Conversation started Jul 31, 2013 at 9:52.
BESW
BESW
Jul 31, 2013 09:52
Mm. Have you heard my "D&D Next is going to shatter the D&D community" speculation?
Alex P
Alex P
@BESW Feel free to repeat it even if I have. ;)
BESW
BESW
Well, 4e bifurcated the audience.
Not a lot of people moved away from D&D (except to Pathfinder, which is close enough to 3.5 that it shares a community), but your choice of edition became like taking sides in a cold war.
This was because 4e catered to a very different kind of game experience than 3.5 did.
Now D&D Next is trying to cater to everyone at once, and their modular system is going to shatter what little sense of "we're all playing the same game" the fanbase has (what with RAW/RAI, houserules, and different playstyles, it was tenuous at best even before the 4e/3.5 split).
Regardless of the quality of the system, it's going to be a social engineering disaster for the D&D franchise.
Alex P
Alex P
@BESW Well, what have we actually seen of "modules," though?
BESW
BESW
I'm not part of the beta, and about all I know is what I pick up from what's linked here.
Alex P
Alex P
Right now it sounds a lot like the digital tabletop.
I do agree that the plan is nonsense, though, because at best you're getting Player's Option (the 2nd Edition modular-rules-addons line).
I'm really curious who came up with the plan. Because it seems to be swimming against the tide of TRPGs sooooooo hard.
BESW
BESW
Jul 31, 2013 09:58
It's pretty obvious why, though.
Alex P
Alex P
Yeah, "bringing all the D&Ds together."
BESW
BESW
Not even that.
Alex P
Alex P
Oh?
BESW
BESW
The tide of TRPGs is to cater to smaller audiences who actually want the focused gameplay your system offers.
D&D cannot follow that. It's a simple business fact: it needs to maintain its position as the flagship "default RPG" that can accommodate every playstyle, or it loses its massive audience, its profits fail, and Hasbro pulls the plug.
D&D suffers from economic constraints that force it into these awful choices.
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Alex P
Alex P
But it's the worst of the "D20 will be the entire industry!" bullshit come back to us. It's like, "Why play your game when you could laboriously beat D&D into a crappy imitation of your game?"
BESW
BESW
Jul 31, 2013 10:01
It got too big to succeed.
Alex P
Alex P
D20 actually did that successfully for about three years.
BESW
BESW
@AlexP Exactly! Their plan really cannot work even if we felt confident they had the quality and insight to do it well.
But they have no other choice; no other foreseeable option has even the chance of letting the franchise continue.
Alex P
Alex P
Hence the death march.
BESW
BESW
Yup. A grim tapdance into the volcano.
Alex P
Alex P
I dunno, I feel like they have other options. One being that they refuse to (publicly) admit that people have different tastes and keep peddling the idea that you should just all play D&D together.
The problem is that it's hard to keep editions going that way.
BESW
BESW
Jul 31, 2013 10:04
Mhm. And it goes against the movement of TRPGs in general.
Alex P
Alex P
Because edition changes upset the fragile balance of "all of our different play goals hanging together by little threads"
Yeah, but look at how much demand there was PF on the strength of "I don't want the group cohesion we've laboriously worked out with D&D3 to go away."
BESW
BESW
With the modular system, they probably think they are --and certainly they're are able to make noises about-- adapting to this new "niche market" ethos.
Alex P
Alex P
They've already lost the thing that might make it actually work, though. Which is people clinging to D&D as a label.
BESW
BESW
Yup, PF did that for 'em.
It's sad, because 4e was their best work.
Zachiel
Zachiel
That makes me think that most of the reasons I disliked 4e at first were the articles they put out during playtesting and engineering of the product. I hope Next can do the same, but I'll probably keep playing 4e.
No, who am I kidding. I'll keep wishing I had a 4e group.
 
Conversation ended Jul 31, 2013 at 10:09.