Neither is McDonalds anymore.
D&D wasnt cheap or fast or convenient back then either. Just one look at 3.5e would prove it.
3.5e is the epitome of a system that hit a wall and tried to keep adding onto it. Now, there's nothing wrong with a TTRPG company making new content because it is a business after all, but with 3.5e it was just too much and too incoherent. The skills were needlessly tedious to use, just like a lot of other factors in that game. They figured it out with 5e and I think that is proven by the fact that 5e has been out for a pretty damn long time now and is both more popular than 3.5e ever was (and by extension, Pathfinder), and still has an active playerbase.
>the skills were needlessly tedious to use
Bro, you literally roll 1D20 and add your modifier. How the frick is that tedious to use?
>and still has an active playerbase.
So does 3.5.
>Bro, you literally roll 1D20 and add your modifier. How the frick is that tedious to use?
Because figuring out that modifier quickly becomes tedious after the early game
>In most cases, modifiers to a given check or roll stack (combine for a cumulative effect) if they come from different sources and have different types (or no type at all), but do not stack if they have the same type or come from the same source (such as the same spell cast twice in succession). If the modifiers to a particular roll do not stack, only the best bonus and worst penalty applies. Dodge bonuses and circumstance bonuses however, do stack with one another unless otherwise specified.
And then you have a dozen different bonus sources
>size
>sacred
>resistance
>racial
>morale
>luck
>insight
>enhancement
>competence
>circumstance
>alchemical
>ability
>profane
>grade school level math is hard
you know you have paper to keep track of it, right? you only need to add it together once
i can tell youve never played a game in your life. asking polayers to do that simply doesnt happen. every turn drags on because of all the calculations, rules checks, and trying to recall every little modifier. just not a fun system thats why nobody plays it.
>you only need to add it together once
Wrong because the modifiers CHANGE EVERY TURN.
No they don't.
Realistically you'll have:
>Rank
>Racial
>circumstance
That's it. Everything else is situational, rare, or optional.
Enhancement bonuses are not rare, but you’ve forgotten them, which kind of goes to prove the point.
Optional
That "rank" is also folding together the Ability Modifier and the Skill Ranks, which are in fact two different things. 4 ranks in Tumble plus a Charisma of 10 does less than 4 ranks in Diplomacy and a Tumble of 16.
So realistically you have:
>Rank
>Ability
>Racial
>Circumstance
Then starting at 2nd level you also have to start remembering Synergy bonuses, which are likewise not uncommon, especially for classes that get a lot of skill points, like bards, rogues, and (due to high intelligence) wizards. Just 5 ranks in Jump (i.e., what you'll likely have at 2nd level) gives you a +2 bonus (untyped) to Tumble checks.
So a 2nd level character with 16 Dexterity, assuming no magic items or feats, could have for Tumble:
+5 (ranks)
+3 (Dexterity)
+2 (racial)
+2 (untyped synergy)
+2 (circumstance)
For a +14 bonus.
D&D has had two periods of peak popularity, the height of the B/X and AD&D 1e lines in the 80s, and 5e. 3.5 was not even close to peak TSR D&D in popularity.
3.5 was free online via the SRD.
It might not have been easy but it doesn't get cheaper or more convenient than that.
D&D definitely qualifies as fast and convenient if your criterion is more focused on the time spent finding a game than on how time is spent within a session.
Finding a game sure, that's more equivalent to finding a McDonalds restaurant I guess, so that's one thing they both have in common.
Learning the system though? D&D is definitely on the slow side.
In the same way you can enjoy mcdonalds if you never learn to have taste, you can enjoy 5e if you never learn how to play.
Nowadays that is true with the advance of storygames and ease of access to make/distribute/access them. But when 3.x came out, the d20 series was revolutionary for it's ease of use and quick maths; that, along with the extremely viable OGL licensing, meant that it was very easy for people to make new D&D content, as well as the hundreds of licensed games that used the d20 rules as their core. D20 wasn't the simpliest or smoothest ruleset by any means, even then, but the various levers were easy enough to grasp and satisfying enough to use that developers and players preferred them, especially once market saturation set in and you could guess most customers had the core books already.
>learning on the slow side
The grappling meme is true, but 'roll this one dice, add your predetermined modifier, and check against a target' is something you figure out in minutes. The nuance is complex (which optimizers love) but you can master the basics of your character in half an hour of playing, needing to reference nothing more than the character sheet in front of you.
You had other competitors in the 90's like WoD and 7th Sea which I prefer mechanically, but they didn't get enough market share to stand against the OGL tide of the early 2000's. They all settled for fighting over second place.
And both of them even released d20 supplements anyway...
>the d20 series was revolutionary for it's ease of use and quick maths
Nta but, are you for real? The d20 system wasn't revolutionary nor easy. It's diffusion was only stemming from clout chasing (d&d compatibility), licensing (ogl) and availability of documentation (srd).
>The d20 system wasn't revolutionary nor easy.
It was at the time. It was way easier than Vampire, its main competitor, anyway.
>It was way easier than Vampire
Nonsense, throwing a bunch of dice and looking for "good ones" without any math involved, just a cursory glance, is definitely easier than rolling a die, adding various modifiers (some variable, non-stacking and situational) and comparing the result to a TN.
>throwing a bunch of dice and looking for "good ones"
How many die? Got all the specific combinations for various tasks memorized? Quick, without looking it up, tell me how you Seduce someone, what the process is.
What's the target numbers?
What's the difference in degrees of success between 1 good one and 2? 2 and 3? 3 and 4?
Tell me, again without looking it up, what you roll for a Clinch verses a Hold. Tell me the system for Sweeps and for Disarming.
What do you roll for a Kick? How does it modify the Difficulty? How much damage does sit deal? Compare/contrast it to a Punch. I'll bet you can't, but probably not for the reasons you think.
The storyteller system has always been flexible, checks were always situational combining traits and skills fitting a compromise between player description/request and the GM arbitration also picrel where readily available in lgs at the time (i have also seen groups using standard d10s marked with permanent markers).
Now counterquestion, do you remember by mind the DC for tying a noose knot? Or the DC for navigation without a map?
Nice try at dodging but literally all of those are actual rolls with rules behind them in the VtM core rulebook, or at least VtM Revised.
>do you remember by mind the DC for tying a noose knot? Or the DC for navigation without a map?
No, but I know it involves Use Rope for the former and Survival for the latter in 3.5, which is more than you've demonstrated for any of the rolls I mentioned from VtM.
You say that like grappling isn't finicky as shit under d20 too.
Kicking someone isn't, however, which is more than can be said for VtM.
For the record, I actually like VtM just fine, but I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that the d20 System isn't easier to work with.
>Nice try at dodging
Not really, going for nitpick particulars isn't really an argument in systems comparison especially if one of the system is fricking 3.x. How many GM bullshitted DCs using the 5/10/15/20/25 array? How many didn't remember how the frick wresting is supposed to work? How many did forget how whatever action may quality as a standard, movement or free one? What causes an attack of opportunity and what not? Wait this monster could do this bullshit i forgot! Achckyually this bonus doesn't stack and that spell effect isn't RAW, etc...
>No, but I know it involves
Not what i asked.
I suppose my counterpoint to this is that the Player's Handbook at least has an index so you can look these things up easily, which is more than can be said for VtM.
For the player. For the GM trying to set appropriate challenges on the fly, not so much.
Roll over/under on the glorified percentile that is the D20 with modifiers rarely exceeding 10 is always going to be easier than dicepool shit, and more importantly, more transparent for both players and GMs.
>For the GM trying to set appropriate challenges on the fly, not so much.
Which is a single facet of the game that is comparable to the d20 system one (setting DCs), not worse.
>Which is a single facet of the game that is comparable to the d20 system one (setting DCs), not worse.
Setting appropriate TNs for checks is one of the main crunch interactions you do as a GM. Making this convenient and transparent is actually very important.
3.PF fumbles because of how complex and fiddly modifiers sources can be with what does and doesn't stack, and sometimes because of excessive steps in the procedure. Being a glorified d% in easy 5% increments is probably the only thing that salvages it in practice because increments of 5% are ergonomic, and can be calculated from the TN - Modifier delta.
Dice pools with variable TNs like some Storyteller iterations, good fricking luck without a chart of binomial distributions in front of your face, and that's still less ergonomic than working with transparent percentages like CoC or D20, or even a roll-over/under bell curve like 2d6+X, 3d6+X etc.
>good fricking luck without a chart of binomial distributions in front of your face
Why the frick anyone should ever do that? Why anyone would care about actual dice probabilities when having standardized values for "very easy" or "difficult"? sure difficulty arbitration was exceedingly granular in the early versions (3-10) and GM pretty much used some standardized array much like 3.x but already with revised was a fixed 6 the GM usually modified with a +1/-1 per situational boon/bane in order to determine the appropriate number (if needed, not that anyone cared except in unique occurrences)
>Why the frick anyone should ever do that?
You've never come up with a TN on the fly because you weren't expecting a check to come up? It's a lot easier to frick up and make something impossible, or trivial. And if you aren't decent at math, you have to trust that the designers put things in the right ballpark on their standard difficulties. While it's a worst case example, I certainly don't trust Cthulhutech's standard difficulties because of how complex the probability calculations are, and how jank and badly edited other aspects of that gameline are.
For the record by the way all my discussion of VtM unless otherwise noted is the Revised rules, since that's what was in use for most of 3.5's run (1998 thru to 2004), which has the Difficulty table in pic.
>Why anyone would care about actual dice probabilities when having standardized values for "very easy" or "difficult"?
Simple, gaining experience, or even just creating more powerful characters from the start because you feel like playing an ancilla or elder campaign. Things that are Standard difficulty for a freshly created Neonate are going to be easier for an Ancilla...but how much easier? Should you even bother including tasks that are Routine or Straightforward in Difficulty, or will your troupe be passing those so regularly that it's not worth the effort of rolling? If you want to make sure that your players are encountering challenging situations (not just fights, but social rolls against primogen and the like), what Difficulty should be used?
These difficulties feel completely off even if you keep in mind this was written in the 90s.
this goes to show how little poon RPG devs get. Getting someone to frick you who wants to frick you should not be considered harder than changing a tire.
Also, since when is firing a gun hard? People literally do it accidentally.
>It was at the time
Never been the case. Yes, yes, we all know, D20 + Mod vs Target Number is very easy, but that's never been the part people struggle with. The death is in the details, and D&D has always been dense with details, splatbooks, errata, outright moon logic, and fiddly rules that are so obtuse that it leads to people, to this fricking day, still arguing over them. The barest surface of the d20 system is simple, but every game is very simple when you pretend to be extremely moronic so you can simplify things down to "roll dice and see if you succeed or not" like the rest of the fricking system doesn't exist.
>it leads to people, to this fricking day, still arguing over them
So you mean 24 years after its release we're still talking about it? More than can be said of Legacy; War of Ages or Armored Trooper VOTOMS.
>Learning the system though? D&D is definitely on the slow side.
Not 5e. That shit is basic as frick. So was B/X. It's only AD&D and 3.x and 4e that are full of pointless autism.
>attack with a melee weapon
>melee weapon attack
This charming little quirk that never actually comes up in play is the strongest argument anyone has against 5e, to the point where it’s been a talking point for a decade. Sad.
it's really good, it's so good even Gordon Ramsay admits he eats there
people aren't ready to hear this but that's the truth of McDonald's. The food tastes genuinely good but because it's also affordable middle class and upper class people cope and shit on it as a vain and petty attempt to flex their wealth
it's like those people that are like
>heh you really wear a $20 shirt from target? well my shirt is $800 from Ralph Lauren!
it's classic snobbery and it's pathetic
MCDonalds isn't cheap anymore and in this analogy, the alternative restaurants are cheaper, taste even better, and are probably healthier for you too.
>The food tastes genuinely good
Frick off Dobson.
>WHO'S GOING TO MCDONALD'S NIGHT?
>proceeds to go there in the day
God help this man wherever he now lurks in blue shame.
I was in the usa in 2022 for work and tasted american mcdonalds, not cheap and doesnt taste good, there is literally cheaper and tastier meals in the same area. Anyone who wants "cheap food" shouldnt be ordering burgers from mcdonalds, literally made my own burgers in my furnished apartment on an electric stove and it tasted better and cost less. there is no way americans are serious when they say nonsense.
Only americans would come up with the cope that fastfood is cheaper or for the lower class, its straight up a scam.
Most Americans from childhood are bombarded with MSG heavy fast food, cheap TV dinners and sugary drinks, which permanently inflicts itself on our taste receptors. That home cooked burger tastes better to you but to most Americans home cooked meat is not laden with the various seasonings and chemical compounds that we grew up with.
Speaking as an American who grew up eating McDonalds because it was cheap, convenient didn't require post cooking clean up on my part, you are absolutely full of goddamn bullshit.
Nah McDicks just sucks, I can get more food and better food per dollar elsewhere.
Fast, cheap, easy, ubiquitous, and McDonald's breakfast sandwiches are a gift from God to mortals.
They’re $6 now. I guarantee there’s a hole in the wall where you live that does them better and for barely more money if that.
good cattle management.
really, its because its damn near everywhere. its just gravity. that's what marketing is, taking up enough space and grafting enough mass that gravity pulls in the prey.
1) Brand recognition leads to widest exposure;
2) widest exposure leads to most support, largest communities, etc, which have their own gravitational pull; and
3) even if other systems are better, many people find it tedious to learn an entirely new RPG system when theyre already working with one which can (albeit imperfectly) be tweaked or reskinned to cover a lot of different things.
>Tell me what 2+2 equals without saying 4.
It's more popular because of historical reasons (it's the first), pop culture (it's the only ttrpg crossreferenced in media) and recent resurgence due to current edition coming after a generically ill received one (4e), raise in popularity of YT actual play shows (cr), a re-popularization in media (stranger things) and unique circumstances (covid lockdowns).
That said my favorite ttrpg (gurps) wasn't particularly popular even during the supposed 90s ttrpg crisis so nothing really changed for me except that currently (and i mean from 3.x era and thereafter) is more difficult to branch off d&d due to strong sunk-cost playerbase fidelisation.
>generically ill received
It had more press and outsold 3e. It demolished pathfinder in every market, in every quarter, for its entire run, just by releasing books. It was the flagship during the renaissance of the hobby which led to the expanded market today. There's a lot of real criticisms to be made about the game - bloat, poor adaptability to the secondary properties that made D&D a household name, a disastrous corporate management, undelivered promises, the Essentials frickup - and yet you people keep trotting out the one that is OBJECTIVELY false. Why are you so fixated on it being popular or unpopular, sellable or unsellable, that you'll lie for ten goddamn years about a game barely anyone plays now. You're allowed to not like something that is also popular.
Was definetly ill received by third part publishers due to change in licensing, wotc backpedaling to the ogl is one of the leading reasons of 5e own success.
getting shit to play the game is incredibly streamlined. especially for people that don't want to pay for stuff. try parsing the online marketplaces for gurps material compared to simply typing in "5e ______" and getting a digital copy of whatever you want or a relatively quick rules lookup due to community infrastructure. Regardless of the rules being spread out in difficult ways in the initial publications the sheer momentum of the game means there are a lot of tools to make it easier to play. Another good example is the digital shop that hoste shadow of the demon lord books barely fricking works and I'm pretty sure it's an insecure site too. I unironically believe most ttrpgs are absolutely terrible at onboarding people, and 5e just has the luxury of their community doing the onboarding for them
Because my favorite system is made by fans and not some garbage printed system made for profit.
Unless I'm including my own systems, and that's because I make them for fun and to use with my friends, not for profit.
DH2e went oop a couple months after I bought the rules
Brand recognition and free pop culture advertising. You think it's because of its level of quality?
Because it's not the best at anything, but it's good enough at everything. General appeal beats specialty appeal every time.
It's definitely not "good at everything", what is it even good at outside of combat? It can't be exploration or social interaction
>what is it even good at outside of combat? It can't be exploration or social interaction
And yet that's how it's often used literally every day by thousands of people to their satisfaction. The fact that it's "good enough" is self-evident.
It's not even that good at combat, seeing as the action economy is fricked and the most powerful thing a monster can do is frick the action economy and ignore needing to roll any saves a few times.
Seeing as every D&D player for the last 50 years has been in a constant state of homebrewing, houseruling, and aggressively supplementing their game with ways to make it more fun, it's really quite easy to argue that the system is very much NOT being used to everyone's satisfaction and there is possibly a reason why people suggest against trying to use D&D's base rules to run every genre of game.
>and there is possibly a reason why people suggest against trying to use D&D's base rules to run every genre of game.
I mean if you want to right a sci-fi game some homebrewing is necessary, I suppose, but when I said "good enough at everything" I meant in terms of the essential functions of what you're trying to do in a roleplaying game (fight, talk, explore, etc.), not setting- or genre-specific stuff.
Though speaking of this, while 5e obviously has a huge number of premade monsters, 5e is also the game for which I came up with the most number of custom stat blocks for monsters or NPCs, and more importantly the only game where I'm close to certain that the stat blocks I mde can be used in a fair and balanced way.
Conversely I made this for V20, and while it was a lot of fun, I have no idea how strong or weak any of the npcs in it are except in the vaguest terms. Like I know the Brujah are good at combat...but I don't know where they scale against, say, a neonate player-made Brujah.
>I mean if you want to right a sci-fi game
"run a sci-fi game", rather. Mea culpa. Man I did not get enough sleep last night.
Are you really so moronic as to suggest that a system being houseruled indicates it's of lower quality? When was the last time you actually played a tabletop game? Every system I've ever played requires houseruling, because different groups want different things out of a game and systems are always significantly flawed in one way or another.
>Are you really so moronic as to suggest that a system being houseruled indicates it's of lower quality?
It does though.
Nuh uh
Are you really so moronic as to misunderstand that a system NEEDING to be houseruled is a mark against its supposed quality?
The more people playing a system, the more it will be houseruled. Most houserules are worse than the original rule.
I don't think houserules are an indication of anything other than popularity.
Please stop being moronic on purpose. Houseruling a game because the designers were lazy homosexuals who neglected to put in all the necessary rules is different than tweaking the base rules to your taste and needs.
So, which systems have you played that didnt require any houseruling and work 100% fine 100% RAW?
4E
I will guarantee you that skill challenges don't work the way you think they do, and you've been house ruling them this entire time without realizing it.
Also, MMI and MMII hit points say hi.
>roll initiative
>go in order
>pick skill to use
>roll DC that changes based on whether skill is a primary skill for the challenge or not
>if you meet X number of successes before you meet Y number of failures, you beat the challenge
Very difficult.
You remember that according to the rules every player has to take part, right? Players can’t sit out skill challenges RAW.
You’ve also remembered to make sure that players who try and go outside the script by being creative get harder DCs, and that players are only allowed to do this once per RAW, right?
I said go in order and that skill DCs increase if you pick something that isn't a primary skill for the challenge, didn't I?
> and that skill DCs increase
ONE skill DC increases, because you can only break the script once according to RAW. Attempting to do so again plain isn’t allowed. Make it count, I guess.
>Also, MMI and MMII hit points say hi.
errata is not the same as homebrew.
I already asked politely for you to stop being moronic and you've now missed the point several times over.
To be entirely clear: almost all house ruling that happens in 5e shouldn’t because the existing rule works. It’s only because of sheer popularity that you see so many people thinking otherwise, and making up something objectively worse.
>almost all house ruling that happens in 5e shouldn’t because the existing rule works.
Some people houserule for fun or because they are dumb and wish to do something in a different way than a system prescribes. Most houseruling that happens with 5e occurs because the system is horrendously incomplete, even with the pittance of splatbooks, UE articles, and half-assed ideas offered on twitter. And even then, there are things that people wish to do and the system will openly say "just don't do that and do something else instead" like Spelljammer combat, where they just refused to design combat mechanics for vehicles and the DM's guild was flooded with people homebrewing ways to make that work.
If you think people are angry about homebrewing in 5e because they expect the system to work flawlessly and never need to be adjusted in edge case situations, you're an extreme moronic homosexual. People are angry because 5e is a system that only really does combat and doesn't even do that especially well, and all complaints or problems with that are met with "lol have your DM make something up!" or "REEEE EVERY SYSTEM HAS HOUSERULES" like homosexuals in this thread have tried deflecting with.
I strongly disagree. The template is there and requires the DM to be inventive in order to use it. The DMG even outlines concepts like multi-faceted skill checks combined with player agency. Just because you aren't able to do that doesn't mean it's the system's fault. The problem I have with "homebrew" is that most people endlessly spiral out of control with it. 5e RAW works perfectly well and I'd argue it's the best TTRPG out of the box on the market.
>I strongly disagree.
You're moronic.
That's because you don't actually have any argument. 5e is written in a way that is designed to give DMs and players max agency over their game, without being weighed down by charts, rulesbloat, and tedious calculations that most TTRPGs suffer from. This is exactly what made Pathfinder and 3.5e lose popularity.
However, 5e is incredibly modular, and the system is designed in a way that lets you pretty quickly design even complex puzzles to figure out. It takes the shift off number-crunching and puts it back into actually being a roleplaying game. Now there are people who prefer it the other way around, and those people are playing Pathfinder. But Pathfinder will never be as popular as 5e simply because of that fact. When the average person wants to play a roleplaying game, they want to roleplay.
>5e is written in a way that is designed to give DMs and players max agency over their game
By not having rules for fricking anything. That's not a game working well by RAW.
That's completely false and again shows that you are not able to think creatively or even use basic levels of imagination. 5e has enough rules in place to make a well-rounded system that offers something for everyone, with enough complexity to keep players engaged into higher level play and yet maintain an okay place (some exceptions are classes like Monks, who I ban at my table anyway).
I bought my DMG in 2014 and have been DM'ing 5e guys for 10 straight years now. This is the best TTRPG system I have ever played. I have a core group of veteran players and I have used this game to bring people into the hobby. It is, without question, the best ttrpg on the market and is playable right out of the box. It's the first time in a long time I had encountered an RPG system that wasn't trying to waste your time with tedious stat and number crunching, and isn't drowning in rulesbloat which is exactly what most ttrpgs suffer from.
The way the system is designed is open enough to easily implement anything you'd like. Last session I ran a jousting tournament and it was a great time. I used a combination of rules within the game, skill checks, and just player agency to determine various outcomes. Just because you aren't able to roleplay does not mean the roleplaying game is bad. Again, there are systems, like Pathfinder and 3.5e, where you will be staring at calculations for most of the session. If that is your idea of fun, then play that game. But as we can see, the overwhelming majority of people do not find that fun.
>5e has enough rules in place to make a well-rounded system that offers something for everyone
5E does not meet a single criteria I use when evaluating an RPG. No, it doesn't.
That's a personal problem and not mine or the majority of other players. Let's take a quick look at 3e skills. I used to play 3e/3.5e and this is something I always felt tedious. There's simply too much. It's a needless amount of skills that really just translate into wasted time at the table while you fumble around. And I know this because I have played and DM'd countless games of 3.5e as well, and moved to Pathfinder and then finally found 5e and have stayed ever since. The fact that the DMG even outlines the concept of DC's as a malleable factor makes it perfect for DM'ing, because I can quickly craft a challenge for a particular player on the fly and make it relevant to his backstory, class, and abilities. Advantage/disadvantage was a quick and clean way to settle a lot of other tedious nonsense that existed in earlier editions of the game and in other systems.
>There's simply too much.
No. There are too many relative to the amount of skill points you get and the DCs on several of them. That's the real problem with it.
>Advantage/disadvantage was a quick and clean way to settle a lot of other tedious nonsense that existed in earlier editions of the game and in other systems.
It literally fails at handling some of the most basic scenarios a player could deal with. It's a shit version of circumstantial bonuses with no granularity and it deserves to be tossed on those merits alone.
*the DCs on several of them are fricked
Note that this is still a better situation than 5E's bullshit which gives worthless guidance on skills. If I don't know who's running the table and exactly what they consider easy, medium, hard, I don't know what the frick my character is capable of. That is a full on, hard stop, I am not playing your game level failure.
If what you said were true, then 3.5e would be popular. It's not, and many veteran players like myself left the system behind when 5e came out too. Because it got to the point where more of the game was spent tediously running calculations then it was actually roleplaying the game. Seriously, Read Lips? What a meaningless waste of space on a piece of paper that just bloats things up for no other reason, and that's not even mentioning those skills also have sub-skills (e.g., Knowledge) which you also need to build on. Whereas in 5e the game is structured on providing a much more comprehensive approach where player agency and roleplaying save the day. Not to mention that the skills are built in a way that make DM'ing much more straight-forward and easier to build things on the fly. Because you understand that the skills are relative to the player or character performing the skill. The modifiers are built into that, that's just logical and easy to use.
The DMG provides plenty of examples to get people thinking about how to design, for example, a trap. And even then, the fact that DM's have agency to build a DC relative to a player, scenario, and situation on the fly makes it much more fun to run and keeps the flow going. Because in most other ttrpgs, you're sitting there for 5-10minutes consulting charts and so on just to pick a fricking lock. Whereas the narrative element in 5e brings DnD into being an actual roleplaying game.
>If what you said were true, then 3.5e would be popular.
It was.
>Seriously, Read Lips? What a meaningless waste of space on a piece of paper that just bloats things up for no other reason
This is why it was removed in 3.5.
>Whereas in 5e the game is structured on providing a much more comprehensive approach where player agency and roleplaying save the day.
No part of this sentence makes any sense anywhere outside of your diseased head. Do you understand what player agency even means?
>It was.
Yeah, it was, and then 5e got released and everyone realized it's a better game and more fun to play.
>This is why it was removed in 3.5
And 3.5 had several other skills added in, such as Handle Humanoid so no, it was also weighed down by bloat that made the game more tedious than fun to play.
>Do you understand what player agency even means?
Yes, i do, because I've been playing these games for over a decade. And the amount of freedom you get in 5e, and the ease in which it is to build a campaign compared to the horrowshow that was making anything in 3.5 is proven by the fact 5e is popular and people play it, including most oldgays. Again, it sounds to me like roleplaying games probably aren't your thing, and thus games like 3.5 still attract a niche audience of people who prefer calculations and consulting charts than roleplaying. But for most people they want to roleplay, and 5e is the best system ever released for this purpose.
>Yes, i do,
No, you don't.
>Again, it sounds to me like roleplaying games probably aren't your thing
Sounds to me more like you don't know what the frick you're talking about. Let me make it clear: 5E offers nothing for me. It does not offer interesting tactical combat, its character building is shit, its skill system is bottom of the barrel garbage that's simultaneously restrictive and so barebones it's unable to fill out a character, the game system literally cannot handle basic scenarios because it's more interested in being gamist for the sake of tards who shriek when asked to add three numbers or be consistent without actually being anything approaching a good game. I've played much lighter RPGs than 5E.
That's great, congrats. As I said from the very beginning, there are going to be people that do not find roleplaying as fun as other facets of what a tabletop game can bring to the table (pun intended). But that's not my problem and it doesn't detract from the fact 5e is the best ttrpg system ever designed. It's not barebones at all, you just do not have the mind able to use it. If you want to play a game with 30+ stats to record and compare your chart for a session, then you can play those games like Pathfinder (with an action economy that is also incredibly frustrating, especially when trying to teach newer players). 5e is a game you can sit down people who are veterans and completely new to the hobby and have a great session without problems every single time. I know because I've been running these games for over 10 years now. The old Pathfinder groups I played in don't play anymore, but the 5e ones are all going strong.
>As I said from the very beginning, there are going to be people that do not find roleplaying as fun as other facets of what a tabletop game can bring to the table
And you were wrong then because you've done something fricking stupid and defined roleplaying as something it's not.
You seem really tedious as a person, I can get why you like tedious games.
Yep. I've run 5th level one-shots in 5e and had characters done in less than an hour. That would never happen in 3.5 or Pathfinder. It's simply too rules bloated to handle it. And I enjoy bringing people into the hobby, I never detract if someone wants to try Pathfinder or 3.5e, but time after time I always see them come back to 5e because it's just a better designed, streamlined game that puts roleplaying first which is what makes it enjoyable.
>puts roleplaying first which is what makes it enjoyable
What do you mean? You've been able to have amateur theater hour regardless of the edition. I don't think it inherently does this better than 3.PF, AD&D, or even Vampire.
I already explained this, but 5e is designed that makes the game run smoothly and thus keeps you immersed in the action and scenario and less time consulting charts, rules, supplemental books, etc. It's just an easier game to DM for and I have enough experience in ttrpgs that I can very easily use what 5e offers in terms of design to quickly produce a variety of challenges for my players. In other systems, this just isn't possible.
>it has less rules therefore it's better
amazing
It has the perfect amount of rules.
No, it actually has the inverse goldilocks zone of rules. There are just enough to persistently get in the way and not be intuitive, but not enough to flesh out the game with anything approaching detail.
That's false, it has the perfect amount of rules and it's popular because of that fact. It also gives you the ability to design just about anything very easily within the framework of the rules and the system and thus makes DM'ing better than any other ttrpg out there.
This is why it's popular.
5e has a bigger playerbase than 3.5e ever had.
>and thus makes DM'ing better than any other ttrpg out there.
Who the frick are you to make that statement? You've played 3.5, Pathfinder, and 5E, and you didn't even understand the purpose of why 3.5 and Pathfinder were set up the way they are. 4E has every benefit you think 5E has to make it easier to run, except its encounter building rules actually fricking work and don't lie to your face and it actually has examples to draw upon for what its DCs mean. Basic is objectively easier to run than 5E. And this is just limiting our scope to editions of D&D.
>5e has a bigger playerbase than 3.5e ever had.
>People aren't lining up to play those systems.
People are playing 5e because when they want to get into RPGs, homosexuals like you, with their heads so far up their asses, insist that they should start with 5e, and then play more 5e, and then when they're done with that they can join the regular weekly 5e gamenights, and if they get tired of 5e, they can play 5e, but in space. And when people try to talk to them about other systems, here you are, religiously screaming the praises of 5e as the perfect system that no one has any reason not to play.
And that's not even getting into the way that 5e fizzled at first until people got hooked on livestreamed shit like CritRole and Adventure Zone, when they had no interest in the hobby until the funny e-celeb people shilled it, and then they only wanted to play 5e because it's the system that the funny e-celebs were playing.
Just completely untrue. It was already more popular before Matt Mercer and co., and in my country nobody even knows who this is and it's still more popular than even the ttrpgs that got translated back in the day before you could just PDF everything.
>NUH UH
>in my country
so you're an ESL dumbass who doesn't know any better. Got it.
You haven't been able to form an argument at all, you just hate 5e because it's popular and you're clearly a moronic contratrian that has to disagree with people just because. In reality nobody actually cares and I play regularly, I doubt you even play.
No, we went over this several dozen times throughout the thread and your response to everything is
>nuh 5e is popular and perfect!
Because you have terminal brainrot.
This. It's rules lite, but all the rules or does have are bad.
>In other systems, this just isn't possible.
Yes it is. You're just shit at your job and haven't touched an actual rules-lite game ever.
>less time consulting charts, rules, supplemental books, etc
In my experience, you do this marginally less than 3.5 or 4e, but the results are kinda bland for the crunchiness of the procedures. It's Adv/Dis, or +-,2,5,10.
If I wanted the results of the procedures to have more mechanical impact, I'd play 3.PF or 4e. If I want something with procedures that actually lend themselves to fast play, I'd run TSR D&D or an OSR retroclone. To me, 5e exists in an awkward medium that's crunchy enough to be annoying, but the impact of its procedures feels kinda limp for how much they slow the game. I'm glad it's a happy medium for you.
I played 4e very briefly, so I can't form a really knowedgable opinion on it so I won't. But as I said from the start, 3.5e is a more mechanical game, and this turns off a lot of people including experienced players. Trying to recruit new players to play 3.5e was always a headache, and not in terms of ease of access to new players (I strictly player in person) but just most people didn't enjoy the mechanics involved or the amount of rules that game had so you got stuck in a loop. When 5e came out, that changed and as someone has been running games for over a decade, I can tell you for a fact I've brought more people into the hobby than I ever did. And no, I don't tell new players that 5e is the best system (though, this is my opinion). I have lent out my old, busted Pathfinder rulebook more times than you can count to people, and still the majority of those people come back to play 5e.
It is physically impossible to play for >10 years and think a class based system is anywhere near the "best" system.
Class based systems, yes, all of them, are worse than skill based systems and that is something everyone who's experienced both for an extended period of time knows.
I just completely disagree. But I enjoy high fantasy, I like Forgotten realms, and i also enjoy roleplaying immensely. I never enjoyed games where more of my time at the table was consulting charts.
Skill based systems are the ones you need less time consulting charts on, are you mental?
It's class based systems that have all the charts with the abilities that build up on other abilities and 10 thousand pages of book-keeping. Skill based systems have you roll your skills.
What charts do you have in Traveller? or in Call of Cthulhu?
>When 5e came out, that changed and as someone has been running games for over a decade, I can tell you for a fact I've brought more people into the hobby than I ever did
That's empirically true. I think it hits a nice sweet spot for players, and there are more players than GMs. As a GM, it's not even my favorite iteration of D&D.
>making call in 3.5
>have precedent dozens of times over for any call, tables on DM screen
>making call in 4E
>tables on DM screen, examples for what the game considers certain difficulties, plus flat DCs for certain checks
>making call in 5E
>choose difficulty from a table and hope I didn't just start an argument at the table because these definitions mean different things to different people
Lied about 5e, they give you examples of what the game considers difficult. just a flat out lie.
It literally does not. Are you moronic?
Just opened a random page in the DMg. Page 111, Foraging for food.
DC 10: Abundant food/water
DC 15: Limitedfood/water
DC 20: Scarce food/water
just a flat out lie, why are you lying now?
>in the DMG
>for ONE use of ONE skill
Need I explain why this does nothing to prevent arguments?
There's plenty of other examples listed. Including spotting, traps, perception concepts, etc. You're being dishonest now because you ran out of insults to throw at people.
Do you not understand why telling you what skill to roll and then a vague gesture towards a contextless DC table is not a worthwhile guideline? And why putting it in the DMG is the dumbest move possible?
For a game that puts roleplaying first it stifled it harder than almost any other game I've played.
>That would never happen in 3.5 or Pathfinder.
Sure it would. Unless I'm engaging in a subsystem I need to brush up on I can easily bang out a 5th level character in 15 minutes. So can most of the people I've played with. They choose to take longer to iron out the details to their satisfaction, which isn't a factor for a one-shot.
>I only run 5e
>I only teach new players 5e
>I end up playing a lot of 5e
>this somehow means that people only want to come back to 5e
D&D brainrot in action.
I played all of the other systems, including GURPs. People aren't lining up to play those systems. Those systems aren't "bad", they're just not as fun for most people and thus 5e wins out. It's the best ttrpg ever made and the numbers speak for it.
Oh, you're that guy, ok
>Yeah, it was, and then 5e got released and everyone realized it's a better game and more fun to play.
This assumes that everyone who is playing 5e right now was a die-hard 3.5 player who abandoned 3.5 only because 5e was superior, and not for any other reason.
This. 90% of 5E players at best are new players, not players of old editions who went to 5E.
A clone of 3.5 was the second most popular RPG by a mile from 2008-2017. It is one of the most successful RPGs of all time, and one of the longest-lived D&D versions, only beaten out by AD&D.
And it's not popular anymore because more people play 5e because it's a better system. Pathfinder was an improvement over 3.5, but it still suffered from the same problems that made 3.5 ultimately not fun. And once you play 5e it's hard to go back because you see just how bloated those other systems really were. And that's exactly why people play 5e and not Pathfinder.
>And it's not popular anymore
Wrong
>And once you play 5e it's hard to go back because you see just how bloated those other systems really were.
I was aware of this when 3E released because I had already played more RPGs than D&D you fricking dumbass. 5E is not a lightweight system and it has none of the benefits of those systems.
I like the simplified 4e chassis of 5e, but PF1 was the only thing close to as popular as 5e. It had legs.
I agree that it's a pain in the ass too. Making a bunch of pregen 2nd level 3.5 characters for a oneshot was a pain, when whipping up a 5e PC takes like 15min.
PF1 was less popular than 3.5 and 4E.
PF1 was in second place by a mile. It may have been a distant second, but everything else was much less.
I would argue that happened because the 3rd and 4th place games killed themselves by way of White Wolf incompetence and Mormonism.
An appeal to popularity is moronic when discussing quality, especially when there's so many other factors responsible for popularity that have absolutely nothing to do with the actual mechanics and rules of a system. Should you scrap D&D night and just have all your players play Fortnite with you because it's more popular than dungeons and dragons?
5e is popular because it's able to coast on 40 years of brand recognition and was the currently-available edition when a global pandemic caused hobby spending to explode as billions of people were literally trapped indoors unable to leave the house, combined with "nerd culture" becoming socially trendy and shit like stranger things reminding millions of people that d&d existed. None of these factors have ANYTHING to do with the actual design ethos of 5th edition dungeons and dragons or the merits of people like Jeremy Crawford as a rules writer.
While I largely agree with what you're saying, it's such incredible hyperbole and just basically false to claim that 'billions of people were literally trapped indoors unable to leave the house'. Neither I nor anybody in my family were ever 'trapped' anywhere, for the duration of the entire pandemic. Sure, plenty of businesses closed down, which was stupid, but there was no authority preventing me from going outside or indeed even going out to drink at a bar (which I did, frequently, during covid). Framing covid in the way you describe is annoying and potentially very dangerous since the idiot mongrel dogs of the youth generation who can't remember it may take you seriously and imagine that institutions really have the power to order people to stay in their homes and they will simply comply. They do not and did not, even with all the whining about masking and social distancing.
Is that where we're at? "COVID didn't happen"? It was only a couple of years ago.
>it's such incredible hyperbole and just basically false to claim that 'billions of people were literally trapped indoors unable to leave the house'
homie the Chinese were welding people inside their apartments,.it's true if you just talk about Asia let alone the rest of the world
The poster is referencing the covid pandemic as a reason for the surge in the popularity of 5e. Chinese people being welded into their apartments obviously did not provide a boost to WotC's sales, so then we have to assume OP meant that people who actually contributed to 5e's growth were physically locked indoors and kept their by their governments. But this didn't happen. The extremely paranoid and the extremely regime-loyal imposed self-quarantine but the vast majority of people just went on about their business.
>It's a shit version of circumstantial bonuses with no granularity and it deserves to be tossed on those merits alone.
Autistic obsession with providing countless +1/+2 bonuses for every minor thing is just really dumb. You're asking your players to be accountants who are constantly trying to remember the tedious list of stupid shit. This is the type of thing that's good in a video game where the computer deals with all that shit for you. In real life though? People aren't going to pay that kind of attention and you find this out real fricking quick as soon as you start playing with actual normies instead of autismos who have nothing better to do with their lives other than memorize this shit.
That's funny because it's the normal players who get pissed when they realize something's up and what's happening by the rules doesn't match what should happen.
>autistic
>tedious
>autismos
>memorize
Adding a +2 to your stealth roll because you're 60 feet away from someone, another +2 because there's a paper wall in the way you can see their silhouette through, and then another +5 because they're facing away isn't autistic, tedious, and it doesn't require memorization. It's something all but the bottom of the barrel can do without thinking about it. Why would you admit to being that bad at RPGs?
That's 3 things already without even having any potential negatives and you have to consider how it's easier to stack AC in previous editions. In the end, your chances will end up being the same. It's really not surprising people find it boring as shit. You've got 4-5 players at the table and they all go through their turn adding and subtracting this shit only so they can end up having a mildly better chance at something. People will lose focus as the session wears on. Not everyone plays this on a daily basis or even weekly.
The benefits of the advantage system are obvious to anyone who thinks about it for 5 fricking seconds. You guys refuse to understand simply because you can't get over your contempt for the people who prefer it.
Not to mention how laughable this whole topic is since the fighting classes that rely on this in previous editions are complete dogshit.
>You've got 4-5 players at the table and they all go through their turn adding and subtracting this shit only so they can end up having a mildly better chance at something. People will lose focus as the session wears on.
Adding and subtracting takes seconds you brainless c**t.
I mean, I've played both 3.5E and 5E. I personally don't have a problem doing it. I simple cannot ignore what I've seen on the other people who played.
Sure, if they're sharp, focused and can actually remember the tedious list of minor garbage that gives you +1 to something. Most of the time these things just won't be true. Scraping the dumb math and just handing someone a re-roll is obviously more efficient. It's in fact so obvious you have no other choice but to resort to personal insults.
It's actually slower when you aren't playing with short bus specials.
But thinking about "how many modifiers sources are there, do they stack or do I take the highest, will a debuff require me to recalculate, etc" does take more time. The issue isn't addition, it's the amount of steps you have to account for outside the simplest scenarios.
It's a pain point, and I say this as someone who likes 3.5 and thinks the cool things make this pain ultimately worth it.
That's a 3.5 issue, not a modifiers issue. Completely different argument.
Yeah D&D is infamous for going full moron with its ideas. Other systems have done modifiers and advantage/disadvantage better.
>That's 3 things already
Good. Granularity deserves to exist because it exists in real life.
>In the end, your chances will end up being the same.
No they won't.
>The benefits of the advantage system are obvious to anyone who thinks about it for 5 fricking seconds.
So are the downsides, but you refuse to do so.
>Good. Granularity deserves to exist because it exists in real life.
Realism is a cancer upon the fantasy genre and TTRPGs in general.
>No they won't.
Yes, they will, because the d20 is the worst die in existence and gives a peasant the same odds of beating a check as a level 20 fighter.
>So are the downsides, but you refuse to do so.
Admittedly there are some downsides, such as preventing situational modifiers, but the pros far outweigh the cons. The simplicity, the raw power another dice roll has in terms of playing the odds, and being able to just make snap judgements as a GM rather than refering to some autistic table in some third party book or whatever to find out how many +1s someone gets for it being 3 PM on a tuesday while overcast make it way better than 50 different +1s, and it also kneecaps metagamer homosexuals who try to copy shitty meme builds they saw online.
>but the pros far outweigh the cons.
No they don't. There is literally nothing worse a game can do than have a mechanic engendering nonsense situations that break suspension of disbelief.
Yeah, like a peasant beating a level 20 barbarian in a contest of strength, that could never happen. Oh, or someone literally being so skilled at something it is impossible for them to even have a chance of failure because they dumped 40 points into Crafting (Basket weaving) or whatever bloated shit 3.X farts out.
In fact, advantage does the opposite of what you're accusing it of. It allows a re-roll, take the higher. It makes situations more believable because the DC doesn't change and GUESS WHO SETS THE DC, the GM THAT'S RIGHT. And rather than having to set the DC to 150 or something ridiculous because Joe Frickwit has dumped all his skill points into the skill he's rolling and it's tuesday and overcast and 3 PM and he's holding a peanut butter sandwich in his left hand while wearing only one shoe and standing on one leg for a +20 bonus to his already +50 modifier, you can give advantage instead and the numbers remain managable and the players aren't going to be able to cheese the shit out of a roll with situational modifiers because Barfwaffle's Book of Extremes says on page 522 that they can.
>In fact, advantage does the opposite of what you're accusing it of.
No it doesn't.
Explain how the exact same modifier being used twice and the higher roll being taken is less realistic than someone having +100 to their roll which makes rolling a moot point?
I have a blind, flanked, crippled enemy on the ground in front of me in darkness who cannot see me. I make the same attack roll a normal PC does.
I am a Wizard researching a spell in a library. I cast Enhance Ability (Fox's Cunning) on myself and direct my 5 apprentices to aid me. The apprentices are redundant because they grant Advantage which I already have.
+100 Run is a good way to explain how when an equally jacked and juiced guy with similar paper stats challenges Usain Bolt, he still gets smoked. Or how Floyd Mayweather could toy with a bigger, stronger guy like McGregor and TKO him at will.
If you want "there's levels to this game" to be a thing, adv/dis makes amateurs smoking professionals more likely. That seems to be the opposite of your stated reason for enjoying advantage.
So you do almost as much work as 3.5 just to get the rough equivalent of +5?
no, in 5e you just have commoner A take the Help action to help Commoner B, who now with Guidance and Bardic Inspiration is as good as the task as a 20th level player characters. wow, awesome, very cool and immersive.
5e using Advantage and Disadvantage as a blunt cudgel means that throwing more bodies at a problem is always the superior outcome because bounded accuracy means the raw d20 value is all that actually matters. A commoner with +0 strength can get advantage from the help action and bust down a DC 15 door with the same reliability as a fighter with 16 strength since advantage is roughly equivalent to a +5 to a roll. Level one enemies and player characters have 18 AC and level 17 enemies have 20.
There's a reason "dogpiling skill checks" is a 5e exclusive problem, in 3.5 if your fricking rogue with a +30 disable device failed to disarm a trap nobody else in the party would even bother trying. In 5e MUH NATTY TWENTY CLACK CLACK MATH ROCKS HEEHEEE means it's always worth rolling for everything, and mechanics like guidance, advantage from helping, and random bonuses like bardic inspiration make it that much easier for the barbarian to know more about the cleric's god on a religion check than the cleric does.
>The simplicity, the raw power another dice roll has in terms of playing the odds
No way you're talking about 5e
>having to keep track of 3 separate additional modifiers isn't autistic or tedious
It absolutely is, and frick 3.PF for its innane bullshit. If you're going to have modifiers there should be a hard cap on how high they can go, and it should be very low to prevent the absolute absurdity of 3.PF.
>Why would you admit to being that bad at RPGs?
Why would you admit to being a sub-brick IQ tard who wants to waste the most valuable resource in all of the universe, time, doing pointless math?
The anon you're arguing with is pretty much spot on. Too much shit to pick from is known to cause most people to just disengage and do something else instead, especially when so much of it is useless, plus, remembering all your little bonuses and number crunching just takes longer and gets tedious. YOU might like it, but it's a factual and demonstrable statement that most people don't. That's just how it is.
>but it's a factual and demonstrable statement that most people don't.
...because there aren't nearly enough skill points and it leaves enormous gaps in character capability.
Skills in 3.5 are legitimately some of the dumbest shit you will ever encounter. Half of this shit won't ever even be used and all of it can be replaced with low level spells anyway. Whoever had the bright idea of separating Hide and Move Silently into 2 skills deserves some kind of award for dumb design.
>you not able to think creatively or even use basic levels of imagination
People like you are insufferable. You're basically the flat earth of the RPG community.
>the system is designed to easily implement anything you'd like
Man I sure love wasting my time with the pointless arbitrary CR system. Which always works (bounded accuracy), and isn't based off some incredibly stupid concept like adventuring day. Which is really just shorthand for 6-8 slogs so you can waste your players resources.
And homebrewing does not eliminate the issue instead it just leads to more having to fix issues the designers didn't think about. Which is tedious and that's why there are tons of people in the community who have tons of homebrew content because they know the system is flawed.
>I used rules within the game, such as skill checks, and uh player agency
Name a single system that doesn't do anything of these things you you obtuse jackass. Bro you are just saying fricking buzzwords at this point what are you even trying to fricking say?
There are simpler and easier systems out there the only reason you don't play them is because you're a lazy dicksucking leech who refuses to try anything new. There are tons of systems that do it better than 5e does it. VtM and PBTA are great examples. Fricking Kids on Bikes which I don't even like does simple, easy and less crunch.
I don't care if its bait or not, frick off you pretentious moron.
> Man I sure love wasting my time with the pointless arbitrary CR system
You almost certainly have no idea how to use CR right and are blaming your own failures on the system.
The CR system of verifiably broken and WotC has admitted as much.
>and WotC has admitted as much.
1. Where? Because I'm not just pressing X, I'm holding it down.
2. I have personally and extensively used it to great effect, so I question if you're using it right.
Oh, yeah, making your own food is always cheaper, yes.
However, how long did it take you to make that burger at home, verses how long would it take you to get a burger from McDonald's?
In a typical work day, how much spare time do you have to clock out for your meal break, leave work, go home, cook up a burger, eat it, then go back to work; verses clock out, go to McDonald's, order a burger, eat it, then go back to work?
Shame on you for replying to such obvious bait.
>Just because you aren't able to do that doesn't mean it's the system's fault.
You are an extreme moronic homosexual. Neglecting to have rules or even just broad general operations for things that will absolutely come up during any average game, is ABSOLUTELY THE FAULT OF THE FRICKING SYSTEM.
By this metric, a book or tv series having more fanfiction means it's of worse quality. Every system "NeEdS" houserules (yes, even [your favorite system]). D&D gets more houserules than any other system because it gets more play than any other system. No one's making houserules for GURPS because no one gives a shit about GURPS.
Comparing fanfiction to homebrew and houserules is possibly the most moronic comparison you could have made. You have terminal brainrot.
It's not even good at combat.
The marketing term for what DnD has is "network utility". That is, everyone in the network already knows DnD and how to play it, and it's a relatively non-creative system that invents monsters and modules for you, and tells your players how to play via the class system. A five year old can play DnD and do just fine, and it's really only in the ruleslawyer bullshit that things get complicated.
It's not that the system is better in any way. It's that the system is already so widespread that it's easy to run games without needing to teach anyone, and the biggest morons in gaming can handle it.
Dungeons & Dragons & Dollars.
More money means more marketing.
It's a simplistic combat game
Accessing D&D both as a player and a DM has least friction due to abundance of resources and premade content to cannibalize at will.
I know a guy who gave up on running BRP because he didn't find enough pre-existing monsters with statblocks for it with few minutes of googling.
I'd echo that sentiment about premade content. I really wanted to run Pokemon Tabletop United for my friends, but after doing a small amount of prep work, I realized that the practical situation of the game was piles of paperwork and nothing pre-enerated.
Mass market appeal and cultural inertia via social media presence.
Rules don't matter much for the contemporary model of gameplay as handwaved combat with cut scenes, so can be focused on or ignored.
Most people don't have broad interests, we're just not like that as a species.
I work in a marketing department for a company that makes pre-packaged desserts.
Name one other game system that hires people like me. You can't. They're too small, and too busy with hiring people to improve their product, expanding production, or making management mistakes. They rely on nerds like us to talk about their game online, for free.
If I tell you we're the 5e of pre-packaged cream-filled cakes, you know exactly who I work for. It doesn't even matter if you've had one of our cakes, I get paid to make sure they live rent free in your head.
Meanwhile, I would bet if I pick 10 gamers at random, 9 of them haven't even heard of your favorite RPG or mine.
[spoilers]Gluten-fricking-free people have heard of twinkies, ho-hos, and zingers[/spoilers]
I'm going to report to Hostess that you're associating their brand with this website. 🙂
Hostess cupcakes are in fact objectively the best cupcakes, though.
If I'm going to eat anything rather than baking my own pastries it's the coffee cakes.
>a chart of binomial distributions
You mean THAC0?
Nobody really cares about any of that. WE do, sure, but players don't consider the math behind it. Everyone just checks the chart, no one cares how they picked the numbers. It's the same with bounded accuracy.
That edition didn't flop because things like THAC0 were too complicated and esoteric. It flopped because TSR had no fricking clue how to run a business. As D&D became more successful, and the company grew bigger, they had more opportunities to make mistakes, which kept compounding, and they folded in spite of their gross increasing. If your product is a success but your managment is so ass that you waste more money the more you make, you end up like TSR and now Hasbro.
Conflating rules autism with lore autism is hurting your argument. I understand what you're saying, and it's true that both kinds of sperggotry exist, but it makes it seem like you're playing both sides of the fence when you're making a decent point.
Also, Morrowind was a flop. Skyrim succeeded because it was more like GTA with Dragons and Vikings than any Elder Scrolls game before it.
>They don't even consider that you can separate mechanics and lore.
One of the best points made on /tg/
I remember stupidly trying to explain to a 40k player that his lists sucked because he saw close combat as a means to kill things, not as a way to tie up a bigger threat and stop it from shooting for a turn or two. He just wanted the big angry dude with the big angry axe to chop everyone like in the story, and why the FRICK is he losing to a bunch of wimpy elves with needle guns from 2 editions ago?
>People want to learn one game. People want fantasy RPGs first and foremost followed by some of the other flavors.
Hasbro markets 5e as The One Game. They don't need to make it good, they need to shout over everything else.
>You mean THAC0?
You are too innumerate to be arguing about dice pools, and an example of why they're usually an anti-pattern in RPG design.
The hidden truth here is that the majority of people don't give a frick at being the best at number crunching with stupid toys or being able to theory craft the best list or any of that nerd shit that doesn't matter, they just care about aesthetics and whatever fantasy they're trying to fulfill.
> If I tell you we're the 5e of pre-packaged cream-filled cakes, you know exactly who I work for. It doesn't even matter if you've had one of our cakes, I get paid to make sure they live rent free in your head.
God dammit that makes tons of sense. Even if I don’t play it anymore in favor of Paizo’s 2e crack, I am constantly assaulted with d&disms everywhere and it indeed lives rent free in my head. When people ask what time the game is at, they don’t always ask “when is pathfinder?” And mostly They ask “when is d&d?” Even though they have never played a single game of d&d.
>Explain why it's more popular than your favorite system without going on an unhinged rant about normies and/or zoomers
Cultural inertia and marketing.
Really good (false) marketing and an old name to ride the coat-tails of.
Now explain why popularity should matter to someone who's already playing his own games, made as a result of D&D 5e fans telling him "rewrite what you don't like" in response to valid criticisms.
I'll wait.
Because it's easy to pick up and make a character. People inherently get broad fantasy archetypes of the classes. If you're not moronic, you quickly get a feel for 5e's crunch conventions. The activities of a given session are much more obvious than most RPGs, and have the easy fallback of "fight monsters and take their stuff".
Basically every other RPG competitor has spent the last decade shooting themselves in the foot, to the point that D&D's only real competitors are previous editions of D&D or clones thereof.
Everyone has already stated the obvious stuff (culture and marketing), so I'll try and answer this purely from a DM perspective.
1. Near 0 effort needed to get a group of players interested, even players that have never touched a TTRPG before in their life simply because they've heard of D&D before in some form or another and so have a sense of familiarity. Theres a hook in.
2. moronicly easy access to any books or information you need. You need to look up anything at all? Google. The first link will likely have what youre looking for. Don't want to flip through the pages of a book, let alone need to buy any book at all? Use the wikidot site or 5e tools, or any other. Can play D&D easily for $0.
3. Community content. People talk about and cry endlessly about how shit D&D adventure modules are. But luckily there is a fix! I go to google. I type in '[adventure name] DM guide', and boom. I have multiple sources with a wealth of information and recommendations on what too change or add to improve the adventure. Along with that, there are redone maps, art, music, ect. Endless amounts of community content.
Now, you can say this is just a reason why D&D is shit. And, yes... yes it is. Fortunately or unfortunately, the quality of the community content and the ease of access to it outweighs the negatives of the modules.
4. D&D is easy for what it is. I don't know where people get this idea that its difficult to learn. It feels like people have become so brainrotted by trying to minmax or be optimal, trying to emulate these broken builds. When the average new player just picks what they think sounds cool and moves on, and can play just fine with that.
>D&D adventure modules are
D&D also actually has them. Most games barely have adventures, and the ones they have are worse railroads. CoC is the notable exception here.
The simple reality is that it's the one with the most widespread exposure and once people get into D&D they don't really have a reason to look at other systems since D&D fulfills their expectations and is fun enough to maintain their interest through their 1-3 year ttrpg phase. Doesn't really have anything to do with zoomers or normies.
First mover advantage.
Books are nice, well printed, nice images, its the RPG with the longest history as commercial phenomenom, its extremely flexible and easily homebrewed. Price isn't high neither.
People seething about marketing. It's popular because it satisfies what is needed in a game.
Believe it or not autists, but most people aren't willing to learn new games. RPGs are a skill, even simple games are complex to learn, it's literally clear you've never dealt with family game nights.
People want to learn one game. People want fantasy RPGs first and foremost followed by some of the other flavors. Certain flavors of autists don't care about mechanics either, they want systems with shit loads of lore, like metric shitloads. The planes alone satisfy like 50% of players I've interacted with. They don't even consider that you can separate mechanics and lore.
Like, I'm sorry, but there's a REASON the most popular games in RPG land have the MOST lore books (D&D, VTM, etc.). No one gives a shit about system mechanics as long as it feels mostly okay and is straightforward. Also, D20 is easy as frick and don't tell me it's not. Your favorite RPGs have little to no lore around them or rely on adaptations of other settings.
You will NEVER capture the market like that. You literally don't get the fantasy of this all. Like, I can convince players to play WFRPG, largely because of the lore of the world. I can't convince anyone to play GURPS, what's the lore of GURPS? Oh wait there is none.
TLDR The vast majority of people in this hobby don't care about the mechanics. They care about lore and simplicity. If it's easy, regardless of it's good, and it's packaged with a lot of lore, it'll capture people. Elder Scrolls is massively popular with autistics not because Morrowind is good, but because the lore is good. No one has EVER cared about mechanics.
This is actually a really good point.
Why do you all think the elder scrolls are so popular as far as fantasy videogames go? None of the games are good. Why do people like them so much? It's the same reason D&D is so popular. Highly detailed lore.
The games before Skyrim were at least interesting and inventive for their time. There weren't really other games like Morrowind before Morrowind, and there haven't been many that come close since. I genuinely don't understand the undying worship of Skyrim though. That game is flavorless stale oatmeal served in a bowl made of mud.
Mods
Putting sprinkles on a dog turd doesn't make it edible.
When I read this at first I thought mods meant moderator and not modification, and thought the mods would force you into an anon's sex slave. And then when you posted "Mods" it meant you were trying to then that anon you replied to into a sex slave by asking the mods to do it for you. Wild ride.
>None of the games are good.
Nice contrarianism.
So what you're saying is, people want to read books of trivia instead of playing games?
Yes, and display them on their shelves and coffeetables while daydreaming about hypothetical games.
Did you really need to call out 99% of the human (non-bot) posters in /tg/ like that?
Yes, because that's the reality of RPG book consumption. You're selling collectible books, that will mostly not be used as play aids
Anyone who does want the books as actual game rules for use and not a nerd badge knows how to get them without paying, too.
Not to mention these days it is often more convenient just searching a rule rather than flipping through a book. Especially with how poorly formatted and organized so so many RPG books are.
Every book I buy I use. I don't like digital shit, I don't allow digital shit at my table when I play and I've been running games for almost 20 years now. And my players universally agree with this philosophy.
Decades of name recognition and 5 billion podcasts/streams.
>OP couldn't explain
Many such cases.
How sad.
Uncle Kev will sabotage anything he touches eventually. It's the nature of his existence.
Because
>the rational consumer is a myth
>in line with the above, proper advertisement trumps quality (see: Hollywood)
>products in which the community is a vital part of the product tend to act somewhat similar to natural monopolies (it's why two decades of WOW killers achieved nothing, and WOW may only be overtaken currently because it's a fight over a dying market)
Normalgays. Does this stating of the truth count as an unhinged rant now?
humans aren't a playable choice
Old, easy to get into, well designed, and available.
Critical Role and Stranger Things of course
Because it's an old system with a well-known name that is tried and tested. 5e is designed really well to offer something to experienced and new players in my opinion. And, if you're an oldgay who has been playing TTRPGs for a long time you're already homebrewing shit regardless of the system you plan anyway. But 5e plays really well "out of the box", and thus it's a great way to get people into the hobby. How is that so hard to understand?
A guy at my game looked me in the eye and tell me only white people can be racist.
I'll go on as many unhinged rants about zoomers and normalgays as I like.
Because action/adventure in a fantasy world is, understandably, more popular than horror/investigation in 1920s Northeastern America.
Fewer options for character building makes it more accessible.
You're telling me that I can just build 6th level character in 10 minutes instead of crawling through literally hundreds of options on Archives of Nethys and trying to figure out whether the feats I've picked have synergy with each other?
You're telling me just about any build I make is viable as long as I allocate ASIs properly? You mean I don't have to choose one thing to be good at forever?
You're telling me there's an easy spreadsheet for leveling up so it can be done in minutes rather than multiple lists of class and general feats?
You're telling me equipment is as easy as picking a +1 item rather than scrolling Archives of Nethys for the very particular weapon I need that meets all the crtiera needed to proc my existing feats and also deals to correct damage type to the enemy I'm facing?
>You're telling me equipment is as easy as picking a +1 item rather than scrolling Archives of Nethys for the very particular weapon I need that meets all the crtiera needed to proc my existing feats and also deals to correct damage type to the enemy I'm facing?
I feel this one. In PF2e I was a two-handed rogue who made STR my dump stat because I was used to finesse weapons using DEX for both attack roll and damage. When I realized I was doing an average of 5 damage per attack (with sneak attack), I poured over the weapon spreadsheets and found the only light finesse weapon eligible for sneak attack that deals more damage is the Kukri, which deals 1d6.
>I didn't pick the racket that gave me dex to damage, and I can't add my dex to damage! Bad game!
>I picked eldritch scoundrel which gives me magic or one of the rackets that gives additional ways to sneak attack and will not mention this
really makes me think you have an agenda, anon
It got a cartoon, like three or four movies, multiple popular book series, is constantly being referenced to in cartoons, TV series and movies and it was made to play a part in the Satanic Panic.
Take your pic: it came out years after and had a bigger fight to get established; post-apoc magic vs hypertech kitchen sinks are too much for some people; Kevin is a moron actively working against the popularity and access to his games.
It's like magic, I ain't gotta explain shit.
>It's like magic
this, same dominant market share, same publisher and everything
>easy to get into
>well known name
>marketed very well
>popular, so high chance of actually playing a game and not just reading rulebooks
>popularised by bg3, crit, etc
wiz knows what they're doing.
>easy to get into
I know people go "got into" 5e years ago and still need D&D Beyond and a full campaign book to play at all, and they need someone to run the game for them.
The reason so many fa/tg/uys hate 5e is because a lot of people play it. If 3.5e were popular, /tg/ would start playing 5e. Just the usual chan-contrianism because they're raised by single moms
Blaming contrarianism even though we've had threads for as long as 5e has been a thing, and before that as well, is actual contrarianism.
Small indie studio, please understand.
My favorite system is Burning Wheel, and DnD is more popular because it's easier (for everyone but the DM), it's more action-packed, and it's more like a video game. That last part is why I prefer Burning Wheel, but I don't pretend for a moment that everyone would like it.
I like Barbriabs or lem- NORMIES NORMIES ZOOMERS ZOOMER FRICKING SNOY FRICKING NORMIE-ZOMMIE homosexualS
Zoomer, zoomer, snoy snoy!
Zoomer, zoomer, snoy snoy
Zoomer, zoomer, snoy snoy
Zoomer, zoomer, snoy snoy snoy!
Market capture, as a result of getting in on the ground floor of the hobby and making the extremely savvy decision to go open source with the OGL, which effectively made D&D the "default" TTRPG. Once you manage to become the name-brand so synonymous with your space that most people struggle to name another one (think "Kleenex" or "Band-Aid"), pretty much the only company that can knock you out of the top spot is yourself. Worth noting that WotC seems to have taken this to heart, as they've apparently opted for some kind of automatic weapon to shoot themselves in the foot with the last few years. Testament to how solid their position is that they're still not only in the game but continue to dominate it.
Zoomers do not play 5e, they don't play RPGs at all, in general. Millenials are the main demographic responsible for both designing and playing RPGs these days, and will remain so for many decades as zoomers and alpha are substantially smaller and less white (and therefore less interested in this kind of hobby).
The increased popularity of 5e is also almost solely concentrated into millenial demographic, as, again, zoomers do not widely play RPGs, and the format of media designed for 5e community should make this extremely obvious to you. Zoomers will never have a significant impact on this hobby, as compared with millenials or the previous generations.
That's true. Most zoomers I've run games for have an abysmal lack of imagination and creativity. They are often unable to use character sheets, cannot hold attention for very long and are usually trying to forcefully insert random politics into the game. Interesting dynamic to see an entire generation lack creativity, free thinking and imagination.
Just to add to this thread. D&D can be found in several languagues, unlike many other RPGs. It's not expensive, easily available and popular.
There's no reason not to play it, unless you're autistic.
because the rules are pretty straight forward and it doesnt take a lot of setup time compared to most other rpg systems.
It's very well marketed, and is also known for being the first ttrpg.
Basically pure name recognition.
Despite my problems with 5e theres no denying its the most approachable and well known roleplaying brand name out there, and i have to admit the game isnt that badly designed. there's some features missing, but when i see how much fun my players have vs. my pathfinder groups who are usually just arguing about micro statting, i am starting to get more blackpilled on the games i used to love and find myself playing more and more 5e. dunno.
You can handhold new players into playing D&D, but you can do that with any system. I've picked up and played and even taught entirely new systems in 10-20 minutes for conventions. However, there's a difference between playing and learning. Learning a game means knowing the gist of the rules. It means not having to reference the book or ask questions for every little thing. It means when the GM says to roll something, you don't have to read your entire character sheet top to bottom to find it. Ideally, it means that someone could run the system, in a pinch, as long as they had the material on hand.
Too many idiots mistake the ability to handhold and training-wheel your way through a session of 5e as a sign that 5e is inherently intuitive and easy to learn. This goes for nearly every system. The amount of systems that are harder to learn than 5e don't number that high and the worst examples aren't even in print anymore.
When I play 5e I find myself playing 5e. When I play other systems I find myself arguing/consulting rulebooks, running calculations, and trying to remember every little detail. WotC took the "less is more" concept they began to implement with 4e, polished it up a bit, and released it as is. I think this pissed a lot of hardcore 3.5 players who want to have stats for every individual aspect of a character so they say it's too bare bones. Maybe it is, but the pacing works much better in my opinion. As a system it just works. Are there "better" rpg systems out there? Define better. I think people play the kind of games they want and 5e has enough appeal to bring in everybody, from veterans to newcomers a like.
>I think this pissed a lot of hardcore 3.5 players who want to have stats for every individual aspect of a character so they say it's too bare bones.
The actually funny thing is that casters are so fricking strong in 3,5 that most of those stats and bonuses are pointless anyway. You successfully pulled off a situation where you managed to stack up a +10 to your attack bonus? Yeah great, by the way, the wizard has paralyzed him anyway. Oh you want to pick the lock with your skills that you invested in? Never mind, Knock spell.
The sheer proliferation of useless feats like "give +1 to attack but only for like 1 weapon" is the apotheosis of this.
WoTC lost control of that system and it really shows. It's also pretty dated in my opinion, it just lacks clear organization that even Pathfinder picked up on. I just don't like the action system in PF.
My favorite system is too complex and high IQ for most people so they go for less intellectual games.
gooder marketing
I don't have a favorite system. My table changes system with pretty much every campaign.
But I don't like our "house made" system, it was just one of the people who GM's badly cobbling together disparate rules he liked from different systems.
marketing.
Easy, simple, and each new eddition is a new effort to make it more marketable.
My favorite system was created by a company that went out of business over twenty years ago 🙁
First mover advantage. It's why MtG is the biggest tcg and why people call tissues Kleenex™
Counterpoint: a nonzero number of people have never even heard of Hydrox cookies, and most of those who have only know of them as the cookies that are basically Oreos and came out before Oreos but which you can’t find so you might as well buy Oreos.
First mover advantage isn’t a guaranteed win all by itself, it has to be partnered with a good enough product.
it is particularly friendly to spectacle brained sorts who want the experience of having played a tabletop game with RP but y'know not actually do any of that shit.
It's the starbucks of rpgs.
When it came out, it was so heavily demonized in the public light that it unintentionally made it the popular thing to do in secret to "rebel" against dysfunctional society. It just continued to take off from there.
Tl;Dr the people who tried to shut it down didn't realize it backfired and made it more popular.
It has like two full generations of pop culture penetration into the public consciousness to the point it's at risk of becoming a genericized term.
free books on da internet + it’s the d&d genre which is popular rn
50 year head start on development and brand recognition.
buy an add.
>add
Yeah, I bought the add-on. Still waiting for the next one to come out.
It's the community, as much as I love 3.PF the players are fricking annoying and garbage. The players also tend to be a bit too autistic for my tastes and I myself am slightly autistic. 5e players are chill and know how to have fun, I stopped caring and learned to enjoy the game with them. I'll just homebrew and iron out stuff when I feel like it but even then I'm starting to let go of all my balancing homebrews, with a few exceptions ofcourse.
Because I'm playing my own homemade heartbreaker.
Other people can't have it.
D&D is the only RPG held by an international conglomerate worth (or at least was) billions of dollars and therefore had the advantage of marketing and product placement.
Chaosium is also an international conglomerate, although I don't know their capitalization, doubt it's even $1bn.
Call of Cthulhu is popular, though.
>doubt it's even $1bn.
I would be shocked if it's even half that
Chaosium isn't a big conglomerate, at best they are a mid size company that's done a really good job of partnering. They have a single office and license out to other publishing companies in other countries.
In many ways, this is what a successful RPG company should look like. It's big enough for the production of it's games and small enough to keep it together and stay focused.
It's cut down and extremely simple and that makes it attractive to certain kinds of players, genersting network utility. The official support also helps make it very easy to GM online - anything and everything is made with 5e in mind.
I play 4th ed as my main game and that requires the players to engage with the mechanics and use tactics to survive - the 'game' aspect of roleplaying game is much more prominent. By contrast 5e is very chilled out, combat is much less challenging and the mechanics are less of a pain to work out for those who want simplicity. Even if the VTT does all the working out for you, the player still has to choose from and understand a bunch of powers with complex interactions in 4e. A barbarian has to work out movement, ping around charging without getting too overwhelmed and combine their powers to deal damage. By contrast the barbarian in 5e just has to know 'Pump strength, rage and make melee attacks.'
Shame as 4th ed is genuinely good if played right and is way better for online play with battle maps (Conversely it fails completely without miniatures and a battle mat. The system definitely has its limits and that is one of them)
How many brands of facial tissue can you name? Do you think Kleenex is the best one?
When you get to high school, your economics classes will discuss basic concepts like market capture. Until then, you're too young to be on Ganker, kid.
Counterquestion OP, YOU explain why d&d is popular without using any of these trite arguments
>It's easy!
It's not, the only edition that could qualify in this regard is Moldvay's and only because was trimmed down to be digested by 10yos and even then some degree of sysmastery was required. 5e has enough layers and moving parts to not fall in the category, bg3 amplily demonstrated that making people face the actual gist of the rules causing a whiplash expectation in some.
>It's the generic enough fantasy game!
Plain false, d&d has very specific assumptions built-in the variations of which require extensive rewriting at rules level or straight ignoring glaring inconsistencies (eg: using the default magic system for running an Harry Potter game).
>It's easy to mod
False, unless you don't give a shit about breaking some rule internal interactions in which case homebrewing isn't a case pro for d&d alone.
>[Insert circular logic here]
"It's good because is popular and is popular because it's good" and anything of the likes. Not an argument.
The thing you are missing is that 5e *looks* like all of those things. It's base mechanic is so simple (d20+stat+prof) that you can teach someone enough to start playing a pregen in literally a couple of minutes. The fantasy trappings look like the same fare you see in every other CRPG or generic fantasy setting. On the GM side, the monster rules seem simple enough that you can eyeball things with assistance from the monster creation rules and create new content quick and easy. And the game is so popular that it should be easy to find new players, GMs or an entire group to play 5e because it is The World's Greatest RPG.
Of course, once you get deep into the weeds, you discover that 5e has almost as much mechanical baggage as previous editions with a fraction of the depth, and the core system has a bunch of implicit and explicit expectations that just don't mesh with most groups needs that you can't fix without fundamentally reworking the system in a way that beyond most GMs and harder than just picking up a more appropriate system. Oh, and being popular doesn't actually matter for how good a system is to play. McDonalds near where I live has been kinda shit and kinda pricey for a decade, and yet it still sells gangbusters.
Sadly, a group that was introduced to tabletops with 5e and has zero experience with other RPGs isn't going to understand this, and will flail about with bad homebrew and poor adventure design because the overall experience is clearly flawed but nobody has the RPG experience to point at 5e as the culprit. This is also why 5e attracts negative sentiments from vets, because they *can* see that 5e is to blame, and once you move beyond the shallow surface level attractions 5e has shockingly little going for it besides being approachable and inoffensive.
I will argue that a well-presented (e.g. written by someone other than Gary “What’s Technical Writing” Gygax) version of OD&D (without supplements) is also sufficiently simple and easy—90% of the difficulty of playing it is parsing badly written text and figuring out when to refer to Chainmail.
Honestly it's fine, they are all fine. Go with what you vibe on
You can find D&D on the shelf at Walmart. Most normies wouldn't have a bookstore or know about any FLGS near them, and since there's no ttrpg category on Amazon or the like, D&D takes top billing for any tabletop game searches.
If the average person could buy a copy of Savage Worlds at Target or Call of Cthulhu at Walmart or whatever, they'd be a hell of a lot more accessible.
>Call of Cthulhu
I don’t think a game that has a word that most people can’t pronounce, and which is based around a niche genre to begin with (at least when compared to “pseudo-Medieval fantasy”), is likely to sell gangbusters.
And yet it's the second biggest game in the world and the first biggest in several countries.
>And yet it's the second biggest game in the world
I know that it's overtaken D&D in Japan, but Japan is not in fact the world, nor is it several countries, and I haven't heard anything about CoC being second biggest in the world overall or biggest in any country outside of Japan before now.
A quick search yields this:
https://www.dramadice.com/blog/the-most-played-tabletop-rpgs-in-2021/
Which has CoC in 2nd place on Roll20 (if we discount "unsorted"), but that's just Roll20 (which is hardly representative of ttrpgs as a whole), and it's three years out of date besides.
Unprepared, and yet with perhaps a more realistic grasp of CoC's market penetration than you.
>Which has CoC in 2nd place on Roll20
Oh, also worth noting that it's a very distant 2nd place: about 11% verses 5e D&D's about 53%.
Thats actually close to the physical market share. According to distributors Call of Cthulhu makes up 14% ish of sales and d&d is around 59% but after that its pathfinder at 2.5% and everything else is parts of a single percentage. CoC may only be under a third of D&D's success but its still an absolutely uncontested second place by a massive margin. I'd bet that are people that have played trpgs for years and never heard of pathfinder but could quite easily know about CoC. Its just largely less popular in the west because we lean more to comic book hero fantasy's meanwhile in japan and korea detective stories are huge and behind all the "kachow whats popping kids its ya boy Howard back at it with the fish people" CoC is a collaborative detective game and thats their fricking jam.
Sure, I can buy that. But in what countries other than Japan is it the #1 RPG, as was claimed?
As well, degrees matter. D&D is *overwhelmingly* in first place in America; does CoC enjoy the same overwhelming dominance in Japan, or are there only a few percentage points separating CoC and D&D?
Iirc it is the nr 1 rpg, or close to it, in France as well.
There is a lot more variety in ttrpgs in Europe than in America, and there's quite a few countries in which CoC is among the most popular.
When D&D is over half of the market then having more 20% of what's left is pretty solid.
Getting direct analytics of CoC's distribution, not to mention the corresponding data for all of the big games, is a daunting task. The best information we have is from websites like RPGGeek and various surveys that have been published. CoC consistently hits second place, often more than double of third place slot.
Well, well, well. Look who showed up totally unprepared for this discussion.
Historical legacy and marketing into the pop culture sphere.
Because its well written and organized, popular, and the alternative games like Pathfinder and 3.5e which are the closest in comparison are just bloated and too tedious
>Explain why it's more popular
It was the first to the market. There's an insane amount of power in being the first to do something.