If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
It’s the absolute height of comedy that a person who admittedly has been away from the game for a dozen or so years is acting as if they are in the position to school others about the true nature of the rules and lore, and that this same person is so very disappointed that the game fails to represent their views. Because vendors make a point of ensuring that people who have spent very little to no money on their product are the ones most satisfied by their product >.>
It’s almost as if the game itself has evolved to appeal to customers spending their money on the product in the last decade instead of stagnating in the hopes that one person will come back to spend their money, which is just crazy for a company in the business of making money to do, right? I’m sure WoTC could have stuck it out all those years and waited for that one person to start buying stuff again. The money spent by this one person surely would have been enough to get them through the decade while that one person was spending their money elsewhere, right?
Why is this thread even still a thing? It’s been like five pages of one poster crying about how the game is not what it used to be but it really should be *tiny indignant foot stamp* Someone needs to realize that the rest of the world does not exist in stasis whenever they are not present, perfectly preserved exactly the way it was when last looked upon and eagerly awaiting reanimation by a certain person’s regard.
Why do assume I'm trying to school anyone? I'm just answering why I like what I like, and dislike what I dislike; of course I'm a bit disappointed that something I like more changes into something I like less. Wouldn't you be?
Dude; I spent over a grand on 3e; and now I'm spending again on 5e. I spent $0 on 4e. The moral of the story is that if I spend money on a product, and you want me spend more money; give me a similar product as the one I spent money on the first time. WotC did largely learn this lesson with 5e relative to 4e and the competition they got from Pathfinders basically 3.75 version of 3e. When you make your product too different to what you already know I like to buy, then you are telling me that "I" am not your sales target, and that you are taking "my" business for granted in your efferts to widen your customer base. It shouldn't be a surprise if I don't necessarily stick around to buy the new product.
What should be a surprise, and is/was for many corporations, and apperently might be for you too, is when it turns out there are more of me then there are of your new target, and you loose total net customer numbers/revenues by bringing in fewer new cutomers than old ones whom you've lost by alienating them. Luckily, WotC isn't facing this particular happenstance with 5e the way other franchises have; instead having struck a good balance and bringing in both new and returning customers. They are walking a fine line though, and should be careful about how much further they want their next version of the product to move in another direction so as not to repeat the mistake of 4e. -I'm never just one person; I'm one example of a portion of your clientbase 28% at last count from teh poll on the other thread.
It’s the absolute height of comedy that a person who admittedly has been away from the game for a dozen or so years is acting as if they are in the position to school others about the true nature of the rules and lore, and that this same person is so very disappointed that the game fails to represent their views. Because vendors make a point of ensuring that people who have spent very little to no money on their product are the ones most satisfied by their product >.>
It’s almost as if the game itself has evolved to appeal to customers spending their money on the product in the last decade instead of stagnating in the hopes that one person will come back to spend their money, which is just crazy for a company in the business of making money to do, right? I’m sure WoTC could have stuck it out all those years and waited for that one person to start buying stuff again. The money spent by this one person surely would have been enough to get them through the decade while that one person was spending their money elsewhere, right?
Why is this thread even still a thing? It’s been like five pages of one poster crying about how the game is not what it used to be but it really should be *tiny indignant foot stamp* Someone needs to realize that the rest of the world does not exist in stasis whenever they are not present, perfectly preserved exactly the way it was when last looked upon and eagerly awaiting reanimation by a certain person’s regard.
Why do assume I'm trying to school anyone? I'm just answering why I like what I like, and dislike what I dislike; of course I'm a bit disappointed that something I like more changes into something I like less. Wouldn't you be?
Dude; I spent over a grand on 3e; and now I'm spending again on 5e. I spent $0 on 4e. The moral of the story is that if I spend money on a product, and you want me spend more money; give me a similar product as the one I spent money on the first time. WotC 5e did largely learn this lesson with 5e relative to 4e and the competition they got from Pathfinders basically 3.75 version of 3e. When you make your product too different to what you already know I like to buy, then you are telling me that "I" am not your sales target, and that you are taking "my" business for granted in your efferts to widen your customer base. It shouldn't be a surprise if I don't necessarily stick around to buy the new product.
What should be a surprise, and is/was for many corporations, and apperently might be for you too, is when it turns out there are more of me then there are of your new target, and you loose total net customer numbers/revenues by bringing in fewer new cutomers than old ones whom you've lost by alienating them. Luckily, WotC isn't facing this particular happenstance with 5e the way other franchises have; instead having struck a good balance and bringing in both new and returning customers. They are walking a fine line though, and should be careful about how much further they want their next version of the product to move in another direction so as not to repeat the mistake of 4e.
D&D has never sold as well as it does right now, and much of that has to do with the changes you dislike so much. WotC are certainly not going back towards 3.5 anytime soon. It might just be that you are outside the target demographic for this product. There is nothing wrong with that. 3.5 and Pathfinder still exist. You still have those books. You can still play those games.
D&D has never sold as well as it does right now, and much of that has to do with the changes you dislike so much. WotC are certainly not going back towards 3.5 anytime soon. It might just be that you are outside the target demographic for this product. There is nothing wrong with that. 3.5 and Pathfinder still exist. You still have those books. You can still play those games.
-was editing; but yeah, there in a good place right now. A sweet spot. Yeah, that's fair, and yeah, I've been. It seems to me I was more outside the target demograpghic of 4e; and 5e indeed represented an effort to reinclude me in the target demographics. However well 5e is doing, it is a bounceback. It isn't straight linear growth from 3 to 4 to 5.
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Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
From what I was able to find, 4e did not suffer poor sales because of the changes made. The anger seemed to stem from the fact that 4e was release only 5 years after the release of 3.5e. I do not feel that you are representing this example fairly in your argument. They seem to be entirely different situations with entirely different reasons for consumer pushback.
So, I suppose I'm just not sure why you're bothering to play 5E at all if you basically just want to play older editions? It seems like a case where you are carping about something that doesn't even matter to you for the sole purpose of roiling up controversy. You can still play ADnD, or 3.5, or whatever. For some of us, seeing the changes that have come around over the course of playing this game since around 1992 is welcome. The game has, in many ways, improved. Particularly when it comes to the basic lore and allowance for creativity baked into the rules. There are certainly some things from 3.5 that I preferred, but overall this is a much healthier, welcoming, and accepted game than it used to be.
From what I was able to find, 4e did not suffer poor sales because of the changes made. The anger seemed to stem from the fact that 4e was release only 5 years after the release of 3.5e. I do not feel that you are representing this example fairly in your argument. They seem to be entirely different situations with entirely different reasons for consumer pushback.
Hello. How are you?
Nah, the 5 year thing was a part of it, but the changes definitely were too; a much huger part IMHO. If it was just the release date, eventually we would've gotten over it and bought in to 4e, even if it was after another couple of years, should it have turned out to be a great version of the game. The lack of compatibility was a problem as well. It's much easier to update from 3e to 5e then it was to try to update from 3e to 4e.
Similalrly 4e was only around for about 6 years too and 5e still is selling well and being appreciated. The anger about another new addition comming out so quickly didn't seem to hold 5e back because most of us agree its a far better system; and largely for some us because it did take a step back from the direction 4e went in. The 4e reasons for consumer pushback re the changes are different of course. 4e pushback was over issues of mechanical changes to the nature of the game on top of it's quick release and incompatability issues. 5e solved that, and now it is potential impending social changes that are causing some consumer pushback.
I don't recall there being any social issues with 4e depictions of the lore, but then again, I didn't stay active much past the introduction of 4e to really keep paying attention.
The failure of 4e is/was a combination of many factors; there's no single "gotcha!" to it. The short release window Erriku mentions is one factor; the alientation/alteration of what many people considered 'critical' elements of D&D-ness was another. A major factor is Paizo's existence and their ability to offer a viasble alternative product. Paizo was a big supplier of third-party 3.5 products; when Wizards switched to 4e without giving them a chance to adapt and onboard, Paizo had the knowledge, experience, and corporate resources required to say "we'll make our OWN 3.5e, with blackjack and hookers!", and in the doing they offered a product others found more familiar and comforting that could outcompete the new edition despite the many actual improvements in 4e. 4e's attempt to integrate digital tools could also be perceived as being too soon, before the market was ready to really support a hybrid experience. In the 4e days, tabletop was still very much a pen and paper game, digital tools were an exotic toy and side thing. These days? Many games are starting to come out in which the digital ecosystem is critical to the game, to the point where you cannot play without the tools, and they're doing fine.
Were 4e to be released today, rather than in 20-whenever-it-was? It might have done significantly better, and represented a real leap forward in D&D. There's a few arguments I've heard that state that 4e wasn't a "failure", or at least it wasn't a failed game design. A failed commercial product yes, but not a failed game. Instead, they just got 4e and 5e backwards - Fifth should have been Fourth, and led into the more nuanced, more interesting Fourth-as-"Fifth" edition. The market is much more tech-savvy today, Paizo has screwed the pooch themselves with PF2e - which, in a great case of irony, is very much Paizo realizing the issues with 3.5 and trying to catch up to 5e in many ways now that Wizards is kicking their asses black and blue again - and furthermore Wizards has figured out how to run/manage/incorporate a thriving third-party ecosystem with things like the DM's Guild and the open license. All of which boosts their core product.
Paizo and Pathfinder succeeded on the backs of 3.5e players who hated 4e and wanted to keep playing their original game. They managed to capitalize very well on a unique opportunity they will not be given again. That pool of players no longer exists, and Wizards is not going to drop the ball like that again. Whatever happens in 2024, it will not be as drastic as the 4e to 5e switch, or even the 3e to 3.5e switch, I would presume. A much, MUCH larger percentage of 5e's audience is new-to-5e players who are not as attached to all the old pre-5e lore, if they have any attachment to it at all. They will be more welcoming and tolerant towards changes to the lore, especially if made with an eye towards modern issues as Wizards is...trying...to do. The market landscape doesn't look a thing like it did in the days of 4e and Pathfinder duking it out. Saying "Wizards will remember who its REAL audience is or they'll fail" is not likely to get you anywhere. . .. ... ...also yes, if you've been homebrewing all your species since you started playing and forcing all your players to adhere to the super strict, extremely narrow, rigidly-defined bioessential roles you see for their species, inflicting severe mechanical penalties on everyone who doesn't toe the line and proclaiming that every other species is An Enemy Of Mankind Forever? I can see where you might be annoyed by Wizards contradicting you, but also maybe stop doing that and see where your players take you? One of the best characters I DMed for back in the day was a lizardman who ended up serving as the party's chief tactician and one of its anchors; that character almost never spoke, but the player had an absolute gift for describing motions, expressions, and emotions in a way that let Malsvir communicate without words in ways that only ever enriched my game. To this day, "Awkward Lizard Stare" is a cherished in-joke at my table. If I'd stamped my little foot and said "NO! Lizardmen are bad guys! Play a human or go away from my table!" I would never have gotten to see all the splendid ways in which Mal's player worked with me and with the lore of the game and the world to create a unique experience for everyone there.
Players want to tell awesome stories as much as DMs do. If you let them have their head, you'll often be surprised by what you end up with. For every jackass who wants to play a loxodon one-man-band bard because of shitty Internet memes, there's two or three players who will delight you with their excellent take on a lizardfolk Battlemaster struggling with feeling out of place within his own people and caught up in events beyond his kin's ability to swiftly adapt to.
Over $1000 on 3.5? That is a fair-sized investment. However, even if we go ahead and generously estimate you spent $2400 on 3.5 products 12 years ago, surely you can see that WoTC could not make it on your $200/year alone and had to sell stuff to other customers? And that those other customer were and are ok enough with the subsequent lore that WoTC was able to make it by without your patronage so what you think about what drow are or aren’t is history? Like I hate that I can’t pay my dog license in person anymore and my husband is still angry that I got rid of our all but useless landline but that’s just the way things are now because the majority of other paying customers want it that way. This thread has reached old man yelling at the clouds proportions. We get it. You are unhappy. Can we move on now?
This is all fantastic, but let's get back to the topic of current lore changes. The dynamics of previous editions can be discussed in a different thread.
Even if this is all the case, it has nothing at all to do with lore changes and how that might drive patrons away. There is a lot of context that you are ignoring in your response that I cannot address here. Suffice to say, I disagree with your reasoning. However, per the recommendation of Sedge, we should get back on topic. Am I understanding that you do not appreciate the lore changes being more generalizable to all D&D games in 5e, a system that you apparently did not use even when the lore was focused on FR? If this is the case, I am at a loss for why you have been such a booming voice in this thread given that you were not invested in 5e to begin with.
Obviously, in this thread, my opinion is in the minority. However, the majority in this thread, or in this forum for that matter do not necessarily represent the majority of D&D players.
I'd be interested in finding out if WoTC conducted a statistically valid survey of the D&D community before deciding to make the changes. If they did, and majority responded that they liked the changes, then so be it.
The ONLY 'lore changes' made were "drow are evil when they're evil and not evil when they're not" as opposed to "ALL DROW EVERYWHERE PERIOD are evil sun-hating slavemongering Omega ******* ******bags who are so hilariously over-the-top For-The-Evulz that even Lolth occasionally has to step in and say 'guys. Guys. For real. Dial it back a notch'."
That is not a 'lore change', that is an acknowledgement of reality. And no, all the folks yelling about how 'there's always been 'good' drow' are wrong - every single edition of D&D except this one has painted the entire species as unrepentantly, irredeemably, overwhelmingly evil and absolutely glorying in that fact no matter how straight-up dumb it is. Eilistraee is a damn dirty fib that old-school DMs use to detect people that won't treat an entire sapient species as guilt-free murder dolls and then eject them from their table. Raise your hand if you have ever played, or allowed someone else to play, a drow adherent of Eilistraee?
Why? There are real world testimonies from players (linked either here or one of the other threads on this topic) who found these changes very necessary and of personal relevance. Do you not think that these voices are material?
The idea that a publishing company somehow needs to proactively get the approval of their audience before adding to their body of creative fictions is ... odd?
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I assume you're responding to my post? I was simply calling the changes what someone else referred to them as (See post #394)
But that's not the point of my post. What I would like to know, is if WoTC conducted a statistically valid survey of the changes.
To respond to your comment. I believe in nurture over nature. Yes, each person is cable of making their own decisions. However, I think it's unrealistic to overlook cultural influence, peer pressure, and the influence of parents and authority figures. If a child sees his parents and peers looting and pillaging, there is strong possibility (no, not a guarantee) that the child will favor looting and pillaging as an adult.
Obviously, in this thread, my opinion is in the minority. However, the majority in this thread, or in this forum for that matter do not necessarily represent the majority of D&D players.
I'd be interested in finding out if WoTC conducted a statistically valid survey of the D&D community before deciding to make the changes. If they did, and majority responded that they liked the changes, then so be it.
So 5e does do a considerable amount of surveying regularly, and they talk a big game about player input. That said, modern business intelligence or market research isn't simply statical analysis of directed questions (see other posts from folks who've articulated better than I the notion that in game design of all forms the industry needs to think beyond immediate player community impressions to determine ways to improve games or design features for new games). WotC does not exist in some demi-plane isolated from the TTRPG hobby. They pay attention to trends seen in social media, the trades (Ennies for example), actual play performances, conventions, outreach from retailers etc. It's not hard to figure out how people play D&D and hypothesize ways to grow the game.
To your response I think there's a further question what do you mean "necessary?" Stepping away from the "cultural impact" hypothesis speculation Bell of Lost Souls misrepresented as a factual interpretation of the factors guiding present 5e and future D&D development, let's think in terms of a property trying to maximize sale of game materials. If the goal of the changes was to free up creative space so the multiverse-leaning iteration of D&D can be played with little "baggage" from prior let's call it "insistent lore", I'd say the language change in Drow as well as the role playing guidance were necessary, but also relatively pedestrian changes. The system D&D is try to create a system where folks can play the broadest range possible. Let's put CoS Death House on one side of the spectrum and Wild Beyond the Witchlight on pacifist mode on the other. Given past statements of WotC as wanting to push "what people can do with D&D" (same press/marketing event where they announced the three classic campaigns revisit, I think it was Celelbration 2020?) into modes and styles of play rarely or to this date never seen in D&D, I see them wanting to enable players to want to push past those "limits" to the game I laid down in a spectrum between Death House and Witchlight.
And we're seeing this it in current and future products. There are a lot of debates here and elsewhere in the D&D community about whether a table can really "do horror" with D&D. I think there's still a lot on that front up for debate, but Van Richten's Guide does make a very strong effort at providing tools to DMs to push horror in D&D past the usual gothic tropes into full on gross out to more subtle psychological games, and done so in way where care is central and the players fears aren't exploited harmfully. On the WBtW side of things, you have other debates on this forum and elsewhere in the community about whether Critical Role is "really D&D" or whether the tools D&D at hand enable a table to have an authentic CR like experience. I think we can all say CR is D&D but also realistically a CR experience requires a lot of narrative and storytelling and "doing the voice" side of role playing techniques that aren't in the "basic box" of D&D, at least not in a way that facilitates new players and DMs (honestly the DMG guide to building a campaign world is quite good, but is so often ignored by folks who want to make an Exandria equivalent out of the box). To address this, we have a Critical Role adventure coming our way and I'd be very surprised if there aren't a lot of Mercer sidebars coaching DMs how to use actual "Mercer effects" (so to speak) in their games.
So taking that longer and wider view of what I see as going on with D&D, this errata sheet wasn't shocking at all, I was actually surprised it took them over a year after the ability mods errata to add this lair to Volo's and the PHB description, but that may be more about how WotC paces errata writing than any lack of knowledge or ability to do targetted changes to streamline and align the game with where they see the game going. And when I see "where they see the game going" that does not imply a map where some games are being left behind. Nothing in the errata dictates a change from the way anyone plays the game.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The idea that a publishing company somehow needs to proactively get the approval of their audience before adding to their body of creative fictions is ... odd?
No, it's not odd. In fact, it's quite common for companies to survey their customer base before making changes to their product.
The idea that a publishing company somehow needs to proactively get the approval of their audience before adding to their body of creative fictions is ... odd?
No, it's not odd. In fact, it's quite common for companies to survey their customer base before making changes to their product.
Which they do, a few times a year at minimum.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I assume you're responding to my post? I was simply calling the changes what someone else referred to them as (See post #394)
But that's not the point of my post. What I would like to know, is if WoTC conducted a statistically valid survey of the changes.
To respond to your comment. I believe in nurture over nature. Yes, each person is cable of making their own decisions. However, I think it's unrealistic not to overlook cultural influence, peer pressure, and influence of parents and authority figures. If a child sees his parents and peers looting and pillaging, there is strong possibility (no, not a guarantee) that the child will favor looting and pillaging as an adult.
Do you not think that undermines your position that the changes are not necessary? The changes that removed racial alignment specifically?
We're having an adversarial discussion, on the Internet no less, and we're surprised why we're not making progress?
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Why do assume I'm trying to school anyone? I'm just answering why I like what I like, and dislike what I dislike; of course I'm a bit disappointed that something I like more changes into something I like less. Wouldn't you be?
Dude; I spent over a grand on 3e; and now I'm spending again on 5e. I spent $0 on 4e. The moral of the story is that if I spend money on a product, and you want me spend more money; give me a similar product as the one I spent money on the first time. WotC did largely learn this lesson with 5e relative to 4e and the competition they got from Pathfinders basically 3.75 version of 3e. When you make your product too different to what you already know I like to buy, then you are telling me that "I" am not your sales target, and that you are taking "my" business for granted in your efferts to widen your customer base. It shouldn't be a surprise if I don't necessarily stick around to buy the new product.
What should be a surprise, and is/was for many corporations, and apperently might be for you too, is when it turns out there are more of me then there are of your new target, and you loose total net customer numbers/revenues by bringing in fewer new cutomers than old ones whom you've lost by alienating them. Luckily, WotC isn't facing this particular happenstance with 5e the way other franchises have; instead having struck a good balance and bringing in both new and returning customers. They are walking a fine line though, and should be careful about how much further they want their next version of the product to move in another direction so as not to repeat the mistake of 4e. -I'm never just one person; I'm one example of a portion of your clientbase 28% at last count from teh poll on the other thread.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
D&D has never sold as well as it does right now, and much of that has to do with the changes you dislike so much. WotC are certainly not going back towards 3.5 anytime soon. It might just be that you are outside the target demographic for this product. There is nothing wrong with that. 3.5 and Pathfinder still exist. You still have those books. You can still play those games.
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-was editing; but yeah, there in a good place right now. A sweet spot. Yeah, that's fair, and yeah, I've been. It seems to me I was more outside the target demograpghic of 4e; and 5e indeed represented an effort to reinclude me in the target demographics. However well 5e is doing, it is a bounceback. It isn't straight linear growth from 3 to 4 to 5.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
Hello Shepherd_Hubbard,
From what I was able to find, 4e did not suffer poor sales because of the changes made. The anger seemed to stem from the fact that 4e was release only 5 years after the release of 3.5e. I do not feel that you are representing this example fairly in your argument. They seem to be entirely different situations with entirely different reasons for consumer pushback.
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So, I suppose I'm just not sure why you're bothering to play 5E at all if you basically just want to play older editions? It seems like a case where you are carping about something that doesn't even matter to you for the sole purpose of roiling up controversy. You can still play ADnD, or 3.5, or whatever. For some of us, seeing the changes that have come around over the course of playing this game since around 1992 is welcome. The game has, in many ways, improved. Particularly when it comes to the basic lore and allowance for creativity baked into the rules. There are certainly some things from 3.5 that I preferred, but overall this is a much healthier, welcoming, and accepted game than it used to be.
Hello. How are you?
Nah, the 5 year thing was a part of it, but the changes definitely were too; a much huger part IMHO. If it was just the release date, eventually we would've gotten over it and bought in to 4e, even if it was after another couple of years, should it have turned out to be a great version of the game. The lack of compatibility was a problem as well. It's much easier to update from 3e to 5e then it was to try to update from 3e to 4e.
Similalrly 4e was only around for about 6 years too and 5e still is selling well and being appreciated. The anger about another new addition comming out so quickly didn't seem to hold 5e back because most of us agree its a far better system; and largely for some us because it did take a step back from the direction 4e went in. The 4e reasons for consumer pushback re the changes are different of course. 4e pushback was over issues of mechanical changes to the nature of the game on top of it's quick release and incompatability issues. 5e solved that, and now it is potential impending social changes that are causing some consumer pushback.
I don't recall there being any social issues with 4e depictions of the lore, but then again, I didn't stay active much past the introduction of 4e to really keep paying attention.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
The failure of 4e is/was a combination of many factors; there's no single "gotcha!" to it. The short release window Erriku mentions is one factor; the alientation/alteration of what many people considered 'critical' elements of D&D-ness was another. A major factor is Paizo's existence and their ability to offer a viasble alternative product. Paizo was a big supplier of third-party 3.5 products; when Wizards switched to 4e without giving them a chance to adapt and onboard, Paizo had the knowledge, experience, and corporate resources required to say "we'll make our OWN 3.5e, with blackjack and hookers!", and in the doing they offered a product others found more familiar and comforting that could outcompete the new edition despite the many actual improvements in 4e. 4e's attempt to integrate digital tools could also be perceived as being too soon, before the market was ready to really support a hybrid experience. In the 4e days, tabletop was still very much a pen and paper game, digital tools were an exotic toy and side thing. These days? Many games are starting to come out in which the digital ecosystem is critical to the game, to the point where you cannot play without the tools, and they're doing fine.
Were 4e to be released today, rather than in 20-whenever-it-was? It might have done significantly better, and represented a real leap forward in D&D. There's a few arguments I've heard that state that 4e wasn't a "failure", or at least it wasn't a failed game design. A failed commercial product yes, but not a failed game. Instead, they just got 4e and 5e backwards - Fifth should have been Fourth, and led into the more nuanced, more interesting Fourth-as-"Fifth" edition. The market is much more tech-savvy today, Paizo has screwed the pooch themselves with PF2e - which, in a great case of irony, is very much Paizo realizing the issues with 3.5 and trying to catch up to 5e in many ways now that Wizards is kicking their asses black and blue again - and furthermore Wizards has figured out how to run/manage/incorporate a thriving third-party ecosystem with things like the DM's Guild and the open license. All of which boosts their core product.
Paizo and Pathfinder succeeded on the backs of 3.5e players who hated 4e and wanted to keep playing their original game. They managed to capitalize very well on a unique opportunity they will not be given again. That pool of players no longer exists, and Wizards is not going to drop the ball like that again. Whatever happens in 2024, it will not be as drastic as the 4e to 5e switch, or even the 3e to 3.5e switch, I would presume. A much, MUCH larger percentage of 5e's audience is new-to-5e players who are not as attached to all the old pre-5e lore, if they have any attachment to it at all. They will be more welcoming and tolerant towards changes to the lore, especially if made with an eye towards modern issues as Wizards is...trying...to do. The market landscape doesn't look a thing like it did in the days of 4e and Pathfinder duking it out. Saying "Wizards will remember who its REAL audience is or they'll fail" is not likely to get you anywhere.
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...also yes, if you've been homebrewing all your species since you started playing and forcing all your players to adhere to the super strict, extremely narrow, rigidly-defined bioessential roles you see for their species, inflicting severe mechanical penalties on everyone who doesn't toe the line and proclaiming that every other species is An Enemy Of Mankind Forever? I can see where you might be annoyed by Wizards contradicting you, but also maybe stop doing that and see where your players take you? One of the best characters I DMed for back in the day was a lizardman who ended up serving as the party's chief tactician and one of its anchors; that character almost never spoke, but the player had an absolute gift for describing motions, expressions, and emotions in a way that let Malsvir communicate without words in ways that only ever enriched my game. To this day, "Awkward Lizard Stare" is a cherished in-joke at my table. If I'd stamped my little foot and said "NO! Lizardmen are bad guys! Play a human or go away from my table!" I would never have gotten to see all the splendid ways in which Mal's player worked with me and with the lore of the game and the world to create a unique experience for everyone there.
Players want to tell awesome stories as much as DMs do. If you let them have their head, you'll often be surprised by what you end up with. For every jackass who wants to play a loxodon one-man-band bard because of shitty Internet memes, there's two or three players who will delight you with their excellent take on a lizardfolk Battlemaster struggling with feeling out of place within his own people and caught up in events beyond his kin's ability to swiftly adapt to.
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Over $1000 on 3.5? That is a fair-sized investment. However, even if we go ahead and generously estimate you spent $2400 on 3.5 products 12 years ago, surely you can see that WoTC could not make it on your $200/year alone and had to sell stuff to other customers? And that those other customer were and are ok enough with the subsequent lore that WoTC was able to make it by without your patronage so what you think about what drow are or aren’t is history? Like I hate that I can’t pay my dog license in person anymore and my husband is still angry that I got rid of our all but useless landline but that’s just the way things are now because the majority of other paying customers want it that way. This thread has reached old man yelling at the clouds proportions. We get it. You are unhappy. Can we move on now?
This is all fantastic, but let's get back to the topic of current lore changes. The dynamics of previous editions can be discussed in a different thread.
Shepherd_Hubbard,
I am good, thank you for asking.
Even if this is all the case, it has nothing at all to do with lore changes and how that might drive patrons away. There is a lot of context that you are ignoring in your response that I cannot address here. Suffice to say, I disagree with your reasoning. However, per the recommendation of Sedge, we should get back on topic. Am I understanding that you do not appreciate the lore changes being more generalizable to all D&D games in 5e, a system that you apparently did not use even when the lore was focused on FR? If this is the case, I am at a loss for why you have been such a booming voice in this thread given that you were not invested in 5e to begin with.
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I don't think the lore changes are necessary.
Obviously, in this thread, my opinion is in the minority. However, the majority in this thread, or in this forum for that matter do not necessarily represent the majority of D&D players.
I'd be interested in finding out if WoTC conducted a statistically valid survey of the D&D community before deciding to make the changes. If they did, and majority responded that they liked the changes, then so be it.
What. Lore. Changes?
The ONLY 'lore changes' made were "drow are evil when they're evil and not evil when they're not" as opposed to "ALL DROW EVERYWHERE PERIOD are evil sun-hating slavemongering Omega ******* ******bags who are so hilariously over-the-top For-The-Evulz that even Lolth occasionally has to step in and say 'guys. Guys. For real. Dial it back a notch'."
That is not a 'lore change', that is an acknowledgement of reality. And no, all the folks yelling about how 'there's always been 'good' drow' are wrong - every single edition of D&D except this one has painted the entire species as unrepentantly, irredeemably, overwhelmingly evil and absolutely glorying in that fact no matter how straight-up dumb it is. Eilistraee is a damn dirty fib that old-school DMs use to detect people that won't treat an entire sapient species as guilt-free murder dolls and then eject them from their table. Raise your hand if you have ever played, or allowed someone else to play, a drow adherent of Eilistraee?
...nah? Nothing? Yeah, I didn't think so either.
Please do not contact or message me.
Why? There are real world testimonies from players (linked either here or one of the other threads on this topic) who found these changes very necessary and of personal relevance. Do you not think that these voices are material?
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The idea that a publishing company somehow needs to proactively get the approval of their audience before adding to their body of creative fictions is ... odd?
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I assume you're responding to my post? I was simply calling the changes what someone else referred to them as (See post #394)
But that's not the point of my post. What I would like to know, is if WoTC conducted a statistically valid survey of the changes.
To respond to your comment. I believe in nurture over nature. Yes, each person is cable of making their own decisions. However, I think it's unrealistic to overlook cultural influence, peer pressure, and the influence of parents and authority figures. If a child sees his parents and peers looting and pillaging, there is strong possibility (no, not a guarantee) that the child will favor looting and pillaging as an adult.
So 5e does do a considerable amount of surveying regularly, and they talk a big game about player input. That said, modern business intelligence or market research isn't simply statical analysis of directed questions (see other posts from folks who've articulated better than I the notion that in game design of all forms the industry needs to think beyond immediate player community impressions to determine ways to improve games or design features for new games). WotC does not exist in some demi-plane isolated from the TTRPG hobby. They pay attention to trends seen in social media, the trades (Ennies for example), actual play performances, conventions, outreach from retailers etc. It's not hard to figure out how people play D&D and hypothesize ways to grow the game.
To your response I think there's a further question what do you mean "necessary?" Stepping away from the "cultural impact" hypothesis speculation Bell of Lost Souls misrepresented as a factual interpretation of the factors guiding present 5e and future D&D development, let's think in terms of a property trying to maximize sale of game materials. If the goal of the changes was to free up creative space so the multiverse-leaning iteration of D&D can be played with little "baggage" from prior let's call it "insistent lore", I'd say the language change in Drow as well as the role playing guidance were necessary, but also relatively pedestrian changes. The system D&D is try to create a system where folks can play the broadest range possible. Let's put CoS Death House on one side of the spectrum and Wild Beyond the Witchlight on pacifist mode on the other. Given past statements of WotC as wanting to push "what people can do with D&D" (same press/marketing event where they announced the three classic campaigns revisit, I think it was Celelbration 2020?) into modes and styles of play rarely or to this date never seen in D&D, I see them wanting to enable players to want to push past those "limits" to the game I laid down in a spectrum between Death House and Witchlight.
And we're seeing this it in current and future products. There are a lot of debates here and elsewhere in the D&D community about whether a table can really "do horror" with D&D. I think there's still a lot on that front up for debate, but Van Richten's Guide does make a very strong effort at providing tools to DMs to push horror in D&D past the usual gothic tropes into full on gross out to more subtle psychological games, and done so in way where care is central and the players fears aren't exploited harmfully. On the WBtW side of things, you have other debates on this forum and elsewhere in the community about whether Critical Role is "really D&D" or whether the tools D&D at hand enable a table to have an authentic CR like experience. I think we can all say CR is D&D but also realistically a CR experience requires a lot of narrative and storytelling and "doing the voice" side of role playing techniques that aren't in the "basic box" of D&D, at least not in a way that facilitates new players and DMs (honestly the DMG guide to building a campaign world is quite good, but is so often ignored by folks who want to make an Exandria equivalent out of the box). To address this, we have a Critical Role adventure coming our way and I'd be very surprised if there aren't a lot of Mercer sidebars coaching DMs how to use actual "Mercer effects" (so to speak) in their games.
So taking that longer and wider view of what I see as going on with D&D, this errata sheet wasn't shocking at all, I was actually surprised it took them over a year after the ability mods errata to add this lair to Volo's and the PHB description, but that may be more about how WotC paces errata writing than any lack of knowledge or ability to do targetted changes to streamline and align the game with where they see the game going. And when I see "where they see the game going" that does not imply a map where some games are being left behind. Nothing in the errata dictates a change from the way anyone plays the game.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
No, it's not odd. In fact, it's quite common for companies to survey their customer base before making changes to their product.
Which they do, a few times a year at minimum.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Do you not think that undermines your position that the changes are not necessary? The changes that removed racial alignment specifically?
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