I would pay $7 a month for the subscription if it came with the MM, PHB, and DM

@AEDorsay: I like how you often express my opinion - only better than I could, you (presumably, my apologies if I'm wrong, but presumably because you're a native speaker).

What we are in the middle of is a shift from D&D being published by RPG's experts, to D&D being published by product development and publishing experts. From a purely functional point of view (unless they screw it up completely, which is certainly a thing that happens) we're going to see a much better product a year or two from now. 

From a functional point of view. It'll be slick, and streamlined, it will integrate stuff and automize stuff, and it'll be great. From a functional point of view. 

It will also be an utter failure. They will either fire or mentally castrate everyone who is good at the parts of the game I like, like storytelling and world-building. 

And either way I'm not paying a subscription. 

I would buy the book in real life and expect that I only need to buy the source material once.

Quote from JustaFarmer >>

 

 

 The schism is coming. There will be the video gamers who will embrace the sub model, and the traditional RPG'ers who will turn their back on this. wotc has made it clear what part of the customer base they want.

 Well, yes, but I think we also need to realise we're a minority. Also, I don't think they'll turn us aside, I think our money is just fine with them - so there'll be an offering for us as well. It just won't be, like, great writing. But I'd like to point out that the vast majority of historical offerings have also been absolutely awful. In my somewhat too harsh opinion, nothing that isn't an original setting - Eberron, Dark Sun, Planescape - is utter junk. 

Quote from Acromos >>

Quote from JustaFarmer >>

 

 

 The schism is coming. There will be the video gamers who will embrace the sub model, and the traditional RPG'ers who will turn their back on this. wotc has made it clear what part of the customer base they want.

 Well, yes, but I think we also need to realise we're a minority. Also, I don't think they'll turn us aside, I think our money is just fine with them - so there'll be an offering for us as well. It just won't be, like, great writing. But I'd like to point out that the vast majority of historical offerings have also been absolutely awful. In my somewhat too harsh opinion, nothing that isn't an original setting - Eberron, Dark Sun, Planescape - is utter junk. 

 
I will agree!

Though Planescape is suffering from a bit of the "have to work with all the other existing worlds" stuff that makes me twitch a bit. I can't even use Planescape because it is still built upon a cosmology that is bothersome.

One thing "we" tend to have in common is that we don't use the default worlds. For the most part, we have well established, good groups, and custom built worlds. And none of the VTT stuff they are doing (or anyone else is doing) is made for us.

A few other companies are trying to make places for that, but they all approach it from a programmer's POV, and so their UI and systems are overly structuralist, requiring a lot of work to even start to use them. I started to use one of them and realized it would be a decade before I could effectively create enough stuff to make it possible simply based on the speed of how long it took to get just the first six ability scores put together.

Do I expect to be able to use DDB long term? Not really. It is useful for me now, but the more they lean towards the published settings (including FR, Eberron, Dragonlance, et al) in baseline material, the less I am likely to find value in it as I keep having to kitbash systems and tools for things my group routinely does that ripple through the game as a whole.

I have more invested in then dollars than I do in now dollars (comparing my 1e/2e stuff and the cost then to the 5e stuff and the cost now). Even accounting for the length of my sub here, I haven't spent anywhere near the three grand I did on earlier editions (and if I do the inflation calcs, 5e spending will never catch up).

So I do see things as moving away from encouraging folks to create their own custom worlds -- there is ever decreasing support for it from the company, ever decreasing support for it from the legions of newer players who have never even played in a well fleshed out world from some very experienced DM.

All the VTTs tend to reinforce the use of published stuff and push back on original creations. And none of that is accidental. We are not only a Minority, we are a literally dying minority who have a higher cost per capita than a normative player, although we could be far more efficiently monetized, lol.

But in terms of online tools (and VTT is a tool), the whole thing is a good decade away from being able to support our style of work.  Which is hilarious, because who is it that creates the coolest, most awesome stuff?

Folks like us. We change the way the game is played, and we always have.

A lot of folks will say "well, go out and use a different system" -- the problem is that the other systems *don't work for us* and *are not D&D*, and we want to play D&D. Just not the same way the designers create it (which is why we create new classes, new species, new rules, and more).

The DM side of the equation has been ignored for a decade. 5e is a player's game in the same sense that 1e was a DM's game. They ever put effort into supporting DM side tools, and they will be drawing us back.

Quote from JustaFarmer >>

 Yes, I don't buy the settings. I buy the mechanics books, and if necessary, use the settings written from decades ago. But I won't be buying 6e. wotc has made it clear that my style of play is not what they are interested in supporting.

 I mean ... granted, this is going to sound bad coming from me, but - don't be so negative =)

I think they might well publish a new setting, and it will be great, once again. But anything they republish, or any expansions or supplements to older stuff, will be absolutely useless refuse - like it always was. 

Of course if they try to make a new setting, and it's pre-neutered by gender-fear and political correctness - it's going to be really, really hard for them to make anything worthwhile. And please don't construe this as negativity towards ... anyone or anything, I just like my villains to be properly villainous. And my male power fantasies to be both male and powerful. My female power fantasies for that matter too (not male, also, of course).

Quote from Acromos >>

Quote from JustaFarmer >>

 Yes, I don't buy the settings. I buy the mechanics books, and if necessary, use the settings written from decades ago. But I won't be buying 6e. wotc has made it clear that my style of play is not what they are interested in supporting.

 I mean ... granted, this is going to sound bad coming from me, but - don't be so negative =)

I think they might well publish a new setting, and it will be great, once again. But anything they republish, or any expansions or supplements to older stuff, will be absolutely useless refuse - like it always was. 

Of course if they try to make a new setting, and it's pre-neutered by gender-fear and political correctness - it's going to be really, really hard for them to make anything worthwhile. And please don't construe this as negativity towards ... anyone or anything, I just like my villains to be properly villainous. And my male power fantasies to be both male and powerful. My female power fantasies for that matter too (not male, also, of course).

 
I have to ask, because, well, it me.

RE: those power fantasies. You mention men's power fantasies (presumably strong and tough and stoic) and women power fantasies (presumably through a man's lens, so appropriately appreciative women and kick butt women who might be appreciative).

Would such a world also enable Trans Woman or Trans Man power fantasies and Nonbinary power fantasies?

I mean, don't get me wrong -- I do not see any existing Setting as enabling such at this time (past or present), despite the usual "oh, you can do that!" when it is very obvious that one cannot do that (because, well, authors don't understand what TW/TM/NB power fantasies are). So not seeking to start stuff. 

It is just that these things are not mutually exclusive, do not interfere with each other, do not detract from each other, and so wouldn't need to be excluded for any reason other than someone being, well, afraid of gender stuff.

I confess that "gender-fear" and "political correctness" are trigger words for my work, and as I am someone whom several US states have been sticking their nose into my personal business and many nations I once visited in person have started to declare I should be killed on sight (where they didn't previously), I tend to be slightly alert to such things.

That said, yes, I am bored to tears with all the assorted published worlds. I snag a cool idea here and there, but I am personally rather over the "anachronistic pseudo-medieval super-generic fantasy world" that somehow must have the ability to let anyone play any class that's been published as if it was just some pastiche of Earth instead of a creative world separate and distinct that never had half the archetypes used and is always based on some mashup of stuff written from 1920 to 1980 that must include Tolkien-esque something somewhere.

One of the things that interested me about 5e originally was that they had updated the inspirations for it. Then I look at the list, and sighed because it was the same stuff they had always used (and that is now so ubiquitous that it has lost luster and wonder for me). If you sit down and yank out everything inspired by what was written between 1920 and 1980, you find yourself having to look in a whole new way for inspirations -- even when creating yet another kitchen sink world. 

What does D&D look like without the stuff drawn from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lin Carter, L Sprague DeCamp, Fletcher Pratt, HP Lovecraft, Lord Dunsany, Robert E Howard, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, Andre Norton, Mervyn Peake, JRR Tolkien, Jack Vance, and Roger Zelazny?

Hell, most of the newest players have never read *any* of those works (and never will -- those books are old and old equals boring). To a lot of folks the answer is "it wouldn't be D&D" and in doing so they show their own lack of creativity and imagination, because they derive their entire fantasy set from those limited works.  And I am not saying those works are bad -- hell, half the other stuff they mention as inspiration draws from those few sources itself, or relies on the cultural zeitgeist=ist that those works created. I am not saying they are bad at all. Hell, I've read everything myself, often more than a few times.

I am saying that if they do decide to create a new world, it needs to completely side step any of those sources. Ignore them. Tear them out at the roots. from the game. That they need to step outside of the European sociocultural folklore systems they use and stretch themselves and draw from things that are 'alien" and different and *then* smooth out bumps using a European frame of reference without getting all caught up in the weeds.

And none of it should resemble Earth. THey cite the Hundred Kingdoms of N. K. Jemison and her influence isn't even visible. Where's stuff like Alwyn Hamilton's Desert Rebel series? Or Alina Boyden's Stealing Thunder or Gifting Fire? Kate Elliot's Spirit Gate or Cold Magic? Tamora Pierce has written a ton of novels that we introduced to our kids -- barely a nod. And that's just a tiny taste of it all. Stuff chosen very specifically because you cannot recreate those settings and use D&D's core classes.

but, as I noted above, I am a minority of folks who wants more creativity, not milking the hell out of an existing, burned out, boring-to-me world, no matter how many hundreds of fan sites it has. I want *evolution* of the game.

And still keep the masculine, feminine, and nonbinary power fantasies. As well as ethnic power fantasies, and disability power fantasies, and being into that kind of thing I want to see new cultures and strange powers and I want it to be an escape from a world that is trying to kill me and those like me every single day.

And for that I would pay a lot more than 7 bucks a month.

(and for others looking on, no, I did not read any misogyny into the comment, nor other crap, because hello, nonspecific power fantasies aren't immediately suspicious. Good faith is a core principle.)