no offense (and maybe this should be a direct message to better ensure that), but why does your group play 5e? what do you like about it that keeps you coming back?
I know this question is not directed at me, but I would agree with Justafarmer that 5e is easily the game that is easiest to find players for because of its popularity and because consequently there are so many YT videos that teach you not only the base rules, but also make recommendations of all kinds. It's very hard to find that easy "buy-in" with most other RPGs unless your friend group already consists of people who have played RPGs for many years. Do I like the direction that WotC is going with 5E? Not really. But scheduling in-person games is already difficult enough with a system as popular as 5E. Try going with something obscure and it's very hard to find large enough group of people to game with. The fact that a lot of people on this forum take familiarity with more than one RPG rules system for granted...well, that just is not reflective of the larger population as whole, even among people who consider themselves "geeky" or "nerdy".
If you already have a regular group, it's much easier to get them to try something new. Especially in the situation where they already agree vigorously with you about the fundamental flaws of 5e, which we are told JustaFarmer's circles do.
If you don't have a regular group, yes, it's much harder, especially if you're not a GM. But it's still possible, especially now, in the age of online play; it just requires way more work.
LOL. Running a regular group was easier before Covid.
My mileage varies. "Everybody hops onto Zoom from home" is a much easier requirement than "everyone needs to converge on the Place of Gaming at this specific time".
I am a GM, but that doesn't mean it's easy to find a group that all agrees on what the flaws of 5E are. Let's face it: you have a group of 10 people, you're going to get at least 4 or 5 sets of opinions, at least, about what the strengths and weaknesses of 5E are, assuming that people even bother to put those kinds of things into words. Most people who play the game just play the game. They aren't dedicated enthusiasts who parse the rules, nor are they game designers who pay much attention to what makes one RPG run differently from another.
In my experience, people who game together game together because they enjoy playing with each other, not because they're there to play a specific game. If the GM says "I wanna try something new", most of the players will go along. Back in college, my main gaming group changed game almost every semester.
Online play is easier to find a random sampling of players, but I've noticed that it doesn't actually help much with finding the kind of players who want to play a campaign that isn't mostly like what they see on poplar YT "influencer" RPG videos, which, as you know, is mostly 5E and some Pathfinder. Another example. There's an organized group of Chronicles of Darkness gamers in my area, but on-going campaigns with slots for new players are difficult to find after Covid, even if you're running the most popular "brands" like Vampire or Mage. Everything else is relegated to a One-shot.
There are entire fora and discords devoted to all sorts of games. If I wanted to run some non-5e game, and didn't have people in my own circles up for it, I'd join one of those, and I doubt it'd take me that long for anything with a player base. If I wanted to play, as I said, it'd be more work; I'd probably end up playing one-shots to find a group I vibe with. Maybe I'm wrong: I don't have direct experience with it, because I've got enough people in my circles that I could run anything I want to. The only reason I'm not running DIE in person at the moment is that I haven't got off my butt to do it, and I've still got like 60% of the players. If I really felt like running 4e, as opposed to having the occasional invasive "I could run 4e" thoughts, I could spin that game up, too, and it'd be a disjoint set of players.
The number of people who won't play anything but 5e is not that large, but a lot of them aren't looking for something else. When you have groups as deeply dissatisfied with 5e as we're told JustaFarmer has, it ought to be easy.
Rather than go back and cherry pick a few posts, I will just ask this to all that care to answer.
If 5e is so flawed that you only play it to recruit for (insert your favorite non 5e TTRPG) otherwise it is bad. Why do you think so many play it that makes it the gateway to other TTRPG's? Furthermore why would you want to change (or limit things in) it if it is so effective at being such a great gateway?
Optimizing isn’t inherently bad, it’s just that often the people who do it are kinda ******y about it and use it to ruin everyone else at the table’s fun. And I don’t mean a small percentage of people are ******y about it every great once in a while, I mean a good solid chunk of them are a whole lot of the time. They may not all mean to be ******y about it, it just happens without them even realizing it sometimes. And they may be very nice people the rest of the time, but they’re ******y about this.
Think of it like if you’re a superhero like Hawkeye or Black Widow, and you’re on a superhero team with mostly other regular people who are just really, really good at something, so good that they actually qualify as “super heroes,” except for this one guy who is super strong (like, throws tanks around strong), and pretty much invulnerable to everything, and he can fly, and he has x-ray vision and can also shoot freaking lasers out of his eyes, and he’s super good looking too. Now, you may not mind it so much if he’s at least humble and gregarious and supportive, but instead he’s kind of a dudebro about it, and likes to brag a lot and show off a lot, and point out how awesome he is at everything all the time. He may not be actively trying to be a giant bag of ******, it just happens.
That’s what’s wrong with a lot of min-maxers. It’s not the min-maxing people resent, it’s the ways the people who often do it sometimes behave, even if they anre consciously intending to, and they ways it makes other people feel when they do act that way. And it’s unfortunate but now that same brush gets used to paint everyone who excessively optimizes, even if they as individuals do actually deserve it. But showing up with a character that has every last ounce of utility squeezed into exactly all the right spots without anything left hanging is like showing up with a sign around your neck that has an arrow pointing up and beneath it it just says “******bag.” You may not personally deserve it, but society just kind of places that sign around your neck anyway based on your character sheet.
So, for everyone out there who’s an optimized but isn’t a bag of ******, instead of arguing about the relative merits of optimizing, instead try just actively not being ******bags. Because arguing the relative merits of optimization kind of just reinforces the ******bag stereotype for lots of people.
Rather than go back and cherry pick a few posts, I will just ask this to all that care to answer.
If 5e is so flawed that you only play it to recruit for (insert your favorite non 5e TTRPG) otherwise it is bad. Why do you think so many play it that makes it the gateway to other TTRPG's? Furthermore why would you want to change (or limit things in) it if it is so effective at being such a great gateway?
It is a matter of ignorance of the vast vast VAST majority of new players. There have been multiple studies showing that 5e is pretty much the ONLY recognizable name for an RPG that people not exposed to RPG's know. You can thank a combination of events: Stranger Things, Covid trapping people in their homes so they watch videos all day, and You Tube/Twitch algo's that spike stuff like Critical Role to the top of any search. Once players get into RPG's, then yeah, they start recognizing that 5e is not the only game in town, in fact many are superior.
But finding a critical mass to play other games is tough. I can do it (played a total of 6 different game systems, all in person, in the past 3 weeks) because I play in person at a location that has a lot of people move through it, and thanks to the OGL debacle, and general 5e game play, some of those 5e players have come to recognize, "hey, maybe 5e is not for me". When you are face to face with someone you have played games with for a number of months or years, it is a lot easier to say "you know, maybe we should try out X" .The trust factor is much higher than with some random internet dude advertising some game.
But ultimately, 5e is still the gateway drug for brand new RPG players.
Optimizing isn’t inherently bad, it’s just that often the people who do it are kinda ******y about it and use it to ruin everyone else at the table’s fun. And I don’t mean a small percentage of people are ******y about it every great once in a while, I mean a good solid chunk of them are a whole lot of the time. They may not all mean to be ******y about it, it just happens without them even realizing it sometimes. And they may be very nice people the rest of the time, but they’re ******y about this.
Think of it like if you’re a superhero like Hawkeye or Black Widow, and you’re on a superhero team with mostly other regular people who are just really, really good at something, so good that they actually qualify as “super heroes,” except for this one guy who is super strong (like, throws tanks around strong), and pretty much invulnerable to everything, and he can fly, and he has x-ray vision and can also shoot freaking lasers out of his eyes, and he’s super good looking too. Now, you may not mind it so much if he’s at least humble and gregarious and supportive, but instead he’s kind of a dudebro about it, and likes to brag a lot and show off a lot, and point out how awesome he is at everything all the time. He may not be actively trying to be a giant bag of ******, it just happens.
That’s what’s wrong with a lot of min-maxers. It’s not the min-maxing people resent, it’s the ways the people who often do it sometimes behave, even if they anre consciously intending to, and they ways it makes other people feel when they do act that way. And it’s unfortunate but now that same brush gets used to paint everyone who excessively optimizes, even if they as individuals do actually deserve it. But showing up with a character that has every last ounce of utility squeezed into exactly all the right spots without anything left hanging is like showing up with a sign around your neck that has an arrow pointing up and beneath it it just says “******bag.” You may not personally deserve it, but society just kind of places that sign around your neck anyway based on your character sheet.
So, for everyone out there who’s an optimized but isn’t a bag of ******, instead of arguing about the relative merits of optimizing, instead try just actively not being ******bags. Because arguing the relative merits of optimization kind of just reinforces the ******bag stereotype for lots of people.
It’s astonishing that so many people have such vast experiences of what every optimiser is like. I’m glad to know it’s such a cohesive demographic that a significant chunk of are ********. This is quite surprising to me given the only person that fits this description I have ever met who even remotely tried to minmax barely understood the rules and just made stuff up, which is definitely not optimisation. Telling people that like number crunching and pushing systems they can’t use half the sourcebooks cause you don’t like it is gatekeeping. Saying optimisation is A Bad Thing is gatekeeping. Saying ‘I don’t dislike all optimisers, just those stuck up Mary Sues’ is frankly insulting - just say you don’t like ******* players, like the rest of us - and using anecdotal examples like they are hard evidence is equally insulting when you’re implying some egomaniac represents all optimisers, and that’s why optimisers are bad. That’s like saying a dog bit you once, all dogs bite, dogs should be put down.
Everyone who optimises does it within a set of restrictions. That’s the fun of it. I know someone who squeezed 240 plus damage out of magic stone. Not a build you’d use, but it’s fun to push systems. If I see one more person making blanket statements without clarifying this is their own experience and has no bearing on the wider game I may delete my original post because I’ve seen nothing here I haven’t heard a thousand times before (just with more and more restrictive controls on what players can and can’t do because it apparently offends your morals).
And it’s also amazing that so many people view optimisation as A Bad Thing. I’ve seen more and less subtle versions of this. For instance, ‘I don’t mind optimisation’ (paraphrased, in this thread) or a complaint that lists using four-plus books as A Bad Thing. Count the PHB for your class, Volo’s (or Mordenkainen’s Monsters of the Universe) for your race, maybe Tasha’s (unless that’s cheating to use a sourcebook, I forgot) or XGtE for your subclass, and the DMG for any magic items you get and that’s four already.
Plus, a lot of the powerful stuff is in the PHB anyway. PHB and XGtE only means ranger sucks and everyone will pick the same races for the same classes as if all adventurers went through a school that taught you things based on eugenics.
Sorry by the way, that wasn’t directed at the quoted post. I got a little sidetracked by my tangent.
Oh good. Because I was going to point out that if you had read my entire post I was careful to point out that it’s not all optimizers who are ******bags, and that even all the ones who are aren’t necessarily ******bags on purpose either, but that the ******bag behavior of some optimizers has left such a strong impression on people that it reflects badly on the demographic as a whole.
Sorry by the way, that wasn’t directed at the quoted post. I got a little sidetracked by my tangent.
Oh good. Because I was going to point out that if you had read my entire post I was careful to point out that it’s not all optimizers who are ******bags, and that even all the ones who are aren’t necessarily ******bags on purpose either, but that the ******bag behavior of some optimizers has left such a strong impression on people that it reflects badly on the demographic as a whole.
Yes, I’m aware. I got a little upset while I was writing mine and forgot I had actually quoted yours.
Rather than go back and cherry pick a few posts, I will just ask this to all that care to answer.
If 5e is so flawed that you only play it to recruit for (insert your favorite non 5e TTRPG) otherwise it is bad. Why do you think so many play it that makes it the gateway to other TTRPG's? Furthermore why would you want to change (or limit things in) it if it is so effective at being such a great gateway?
It is a matter of ignorance of the vast vast VAST majority of new players. There have been multiple studies showing that 5e is pretty much the ONLY recognizable name for an RPG that people not exposed to RPG's know. You can thank a combination of events: Stranger Things, Covid trapping people in their homes so they watch videos all day, and You Tube/Twitch algo's that spike stuff like Critical Role to the top of any search. Once players get into RPG's, then yeah, they start recognizing that 5e is not the only game in town, in fact many are superior.
But finding a critical mass to play other games is tough. I can do it (played a total of 6 different game systems, all in person, in the past 3 weeks) because I play in person at a location that has a lot of people move through it, and thanks to the OGL debacle, and general 5e game play, some of those 5e players have come to recognize, "hey, maybe 5e is not for me". When you are face to face with someone you have played games with for a number of months or years, it is a lot easier to say "you know, maybe we should try out X" .The trust factor is much higher than with some random internet dude advertising some game.
But ultimately, 5e is still the gateway drug for brand new RPG players.
My experience has been very different.
I play mostly 5e, and mostly published stuff with house rules. After realizing the importance of setting expectations and talking about what kind of game the group wants to play in a session 0 or before it does take a little time up front and some oneshots to get things sussed out but we have way less OOG drama than when we rushed to get the game started.
I can see where this would not be something a player looking to recruit players for other games would want to spend the time to do but it is working very well for us but 5e is what we are playing warts and all, it is a fun game.
Oddly the only negative issues in those groups I have experienced since slowing down the session 0's was from players that want to play games other than 5e.
Rather than go back and cherry pick a few posts, I will just ask this to all that care to answer.
If 5e is so flawed that you only play it to recruit for (insert your favorite non 5e TTRPG) otherwise it is bad. Why do you think so many play it that makes it the gateway to other TTRPG's? Furthermore why would you want to change (or limit things in) it if it is so effective at being such a great gateway?
This is off topic so I'll try to be concise. The short answer to your first question is brand recognition. D&D is the only TTRPG most people have ever heard of. Most new players don't come to a table wanting to play "a TTRPG" (if they even know what that is), they come wanting to play D&D.
I don't count myself a member of the 5e Hate Club; I think there's a few things it does well, a few things it does poorly, and a lot of things that depend heavily on the GM putting in a herculean amount of work. This is abnormal, by the way. I don't know any other system that works the GM as hard as D&D 5e does. That's one thing I'd like to change. The other thing is that there's just not much depth to it, especially outside of combat. I think both these things could be improved without making the game harder to introduce new players to.
Here's something to consider, though this thread isn't really the place for this discussion: why are so many people who have never played another game convinced 5e represents the ideal RPG? How could you possibly come to that conclusion without trying at least a handful of other games?
So, for everyone out there who’s an optimized but isn’t a bag of ******, instead of arguing about the relative merits of optimizing, instead try just actively not being ******bags. Because arguing the relative merits of optimization kind of just reinforces the ******bag stereotype for lots of people.
But we can't control the behavior of anyone you play with who is not ourselves. Therefore, arguing about the merits of optimization (including its merits when it comes to roleplay synergy and textured character concepts) is all we can do, as well as continuing to point out that there is no correlation (positive OR negative) between the two.
It’s astonishing that so many people have such vast experiences of what every optimiser is like. I’m glad to know it’s such a cohesive demographic that a significant chunk of are ********. This is quite surprising to me given the only person that fits this description I have ever met who even remotely tried to minmax barely understood the rules and just made stuff up, which is definitely not optimisation. Telling people that like number crunching and pushing systems they can’t use half the sourcebooks cause you don’t like it is gatekeeping. Saying optimisation is A Bad Thing is gatekeeping. Saying ‘I don’t dislike all optimisers, just those stuck up Mary Sues’ is frankly insulting - just say you don’t like ******* players, like the rest of us - and using anecdotal examples like they are hard evidence is equally insulting when you’re implying some egomaniac represents all optimisers, and that’s why optimisers are bad. That’s like saying a dog bit you once, all dogs bite, dogs should be put down
Okay, but you see that there's more than two positions here, right? Like, sticking with the metaphor, people who get bitten by dogs don't usually become anti-dog crusaders, but they might reasonably choose not to get dogs, choose not to spend their free time around dogs, maybe choose to live in a building (this is getting strained; "live in a building" here means "play a TTRPG system") that does not allow dogs. Avoidance is a normal response to a bad experience, and it's obviously a fairly common bad experience.
I say this as a chronic dog (er, optimizer) myself, for what it's worth.
There are entire fora and discords devoted to all sorts of games. If I wanted to run some non-5e game, and didn't have people in my own circles up for it, I'd join one of those, and I doubt it'd take me that long for anything with a player base. If I wanted to play, as I said, it'd be more work; I'd probably end up playing one-shots to find a group I vibe with. Maybe I'm wrong: I don't have direct experience with it, because I've got enough people in my circles that I could run anything I want to. The only reason I'm not running DIE in person at the moment is that I haven't got off my butt to do it, and I've still got like 60% of the players. If I really felt like running 4e, as opposed to having the occasional invasive "I could run 4e" thoughts, I could spin that game up, too, and it'd be a disjoint set of players.
The number of people who won't play anything but 5e is not that large, but a lot of them aren't looking for something else. When you have groups as deeply dissatisfied with 5e as we're told JustaFarmer has, it ought to be easy.
I highlighted the most pertinent part of your reply.
The short of my rejoinder: My experience is clearly different from yours.
Long answer: Most of my friends, historically, are not gamers, since I stopped gaming for well over a decade. While I have met some people using online forums and Discord, most are not interested in playing RPGs other those that are most popular for anything much longer than a one-shot. Of the friends I did know in high school who gamed, I have long ago lost touch with them, partly due to the usual circumstances of marriage and growing up/apart, but also b/c I am trans and was not aware of it until later in life, and society as a whole was significantly less welcoming to trans people back then than it is now. While I have made more "geek gamer" friends since then, I have found that there are still many people who would rather not play RPGs with a trans person who somehow offends them by caring more about character development and coherent backstory than they do while also matching them for understanding of the game's mechanics.
Something peculiar that I have observed as a trans person is that men (particularly straight ones) are more comfortable with having me around when they can assume that I am a person who needs their help than when I present myself as someone who is just as capable as they are at understanding how stuff works. Since this is DDB, I will refrain from attempting to label this phenomenon, but needless to say, your experience is quite far removed from my own. So please do not assume that just because something is simple for you, that it is simple for everyone else.
Min-maxing has been the bane of D&D since 1e allowed non-humans to multiclass. Of course back then non-humans couldn't progress like humans, since Cygax gave them innate magical abilities. Which meant they were already ahead of humans from the beginning. The new rules, IIRC, removes those innate magical abilities from races (now called Species), so that also reduces the amount of optimizing based on races. In addition, there have been changes to classes to also reduce the urge to min-max, such as applying the same bonuses for an ASI at the beginning for all races. It looks like no matter what you do, you will receive only modest increases to optimize.
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My mileage varies. "Everybody hops onto Zoom from home" is a much easier requirement than "everyone needs to converge on the Place of Gaming at this specific time".
In my experience, people who game together game together because they enjoy playing with each other, not because they're there to play a specific game. If the GM says "I wanna try something new", most of the players will go along. Back in college, my main gaming group changed game almost every semester.
There are entire fora and discords devoted to all sorts of games. If I wanted to run some non-5e game, and didn't have people in my own circles up for it, I'd join one of those, and I doubt it'd take me that long for anything with a player base. If I wanted to play, as I said, it'd be more work; I'd probably end up playing one-shots to find a group I vibe with. Maybe I'm wrong: I don't have direct experience with it, because I've got enough people in my circles that I could run anything I want to. The only reason I'm not running DIE in person at the moment is that I haven't got off my butt to do it, and I've still got like 60% of the players. If I really felt like running 4e, as opposed to having the occasional invasive "I could run 4e" thoughts, I could spin that game up, too, and it'd be a disjoint set of players.
The number of people who won't play anything but 5e is not that large, but a lot of them aren't looking for something else. When you have groups as deeply dissatisfied with 5e as we're told JustaFarmer has, it ought to be easy.
Rather than go back and cherry pick a few posts, I will just ask this to all that care to answer.
If 5e is so flawed that you only play it to recruit for (insert your favorite non 5e TTRPG) otherwise it is bad. Why do you think so many play it that makes it the gateway to other TTRPG's? Furthermore why would you want to change (or limit things in) it if it is so effective at being such a great gateway?
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Optimizing isn’t inherently bad, it’s just that often the people who do it are kinda ******y about it and use it to ruin everyone else at the table’s fun. And I don’t mean a small percentage of people are ******y about it every great once in a while, I mean a good solid chunk of them are a whole lot of the time. They may not all mean to be ******y about it, it just happens without them even realizing it sometimes. And they may be very nice people the rest of the time, but they’re ******y about this.
Think of it like if you’re a superhero like Hawkeye or Black Widow, and you’re on a superhero team with mostly other regular people who are just really, really good at something, so good that they actually qualify as “super heroes,” except for this one guy who is super strong (like, throws tanks around strong), and pretty much invulnerable to everything, and he can fly, and he has x-ray vision and can also shoot freaking lasers out of his eyes, and he’s super good looking too. Now, you may not mind it so much if he’s at least humble and gregarious and supportive, but instead he’s kind of a dudebro about it, and likes to brag a lot and show off a lot, and point out how awesome he is at everything all the time. He may not be actively trying to be a giant bag of ******, it just happens.
That’s what’s wrong with a lot of min-maxers. It’s not the min-maxing people resent, it’s the ways the people who often do it sometimes behave, even if they anre consciously intending to, and they ways it makes other people feel when they do act that way. And it’s unfortunate but now that same brush gets used to paint everyone who excessively optimizes, even if they as individuals do actually deserve it. But showing up with a character that has every last ounce of utility squeezed into exactly all the right spots without anything left hanging is like showing up with a sign around your neck that has an arrow pointing up and beneath it it just says “******bag.” You may not personally deserve it, but society just kind of places that sign around your neck anyway based on your character sheet.
So, for everyone out there who’s an optimized but isn’t a bag of ******, instead of arguing about the relative merits of optimizing, instead try just actively not being ******bags. Because arguing the relative merits of optimization kind of just reinforces the ******bag stereotype for lots of people.
It is a matter of ignorance of the vast vast VAST majority of new players. There have been multiple studies showing that 5e is pretty much the ONLY recognizable name for an RPG that people not exposed to RPG's know. You can thank a combination of events: Stranger Things, Covid trapping people in their homes so they watch videos all day, and You Tube/Twitch algo's that spike stuff like Critical Role to the top of any search. Once players get into RPG's, then yeah, they start recognizing that 5e is not the only game in town, in fact many are superior.
But finding a critical mass to play other games is tough. I can do it (played a total of 6 different game systems, all in person, in the past 3 weeks) because I play in person at a location that has a lot of people move through it, and thanks to the OGL debacle, and general 5e game play, some of those 5e players have come to recognize, "hey, maybe 5e is not for me". When you are face to face with someone you have played games with for a number of months or years, it is a lot easier to say "you know, maybe we should try out X" .The trust factor is much higher than with some random internet dude advertising some game.
But ultimately, 5e is still the gateway drug for brand new RPG players.
It’s astonishing that so many people have such vast experiences of what every optimiser is like. I’m glad to know it’s such a cohesive demographic that a significant chunk of are ********. This is quite surprising to me given the only person that fits this description I have ever met who even remotely tried to minmax barely understood the rules and just made stuff up, which is definitely not optimisation. Telling people that like number crunching and pushing systems they can’t use half the sourcebooks cause you don’t like it is gatekeeping. Saying optimisation is A Bad Thing is gatekeeping. Saying ‘I don’t dislike all optimisers, just those stuck up Mary Sues’ is frankly insulting - just say you don’t like ******* players, like the rest of us - and using anecdotal examples like they are hard evidence is equally insulting when you’re implying some egomaniac represents all optimisers, and that’s why optimisers are bad. That’s like saying a dog bit you once, all dogs bite, dogs should be put down.
Everyone who optimises does it within a set of restrictions. That’s the fun of it. I know someone who squeezed 240 plus damage out of magic stone. Not a build you’d use, but it’s fun to push systems. If I see one more person making blanket statements without clarifying this is their own experience and has no bearing on the wider game I may delete my original post because I’ve seen nothing here I haven’t heard a thousand times before (just with more and more restrictive controls on what players can and can’t do because it apparently offends your morals).
And it’s also amazing that so many people view optimisation as A Bad Thing. I’ve seen more and less subtle versions of this. For instance, ‘I don’t mind optimisation’ (paraphrased, in this thread) or a complaint that lists using four-plus books as A Bad Thing. Count the PHB for your class, Volo’s (or Mordenkainen’s Monsters of the Universe) for your race, maybe Tasha’s (unless that’s cheating to use a sourcebook, I forgot) or XGtE for your subclass, and the DMG for any magic items you get and that’s four already.
Plus, a lot of the powerful stuff is in the PHB anyway. PHB and XGtE only means ranger sucks and everyone will pick the same races for the same classes as if all adventurers went through a school that taught you things based on eugenics.
I can’t remember what’s supposed to go here.
Sorry by the way, that wasn’t directed at the quoted post. I got a little sidetracked by my tangent.
I can’t remember what’s supposed to go here.
Oh good. Because I was going to point out that if you had read my entire post I was careful to point out that it’s not all optimizers who are ******bags, and that even all the ones who are aren’t necessarily ******bags on purpose either, but that the ******bag behavior of some optimizers has left such a strong impression on people that it reflects badly on the demographic as a whole.
Yes, I’m aware. I got a little upset while I was writing mine and forgot I had actually quoted yours.
I can’t remember what’s supposed to go here.
My experience has been very different.
I play mostly 5e, and mostly published stuff with house rules. After realizing the importance of setting expectations and talking about what kind of game the group wants to play in a session 0 or before it does take a little time up front and some oneshots to get things sussed out but we have way less OOG drama than when we rushed to get the game started.
I can see where this would not be something a player looking to recruit players for other games would want to spend the time to do but it is working very well for us but 5e is what we are playing warts and all, it is a fun game.
Oddly the only negative issues in those groups I have experienced since slowing down the session 0's was from players that want to play games other than 5e.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
This is off topic so I'll try to be concise. The short answer to your first question is brand recognition. D&D is the only TTRPG most people have ever heard of. Most new players don't come to a table wanting to play "a TTRPG" (if they even know what that is), they come wanting to play D&D.
I don't count myself a member of the 5e Hate Club; I think there's a few things it does well, a few things it does poorly, and a lot of things that depend heavily on the GM putting in a herculean amount of work. This is abnormal, by the way. I don't know any other system that works the GM as hard as D&D 5e does. That's one thing I'd like to change. The other thing is that there's just not much depth to it, especially outside of combat. I think both these things could be improved without making the game harder to introduce new players to.
Here's something to consider, though this thread isn't really the place for this discussion: why are so many people who have never played another game convinced 5e represents the ideal RPG? How could you possibly come to that conclusion without trying at least a handful of other games?
Technically it's French for "shower" - but its English meanings are the pertinent ones here 😛
But we can't control the behavior of anyone you play with who is not ourselves. Therefore, arguing about the merits of optimization (including its merits when it comes to roleplay synergy and textured character concepts) is all we can do, as well as continuing to point out that there is no correlation (positive OR negative) between the two.
Okay, but you see that there's more than two positions here, right? Like, sticking with the metaphor, people who get bitten by dogs don't usually become anti-dog crusaders, but they might reasonably choose not to get dogs, choose not to spend their free time around dogs, maybe choose to live in a building (this is getting strained; "live in a building" here means "play a TTRPG system") that does not allow dogs. Avoidance is a normal response to a bad experience, and it's obviously a fairly common bad experience.
I say this as a chronic dog (er, optimizer) myself, for what it's worth.
I highlighted the most pertinent part of your reply.
The short of my rejoinder: My experience is clearly different from yours.
Long answer: Most of my friends, historically, are not gamers, since I stopped gaming for well over a decade. While I have met some people using online forums and Discord, most are not interested in playing RPGs other those that are most popular for anything much longer than a one-shot. Of the friends I did know in high school who gamed, I have long ago lost touch with them, partly due to the usual circumstances of marriage and growing up/apart, but also b/c I am trans and was not aware of it until later in life, and society as a whole was significantly less welcoming to trans people back then than it is now. While I have made more "geek gamer" friends since then, I have found that there are still many people who would rather not play RPGs with a trans person who somehow offends them by caring more about character development and coherent backstory than they do while also matching them for understanding of the game's mechanics.
Something peculiar that I have observed as a trans person is that men (particularly straight ones) are more comfortable with having me around when they can assume that I am a person who needs their help than when I present myself as someone who is just as capable as they are at understanding how stuff works. Since this is DDB, I will refrain from attempting to label this phenomenon, but needless to say, your experience is quite far removed from my own. So please do not assume that just because something is simple for you, that it is simple for everyone else.
Min-maxing has been the bane of D&D since 1e allowed non-humans to multiclass. Of course back then non-humans couldn't progress like humans, since Cygax gave them innate magical abilities. Which meant they were already ahead of humans from the beginning. The new rules, IIRC, removes those innate magical abilities from races (now called Species), so that also reduces the amount of optimizing based on races. In addition, there have been changes to classes to also reduce the urge to min-max, such as applying the same bonuses for an ASI at the beginning for all races. It looks like no matter what you do, you will receive only modest increases to optimize.