Folk, there has now been two pages of sniping back on forth on a single topic, that seems to be becoming disruptive rather than helpful. Remember to take a step back, and that you can take your time to type and formulate a reply (And also to check that you're not quoting too much of comments either directly above or with long reply chains). Focus on a topic, not a user.
The cost of D&D is relevant to a discussion on why folk are or aren't using the new rules, but remember to make sure you're linking back to the thread topic of the 2024 Core Rules and why people like or dislike them. If a particular topic looks like it might go on a tangent or take over a thread, it might be worth taking that discussion to a new thread, especially if it becomes a general discussion and not specifically linked back to the 2024 Core Rules.
Also remember to respect each other and be careful how you discuss this topic. No one should be shamed for wanting to be careful with money or shamed for wanting to spend money on their hobby. Advice on how to make the most of D&D on a budget (Such as using Official free rules and resources or legal means of content sharing, so on) is helpful, judgement is not- in either direction.
Posts that continue to be nonconstructive on this topic may be removed, and reminded/warned.
Ah yes, the famously free Red Box from TSR, Dungeon & Dragon Magazines from Paizo, & minatures.
Totally free. Didn't cost a dime, subscriptions & postage, or the cost of materials.
Just like Beyond was a free Archives of Nethys-style wiki before the buyout...
oh wait....
It's almost like DND was NEVER "free".
This is a common misconception, that DND was "free" back in the day.
Making strawman arguments is not a way to have a productive and constructive discussion. Obviously, I'm talking about a time after the internet was invented.
As early as the 2nd edition AD&D era, we had the community knocking out digital content and tools for ourselves, by 3rd edition with the OGL there was an insane growth in this area and it has for all other RPG's except this one continued.
You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. Hell I was a creator during the 2nd-3rd edition era and I created and ran sites where you could create characters, manage campaigns, build monsters.. All this stuff was free (yes, AFTER the internet was invented) and still is free for every game out there.
I mean... you want to play Castles and Crusade... Here is the FREE players handbook. Want to play Pathfinder, here is Pathbuilder with every rule for every book ever published, character creation, customization, a free phone app HERE.
All RPG makers create an environment that is open to the community to create, contribute and support the game and everyone understands that this method promotes growth, unity and structure to the community which turns into sales for the company. Wizards of the Coast is the only company that I know of that puts up a paywall for pretty much everything. Everything they give away for free.. comes with a catch... Free rules? Sure... some of them... Create characters ... sure.. we give you 4, you pay for the rest.. etc.. etc..
That situation wasn't created by Wizards of the Coast, it was created by the tolerance of the community. The only reason we have a SRD and a community license for 5e is because Wizards didn't get away with canceling the OGL... A reflection of the control the community has. We can blame Wizards and to a degree, they are accountable as they are constantly attempting to do everything in their power to make D&D a micro-transaction hell, but they only get away with the stuff the community lets them and that's on the community not on them. They have the power to stop Wizards of the Coast, that's been proven.
So yeah, personally I don't really care. At this stage, in my eyes, D&D is effectively going down a path like a free-to-play microtransaction game. Yeah it's free to play, except all the time when it's not. My issue with it isn't even that they are doing it, it's that they are very clearly and obviously doing it and gaslighting everyone by pretending it's not actually happening. It's ridiculous and insulting and its bad for 2024 D&D because it all reflects on that game.
Which is sad, because again, I think 2024 is a great version of D&D. For a game to be great, but I still don't want to play it, because of how the community is treated by the company... That is a real thing I think is happening all over the place and this lack of "love" for D&D stems from that more than it does with any perceived problem with the game itself.
Ah yes, the famously free Red Box from TSR, Dungeon & Dragon Magazines from Paizo, & minatures.
Totally free. Didn't cost a dime, subscriptions & postage, or the cost of materials.
Just like Beyond was a free Archives of Nethys-style wiki before the buyout...
oh wait....
It's almost like DND was NEVER "free".
This is a common misconception, that DND was "free" back in the day.
Making strawman arguments is not a way to have a productive and constructive discussion. Obviously, I'm talking about a time after the internet was invented.
As early as the 2nd edition AD&D era, we had the community knocking out digital content and tools for ourselves, by 3rd edition with the OGL there was an insane growth in this area and it has for all other RPG's except this one continued.
You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. Hell I was a creator during the 2nd-3rd edition era and I created and ran sites where you could create characters, manage campaigns, build monsters.. All this stuff was free (yes, AFTER the internet was invented) and still is free for every game out there.
I mean... you want to play Castles and Crusade... Here is the FREE players handbook. Want to play Pathfinder, here is Pathbuilder with every rule for every book ever published, character creation, customization, a free phone app HERE.
All RPG makers create an environment that is open to the community to create, contribute and support the game and everyone understands that this method promotes growth, unity and structure to the community which turns into sales for the company. Wizards of the Coast is the only company that I know of that puts up a paywall for pretty much everything. Everything they give away for free.. comes with a catch... Free rules? Sure... some of them... Create characters ... sure.. we give you 4, you pay for the rest.. etc.. etc..
That situation wasn't created by Wizards of the Coast, it was created by the tolerance of the community. The only reason we have a SRD and a community license for 5e is because Wizards didn't get away with canceling the OGL... A reflection of the control the community has. We can blame Wizards and to a degree, they are accountable as they are constantly attempting to do everything in their power to make D&D a micro-transaction hell, but they only get away with the stuff the community lets them and that's on the community not on them. They have the power to stop Wizards of the Coast, that's been proven.
So yeah, personally I don't really care. At this stage, in my eyes, D&D is effectively going down a path like a free-to-play microtransaction game. Yeah it's free to play, except all the time when it's not. My issue with it isn't even that they are doing it, it's that they are very clearly and obviously doing it and gaslighting everyone by pretending it's not actually happening. It's ridiculous and insulting and its bad for 2024 D&D because it all reflects on that game.
Which is sad, because again, I think 2024 is a great version of D&D. For a game to be great, but I still don't want to play it, because of how the community is treated by the company... That is a real thing I think is happening all over the place and this lack of "love" for D&D stems from that more than it does with any perceived problem with the game itself.
if the internet is telling the truth - there was no OGL/SRD before wotc acquired dnd so for all the hate it gets for trying to change the OGL, personally am curious where is the love for them creating it to begin with, surely it helped grow the creator community to what it is today (for better or worse)
if the internet is telling the truth - there was no OGL/SRD before wotc acquired dnd so for all the hate it gets for trying to change the OGL, personally am curious where is the love for them creating it to begin with, surely it helped grow the creator community to what it is today (for better or worse)
"They" in this context were Ryan Dancey, Monte Cook, Skip Williams, and Jonathan Tweet, all RPG legends, all victims of the WotC talent purge. The term OGL and SRD didn't exist before this, but arguably the concept of digital products wasn't fully realized until the late 90's. Like during the 1st and 2nd edition era there were some attempts at producing stand-alone digital products like character generators for example, but strictly speaking it wasn't until 3rd edition when the premise of open-sharing content kind of became a thing. Photocopied scans of PDF's being passed around the internet were about as close you got to getting D&D digitally before 3rd edition.
But you are absolutely right that it was Wizards of the Coast that created the OGL, it was and is, one of their greatest contributions to D&D upon which millions of creators still function to this day. I mean the entire OSR is built on the OGL. Wizards of the Coast had a lot of love for the creation of the OGL but like a spoiled brat, they woke up one day and decided they were going to take their ball and go home and try to sell us the ball for 39.99. I think a lot of the current hate for Wizards of the Coast and the resentment by the community comes from them feeling betrayed. It's like you created a great thing, why would you try to destroy it? It was just greed.
It was about the equivalent of them giving us a beautiful picture to hang on our walls, we had it in our house for decades and then one day, they came over and tried to re-claim it and then sell it back to us. Most D&D fans feel rightfully that it's not Wizard of the Coast that owns the OGL and D&D, the fans do and WotC has no right to it. Legally speaking of course that is not true, but legality and community sensibilities are not the same thing. If there is one truth in the world, if you want to be hated by the masses, act like a corporation.
One thing that is important to note too about D&D as a whole and TSR didn't understand this until it was far too late is that D&D isn't a game, its a series of memories immortalized by the books. There is a reason why the OSR exists and its not because old-school D&D was a better-designed game. It's because there is an ownership to the D&D experience. The books themselves are artifacts cherished and coveted by the fans of the game, almost like a high school yearbook, its a real object that acts as a placeholder for all the memories had playing the game.
DnDBeyond and digital data will never replace that human connection we have to the game. DnDBeyond will one day shutdown and all of those digital assets will disappear and the advancement of technology is never going to replace the substantial connection you have to objects like books.
This is why preservation of the tabletop tradition is such an important part of D&D and why Wizards of the Coasts intention to digitize and monetize and turn this role-playing experience into a forgettable technical execution means that they don't understand what this game is and why people play it. They are destroying the future of the game by stepping out from its core fundamentals and I'm a big believer that one day, very soon, people are going to start realizing that technology is not a replacement for the human experience and will start to reject it. We are almost there and you can see the exhaustion in people and the emptiness of the digital age.
Wizards of the Coast when they created 3rd edition seemed to really understand this, the OGL and the sharing of the responsibility of creating for D&D with the community was such a key to all of it and 5th edition, without question one of the best versions of the game ever should be treated like a crown prince. To see it being sold out as a digital product in the name of monetization... makes me sad. It means that, this generation of gamers, is not going to have the same experience as all of the past generations. D&D will be a video game, as forgettable and temporary as all video games are.
One thing that is important to note too about D&D as a whole and TSR didn't understand this until it was far too late is that D&D isn't a game, its a series of memories immortalized by the books. There is a reason why the OSR exists and its not because old-school D&D was a better-designed game. It's because there is an ownership to the D&D experience. The books themselves are artifacts cherished and coveted by the fans of the game, almost like a high school yearbook, its a real object that acts as a placeholder for all the memories had playing the game.
DnDBeyond and digital data will never replace that human connection we have to the game. DnDBeyond will one day shutdown and all of those digital assets will disappear and the advancement of technology is never going to replace the substantial connection you have to objects like books.
This is why preservation of the tabletop tradition is such an important part of D&D and why Wizards of the Coasts intention to digitize and monetize and turn this role-playing experience into a forgettable technical execution means that they don't understand what this game is and why people play it. They are destroying the future of the game by stepping out from its core fundamentals and I'm a big believer that one day, very soon, people are going to start realizing that technology is not a replacement for the human experience and will start to reject it. We are almost there and you can see the exhaustion in people and the emptiness of the digital age.
Wizards of the Coast when they created 3rd edition seemed to really understand this, the OGL and the sharing of the responsibility of creating for D&D with the community was such a key to all of it and 5th edition, without question one of the best versions of the game ever should be treated like a crown prince. To see it being sold out as a digital product in the name of monetization... makes me sad. It means that, this generation of gamers, is not going to have the same experience as all of the past generations. D&D will be a video game, as forgettable and temporary as all video games are.
This post holds no more merit than the other times they repeated the same claims. The reality? Wizards started dipping their toes into digital content in 2008 - 34% of this game’s history has had digital content, and there are folks on this forum younger than Wizards’ foray into digital tools. Despite what the folks tilting at windmills want you to believe, there has not been any real disasters yet - they just are choosing to ignore 17 years of coexistence between digital and physical play because it suits whatever narrative they are trying to push.
And the idea Wizards is neglecting physical product? This starts to fall apart quickly when one considers reality.
One of the things I really love about 2024 - to get this back on topic and away from the doomsaying - is how much effort they put into physical product. The special edition core books are beautiful. The covers, with their gorgeous art and shine. The pages and pages of full illustrations - the first core books where the art team was part of design, not an afterthought. There is the fact these are LGS exclusive, clearly an attempt to help insulate LGSes from digital tends and ensure long-term support for physical play spaces.
Even if you are the kind of conspiracy pusher who willfully ignores the many, many, many, many times WotC staff discuss their love of physical play, the products speak volumes. They clearly are still making physical products that are designed to create a lasting legacy on the bookshelf, something certain people pretend do not exist because it single handedly disproves their entire narrative.
So, there’s something else I love about 2024 - if you ignore the nostalgia for older editions and look at just physical quality, this is the most physically appealing, and legacy worthy set of core books I’ve seen.
So, there’s something else I love about 2024 - if you ignore the nostalgia for older editions and look at just physical quality, this is the most physically appealing, and legacy worthy set of core books I’ve seen.
So, there’s something else I love about 2024 - if you ignore the nostalgia for older editions and look at just physical quality, this is the most physically appealing, and legacy worthy set of core books I’ve seen.
If we "ignore the nostalgia for older editions" then what we're left with is an incredibly flat set of rules and information that does nothing to inspire the imagination of the players or GMs.
Which would make it pretty much a dismal failure of a collaborative storytelling game.
This post holds no more merit than the other times they repeated the same claims. The reality? Wizards started dipping their toes into digital content in 2008 - 34% of this game’s history has had digital content, and there are folks on this forum younger than Wizards’ foray into digital tools. Despite what the folks tilting at windmills want you to believe, there has not been any real disasters yet - they just are choosing to ignore 17 years of coexistence between digital and physical play because it suits whatever narrative they are trying to push.
And the idea Wizards is neglecting physical product? This starts to fall apart quickly when one considers reality.
One of the things I really love about 2024 - to get this back on topic and away from the doomsaying - is how much effort they put into physical product. The special edition core books are beautiful. The covers, with their gorgeous art and shine. The pages and pages of full illustrations - the first core books where the art team was part of design, not an afterthought. There is the fact these are LGS exclusive, clearly an attempt to help insulate LGSes from digital tends and ensure long-term support for physical play spaces.
Even if you are the kind of conspiracy pusher who willfully ignores the many, many, many, many times WotC staff discuss their love of physical play, the products speak volumes. They clearly are still making physical products that are designed to create a lasting legacy on the bookshelf, something certain people pretend do not exist because it single handedly disproves their entire narrative.
So, there’s something else I love about 2024 - if you ignore the nostalgia for older editions and look at just physical quality, this is the most physically appealing, and legacy worthy set of core books I’ve seen.
Well, we are all going to find out one way or the other together. I like your outlook, don't get me wrong, I wish everything you were saying was true and this so-called "conspiracy theory" you're claiming I'm making is wrong and the D&D just continues on its merry way as a tabletop wonder it's always been. I really do hope that.
I will however point out that I was not wrong about 4th edition being an attempt to capture the MMORPG gamers and that it would turn out to be the most poorly received edition of the game, despite forums just like this insisting that "I was edition warring" and "a conspiracy nut". I was not wrong when I promised this community that Wizards of the Coast would squash all external Digital tool creation, buy DNDBeyond and create a monopoly on digital tools. And while I was technically wrong that WotC would kill the OGL, it was pretty bloody close.
I don't take any pleasure in being right nor do I find any enjoyment in being negative, so here's hoping your right. That said I will make three predictions and I will save this post so that a couple of years from now when we are discussing this game, I can reference it for you.
1. 2024 will have the fewest physical books released of any version of D&D in its history.
2. There will be exclusive content (like sub-classes) for the game released on Sigil and/or DNDbeyond not available in any book, purchasable only as a digital product.
2. I predict the 6th edition will be announced in 2028.
So, there’s something else I love about 2024 - if you ignore the nostalgia for older editions and look at just physical quality, this is the most physically appealing, and legacy worthy set of core books I’ve seen.
If we "ignore the nostalgia for older editions" then what we're left with is an incredibly flat set of rules and information that does nothing to inspire the imagination of the players or GMs.
Which would make it pretty much a dismal failure of a collaborative storytelling game.
That is certainly your opinion - and an opinion that is completely unrelated to the point I am making about physical quality.
But, sure, I’ll bite. Your point might be irrelevant, but it is a popular, misguided argument against 2024. As the data has always shown, the most popular game world for the past five decades, regularly boasting a majority of players, is “my own homebrew world.” The second most popular is consistently “my homebrew version of a Wizards world.”
2024 is the first iteration of the game to acknowledge that fact. It does have lore - contrary to what folks who clearly did not read the rules like to claim - but that lore is designed to provide a basic inspiration for folks when homebrewing. Cutting some of the “here, use this plane specific lore as the default” content frees up more space for more monsters, more art, more subclasses, new systems like bastions, etc. All things that are actually helpful in a core book - and decidedly more helpful than “here’s some forgotten realms specific lore that most of you will not use.”
For those who do not homebrew - the remaining segment of the population - they already announced there will be books to help those players specifically. Heck, we already know a Forgotten Realms and Eberron book are slated to be released this very year.
Making books more useful to players is hardly a “dismal failure” - fifty years of data show that the majority are perfectly capable of making up their own lore.. and prefer that to using Wizards’/TSR’s content. Wizards is simply acknowledging the reality of what most players want in core books, while still giving the other players content as well.
So, there’s another thing I love about 2024 - unlike most other iterations of the game, they finally are letting their core books be core books.. instead of primers on worlds like the Forgotten Realms that most of us do not intend to play in.
I don't take any pleasure in being right nor do I find any enjoyment in being negative, so here's hoping your right. That said I will make three predictions and I will save this post so that a couple of years from now when we are discussing this game, I can reference it for you.
1. 2024 will have the fewest physical books released of any version of D&D in its history.
2. There will be exclusive content (like sub-classes) for the game released on Sigil and/or DNDbeyond not available in any book, purchasable only as a digital product.
2. I predict the 6th edition will be announced in 2028.
Let's hope for the best!
Let's put those predictions in the same box as the prediction that Tasha's would be a failure and would be WotC's "New Coke" and the that prediction that the "OGL debacle" would be the end of WotC because everyone would leave for other games forever.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Mother and Cat Herder. Playing TTRPGs since 1989 (She/Her)
So, there’s something else I love about 2024 - if you ignore the nostalgia for older editions and look at just physical quality, this is the most physically appealing, and legacy worthy set of core books I’ve seen.
If we "ignore the nostalgia for older editions" then what we're left with is an incredibly flat set of rules and information that does nothing to inspire the imagination of the players or GMs.
Which would make it pretty much a dismal failure of a collaborative storytelling game.
That is certainly your opinion - and an opinion that is completely unrelated to the point I am making about physical quality.
Please define physical quality; Like I'm looking at the book right now and... it exists? The pages don't appear to be falling out? It is in fact made of paper?
As the data has always shown, the most popular game world for the past five decades, regularly boasting a majority of players, is “my own homebrew world.” The second most popular is consistently “my homebrew version of a Wizards world.”
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that if you looked at most of the "Totally original homebrews" It would be like going to the toy aisle at a dollar store where you could find GI Jared, Barberra, Transmorphers and Man#Spider action figures; that is to say that they draw heavy inspiration from pre-existing media and then try to implement it into their game world setting.
Also: I would like for you to actually show me the method by which WotC acquired this information; how big is the sample, what was the length of the study, the break down of demographics... Because I'd legitimately love to read over it.
2024 is the first iteration of the game to acknowledge that fact. It does have lore - contrary to what folks who clearly did not read the rules like to claim - but that lore is designed to provide a basic inspiration for folks when homebrewing. Cutting some of the “here, use this plane specific lore as the default” content frees up more space for more monsters, more art, more subclasses, new systems like bastions, etc. All things that are actually helpful in a core book - and decidedly more helpful than “here’s some forgotten realms specific lore that most of you will not use.”
What they've provided is so vague and generic as to be functionally useless; no one is going to read over the notes for Tieflings and get any sense of who they are as a people or the way they would see the world or how to fit them into a setting beyond "they're like... devil people... I guess."
And if the goal was to truly give players and GM's more freedom then the better solution would have been to remove the concept of established races entirely and then replace it with a point buy system that would allow people to build them as they see fit from a list of potential options like skills, movement modifiers (IE climb speed), feats, resistances and/or innate spell casting. Things which other RPG's have functionally allowed players to do for decades.
So, there’s something else I love about 2024 - if you ignore the nostalgia for older editions and look at just physical quality, this is the most physically appealing, and legacy worthy set of core books I’ve seen.
If we "ignore the nostalgia for older editions" then what we're left with is an incredibly flat set of rules and information that does nothing to inspire the imagination of the players or GMs.
Which would make it pretty much a dismal failure of a collaborative storytelling game.
That is certainly your opinion - and an opinion that is completely unrelated to the point I am making about physical quality.
But, sure, I’ll bite. Your point might be irrelevant, but it is a popular, misguided argument against 2024. As the data has always shown, the most popular game world for the past five decades, regularly boasting a majority of players, is “my own homebrew world.” The second most popular is consistently “my homebrew version of a Wizards world.”
2024 is the first iteration of the game to acknowledge that fact. It does have lore - contrary to what folks who clearly did not read the rules like to claim - but that lore is designed to provide a basic inspiration for folks when homebrewing. Cutting some of the “here, use this plane specific lore as the default” content frees up more space for more monsters, more art, more subclasses, new systems like bastions, etc. All things that are actually helpful in a core book - and decidedly more helpful than “here’s some forgotten realms specific lore that most of you will not use.”
For those who do not homebrew - the remaining segment of the population - they already announced there will be books to help those players specifically. Heck, we already know a Forgotten Realms and Eberron book are slated to be released this very year.
Making books more useful to players is hardly a “dismal failure” - fifty years of data show that the majority are perfectly capable of making up their own lore.. and prefer that to using Wizards’/TSR’s content. Wizards is simply acknowledging the reality of what most players want in core books, while still giving the other players content as well.
So, there’s another thing I love about 2024 - unlike most other iterations of the game, they finally are letting their core books be core books.. instead of primers on worlds like the Forgotten Realms that most of us do not intend to play in.
Mmm, as much as the argument against setting specific lore has merit, the class/subclass descriptions and especially the backgrounds were distinctly lacking in even general roleplay and backstory prompts. It’s not the end of the world or even a particularly damning shortcoming, but some more work giving a vivid description of the classes and especially something similar to the traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws of the 2014 backgrounds would have been nice to see as some loose framework for character building.
For those who do not homebrew - the remaining segment of the population - they already announced there will be books to help those players specifically. Heck, we already know a Forgotten Realms and Eberron book are slated to be released this very year.
^This. I use exclusively homebrew for the settings and lore of the games I run, so I'm glad that they've stripped the core 3 rules down to just the rules (which so far I'm loving), the core 3 are hefty enough as it is, so having lore elsewhere is more useful, at least IMHO. Having said that, I will almost certainly buy the lore books (depending on reviews), solely for inspiration. Yes, I know that I am fortunate enough to be able to afford such an expense (and grateful for it every day). For those who cannot afford additional books but still need/want lore, there is at least one wiki that has a truly massive amount of information that is freely available to everyone.
So, there’s something else I love about 2024 - if you ignore the nostalgia for older editions and look at just physical quality, this is the most physically appealing, and legacy worthy set of core books I’ve seen.
If we "ignore the nostalgia for older editions" then what we're left with is an incredibly flat set of rules and information that does nothing to inspire the imagination of the players or GMs.
Which would make it pretty much a dismal failure of a collaborative storytelling game.
That is certainly your opinion - and an opinion that is completely unrelated to the point I am making about physical quality.
Please define physical quality; Like I'm looking at the book right now and... it exists? The pages don't appear to be falling out? It is in fact made of paper?
As the data has always shown, the most popular game world for the past five decades, regularly boasting a majority of players, is “my own homebrew world.” The second most popular is consistently “my homebrew version of a Wizards world.”
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that if you looked at most of the "Totally original homebrews" It would be like going to the toy aisle at a dollar store where you could find GI Jared, Barberra, Transmorphers and Man#Spider action figures; that is to say that they draw heavy inspiration from pre-existing media and then try to implement it into their game world setting.
Also: I would like for you to actually show me the method by which WotC acquired this information; how big is the sample, what was the length of the study, the break down of demographics... Because I'd legitimately love to read over it.
2024 is the first iteration of the game to acknowledge that fact. It does have lore - contrary to what folks who clearly did not read the rules like to claim - but that lore is designed to provide a basic inspiration for folks when homebrewing. Cutting some of the “here, use this plane specific lore as the default” content frees up more space for more monsters, more art, more subclasses, new systems like bastions, etc. All things that are actually helpful in a core book - and decidedly more helpful than “here’s some forgotten realms specific lore that most of you will not use.”
What they've provided is so vague and generic as to be functionally useless; no one is going to read over the notes for Tieflings and get any sense of who they are as a people or the way they would see the world or how to fit them into a setting beyond "they're like... devil people... I guess."
And if the goal was to truly give players and GM's more freedom then the better solution would have been to remove the concept of established races entirely and then replace it with a point buy system that would allow people to build them as they see fit from a list of potential options like skills, movement modifiers (IE climb speed), feats, resistances and/or innate spell casting. Things which other RPG's have functionally allowed players to do for decades.
Not defining how tieflings in general view or are viewed by “the world” was rather the point, since WotC is trying to avoid the implication there is a default/correct world and set of viewpoints. And the use of established fantasy/D&D-specific races is a cornerstone of the game. Yes, having a general grab bag of traits to custom build a starting character is an option for a TTRPG, but it’s typically one exercised when the various PCs are all of a single type. Plenty of others- including cases where the PCs are all of a type like the various World of Darkness lines- likewise have various features baked into the x splat that race/species occupies in D&D.
So, there’s something else I love about 2024 - if you ignore the nostalgia for older editions and look at just physical quality, this is the most physically appealing, and legacy worthy set of core books I’ve seen.
If we "ignore the nostalgia for older editions" then what we're left with is an incredibly flat set of rules and information that does nothing to inspire the imagination of the players or GMs.
Which would make it pretty much a dismal failure of a collaborative storytelling game.
That is certainly your opinion - and an opinion that is completely unrelated to the point I am making about physical quality.
But, sure, I’ll bite. Your point might be irrelevant, but it is a popular, misguided argument against 2024. As the data has always shown, the most popular game world for the past five decades, regularly boasting a majority of players, is “my own homebrew world.” The second most popular is consistently “my homebrew version of a Wizards world.”
2024 is the first iteration of the game to acknowledge that fact. It does have lore - contrary to what folks who clearly did not read the rules like to claim - but that lore is designed to provide a basic inspiration for folks when homebrewing. Cutting some of the “here, use this plane specific lore as the default” content frees up more space for more monsters, more art, more subclasses, new systems like bastions, etc. All things that are actually helpful in a core book - and decidedly more helpful than “here’s some forgotten realms specific lore that most of you will not use.”
For those who do not homebrew - the remaining segment of the population - they already announced there will be books to help those players specifically. Heck, we already know a Forgotten Realms and Eberron book are slated to be released this very year.
Making books more useful to players is hardly a “dismal failure” - fifty years of data show that the majority are perfectly capable of making up their own lore.. and prefer that to using Wizards’/TSR’s content. Wizards is simply acknowledging the reality of what most players want in core books, while still giving the other players content as well.
So, there’s another thing I love about 2024 - unlike most other iterations of the game, they finally are letting their core books be core books.. instead of primers on worlds like the Forgotten Realms that most of us do not intend to play in.
Mmm, as much as the argument against setting specific lore has merit, the class/subclass descriptions and especially the backgrounds were distinctly lacking in even general roleplay and backstory prompts. It’s not the end of the world or even a particularly damning shortcoming, but some more work giving a vivid description of the classes and especially something similar to the traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws of the 2014 backgrounds would have been nice to see as some loose framework for character building.
This is My favourite part of all of this; I'm not going to sit here and insist that the core rules must directly reflect the reality of any of the established settings but rather that everything is presented in such a vague and mumbly manner that none of it actually sparks any creativity for me.
Which if the goal is to force GM's to build and establish everything from scratch like it's a sky factory mod for Minecraft then congratualtions, well done... I guess?
I don't take any pleasure in being right nor do I find any enjoyment in being negative, so here's hoping your right. That said I will make three predictions and I will save this post so that a couple of years from now when we are discussing this game, I can reference it for you.
1. 2024 will have the fewest physical books released of any version of D&D in its history.
2. There will be exclusive content (like sub-classes) for the game released on Sigil and/or DNDbeyond not available in any book, purchasable only as a digital product.
2. I predict the 6th edition will be announced in 2028.
Let's hope for the best!
Let's put those predictions in the same box as the prediction that Tasha's would be a failure and would be WotC's "New Coke" and the that prediction that the "OGL debacle" would be the end of WotC because everyone would leave for other games forever.
Those were the internets predictions, not mine, so lets not.
So, there’s something else I love about 2024 - if you ignore the nostalgia for older editions and look at just physical quality, this is the most physically appealing, and legacy worthy set of core books I’ve seen.
If we "ignore the nostalgia for older editions" then what we're left with is an incredibly flat set of rules and information that does nothing to inspire the imagination of the players or GMs.
Which would make it pretty much a dismal failure of a collaborative storytelling game.
That is certainly your opinion - and an opinion that is completely unrelated to the point I am making about physical quality.
Please define physical quality; Like I'm looking at the book right now and... it exists? The pages don't appear to be falling out? It is in fact made of paper?
As the data has always shown, the most popular game world for the past five decades, regularly boasting a majority of players, is “my own homebrew world.” The second most popular is consistently “my homebrew version of a Wizards world.”
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that if you looked at most of the "Totally original homebrews" It would be like going to the toy aisle at a dollar store where you could find GI Jared, Barberra, Transmorphers and Man#Spider action figures; that is to say that they draw heavy inspiration from pre-existing media and then try to implement it into their game world setting.
Also: I would like for you to actually show me the method by which WotC acquired this information; how big is the sample, what was the length of the study, the break down of demographics... Because I'd legitimately love to read over it.
2024 is the first iteration of the game to acknowledge that fact. It does have lore - contrary to what folks who clearly did not read the rules like to claim - but that lore is designed to provide a basic inspiration for folks when homebrewing. Cutting some of the “here, use this plane specific lore as the default” content frees up more space for more monsters, more art, more subclasses, new systems like bastions, etc. All things that are actually helpful in a core book - and decidedly more helpful than “here’s some forgotten realms specific lore that most of you will not use.”
What they've provided is so vague and generic as to be functionally useless; no one is going to read over the notes for Tieflings and get any sense of who they are as a people or the way they would see the world or how to fit them into a setting beyond "they're like... devil people... I guess."
And if the goal was to truly give players and GM's more freedom then the better solution would have been to remove the concept of established races entirely and then replace it with a point buy system that would allow people to build them as they see fit from a list of potential options like skills, movement modifiers (IE climb speed), feats, resistances and/or innate spell casting. Things which other RPG's have functionally allowed players to do for decades.
Not defining how tieflings in general view or are viewed by “the world” was rather the point, since WotC is trying to avoid the implication there is a default/correct world and set of viewpoints. And the use of established fantasy/D&D-specific races is a cornerstone of the game. Yes, having a general grab bag of traits to custom build a starting character is an option for a TTRPG, but it’s typically one exercised when the various PCs are all of a single type. Plenty of others- including cases where the PCs are all of a type like the various World of Darkness lines- likewise have various features baked into the x splat that race/species occupies in D&D.
The thing is, they've effectlively stripped so much from the various races that I feel that they've already become the same "type" it's just that wizard's hasn't done the logical move of maximizing player freedom and creativity and instead left us with these pre-packaged powersets.
I'm just proposing taking things to their logical conclusion if the goal is to do away with stereotypes.
So, there’s something else I love about 2024 - if you ignore the nostalgia for older editions and look at just physical quality, this is the most physically appealing, and legacy worthy set of core books I’ve seen.
If we "ignore the nostalgia for older editions" then what we're left with is an incredibly flat set of rules and information that does nothing to inspire the imagination of the players or GMs.
Which would make it pretty much a dismal failure of a collaborative storytelling game.
That is certainly your opinion - and an opinion that is completely unrelated to the point I am making about physical quality.
Please define physical quality; Like I'm looking at the book right now and... it exists? The pages don't appear to be falling out? It is in fact made of paper?
As the data has always shown, the most popular game world for the past five decades, regularly boasting a majority of players, is “my own homebrew world.” The second most popular is consistently “my homebrew version of a Wizards world.”
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that if you looked at most of the "Totally original homebrews" It would be like going to the toy aisle at a dollar store where you could find GI Jared, Barberra, Transmorphers and Man#Spider action figures; that is to say that they draw heavy inspiration from pre-existing media and then try to implement it into their game world setting.
Also: I would like for you to actually show me the method by which WotC acquired this information; how big is the sample, what was the length of the study, the break down of demographics... Because I'd legitimately love to read over it.
2024 is the first iteration of the game to acknowledge that fact. It does have lore - contrary to what folks who clearly did not read the rules like to claim - but that lore is designed to provide a basic inspiration for folks when homebrewing. Cutting some of the “here, use this plane specific lore as the default” content frees up more space for more monsters, more art, more subclasses, new systems like bastions, etc. All things that are actually helpful in a core book - and decidedly more helpful than “here’s some forgotten realms specific lore that most of you will not use.”
What they've provided is so vague and generic as to be functionally useless; no one is going to read over the notes for Tieflings and get any sense of who they are as a people or the way they would see the world or how to fit them into a setting beyond "they're like... devil people... I guess."
And if the goal was to truly give players and GM's more freedom then the better solution would have been to remove the concept of established races entirely and then replace it with a point buy system that would allow people to build them as they see fit from a list of potential options like skills, movement modifiers (IE climb speed), feats, resistances and/or innate spell casting. Things which other RPG's have functionally allowed players to do for decades.
Not defining how tieflings in general view or are viewed by “the world” was rather the point, since WotC is trying to avoid the implication there is a default/correct world and set of viewpoints. And the use of established fantasy/D&D-specific races is a cornerstone of the game. Yes, having a general grab bag of traits to custom build a starting character is an option for a TTRPG, but it’s typically one exercised when the various PCs are all of a single type. Plenty of others- including cases where the PCs are all of a type like the various World of Darkness lines- likewise have various features baked into the x splat that race/species occupies in D&D.
The thing is, they've effectlively stripped so much from the various races that I feel that they've already become the same "type" it's just that wizard's hasn't done the logical move of maximizing player freedom and creativity and instead left us with these pre-packaged powersets.
I'm just proposing taking things to their logical conclusion if the goal is to do away with stereotypes.
You’re talking about two different things here: the narrative freedom of not saying “most tieflings go around with a chip on their shoulder because of an in-setting stigma” in books that are not meant to codify settings is different from the mechanical freedom of “just stitch together your own collection of physical traits/capabilities from this pool”. The latter is a valid option for game design in general, but by the same token so is having prebuilt powersets, which is a fairly iconic aspect of D&D. Stepping back the narrative end does not create a gap or impetus that can only be effectively resolved by stepping back the mechanical end.
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ModeratorFolk, there has now been two pages of sniping back on forth on a single topic, that seems to be becoming disruptive rather than helpful. Remember to take a step back, and that you can take your time to type and formulate a reply (And also to check that you're not quoting too much of comments either directly above or with long reply chains). Focus on a topic, not a user.
The cost of D&D is relevant to a discussion on why folk are or aren't using the new rules, but remember to make sure you're linking back to the thread topic of the 2024 Core Rules and why people like or dislike them. If a particular topic looks like it might go on a tangent or take over a thread, it might be worth taking that discussion to a new thread, especially if it becomes a general discussion and not specifically linked back to the 2024 Core Rules.
Also remember to respect each other and be careful how you discuss this topic. No one should be shamed for wanting to be careful with money or shamed for wanting to spend money on their hobby. Advice on how to make the most of D&D on a budget (Such as using Official free rules and resources or legal means of content sharing, so on) is helpful, judgement is not- in either direction.
Posts that continue to be nonconstructive on this topic may be removed, and reminded/warned.
D&D Beyond ToS || D&D Beyond Support
Making strawman arguments is not a way to have a productive and constructive discussion. Obviously, I'm talking about a time after the internet was invented.
As early as the 2nd edition AD&D era, we had the community knocking out digital content and tools for ourselves, by 3rd edition with the OGL there was an insane growth in this area and it has for all other RPG's except this one continued.
You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. Hell I was a creator during the 2nd-3rd edition era and I created and ran sites where you could create characters, manage campaigns, build monsters.. All this stuff was free (yes, AFTER the internet was invented) and still is free for every game out there.
I mean... you want to play Castles and Crusade... Here is the FREE players handbook. Want to play Pathfinder, here is Pathbuilder with every rule for every book ever published, character creation, customization, a free phone app HERE.
All RPG makers create an environment that is open to the community to create, contribute and support the game and everyone understands that this method promotes growth, unity and structure to the community which turns into sales for the company. Wizards of the Coast is the only company that I know of that puts up a paywall for pretty much everything. Everything they give away for free.. comes with a catch... Free rules? Sure... some of them... Create characters ... sure.. we give you 4, you pay for the rest.. etc.. etc..
That situation wasn't created by Wizards of the Coast, it was created by the tolerance of the community. The only reason we have a SRD and a community license for 5e is because Wizards didn't get away with canceling the OGL... A reflection of the control the community has. We can blame Wizards and to a degree, they are accountable as they are constantly attempting to do everything in their power to make D&D a micro-transaction hell, but they only get away with the stuff the community lets them and that's on the community not on them. They have the power to stop Wizards of the Coast, that's been proven.
So yeah, personally I don't really care. At this stage, in my eyes, D&D is effectively going down a path like a free-to-play microtransaction game. Yeah it's free to play, except all the time when it's not. My issue with it isn't even that they are doing it, it's that they are very clearly and obviously doing it and gaslighting everyone by pretending it's not actually happening. It's ridiculous and insulting and its bad for 2024 D&D because it all reflects on that game.
Which is sad, because again, I think 2024 is a great version of D&D. For a game to be great, but I still don't want to play it, because of how the community is treated by the company... That is a real thing I think is happening all over the place and this lack of "love" for D&D stems from that more than it does with any perceived problem with the game itself.
if the internet is telling the truth - there was no OGL/SRD before wotc acquired dnd
so for all the hate it gets for trying to change the OGL, personally am curious where is the love for them creating it to begin with, surely it helped grow the creator community to what it is today (for better or worse)
"They" in this context were Ryan Dancey, Monte Cook, Skip Williams, and Jonathan Tweet, all RPG legends, all victims of the WotC talent purge. The term OGL and SRD didn't exist before this, but arguably the concept of digital products wasn't fully realized until the late 90's. Like during the 1st and 2nd edition era there were some attempts at producing stand-alone digital products like character generators for example, but strictly speaking it wasn't until 3rd edition when the premise of open-sharing content kind of became a thing. Photocopied scans of PDF's being passed around the internet were about as close you got to getting D&D digitally before 3rd edition.
But you are absolutely right that it was Wizards of the Coast that created the OGL, it was and is, one of their greatest contributions to D&D upon which millions of creators still function to this day. I mean the entire OSR is built on the OGL. Wizards of the Coast had a lot of love for the creation of the OGL but like a spoiled brat, they woke up one day and decided they were going to take their ball and go home and try to sell us the ball for 39.99. I think a lot of the current hate for Wizards of the Coast and the resentment by the community comes from them feeling betrayed. It's like you created a great thing, why would you try to destroy it? It was just greed.
It was about the equivalent of them giving us a beautiful picture to hang on our walls, we had it in our house for decades and then one day, they came over and tried to re-claim it and then sell it back to us. Most D&D fans feel rightfully that it's not Wizard of the Coast that owns the OGL and D&D, the fans do and WotC has no right to it. Legally speaking of course that is not true, but legality and community sensibilities are not the same thing. If there is one truth in the world, if you want to be hated by the masses, act like a corporation.
One thing that is important to note too about D&D as a whole and TSR didn't understand this until it was far too late is that D&D isn't a game, its a series of memories immortalized by the books. There is a reason why the OSR exists and its not because old-school D&D was a better-designed game. It's because there is an ownership to the D&D experience. The books themselves are artifacts cherished and coveted by the fans of the game, almost like a high school yearbook, its a real object that acts as a placeholder for all the memories had playing the game.
DnDBeyond and digital data will never replace that human connection we have to the game. DnDBeyond will one day shutdown and all of those digital assets will disappear and the advancement of technology is never going to replace the substantial connection you have to objects like books.
This is why preservation of the tabletop tradition is such an important part of D&D and why Wizards of the Coasts intention to digitize and monetize and turn this role-playing experience into a forgettable technical execution means that they don't understand what this game is and why people play it. They are destroying the future of the game by stepping out from its core fundamentals and I'm a big believer that one day, very soon, people are going to start realizing that technology is not a replacement for the human experience and will start to reject it. We are almost there and you can see the exhaustion in people and the emptiness of the digital age.
Wizards of the Coast when they created 3rd edition seemed to really understand this, the OGL and the sharing of the responsibility of creating for D&D with the community was such a key to all of it and 5th edition, without question one of the best versions of the game ever should be treated like a crown prince. To see it being sold out as a digital product in the name of monetization... makes me sad. It means that, this generation of gamers, is not going to have the same experience as all of the past generations. D&D will be a video game, as forgettable and temporary as all video games are.
This post holds no more merit than the other times they repeated the same claims. The reality? Wizards started dipping their toes into digital content in 2008 - 34% of this game’s history has had digital content, and there are folks on this forum younger than Wizards’ foray into digital tools. Despite what the folks tilting at windmills want you to believe, there has not been any real disasters yet - they just are choosing to ignore 17 years of coexistence between digital and physical play because it suits whatever narrative they are trying to push.
And the idea Wizards is neglecting physical product? This starts to fall apart quickly when one considers reality.
One of the things I really love about 2024 - to get this back on topic and away from the doomsaying - is how much effort they put into physical product. The special edition core books are beautiful. The covers, with their gorgeous art and shine. The pages and pages of full illustrations - the first core books where the art team was part of design, not an afterthought. There is the fact these are LGS exclusive, clearly an attempt to help insulate LGSes from digital tends and ensure long-term support for physical play spaces.
Even if you are the kind of conspiracy pusher who willfully ignores the many, many, many, many times WotC staff discuss their love of physical play, the products speak volumes. They clearly are still making physical products that are designed to create a lasting legacy on the bookshelf, something certain people pretend do not exist because it single handedly disproves their entire narrative.
So, there’s something else I love about 2024 - if you ignore the nostalgia for older editions and look at just physical quality, this is the most physically appealing, and legacy worthy set of core books I’ve seen.
As is fitting for a 50th anniversary edition.
If we "ignore the nostalgia for older editions" then what we're left with is an incredibly flat set of rules and information that does nothing to inspire the imagination of the players or GMs.
Which would make it pretty much a dismal failure of a collaborative storytelling game.
Well, we are all going to find out one way or the other together. I like your outlook, don't get me wrong, I wish everything you were saying was true and this so-called "conspiracy theory" you're claiming I'm making is wrong and the D&D just continues on its merry way as a tabletop wonder it's always been. I really do hope that.
I will however point out that I was not wrong about 4th edition being an attempt to capture the MMORPG gamers and that it would turn out to be the most poorly received edition of the game, despite forums just like this insisting that "I was edition warring" and "a conspiracy nut". I was not wrong when I promised this community that Wizards of the Coast would squash all external Digital tool creation, buy DNDBeyond and create a monopoly on digital tools. And while I was technically wrong that WotC would kill the OGL, it was pretty bloody close.
I don't take any pleasure in being right nor do I find any enjoyment in being negative, so here's hoping your right. That said I will make three predictions and I will save this post so that a couple of years from now when we are discussing this game, I can reference it for you.
1. 2024 will have the fewest physical books released of any version of D&D in its history.
2. There will be exclusive content (like sub-classes) for the game released on Sigil and/or DNDbeyond not available in any book, purchasable only as a digital product.
2. I predict the 6th edition will be announced in 2028.
Let's hope for the best!
That is certainly your opinion - and an opinion that is completely unrelated to the point I am making about physical quality.
But, sure, I’ll bite. Your point might be irrelevant, but it is a popular, misguided argument against 2024. As the data has always shown, the most popular game world for the past five decades, regularly boasting a majority of players, is “my own homebrew world.” The second most popular is consistently “my homebrew version of a Wizards world.”
2024 is the first iteration of the game to acknowledge that fact. It does have lore - contrary to what folks who clearly did not read the rules like to claim - but that lore is designed to provide a basic inspiration for folks when homebrewing. Cutting some of the “here, use this plane specific lore as the default” content frees up more space for more monsters, more art, more subclasses, new systems like bastions, etc. All things that are actually helpful in a core book - and decidedly more helpful than “here’s some forgotten realms specific lore that most of you will not use.”
For those who do not homebrew - the remaining segment of the population - they already announced there will be books to help those players specifically. Heck, we already know a Forgotten Realms and Eberron book are slated to be released this very year.
Making books more useful to players is hardly a “dismal failure” - fifty years of data show that the majority are perfectly capable of making up their own lore.. and prefer that to using Wizards’/TSR’s content. Wizards is simply acknowledging the reality of what most players want in core books, while still giving the other players content as well.
So, there’s another thing I love about 2024 - unlike most other iterations of the game, they finally are letting their core books be core books.. instead of primers on worlds like the Forgotten Realms that most of us do not intend to play in.
I love Dnd but I cant afford the new rulebooks so I'm still with the other rulebooks. I don't understand why people hate on DnD
Let's put those predictions in the same box as the prediction that Tasha's would be a failure and would be WotC's "New Coke" and the that prediction that the "OGL debacle" would be the end of WotC because everyone would leave for other games forever.
Mother and Cat Herder. Playing TTRPGs since 1989 (She/Her)
Please define physical quality; Like I'm looking at the book right now and... it exists? The pages don't appear to be falling out? It is in fact made of paper?
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that if you looked at most of the "Totally original homebrews" It would be like going to the toy aisle at a dollar store where you could find GI Jared, Barberra, Transmorphers and Man#Spider action figures; that is to say that they draw heavy inspiration from pre-existing media and then try to implement it into their game world setting.
Also: I would like for you to actually show me the method by which WotC acquired this information; how big is the sample, what was the length of the study, the break down of demographics... Because I'd legitimately love to read over it.
What they've provided is so vague and generic as to be functionally useless; no one is going to read over the notes for Tieflings and get any sense of who they are as a people or the way they would see the world or how to fit them into a setting beyond "they're like... devil people... I guess."
And if the goal was to truly give players and GM's more freedom then the better solution would have been to remove the concept of established races entirely and then replace it with a point buy system that would allow people to build them as they see fit from a list of potential options like skills, movement modifiers (IE climb speed), feats, resistances and/or innate spell casting. Things which other RPG's have functionally allowed players to do for decades.
Mmm, as much as the argument against setting specific lore has merit, the class/subclass descriptions and especially the backgrounds were distinctly lacking in even general roleplay and backstory prompts. It’s not the end of the world or even a particularly damning shortcoming, but some more work giving a vivid description of the classes and especially something similar to the traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws of the 2014 backgrounds would have been nice to see as some loose framework for character building.
^This. I use exclusively homebrew for the settings and lore of the games I run, so I'm glad that they've stripped the core 3 rules down to just the rules (which so far I'm loving), the core 3 are hefty enough as it is, so having lore elsewhere is more useful, at least IMHO. Having said that, I will almost certainly buy the lore books (depending on reviews), solely for inspiration. Yes, I know that I am fortunate enough to be able to afford such an expense (and grateful for it every day). For those who cannot afford additional books but still need/want lore, there is at least one wiki that has a truly massive amount of information that is freely available to everyone.
Just my two cents.
Not defining how tieflings in general view or are viewed by “the world” was rather the point, since WotC is trying to avoid the implication there is a default/correct world and set of viewpoints. And the use of established fantasy/D&D-specific races is a cornerstone of the game. Yes, having a general grab bag of traits to custom build a starting character is an option for a TTRPG, but it’s typically one exercised when the various PCs are all of a single type. Plenty of others- including cases where the PCs are all of a type like the various World of Darkness lines- likewise have various features baked into the x splat that race/species occupies in D&D.
This is My favourite part of all of this; I'm not going to sit here and insist that the core rules must directly reflect the reality of any of the established settings but rather that everything is presented in such a vague and mumbly manner that none of it actually sparks any creativity for me.
Which if the goal is to force GM's to build and establish everything from scratch like it's a sky factory mod for Minecraft then congratualtions, well done... I guess?
Those were the internets predictions, not mine, so lets not.
The thing is, they've effectlively stripped so much from the various races that I feel that they've already become the same "type" it's just that wizard's hasn't done the logical move of maximizing player freedom and creativity and instead left us with these pre-packaged powersets.
I'm just proposing taking things to their logical conclusion if the goal is to do away with stereotypes.
You’re talking about two different things here: the narrative freedom of not saying “most tieflings go around with a chip on their shoulder because of an in-setting stigma” in books that are not meant to codify settings is different from the mechanical freedom of “just stitch together your own collection of physical traits/capabilities from this pool”. The latter is a valid option for game design in general, but by the same token so is having prebuilt powersets, which is a fairly iconic aspect of D&D. Stepping back the narrative end does not create a gap or impetus that can only be effectively resolved by stepping back the mechanical end.