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.
D&D originates from lore based on classic fantasy and myth, as well as general medievil tropes. It has evolved over the years in a wide range of ways as well as de-evolve away from certain things. I don't think there is a "right way" to make a RPG in terms of lore, but your choices typically are either build a world for your game (aka Pathfinder 2e for example) or go pure generic fantasy, (aka Old School Essentials for example).
Both have merit, but D&D is kind of somewhere in between. People want to claim its unspecific but its actually quite specific. Tieflings exist in this world for example, that's not generic, that is quite unique. I mean, I can't think of any fantasy setting where that is true outside of D&D. The spell system for example is insanely specific, I mean its very much a unique system that describes magic in a way never done before the original Vance source material.
D&D is a setting, from which broader settings exist but it's definitely not generic. You can't run Game of Thrones using D&D unless you cut 98% of the game out of it. If it was generic you would be able to run any sort of fantasy but you can't with D&D, not unless you make very deep cuts into the system and remove entire classes and specifics, change core mechanics like magic.
People like to claim that you can run any sort of fantasy you want with D&D but that is completely false, there is only ONE kind of fantasy you can run with D&D and that is a D&D fantasy which is a very specific thing.
Which is fine, it's what it should be, but I don't think it's generic or uninspiring or anything like that, its-its own thing.
I love D&D. I just love the Shadowdark version of it.
It marries the skill system from 5e with OSR combat pacing, and encourages players to focus on a narrative view instead of a mechanical view of the game.
D&D originates from lore based on classic fantasy and myth, as well as general medievil tropes. It has evolved over the years in a wide range of ways as well as de-evolve away from certain things. I don't think there is a "right way" to make a RPG in terms of lore, but your choices typically are either build a world for your game (aka Pathfinder 2e for example) or go pure generic fantasy, (aka Old School Essentials for example).
Both have merit, but D&D is kind of somewhere in between. People want to claim its unspecific but its actually quite specific. Tieflings exist in this world for example, that's not generic, that is quite unique. I mean, I can't think of any fantasy setting where that is true outside of D&D. The spell system for example is insanely specific, I mean its very much a unique system that describes magic in a way never done before the original Vance source material.
D&D is a setting, from which broader settings exist but it's definitely not generic. You can't run Game of Thrones using D&D unless you cut 98% of the game out of it. If it was generic you would be able to run any sort of fantasy but you can't with D&D, not unless you make very deep cuts into the system and remove entire classes and specifics, change core mechanics like magic.
People like to claim that you can run any sort of fantasy you want with D&D but that is completely false, there is only ONE kind of fantasy you can run with D&D and that is a D&D fantasy which is a very specific thing.
Which is fine, it's what it should be, but I don't think it's generic or uninspiring or anything like that, its-its own thing.
I'm having trouble understanding a few things about your post
How would you describe a tiefling (or any other species) without being specific and what would then make them different from another species??
How would a spell be written without specific information about how that spell functions??
Why can't you run a "game of thrones" themed DnD game with each book or seasons overarching story as an adventure?? with homebrew (and a decent DM) it should be possible, they are both fantasy and have dragons, magic, and mythical creatures in a medieval-inspired world.
DnD is not a genre as far as I'm aware, fantasy is the genre - so anything fantasy related should be possible, with varying degrees of work involved. You can even add other genres in depending on table preferences if desired, it all just takes a little work.
Personally love the flexibility of DnD when world-building and can't help but think along the lines of that assassin's creed catchphrase "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted." (Depending on table)
D&D is a setting, from which broader settings exist but it's definitely not generic. You can't run Game of Thrones using D&D unless you cut 98% of the game out of it. If it was generic you would be able to run any sort of fantasy but you can't with D&D, not unless you make very deep cuts into the system and remove entire classes and specifics, change core mechanics like magic.
People like to claim that you can run any sort of fantasy you want with D&D but that is completely false, there is only ONE kind of fantasy you can run with D&D and that is a D&D fantasy which is a very specific thing.
Which is fine, it's what it should be, but I don't think it's generic or uninspiring or anything like that, its-its own thing.
I'm having trouble understanding a few things about your post
Why can't you run a "game of thrones" themed DnD game with each book or seasons overarching story as an adventure?? with homebrew (and a decent DM) it should be possible, they are both fantasy and have dragons, magic, and mythical creatures in a medieval-inspired world.
I don't necessarily agree with him on a whole lot of things, but he's 100% right on that. D&D's fundamental assumptions are different from GoT's.
For instance, GoT is
Low magic
Brutal combat
Neither of those are baseline design assumptions of D&D. You can play low magic with the D&D mechanics, but you're ripping so much out that it's questionable whether it's still D&D any more. As for combat, that's possibly even harder. D&D characters, especially competent ones, are incredibly resilient, and that affects the sort of games you can play in it. If you want one where death or serious injury is a real possibility anytime you get into a fight, you again have to throw out most of D&D's combat systems.
I suspect I'd have an easier time running something GoTish in FATE than I would in D&D, and FATE is a loose, pulpy, system at heart. (But it has fundamental mechanics that lend themselves to such things as lingering injuries.)
DnD is not a genre as far as I'm aware, fantasy is the genre - so anything fantasy related should be possible, with varying degrees of work involved. You can even add other genres in depending on table preferences if desired, it all just takes a little work.
Fantasy is a very broad genre. D&D not only can only do a subset of the possible fantasy tropes, but it also established some fundamental conventions of its own very early on. (The party, the ascension in power from low-level to high, the dungeon crawl, etc.) These were necessary for the game to work, and didn't really exist in the fiction before the way they did after.
It's broad enough in its capabilities that I don't think it can be called a setting (and it's become broader over the generations), but there are plenty of fantasy tropes that don't work in it, and a bunch more where you're straining its limits if you try. "Genre" is a perfectly good description.
D&D is great for playing D&D. There have pretty much always been other games for people that want to play D&D, but with the things they don't like about the current iteration of D&D fixed to their liking.
DnD is not a genre as far as I'm aware, fantasy is the genre - so anything fantasy related should be possible, with varying degrees of work involved. You can even add other genres in depending on table preferences if desired, it all just takes a little work.
(This is mostly an aside)
DnD basically is its own genre. Sure, it's a sub-genre of fantasy, sort of a weird cross between high fantasy and sword and sorcery, and it's basically the only genre DnD is good at. (And it'd be particularly bad at GoT.)
D&D is a setting, from which broader settings exist but it's definitely not generic. You can't run Game of Thrones using D&D unless you cut 98% of the game out of it. If it was generic you would be able to run any sort of fantasy but you can't with D&D, not unless you make very deep cuts into the system and remove entire classes and specifics, change core mechanics like magic.
People like to claim that you can run any sort of fantasy you want with D&D but that is completely false, there is only ONE kind of fantasy you can run with D&D and that is a D&D fantasy which is a very specific thing.
Which is fine, it's what it should be, but I don't think it's generic or uninspiring or anything like that, its-its own thing.
I'm having trouble understanding a few things about your post
Why can't you run a "game of thrones" themed DnD game with each book or seasons overarching story as an adventure?? with homebrew (and a decent DM) it should be possible, they are both fantasy and have dragons, magic, and mythical creatures in a medieval-inspired world.
I don't necessarily agree with him on a whole lot of things, but he's 100% right on that. D&D's fundamental assumptions are different from GoT's.
For instance, GoT is
Low magic
Brutal combat
Neither of those are baseline design assumptions of D&D. You can play low magic with the D&D mechanics, but you're ripping so much out that it's questionable whether it's still D&D any more. As for combat, that's possibly even harder. D&D characters, especially competent ones, are incredibly resilient, and that affects the sort of games you can play in it. If you want one where death or serious injury is a real possibility anytime you get into a fight, you again have to throw out most of D&D's combat systems.
I suspect I'd have an easier time running something GoTish in FATE than I would in D&D, and FATE is a loose, pulpy, system at heart. (But it has fundamental mechanics that lend themselves to such things as lingering injuries.)
perhaps my mind is missing something alot of it seems like choices/options in my mind hence why i mentioned homebrew and a decent dm - to me the possibilities are only restricted by a persons imagination
if someone is already homebrewing a game of thrones themed dnd game (or any other theme), what is stopping them besides work and imagination... if someone wants brutal combat, make combat brutal - pretty sure a character perishing in dnd can happen (the dumbest way you died thread for example) if you want low magic, by all means make it so - besides nothing prevents expanding upon the magic already present in game of thrones (led to believe there is blood magic, necromancy, pyrokinesis, shadow magic, fire and water magic, mind control, healing magic, bond with dragons all present in game of thrones)
DnD is not a genre as far as I'm aware, fantasy is the genre - so anything fantasy related should be possible, with varying degrees of work involved. You can even add other genres in depending on table preferences if desired, it all just takes a little work.
Fantasy is a very broad genre. D&D not only can only do a subset of the possible fantasy tropes, but it also established some fundamental conventions of its own very early on. (The party, the ascension in power from low-level to high, the dungeon crawl, etc.) These were necessary for the game to work, and didn't really exist in the fiction before the way they did after.
It's broad enough in its capabilities that I don't think it can be called a setting (and it's become broader over the generations), but there are plenty of fantasy tropes that don't work in it, and a bunch more where you're straining its limits if you try. "Genre" is a perfectly good description.
D&D is great for playing D&D. There have pretty much always been other games for people that want to play D&D, but with the things they don't like about the current iteration of D&D fixed to their liking.
may i ask which subsets of fantasy are possible?? always thought of it similar to movie or book genres where you just add on what else is influencing the story such as: fantasy/scifi, fantasy/adventure, fantasy/comedy, fantasy/horror, fantasy/romance, etc
DnD is not a genre as far as I'm aware, fantasy is the genre - so anything fantasy related should be possible, with varying degrees of work involved. You can even add other genres in depending on table preferences if desired, it all just takes a little work.
(This is mostly an aside)
DnD basically is its own genre. Sure, it's a sub-genre of fantasy, sort of a weird cross between high fantasy and sword and sorcery, and it's basically the only genre DnD is good at. (And it'd be particularly bad at GoT.)
it may turn out bad or even feel wonky and strange compared to other settings but its doable, the potential is there
Open-Ended Nature:D&D's rules and setting guidelines allow for a wide variety of fantasy styles, from high fantasy to low fantasy, or even other subgenres like grimdark or sword and sorcery.
Campaign Diversity:D&D campaigns can be tailored to different preferences, with some focusing on epic adventures and others on more character-driven stories.
Homebrew Potential:The game's open nature also allows for players and Dungeon Masters to create their own unique settings and stories, which can range from high fantasy to low fantasy or anything in between.
DnD is not a genre as far as I'm aware, fantasy is the genre - so anything fantasy related should be possible, with varying degrees of work involved. You can even add other genres in depending on table preferences if desired, it all just takes a little work.
(This is mostly an aside)
DnD basically is its own genre. Sure, it's a sub-genre of fantasy, sort of a weird cross between high fantasy and sword and sorcery, and it's basically the only genre DnD is good at. (And it'd be particularly bad at GoT.)
I don't disagree that D&D's approach is uncommon in the TTRPG sphere but it's not, like, completely unique/singular. D&D's genre is Heroic Fantasy. And as the name implies, it's basically superheroes (both street-level like Hawkeye and Daredevil, and cosmic like Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch), but medieval-flavored.
Where I definitely agree is that D&D is a bad fit for Game of Thrones without a whole lot of rework.
There is only two ways you can make D&D work with other fantasy settings and this usually also includes some original D&D settings like Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms.
You either change the setting to make it work with the system, or you change the system to make it work with the setting.
This however is not unique to 5e, I mean even in 1e days, most settings that D&D was adapted for required considerable changes to the system to make them work, even settings designed for D&D. Each edition required adaptions to the D&D settings like Forgotten Realms for example in order to make it work with the system. In fact, arguably each version of Forgotten Realms for each edition is a completely different setting. WotC likes to pretend like this is some sort of "timeline" thing but it has nothing to do with that, those changes were introduced to try to make sense out of how that edition of the game was designed.
If however you want to play D&D RAW, there are no settings that works, you have to play "D&D fantasy" which is a setting of its own, it doesn't work with anything else. The exception is when WotC releases a D&D setting and rewrites it to be adapted for the current edition.
The point is, that nothing about D&D is generic, D&D is a setting, what is in the Players Handbook as vaguely described as it is, is very much a unique fantasy setting for which the system is designed.
Adapting it for things like Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time, The Witcher, The Elder Scrolls... etc.. etc.. It doesn't matter which setting you take, you cannot use D&D for them and make it work without gutting the system so much that it would completely cease to be D&D or altering the setting so much that it would cease to be that setting.
The flexibility of D&D as a system has always been very overstated, but it's because people always use the term "homebrew" to describe its flexibility. Homebrewing is not an "advantage" or "feature" of the D&D system, that is not something the system provides. If you are homebrewing and making changes it's indisputable evidence that the system does not work for adaptation.
A truly flexible system is something like GURPS. With GURPS, you can take any setting and without altering the setting or the rules of the system, replicate it with perfect harmony, even including a setting with unique nuanced elements. Even in the rare cases where a setting is so unique and unusual that a supplement must be created to replicate it, that supplement would not alter any rules, it would include new mechanics and attributes. That is real, measurable flexibility. D&D's mantra of "you can homebrew", is not a reflection of its flexibility, its indisputable proof of its absence. I can homebrew Yathzee to be The Game of Thrones RPG as effectively as converting D&D to it.
I'm unfamiliar with GoT, it never appealed, but let's look at Middle-Earth. It's a common setting for people to use as the gold standard of what D&D should be like...and it doesn't work.
In ME, it's all about the journey, how you get there, the decisions you make. Combat is a side thing that we generally skip - Bilbo literally gets knocked out for the entirety of the climactic battle of his book. D&D is all about the combat, anything else is the side gig. It really struggles with journeys, and generally they're a waste of time. Either they're dangerous enough to distract from the main show at the end of it, or they're of no consequence. There's a reason most people skip them.
In ME, characters progress because they make moral choices, skill is less important. Even the Hobbits frequently meaningfully contribute to the party, despite being with an Ubermensch and an angel, while being children themselves. D&D says nothing about your morality or your decisions, but everything about your skill and physical might. Try playing a L1 with L20s sometime. Good times.
In ME, magic is practically nonexistent, while in Even Tier 1 D&D Wizards would consider, the magic we do see in ME is largely parlour tricks.
Morality, or perhaps the efforts we go to in order to support it, is the backbone in ME. The last vestige of any (mechanical) morality in D&D is being purged. Which is fine - but the ethos is very different.
I could go on. There's a reason why LotRRP5e pretty much ripped out most of what's familiar in 5e, what's left is basically "you roll a d20 and add a bonus". It's not really 5e any more. Even then - it doesn't really go far enough. TOR does a better job of communicating the setting.
D&D can do a wide range of settings, like steampunk, medieval fantasy, etc - with one caveat, that it's D&D's take on that setting. Which is great - TOR wouldn't be able to do that. That's a major strength of 5e. However, let's not get overexcited and say we can feasibly use 5e to run any setting well.
Also, let's not confuse genre with aesthetic. Engines can run different aesthetics, but they can rarely do different genres.
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I'm unfamiliar with GoT, it never appealed, but let's look at Middle-Earth. It's a common setting for people to use as the gold standard of what D&D should be like...and it doesn't work.
In ME, it's all about the journey, how you get there, the decisions you make. Combat is a side thing that we generally skip - Bilbo literally gets knocked out for the entirety of the climactic battle of his book. D&D is all about the combat, anything else is the side gig. It really struggles with journeys, and generally they're a waste of time. Either they're dangerous enough to distract from the main show at the end of it, or they're of no consequence. There's a reason most people skip them.
I think this is really more of a DM issue than a rules issue. There are rules for things like exploration and social encounters - but those rules put a lot of trust in the DM to fill in the details. The idea is that, for elements of the game, imagination and flexibility is more important than crunchy rules. Compare to combat, where crunchy rules help keep things focused and, more importantly, fair, not leaving things up to the DM’s whims.
Personally, this is something I am quite fond of - D&D is numbers heavy when numbers matter, but gives you much more flexibility in other elements of the game. I’ve played in games where journeys and discovering new are a major and beloved part of the game… and ones where they are busywork of random tables - at least in my experience, success or failure is a DM problem, not necessarily a system one.
I will also acknowledge that is not for everyone - and folks who might not be as good at crafting such a journey might want to use other systems that work better for their style of play (or homerule adapt those systems to 5e).
The "right" system for GoT is probably GURPS, because GURPS is Martin's preferred system (one of his other works was made into a GURPS supplement back in the day, even). But that's super off-topic.
D&D can do a wide range of settings, like steampunk, medieval fantasy, etc - with one caveat, that it's D&D's take on that setting. Which is great - TOR wouldn't be able to do that. That's a major strength of 5e. However, let's not get overexcited and say we can feasibly use 5e to run any setting well.
Exactly. D&D is very tied to its own assumptions. Mostly structural ones like classes and levels.
Exactly. D&D is very tied to its own assumptions. Mostly structural ones like classes and levels.
Classes and levels aren't super hard to deal with. The big problem is magic and monsters -- the way spellcasting works in D&D is both extremely distinctive and extremely rare outside of D&D, and while other settings might have monsters, usually they're rare. If you toss the magic system, and the lists of magic items, and most of the monster manual, there isn't a lot left of D&D.
This however is not unique to 5e, I mean even in 1e days, most settings that D&D was adapted for required considerable changes to the system to make them work, even settings designed for D&D. Each edition required adaptions to the D&D settings like Forgotten Realms for example in order to make it work with the system. In fact, arguably each version of Forgotten Realms for each edition is a completely different setting. WotC likes to pretend like this is some sort of "timeline" thing but it has nothing to do with that, those changes were introduced to try to make sense out of how that edition of the game was designed.
Honestly, it's always been unnecessary and weird that they do big, world-shaking events in the FR to explain the edition transitions within the fiction. The fiction doesn't have the level of mechanical detail, and the needs of fiction mean they stretch the mechanics anyway. Hand a 1e FR novel to a 5e player, and they won't notice it's a different system.
As for people playing in the FR, they have to convert mechanical stuff, but the history and essential nature of the major players doesn't have any need to change, so you can run 5e FR in the 1e timeframe without worrying about the lore.
The point is, that nothing about D&D is generic, D&D is a setting, what is in the Players Handbook as vaguely described as it is, is very much a unique fantasy setting for which the system is designed.
It's good for specific types of games, but "a heroic fantasy story with a group of characters with strong specializations advancing significantly in power over the course of the narrative" is too vague to be a setting. Ravenloft is not Eberron is not FR is not your game is not 2e Spelljammer is not 5e Spelljammer is not my Spelljammer game. They all have the fundamental assumptions of D&D fit into very different worlds.
The flexibility of D&D as a system has always been very overstated, but it's because people always use the term "homebrew" to describe its flexibility. Homebrewing is not an "advantage" or "feature" of the D&D system, that is not something the system provides. If you are homebrewing and making changes it's indisputable evidence that the system does not work for adaptation.
Most "homebrew" is just "the sourcebooks don't contain the specific world/spell/item/monster I imagined". You can even add/remove classes, species, etc. without changing the basic assumptions of D&D.
A truly flexible system is something like GURPS. With GURPS, you can take any setting and without altering the setting or the rules of the system, replicate it with perfect harmony, even including a setting with unique nuanced elements. Even in the rare cases where a setting is so unique and unusual that a supplement must be created to replicate it, that supplement would not alter any rules, it would include new mechanics and attributes. That is real, measurable flexibility.
There's no such thing as a universal RPG. They always have assumptions about the way the game world works. GURPS, for instance, breaks down at high power levels, has fundamental assumptions about how skills and combat work, etc. FATE is loose and pulpy. Hero shows its ancestry as a superhero system. Etc. Even systems that focus on the narrative level of play are still designed to play out a specific type of narrative. Good Society and Prime Time Adventures tell different stories, even if you set them up from the same premise.
D&D invented the D&D genre, and the genre has features that are useful for a game. Class encourages the party, and makes it hard for one player to dominate. Leveling provides a gradual raising of the stakes. Hit points mean that you can regularly have combat without the players worrying too much about their characters. The spell system is an easily managed resource tracker. And so on.
D&D suffers more layoffs as Wizards cuts Sigil VTT staff by 90%
To be fair while I like Sigil VTT I like the current one Beyond has published more. Its simpler and doesn't require me to install anything. I do wish they had more staff writing adventurers for D&DOne though. I think if they put out a monthly OneShot for Master Tier subscribers or as an add on service that would help highlight the new rule set and keep things in the black for them. Especially if these OneShots were all set in the same region for a season culminating in a "Realms Lore" book to provide extra depth to that area. Sort of like what Dragon Magazine used to do. I'd pay an extra $10/month for something like that if it was good. Thats less than Netflix and as a DM I'd have material always on hand.
Yeah, speaking selfishly, I'd prefer they focused more on adventures. They'd probably get more money out of me that way.
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D&D suffers more layoffs as Wizards cuts Sigil VTT staff by 90%
Whether Sigil lives or dies from this those devs knew it was a job with an end point as many have posted it is the industry standard in the line of work. It is not the same as other types of layoffs.
Yeah, it'd be more accurate to say that the contractors reached the end of their term rather than that they were laid off. They were never permanent employees in the first place. Calling it "layoffs" is just a dogwhistle.
I think calling the layoffs a dog whistle is going just as far the other way they are layoffs that were expected, were they expected at this point, only a very few will ever know.
Hard to believe that laying off 90% of a team working on what was going to be WOTC's flagship online service - one that was touted LOUDLY in the days leading up to the release of the 2024 rules - was planned.
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D&D originates from lore based on classic fantasy and myth, as well as general medievil tropes. It has evolved over the years in a wide range of ways as well as de-evolve away from certain things. I don't think there is a "right way" to make a RPG in terms of lore, but your choices typically are either build a world for your game (aka Pathfinder 2e for example) or go pure generic fantasy, (aka Old School Essentials for example).
Both have merit, but D&D is kind of somewhere in between. People want to claim its unspecific but its actually quite specific. Tieflings exist in this world for example, that's not generic, that is quite unique. I mean, I can't think of any fantasy setting where that is true outside of D&D. The spell system for example is insanely specific, I mean its very much a unique system that describes magic in a way never done before the original Vance source material.
D&D is a setting, from which broader settings exist but it's definitely not generic. You can't run Game of Thrones using D&D unless you cut 98% of the game out of it. If it was generic you would be able to run any sort of fantasy but you can't with D&D, not unless you make very deep cuts into the system and remove entire classes and specifics, change core mechanics like magic.
People like to claim that you can run any sort of fantasy you want with D&D but that is completely false, there is only ONE kind of fantasy you can run with D&D and that is a D&D fantasy which is a very specific thing.
Which is fine, it's what it should be, but I don't think it's generic or uninspiring or anything like that, its-its own thing.
I love D&D. I just love the Shadowdark version of it.
It marries the skill system from 5e with OSR combat pacing, and encourages players to focus on a narrative view instead of a mechanical view of the game.
I'm having trouble understanding a few things about your post
Personally love the flexibility of DnD when world-building and can't help but think along the lines of that assassin's creed catchphrase "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted." (Depending on table)
I don't necessarily agree with him on a whole lot of things, but he's 100% right on that. D&D's fundamental assumptions are different from GoT's.
For instance, GoT is
Neither of those are baseline design assumptions of D&D. You can play low magic with the D&D mechanics, but you're ripping so much out that it's questionable whether it's still D&D any more. As for combat, that's possibly even harder. D&D characters, especially competent ones, are incredibly resilient, and that affects the sort of games you can play in it. If you want one where death or serious injury is a real possibility anytime you get into a fight, you again have to throw out most of D&D's combat systems.
I suspect I'd have an easier time running something GoTish in FATE than I would in D&D, and FATE is a loose, pulpy, system at heart. (But it has fundamental mechanics that lend themselves to such things as lingering injuries.)
Fantasy is a very broad genre. D&D not only can only do a subset of the possible fantasy tropes, but it also established some fundamental conventions of its own very early on. (The party, the ascension in power from low-level to high, the dungeon crawl, etc.) These were necessary for the game to work, and didn't really exist in the fiction before the way they did after.
It's broad enough in its capabilities that I don't think it can be called a setting (and it's become broader over the generations), but there are plenty of fantasy tropes that don't work in it, and a bunch more where you're straining its limits if you try. "Genre" is a perfectly good description.
D&D is great for playing D&D. There have pretty much always been other games for people that want to play D&D, but with the things they don't like about the current iteration of D&D fixed to their liking.
(This is mostly an aside)
DnD basically is its own genre. Sure, it's a sub-genre of fantasy, sort of a weird cross between high fantasy and sword and sorcery, and it's basically the only genre DnD is good at. (And it'd be particularly bad at GoT.)
perhaps my mind is missing something
alot of it seems like choices/options in my mind hence why i mentioned homebrew and a decent dm - to me the possibilities are only restricted by a persons imagination
if someone is already homebrewing a game of thrones themed dnd game (or any other theme), what is stopping them besides work and imagination...
if someone wants brutal combat, make combat brutal - pretty sure a character perishing in dnd can happen (the dumbest way you died thread for example)
if you want low magic, by all means make it so - besides nothing prevents expanding upon the magic already present in game of thrones (led to believe there is blood magic, necromancy, pyrokinesis, shadow magic, fire and water magic, mind control, healing magic, bond with dragons all present in game of thrones)
may i ask which subsets of fantasy are possible?? always thought of it similar to movie or book genres where you just add on what else is influencing the story
such as: fantasy/scifi, fantasy/adventure, fantasy/comedy, fantasy/horror, fantasy/romance, etc
it may turn out bad or even feel wonky and strange compared to other settings but its doable, the potential is there
I don't disagree that D&D's approach is uncommon in the TTRPG sphere but it's not, like, completely unique/singular. D&D's genre is Heroic Fantasy. And as the name implies, it's basically superheroes (both street-level like Hawkeye and Daredevil, and cosmic like Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch), but medieval-flavored.
Where I definitely agree is that D&D is a bad fit for Game of Thrones without a whole lot of rework.
There is only two ways you can make D&D work with other fantasy settings and this usually also includes some original D&D settings like Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms.
You either change the setting to make it work with the system, or you change the system to make it work with the setting.
This however is not unique to 5e, I mean even in 1e days, most settings that D&D was adapted for required considerable changes to the system to make them work, even settings designed for D&D. Each edition required adaptions to the D&D settings like Forgotten Realms for example in order to make it work with the system. In fact, arguably each version of Forgotten Realms for each edition is a completely different setting. WotC likes to pretend like this is some sort of "timeline" thing but it has nothing to do with that, those changes were introduced to try to make sense out of how that edition of the game was designed.
If however you want to play D&D RAW, there are no settings that works, you have to play "D&D fantasy" which is a setting of its own, it doesn't work with anything else. The exception is when WotC releases a D&D setting and rewrites it to be adapted for the current edition.
The point is, that nothing about D&D is generic, D&D is a setting, what is in the Players Handbook as vaguely described as it is, is very much a unique fantasy setting for which the system is designed.
Adapting it for things like Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time, The Witcher, The Elder Scrolls... etc.. etc.. It doesn't matter which setting you take, you cannot use D&D for them and make it work without gutting the system so much that it would completely cease to be D&D or altering the setting so much that it would cease to be that setting.
The flexibility of D&D as a system has always been very overstated, but it's because people always use the term "homebrew" to describe its flexibility. Homebrewing is not an "advantage" or "feature" of the D&D system, that is not something the system provides. If you are homebrewing and making changes it's indisputable evidence that the system does not work for adaptation.
A truly flexible system is something like GURPS. With GURPS, you can take any setting and without altering the setting or the rules of the system, replicate it with perfect harmony, even including a setting with unique nuanced elements. Even in the rare cases where a setting is so unique and unusual that a supplement must be created to replicate it, that supplement would not alter any rules, it would include new mechanics and attributes. That is real, measurable flexibility. D&D's mantra of "you can homebrew", is not a reflection of its flexibility, its indisputable proof of its absence. I can homebrew Yathzee to be The Game of Thrones RPG as effectively as converting D&D to it.
I'm unfamiliar with GoT, it never appealed, but let's look at Middle-Earth. It's a common setting for people to use as the gold standard of what D&D should be like...and it doesn't work.
In ME, it's all about the journey, how you get there, the decisions you make. Combat is a side thing that we generally skip - Bilbo literally gets knocked out for the entirety of the climactic battle of his book. D&D is all about the combat, anything else is the side gig. It really struggles with journeys, and generally they're a waste of time. Either they're dangerous enough to distract from the main show at the end of it, or they're of no consequence. There's a reason most people skip them.
In ME, characters progress because they make moral choices, skill is less important. Even the Hobbits frequently meaningfully contribute to the party, despite being with an Ubermensch and an angel, while being children themselves. D&D says nothing about your morality or your decisions, but everything about your skill and physical might. Try playing a L1 with L20s sometime. Good times.
In ME, magic is practically nonexistent, while in Even Tier 1 D&D Wizards would consider, the magic we do see in ME is largely parlour tricks.
Morality, or perhaps the efforts we go to in order to support it, is the backbone in ME. The last vestige of any (mechanical) morality in D&D is being purged. Which is fine - but the ethos is very different.
I could go on. There's a reason why LotRRP5e pretty much ripped out most of what's familiar in 5e, what's left is basically "you roll a d20 and add a bonus". It's not really 5e any more. Even then - it doesn't really go far enough. TOR does a better job of communicating the setting.
D&D can do a wide range of settings, like steampunk, medieval fantasy, etc - with one caveat, that it's D&D's take on that setting. Which is great - TOR wouldn't be able to do that. That's a major strength of 5e. However, let's not get overexcited and say we can feasibly use 5e to run any setting well.
Also, let's not confuse genre with aesthetic. Engines can run different aesthetics, but they can rarely do different genres.
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I think this is really more of a DM issue than a rules issue. There are rules for things like exploration and social encounters - but those rules put a lot of trust in the DM to fill in the details. The idea is that, for elements of the game, imagination and flexibility is more important than crunchy rules. Compare to combat, where crunchy rules help keep things focused and, more importantly, fair, not leaving things up to the DM’s whims.
Personally, this is something I am quite fond of - D&D is numbers heavy when numbers matter, but gives you much more flexibility in other elements of the game. I’ve played in games where journeys and discovering new are a major and beloved part of the game… and ones where they are busywork of random tables - at least in my experience, success or failure is a DM problem, not necessarily a system one.
I will also acknowledge that is not for everyone - and folks who might not be as good at crafting such a journey might want to use other systems that work better for their style of play (or homerule adapt those systems to 5e).
The "right" system for GoT is probably GURPS, because GURPS is Martin's preferred system (one of his other works was made into a GURPS supplement back in the day, even). But that's super off-topic.
Exactly. D&D is very tied to its own assumptions. Mostly structural ones like classes and levels.
Classes and levels aren't super hard to deal with. The big problem is magic and monsters -- the way spellcasting works in D&D is both extremely distinctive and extremely rare outside of D&D, and while other settings might have monsters, usually they're rare. If you toss the magic system, and the lists of magic items, and most of the monster manual, there isn't a lot left of D&D.
Honestly, it's always been unnecessary and weird that they do big, world-shaking events in the FR to explain the edition transitions within the fiction. The fiction doesn't have the level of mechanical detail, and the needs of fiction mean they stretch the mechanics anyway. Hand a 1e FR novel to a 5e player, and they won't notice it's a different system.
As for people playing in the FR, they have to convert mechanical stuff, but the history and essential nature of the major players doesn't have any need to change, so you can run 5e FR in the 1e timeframe without worrying about the lore.
It's good for specific types of games, but "a heroic fantasy story with a group of characters with strong specializations advancing significantly in power over the course of the narrative" is too vague to be a setting. Ravenloft is not Eberron is not FR is not your game is not 2e Spelljammer is not 5e Spelljammer is not my Spelljammer game. They all have the fundamental assumptions of D&D fit into very different worlds.
Most "homebrew" is just "the sourcebooks don't contain the specific world/spell/item/monster I imagined". You can even add/remove classes, species, etc. without changing the basic assumptions of D&D.
There's no such thing as a universal RPG. They always have assumptions about the way the game world works. GURPS, for instance, breaks down at high power levels, has fundamental assumptions about how skills and combat work, etc. FATE is loose and pulpy. Hero shows its ancestry as a superhero system. Etc. Even systems that focus on the narrative level of play are still designed to play out a specific type of narrative. Good Society and Prime Time Adventures tell different stories, even if you set them up from the same premise.
D&D invented the D&D genre, and the genre has features that are useful for a game. Class encourages the party, and makes it hard for one player to dominate. Leveling provides a gradual raising of the stakes. Hit points mean that you can regularly have combat without the players worrying too much about their characters. The spell system is an easily managed resource tracker. And so on.
D&D suffers more layoffs as Wizards cuts Sigil VTT staff by 90%
To be fair while I like Sigil VTT I like the current one Beyond has published more. Its simpler and doesn't require me to install anything. I do wish they had more staff writing adventurers for D&DOne though. I think if they put out a monthly OneShot for Master Tier subscribers or as an add on service that would help highlight the new rule set and keep things in the black for them. Especially if these OneShots were all set in the same region for a season culminating in a "Realms Lore" book to provide extra depth to that area. Sort of like what Dragon Magazine used to do. I'd pay an extra $10/month for something like that if it was good. Thats less than Netflix and as a DM I'd have material always on hand.
"Life is Cast by Random Dice"
Burn my candle twice.
I have done my life justice
Against random dice.
Yeah, speaking selfishly, I'd prefer they focused more on adventures. They'd probably get more money out of me that way.
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Whether Sigil lives or dies from this those devs knew it was a job with an end point as many have posted it is the industry standard in the line of work. It is not the same as other types of layoffs.
Yeah, it'd be more accurate to say that the contractors reached the end of their term rather than that they were laid off. They were never permanent employees in the first place. Calling it "layoffs" is just a dogwhistle.
I think calling the layoffs a dog whistle is going just as far the other way they are layoffs that were expected, were they expected at this point, only a very few will ever know.
Hard to believe that laying off 90% of a team working on what was going to be WOTC's flagship online service - one that was touted LOUDLY in the days leading up to the release of the 2024 rules - was planned.