Oh, it is a morning and I have responses! I am not particularly adept at the multi-quote thing, so I will just quote as I go (sorry):
What I mean is that, they have created a setting and used D&D to create unique races and classes specific to that setting and specific to the style of play they created in the game with unique fantasy troupes designed just for that game. Its D&D, but there are clear decisions made in the game about what it wants to be, what atmosphere its trying to create/portray and everything about the design, the setting and the writing is focused on creating the atmosphere of that game.
This I can agree on as well. I mean, I better -- I've spent the last five years working on massive setting that does exactly this and starts with a basis of no inspiration from works created between 1920 and 1980, thereby erasing most of the core ideas that give D&D its character. And that started three years before my last campaign ended (this summer).
I think the reason why D&D 5e appears "bland" by comparison is because its a game in which pretty much anything and everything goes at all times. There is nothing specific about the atmosphere its trying to create, its not generating any sort of specific playstyle or focused on doing anything unique, it ensures that every 5e game is everything to everyone.
It *is* the default, the least common denominator, the baseline, the familiar. The mechanics of business (blah blha) kinda dictate that in order to grow it needs to be able to reach the most people without pushing any out. But this, this pertains specifically to the settings -- the places where things take place. In this, I am very much more kin to Gygax and his thoughts about the whole oriental adventures thing: it really is a separate basis, and that's whyt he classes in it were so very different from the mainline classes at the time. I don't mean the later changes, I mean from when OA was first released, 1e era.
I am of the mind that what he did there was really the key approach, and that the rest of this is just meant to provide a framework approach for people to do things like that. I have 16 classes, and I have rules for creation of a class that prevent it from becoming too much like any other class, and I have no subclasses -- but I am doing all of that with the same basic 5e systems using the special abilities and such that allows a character to build something impressive and distinct, even if it dos have some things in line with others, it will never be another class.
The rules have layers to them -- pure mechanics, mixed mechanics and flavor (class, race, anything that deals with the setting), and then pure setting. In the sense that what the published works provide is a baseline, a simplification of large ideas and a common level of familiarity, yes. But at the same time, if they push into the main rule books those distinct permutations and say "this is the way", they discourage folks from branching out beyond the published settings (which are, as you noted, kinda meant for anything to be any way).
In short, it is generic fantasy because in order to maximize the life of the object, it needs to be generic. Familiar. Easy to digest, to grasp, to understand (hence the influence of video games from the players side, not the devs). For folks who just want the generic stuff and then want a special cool version of Faerun or Eberron (or however many settings they have right now, lol) and want to be able to do it like a video game, well, DDB and the upcoming VTT are the tools for that. And if they pump too much of that into the core rules outside those sources, well, folks like you and I who have decades are going to go away and the heart of the game will die, because the heart of the game is still *our* creativity, not theirs.
And if that comes across as a kind of odd defense, well, that's because I want the core game to stick around, I think their business model should be "core game free, custom worlds not", and they should be punching hard on empowering and picking up creative word building -- with less focus on "this is everywhere" and more on "this is here". But they don't pay me, don't even know who tf I am, lol, and I don't use more than a smattering of their stuff.
Dark Sun wasn't ever going to be a big enough market to justify the investment, but what they don't realize is that after what, 40 years of building off Greenwood's work, they have a crap ton of potential merch *and it is generic*, and they could be creating a crapton of merch that isn't. And Sun could have been that -- still could be -- if they start really giving it a build out and license it properly. I mean, freaking Bionicle exists, and that captured an entire generation that now wants to put bionicle into the D&D game. They can pull it off if they get into the right mindset.
But lore itself also only really pertains to those that stick only to published adventures, though, in that regard, it's mostly a republishing cycle with each edition rather than new and exciting worlds/settings, but again, the problem lies with the core mechanics, and I really think a full re-examination under the hood so to speak is needed, this time to favor DM's more an balance the player power, but without creating situations that allow for toxic players or DM's to ruin the games.
The underlying imbalance between DM and Player stuff -- I agree, but like I said, I am an old lady who is fussy and grumpy and the kids I play with are loving that superheroes thing. Watching a 10 year old grow over three years while playing the same character and watching how they change in play style as they grow is shocking and rewarding and so different from my own nostalgia tinged memories of my teen years doing the same thing.
But it also taught me (more so than years of running open games where anyone could come in with any character and having groups of 15 to 20 playing) that the real job of a DM isn't to be able to out power the players. It is to be able to let them be the heroes -- give them something to be heroic and super about. So I would say the big thing they need to do there is give more tools. They need to simplify and streamline the CR system, explain it better, make it more explicit and then make it the foundation for folks to go and have fun and do stuff with it, which they cannot do if they don't understand it.
That kinda defeats the VTT purpose, lol, but it just one of the ways in which a tool that works great for a computer game fails when applied to a direct personal game.
Mechanics-wise, I am closer to OSR than I am 5e, but I see 5e as a base on which to build -- like a kind of AD&D lite, or starter set, lol. And I don't mind admitting I yanked out my old 1e and 2e books just to add more stuff in.
Removing the need for magic items removes a primary motivation to even play the game at all, whether you're talking game-internal motivation (character) or game-external motivation (player). Characters no longer need magic items, which means they no longer need or have as much drive to go loot tombs, explore, and seek out treasure. They don't need magic weapons to defeat the monsters guarding any treasure hoards which, again, has a domino effect on motivation. I'm in full support of D&D becoming much, much more than simply a gang of adventurers going from one tomb complex to another - but I'm also in support of it never being less than that. If that makes sense.
It does to me. After a decade of not doing any dungeons (despite my love of them -- I was an OG Grimtooth's user, lol) I whipped up the simplest setting I have ever done, and it was centered around a dungeon. Seven months of dev work, years of play. And it still had entire side story arcs and exploration and more. Took them through 20 levels. Mostly straight 5e. Mostly.
And magic items were a big part of that. They just suddenly became a different sort, and required a lot more work, because the characters didn't need a ring of invisibility by level 10, and by level 20 they thought they were akin to gods. Didn't work out that way.
But yes, we had magic items and they made a difference -- but that limits player feels, and a lot of those magic items are being downshifted to "everyday magic" and they never did come up with a decent way to keep monty hauls out of the game. Too many variables.
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telling complex, interesting stories in a generic world is easy. Telling them in a world that is crafted to the story is much more cinematic, more theatrical, moore enriching and rewarding for DMs and Players, and that's where I see a lot of the disconnect.
For a lot of folks disconnecting the rules & mechanics from the setting is hard. Hell, for WotC it's hard, because they include an optional rule for using spell points and then freaking ignore it forever after. They stub in psionics and then bury it as just magic with a different name. But those kinds of things are mechanically linked to the setting.
Kurtz's Deryni stories couldn't be told in D&D 5e, unless you block everything and make new subclasses and only allow certain spells and then you'd still have to create them. A lot of modern day paranormal fiction operates on the idea of the caster only having so much "energy" to cast spells with -- and if you are going to do that, then spell slots don't work. I was asked to have a zoom call about someone who wanted to do a conan style world (i chuckled) and they couldn't figure out how to make magic work in one be ause you can't do that kind of stuff in D&D -- it is too big.
COmbat, environment, sociocultural stuff, psychosocial elements -- all of the are fine. But a lot of the stuff to make a character is dependent on having a function of the world that supports that race or that class. I mention above how I solved for Rangers by redoing Druids -- because the default archetype for Druids simply has no basis on my setting, so I had to come up with something that worked, and what I got used elements from four different subclasses to create a more grounded, more real sense of what would otherwise be called a Shaman (unless, like me, you are overly educated and aware of the issues around the use of the word shaman).
Monks are the same way -- what if there is no special place or school for them to learn these arts at? Sorcerers? What if wild magic is something that affects everyone, and wizards are the metamagic users? What if Warlocks don't have all the options for a patron, and didn't you need some kind of elementalist anway?
Each of these different things is attractive in some way to some segment of the larger playing population -- and that's where the bland comes from. Yes, the published settings are generic. They needed to be to get the game this far.
I think they need to start expanding them, even if the history of trying to do so was an utter failure the last time they tried to do it. They keep making the core rules bigger, but that just changes the core rules for all the published settings and creates issues for WotC like the damn OGL stuff -- but they can overcome a lot of that by putting it into custom settings, where if they are tied into that setting, then things become much more "controllable" from an IP standpoint (meaning the corp masters are happy) and much more interesting for the different segments of the audience at large.
It isn't blandness so much as it is the baseline, the minimums. They need to create things that expand meta-possibilities instead of focusing on how to refine things down to a handful of interchangeable settings that are not bad settings, they are just minimalist ones.
They need to stop encouraging mediocrity (no in the bad sense, but in the meaning of "conforming to the least common denom") and start encouraging creativity. More "how to", and then a way to feature the work much like they have for the whole homebrew stuff here.
If anything, the homebrew system, however deeply tied tot he traditional settings it is, is perhaps the most incredibly part of the site. Because it allows us to share all the things we do ourselves.
My predictions for this next iteration haven't changed. What I would like to see is them to keep D&D alive, even if it does shrink in market size. Hell, a 33% marketshare would still be fine and is likely the worst case scenario (they currently still have well above double that), but they can take it beyond a "cottage industry" model if they chose.
Once I finish this dang setting and rule set for it, I will be putting it out there for free myself -- and I make no bones about it being D&D even if it doesn't look like it to some people. I tweak it constantly even as I keep developing it, and I do so knowing that it will never be something that will work with a VTT.
So over half the market will never even want to deal with it. Because that's how it is going. And I won't be selling it through marketplaces or anythign else because i would be sharing it for the love of the effort.
But if I had to make it my living, I would do a lot of things differently.
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Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
The underlying imbalance between DM and Player stuff -- I agree, but like I said, I am an old lady who is fussy and grumpy and the kids I play with are loving that superheroes thing. Watching a 10 year old grow over three years while playing the same character and watching how they change in play style as they grow is shocking and rewarding and so different from my own nostalgia tinged memories of my teen years doing the same thing.
But it also taught me (more so than years of running open games where anyone could come in with any character and having groups of 15 to 20 playing) that the real job of a DM isn't to be able to out power the players. It is to be able to let them be the heroes -- give them something to be heroic and super about. So I would say the big thing they need to do there is give more tools. They need to simplify and streamline the CR system, explain it better, make it more explicit and then make it the foundation for folks to go and have fun and do stuff with it, which they cannot do if they don't understand it.
That kinda defeats the VTT purpose, lol, but it just one of the ways in which a tool that works great for a computer game fails when applied to a direct personal game.
What you are talking about here is kind of the underlying issue with the game. The problem is that different people want different types of fantasy. This is why you have different settings, some are about kingdom management and being rulers like Birthright, some are about going on epic, Lord of the Rings like quests and leading armies like Dragonlance, others are about solving mysteries, being detectives and working a case like Eberron, others still like Mystara or Dark Sun are about are low powered heroics, survival and grit.
None of these things exist anymore in modern D&D. There is one type of fantasy in D&D, power fantasy.. that's it there are no other options unless you go outside of official D&D to seek them out. Right now D&D is winning because it so happens that the power fantasy is all the rage and so the audience is big, but fads have a way of starting abruptly and ending abruptly and unfortunately, Wizards of the Coast has done a lot of damage to their settings at this point. Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance in particular are absolutely ruined, they are unrecognizable at this point. I mean I read the Dragonlance book and honestly, there was almost nothing about it that separated it from Forgotten Realms, it was generic gibberish.
not the system so much as the D&D culture and by association D&D creative publishing. The assumption by modern gamers of D&D is that if it's printed, it's cannon for all of D&D, and it must be allowed in the game which is why you end up with this very bland, anything-goes D&D that doesn't have its own identity. In turn because this community is so adamant about this mentality of including everything in every setting, Wizards of the Coasts knows that they can't release anything without being all-inclusive of every book printed before the release of any other.
Very much so, though I should point out:
"those darn kids, coming in here and making everything about them!"
mostly because if I am not laughing at my own foibles, I am missing the joke.
And that is why the vtt and even DDB itself aren't for everyone. They are for the folks who want to be that way, which is, without question, the overwhelming majority of Players.
Not DMs. Players.
Since at least 1977, there has been a sense of antagonism between Players and DMs, and the game as it is designed right now leans in favor of players, whereas in the older editions it leaned in favor of DMs.
This is also part of why I say they need to start producing more non-generic settings and dropping their sub-classes and special abilities there, in a way that *doesn't* work well for places like Faerun and Eberron.
I mean, if you take out Vance, Tolkien, Moorcock, deCamp, Pratt, Leiber, HPL, and Merrit from the game's underlying basis, you suddenly have to look a LOT more closely at a lot of the conventions that are used, and you suddenly need new mechanics and new approaches that do not fit in with the multiverse basis they have right now that enables Spelljammer.
Each of them supplied what became a core mechanic and the basis for it. Without them, the mechanic becomes unmoored and now you have to see if you really need it, or if it needs to change.
But also, by doing that, D&D -- which essentially created the default, generic fantasy setting as it is understood today -- suddenly gains the ability to start monetizing something other than just more core rule books, and can (in the eyes of hasbro) start to develop new IP setups. That, in turn, will preserve the game as a whole, and still enable them to develop new iterations of core rules -- although with more of that construction kit (structuralist) type set up that will support Dms while retaining the feature freedom for players.
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Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
not the system so much as the D&D culture and by association D&D creative publishing. The assumption by modern gamers of D&D is that if it's printed, it's cannon for all of D&D, and it must be allowed in the game which is why you end up with this very bland, anything-goes D&D that doesn't have its own identity. In turn because this community is so adamant about this mentality of including everything in every setting, Wizards of the Coasts knows that they can't release anything without being all-inclusive of every book printed before the release of any other.
Very much so, though I should point out:
"those darn kids, coming in here and making everything about them!"
mostly because if I am not laughing at my own foibles, I am missing the joke.
And that is why the vtt and even DDB itself aren't for everyone. They are for the folks who want to be that way, which is, without question, the overwhelming majority of Players.
Not DMs. Players.
Since at least 1977, there has been a sense of antagonism between Players and DMs, and the game as it is designed right now leans in favor of players, whereas in the older editions it leaned in favor of DMs.
This is also part of why I say they need to start producing more non-generic settings and dropping their sub-classes and special abilities there, in a way that *doesn't* work well for places like Faerun and Eberron.
I mean, if you take out Vance, Tolkien, Moorcock, deCamp, Pratt, Leiber, HPL, and Merrit from the game's underlying basis, you suddenly have to look a LOT more closely at a lot of the conventions that are used, and you suddenly need new mechanics and new approaches that do not fit in with the multiverse basis they have right now that enables Spelljammer.
Each of them supplied what became a core mechanic and the basis for it. Without them, the mechanic becomes unmoored and now you have to see if you really need it, or if it needs to change.
But also, by doing that, D&D -- which essentially created the default, generic fantasy setting as it is understood today -- suddenly gains the ability to start monetizing something other than just more core rule books, and can (in the eyes of hasbro) start to develop new IP setups. That, in turn, will preserve the game as a whole, and still enable them to develop new iterations of core rules -- although with more of that construction kit (structuralist) type set up that will support Dms while retaining the feature freedom for players.
Thats the thing. Publishers are taking 5e and other D&D rules systems and making unique settings, stylized sub-sets of rules and supporting unique playstyles, it's just that Wizards of the Coast is not one of them.
They only support a sub-set of the D&D community and while D&D is popular, its not so popular that it doesn't have competition and its bottom line is a lot bigger than most RPG companies out there. I mean Paizo has a couple of bad quarters its no big deal, Hasbro has a bad quarter and they lose half a billion dollars.
I guess I'm wondering if Wizards of the Coast can really ignore this other aspect of fantasy role-playing market that is capturing frustrated D&D players who are looking for something a bit more interesting than super hero power fantasy.
The underlying imbalance between DM and Player stuff -- I agree, but like I said, I am an old lady who is fussy and grumpy and the kids I play with are loving that superheroes thing. Watching a 10 year old grow over three years while playing the same character and watching how they change in play style as they grow is shocking and rewarding and so different from my own nostalgia tinged memories of my teen years doing the same thing.
But it also taught me (more so than years of running open games where anyone could come in with any character and having groups of 15 to 20 playing) that the real job of a DM isn't to be able to out power the players. It is to be able to let them be the heroes -- give them something to be heroic and super about. So I would say the big thing they need to do there is give more tools. They need to simplify and streamline the CR system, explain it better, make it more explicit and then make it the foundation for folks to go and have fun and do stuff with it, which they cannot do if they don't understand it.
That kinda defeats the VTT purpose, lol, but it just one of the ways in which a tool that works great for a computer game fails when applied to a direct personal game.
What you are talking about here is kind of the underlying issue with the game. The problem is that different people want different types of fantasy. This is why you have different settings, some are about kingdom management and being rulers like Birthright, some are about going on epic, Lord of the Rings like quests and leading armies like Dragonlance, others are about solving mysteries, being detectives and working a case like Eberron, others still like Mystara or Dark Sun are about are low powered heroics, survival and grit.
None of these things exist anymore in modern D&D. There is one type of fantasy in D&D, power fantasy.. that's it there are no other options unless you go outside of official D&D to seek them out. Right now D&D is winning because it so happens that the power fantasy is all the rage and so the audience is big, but fads have a way of starting abruptly and ending abruptly and unfortunately, Wizards of the Coast has done a lot of damage to their settings at this point. Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance in particular are absolutely ruined, they are unrecognizable at this point. I mean I read the Dragonlance book and honestly, there was almost nothing about it that separated it from Forgotten Realms, it was generic gibberish.
Zero Argument from me. I like exploration and survival style games, as a strictly personal preference, and despite my love of using dungeons, lol.
the particulars around Dragonlance are, well, fascinating, as gossip and BTS stuff, but the end result is a bowdlerizing of a distinctive world that I may not have liked much, but was built around an epic story all by itself. Hell, egg of the Phoenix is still one of my fave modules, and it was in between the Ravenloft and dragonlance stuff. And Ravenloft is still very much stuck in the same -- the official rules for it call for the use of Sanity as a score, yet you cannot even include sanity in DDB.
With the 90's era emphasis on settings being blamed (instead of poor fiscal management) for the weakness in the game during that time and the later failure of 4e, there has been very little interest on their part to truly develop beyond these very basic, very much interchangeable worlds. I think it was you who pointed out the have been strip mining the past -- the 1e and 2e era of serious module work -- and since they have pretty successfully done that I am seeing more creative stuff coming out.
mercer's stuff has forced them to take another look at stuff outside -- the fame is a problem, perhaps, but if they can look there, they look at other sources.
There's hope.
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Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
Perhaps, but I'm hedging my bets on modern designers and modern publishers, rather than official WotC sources when it comes to who will produce fresh and new creative content going into the future.
I mean initially for example when I looked into Dolmenwood I was sort of like.. meh.. another OSR homebrew, but then I watched some of the youtube content and read the early release stuff and it was sort of like ... wow. I mean, no one at Wizards of the Coast even has the talent to produce something this good even if they decided they wanted to. It is simply beyond their skill. Perkins, Crawford and Mearls combined have less talent than the average D&D enthusiast so I would not hold my breath that they will surprise us anytime soon.
The same is true with Flee Mortals, I mean, MCDM effectively fixed D&D 5e with that book by making monsters actually fun to fight. It is like next-level good, far beyond anything WotC could ever even conceive.
The real professionals, the real artists in this business have all abandoned Wizards of the Coast long ago. All that is left are former game designers who sold out and became social justice warriors.
If WotC can produce something I'm willing to pay for in the next 5 years I will eat my hat, but I'm not holding my breath.
Flee, Mortals makes every official D&D monster book look embarrassingly bad. The amount of intentional creativity and sheer fun behind the monsters in Flee, Mortals (and their accompanying mechanics/traits) should make any reader of it immediately ask "Why the f**k wasn't the Monster Manual like this?"
Flee, Mortals makes every official D&D monster book look embarrassingly bad. The amount of intentional creativity and sheer fun behind the monsters in Flee, Mortals (and their accompanying mechanics/traits) should make any reader of it immediately ask "Why the f**k wasn't the Monster Manual like this?"
Its a good question and while I would first point out that there is a shortage of talent in WotC in general, which has to do with their hiring practices, that is just a surface issue. I think it has more to do with the fact that they spend entirely too much time listening to their audience's solutions, notably an audience that is not made up of game designers and too little time listening to their audience's complaints, their actual problems.
I see this in my work as well, I'm an IT guy, I work as a solution architect and in my work when someone is describing a problem to me, almost always they are also giving me a solution in the process. The thing is the people who are giving me their problem, god love them all, don't know the first bloody thing about IT work, they are in effect worse than clueless, yet they are demanding and truly believe that it's their job to provide a solution that I should implement. Almost always they are completely wrong about the solution, but their problem is real and it's my job as a solution architect to solve the problem, not to listen to their solution and implement it, but to listen to their problem and find a professional solution to that problem.
This is the approach Matt Colville and MCDM took to solving the problem of D&D combat, namely the balance issues and fun factor of monsters in combat. They didn't reach out to their audience to ask them what they think they should do, they asked them what problems they were having, they observed the problems themselves and worked on a design that addressed those issues. There were no surveys, Matt never asked anyone outside of his design team what they thought they should do. They are professional game designers, they did their job and designed a book that solved the problems players were having.
There were no surveys, Matt never asked anyone outside of his design team what they thought they should do. They are professional game designers, they did their job and designed a book that solved the problems players were having.
Yeah. I've come to the conclusion that the survey approach WOTC is taking is a mistake. The most they should've done is solicit how folks think 5E is broken, and then gone to work on fixing that and anything else they decided could be improved based on almost ten years of field testing and experience.
Perhaps, but I'm hedging my bets on modern designers and modern publishers, rather than official WotC sources when it comes to who will produce fresh and new creative content going into the future.
I mean initially for example when I looked into Dolmenwood I was sort of like.. meh.. another OSR homebrew, but then I watched some of the youtube content and read the early release stuff and it was sort of like ... wow. I mean, no one at Wizards of the Coast even has the talent to produce something this good even if they decided they wanted to. It is simply beyond their skill. Perkins, Crawford and Mearls combined have less talent than the average D&D enthusiast so I would not hold my breath that they will surprise us anytime soon.
The same is true with Flee Mortals, I mean, MCDM effectively fixed D&D 5e with that book by making monsters actually fun to fight. It is like next-level good, far beyond anything WotC could ever even conceive.
The real professionals, the real artists in this business have all abandoned Wizards of the Coast long ago. All that is left are former game designers who sold out and became social justice warriors.
If WotC can produce something I'm willing to pay for in the next 5 years I will eat my hat, but I'm not holding my breath.
that office isn't set up to produce fresh new ideas. it's there to curate the brand. wizards of the coast is a bunch of employees hired to do a job. a bunch of well-meaning people all doing as little wrong as possible and keeping their dreams within bounds. it's like a big, clean, quiet museum with a flurry of activity at the gift shop.
All that is left are former game designers who sold out and became social justice warriors.
I am compelled to disclose that I am pretty much the ultimate social justice warrior.
Not only am I part of multiple different communities that exist in an area of sociolegal opprobrium, I am one of those people who actually teaches critical race theory (and laughs at the way it is used by some), and my field in general is literally the basis of "social justice", as I am a sociologist and psychologist who works professionally in the area of human rights and diversity. In short, I can count more laws being written up against me (life and work) in the US right now than I have fingers, toes, limbs and sensory organs combined.
And I went down that path because of D&D. The creative aspects of D&D led me to learn ever more about the things I wanted to create, and presto, one day I woke up and said I hated academia (proper) and after a decade in it I wanted to do something real.
You can now insert the darkwing duck monologue here if you would like.
All of which I mention because that isn't a knock except to a certain segment of the player base, and that segment is not one that generally sticks to D&D overall (and certainly not among the younger generations).
Now, I have said that, and I want you to think about my prior statements as well. The issue of "are they creative enough"? Well, probably -- but they also are in a bubble there. Bubbles and the pressures of business needs tend to collide heavily into a space of where the minimalist crap is minimalist.
I haven't liked the direction of the game since about halfway through the 2e era, lol, but that's because of bad biz decisions and poor timing and all that stuff. They at least kept the game alive and growing. WHich is what matters a lot -- especially since they are the default. Without the default,t hee would be none of those other third party products -- hell, look at the calamities of Judges guild and Mayfair and flying buffalo, who were all in the same places these others are in now.
Yes, the times have changed the size of the market is larger, the shares are bigger, but beneath all of that they are all still dependent on D&D in terms of the economic forces around it.
I don't think it is a matter of "social justice" that is the problem. That's a cop out. A way to hand wave something else, like the notion of "common sense" or a Dm who hasn't time to explain why the lich being faced seems to have broken the rules about how to become a lich.
No, it is because people don't like to lose the jobs they love, and the folks we are talking about tend to all fit a certain demographic base and so their creativity output is likely as limited as you say by that needs and pressures of that job, the tradition and history of the game, and the demands of those players who are anything but like us.
Thank heavens none of them are development anymore, only admin, right?
Wait, no, nevermind, scratch tha
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Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
1.But it also taught me (more so than years of running open games where anyone could come in with any character and having groups of 15 to 20 playing) that the real job of a DM isn't to be able to out power the players. It is to be able to let them be the heroes -- give them something to be heroic and super about. So I would say the big thing they need to do there is give more tools. They need to simplify and streamline the CR system, explain it better, make it more explicit and then make it the foundation for folks to go and have fun and do stuff with it, which they cannot do if they don't understand it.
2. telling complex, interesting stories in a generic world is easy. Telling them in a world that is crafted to the story is much more cinematic, more theatrical, moore enriching and rewarding for DMs and Players, and that's where I see a lot of the disconnect.
3. I think they need to start expanding them, even if the history of trying to do so was an utter failure the last time they tried to do it. They keep making the core rules bigger, but that just changes the core rules for all the published settings and creates issues for WotC like the damn OGL stuff -- but they can overcome a lot of that by putting it into custom settings, where if they are tied into that setting, then things become much more "controllable" from an IP standpoint (meaning the corp masters are happy) and much more interesting for the different segments of the audience at large.
It isn't blandness so much as it is the baseline, the minimums. They need to create things that expand meta-possibilities instead of focusing on how to refine things down to a handful of interchangeable settings that are not bad settings, they are just minimalist ones.
They need to stop encouraging mediocrity (no in the bad sense, but in the meaning of "conforming to the least common denom") and start encouraging creativity. More "how to", and then a way to feature the work much like they have for the whole homebrew stuff here.
If anything, the homebrew system, however deeply tied tot he traditional settings it is, is perhaps the most incredibly part of the site. Because it allows us to share all the things we do ourselves.
Ok, just snagging the bits I wanted to address here.
1. First of all, I never said as a DM that you're supposed to overpower the players. That's not good DM'ing. You SHOULD challenge your players though. Being superman is only fin for five minutes. It's like when you're a child, learning a game and realizing that the adult teaching you is basically letting you win.
That's the feeling D&D fosters with its mechanics as they are, or at least that's what any player who actually wants to step beyond the childish wish fullfillment. (I could speak volumes on how everyone's reverted to the morality and drive of five years olds, but that's a diatribe on society that I don't really feel like getting in to).
The goal is to give enough challenge and enough threat that you COULD die to make it challenging and fun within the challenge. If my players are looking pretty close to death, I can "kill" them and just say they were knocked out and dragged somewhere where they get a chance again, or something.... But the fact that there was actually a bit of doubt that they might lose... That's an important tool within the DM's box that the system removes through overpowering players and underpowering the DM's monsters.
2. theatrics is important, and to some they can't homebrew or storycraft or setting craft. I know I can, you probably can, and maybe OSR here can, but even in the DM forum I can see that there are people who struggle....
And the published content is great for that. But more setting guides and more original adventures rather than retreads of retreads that have existed since first edition. In the past 40-50 years they really have such a hard time coming up with new content?
3. That's kinda what I was alluding to. Give us our rule books and guides in print, etc. but there's a huge wasted opportunity with D&D Beyond and even to a degree the "One D&D" branding where they COULD have it work as just a general repository or the rules system, with customizable classes where you have lists of standardized feats/level options that the DM can put into a set format so that you can very easily create your own "rule books" for your own campaigns. A master spell list with an easy "pick and choose" options for your to customize the entirety of what your classes can have access to within you setting. Lean into the customization for DM's, and make it stupid easy for them to share "*their* unique worlds and lists. Meanwhile, you can print out unique PHB's and DM source books that are half monster manual and half flavor guide for existing IP worlds and whatever new worlds they wish to run. The current rule set would be the "Ur-D&D" or "OneD&D" that would be both the repository for all official play pieces, for which to use to craft the sub-games. MY cheap ass would actually pay for that kind of tool set rather than screwing around with janky half baked excel spreadsheets off the internet
Give us easy dungeon crafting tools, and honestly, the user generated content will feed itself.
Of course that's all very VERY wishful thinking...
EDIT a few points I missed/forgot.
The third party publisher/hasbro antagonism has to stop. I'm sorry, but publishing a third party source book should (and the anti-intellectual property part of me is SCREAMING here), somehow be willing to give a 1-2% cut for the license, OR, WotC should be trying to be more open about creating a way to submit homebrew content and buying the publishing rights to it.(hasbro publishes it and pays the creator 1-2%)
That whole uproar over the open license was BS, especially by youbtubers whom are more than happy to let big daddy youtube/google take a MASSIVE cut for the use of their platform and pay them fractions of a fraction of a penny to show ads, and are far more "cease and desist" friendly to corporate sponsors.
But then, back to what I said about everyone having the morality of a 5 year old. Hasbro was a bit of a jerkface about how they went about it too...
Critical role also needs to stop being referenced as some "renegade small group" Maybe their first few years, but they're a full fledged corporate entity in their own right, and with now 2 game systems of their own and merchandising and an amazon deal? They're pretty much everything hasbro is and more...
2. You a "Social justice warrior"? would have never guessed from your response from the species problem... (I also assumed you didn't get the edits I did back then. I am NOT one to side with the group, but its a matter or how ferverent others are, and how that dedication can blind them... I'm not a conservative type by any stretch of the imagination either).
I don't see the changes being enough to declare that D&D has a social agenda, but I DO say they're seeing their demographics shift and are virtue signalling the shit out of whatever they can... for profit.... just like everyone else.
But honestly, it's fantasy. If you aren't used to gender exploration or swapping, or alternative lifestyles including polygamy, homosexuality, and so on.... Ungh.... you haven't read much from... well... any of the years D&D has been a thing...
1.But it also taught me (more so than years of running open games where anyone could come in with any character and having groups of 15 to 20 playing) that the real job of a DM isn't to be able to out power the players. It is to be able to let them be the heroes -- give them something to be heroic and super about. So I would say the big thing they need to do there is give more tools. They need to simplify and streamline the CR system, explain it better, make it more explicit and then make it the foundation for folks to go and have fun and do stuff with it, which they cannot do if they don't understand it.
2. telling complex, interesting stories in a generic world is easy. Telling them in a world that is crafted to the story is much more cinematic, more theatrical, moore enriching and rewarding for DMs and Players, and that's where I see a lot of the disconnect.
3. I think they need to start expanding them, even if the history of trying to do so was an utter failure the last time they tried to do it. They keep making the core rules bigger, but that just changes the core rules for all the published settings and creates issues for WotC like the damn OGL stuff -- but they can overcome a lot of that by putting it into custom settings, where if they are tied into that setting, then things become much more "controllable" from an IP standpoint (meaning the corp masters are happy) and much more interesting for the different segments of the audience at large.
It isn't blandness so much as it is the baseline, the minimums. They need to create things that expand meta-possibilities instead of focusing on how to refine things down to a handful of interchangeable settings that are not bad settings, they are just minimalist ones.
They need to stop encouraging mediocrity (no in the bad sense, but in the meaning of "conforming to the least common denom") and start encouraging creativity. More "how to", and then a way to feature the work much like they have for the whole homebrew stuff here.
If anything, the homebrew system, however deeply tied tot he traditional settings it is, is perhaps the most incredibly part of the site. Because it allows us to share all the things we do ourselves.
Ok, just snagging the bits I wanted to address here.
1. First of all, I never said as a DM that you're supposed to overpower the players. That's not good DM'ing. You SHOULD challenge your players though. Being superman is only fin for five minutes. It's like when you're a child, learning a game and realizing that the adult teaching you is basically letting you win.
That's the feeling D&D fosters with its mechanics as they are, or at least that's what any player who actually wants to step beyond the childish wish fullfillment. (I could speak volumes on how everyone's reverted to the morality and drive of five years olds, but that's a diatribe on society that I don't really feel like getting in to).
The goal is to give enough challenge and enough threat that you COULD die to make it challenging and fun within the challenge. If my players are looking pretty close to death, I can "kill" them and just say they were knocked out and dragged somewhere where they get a chance again, or something.... But the fact that there was actually a bit of doubt that they might lose... That's an important tool within the DM's box that the system removes through overpowering players and underpowering the DM's monsters.
2. theatrics is important, and to some they can't homebrew or storycraft or setting craft. I know I can, you probably can, and maybe OSR here can, but even in the DM forum I can see that there are people who struggle....
And the published content is great for that. But more setting guides and more original adventures rather than retreads of retreads that have existed since first edition. In the past 40-50 years they really have such a hard time coming up with new content?
3. That's kinda what I was alluding to. Give us our rule books and guides in print, etc. but there's a huge wasted opportunity with D&D Beyond and even to a degree the "One D&D" branding where they COULD have it work as just a general repository or the rules system, with customizable classes where you have lists of standardized feats/level options that the DM can put into a set format so that you can very easily create your own "rule books" for your own campaigns. A master spell list with an easy "pick and choose" options for your to customize the entirety of what your classes can have access to within you setting. Lean into the customization for DM's, and make it stupid easy for them to share "*their* unique worlds and lists. Meanwhile, you can print out unique PHB's and DM source books that are half monster manual and half flavor guide for existing IP worlds and whatever new worlds they wish to run. The current rule set would be the "Ur-D&D" or "OneD&D" that would be both the repository for all official play pieces, for which to use to craft the sub-games. MY cheap ass would actually pay for that kind of tool set rather than screwing around with janky half baked excel spreadsheets off the internet
Give us easy dungeon crafting tools, and honestly, the user generated content will feed itself.
Of course that's all very VERY wishful thinking...
You did not ever say that and I apologize if it seems like implied or stated you did. well over half the questions I see here in the forums and then that I get from young Dms who reach out (and seriously, I wonder why? I mean, I've met me, I wouldn't) are that kind of thing, though, where they feel that antagonist role overwhelming them.
Much like OSrR I am of the "well, they feel like they wanna die, let them die" variety. I have what I think are relatively few TPKs (since I started tracking in early 90's, fewer than 10), but I also don't like to pull out a deus ex machina unless it is key for the players (for whatever reason of personal investment). Death has to be on the table -- especially early and especially in a new campaign, so you can show the stakes.
But there are worse things than dying. AMong them being railroaded, but ganging a party that just gave itself to you can sometimes be a good team building exercise. Yeah, that's it.
So, Wizards was never big to begin with, in terms of employees, and the D&D section isn't with Hasbro, plus the corporate culture thing and, well, to be blunt, the kinda weird videos they've been making of late...
... yeah, that probably is all they could do so far, between top town thinking, limited resources, and so forth. Remember that in early days, most of the modules produced were slush pile efforts. They reached *outside* the core group to get stuff. The early contract with Judges Guild, the original CSOTIO, the much more open to the community fo players and DMS stuff, hell even Dungeon and Dragon mags. There was a lot of "close to" "almost direct" and direct release material from folks outside the bubble of the core team.
Honestly, I am *shocked* to see the Mercer based third party world released -- that's the kind of thing they need to do more of. Dragonlance and Ravenloft were pitches from outside TSR -- hell, so was freaking Faerun from Greenwood.
Do I think they have the talent in-house to handle it? No. They could, though. But Wizards has been a "we'll do it ourselves" kind of company from the start, and while I don't know Hasbro's corp culture, I don't think it is supportive of external input without really key reason (like Critical Role, lol). And to the points raised earlier, yeah, that is a major part of why they screwed up 4e and why 3e spawned so much secondary material outside of their control. Wizards is not good at D&D, even if MTG did start out as a D&D game.
But they do get mechanics. But also, they are a bunch of players, not DMs. Or at least, that's how it seems to me. See that Hero Player thing again.
I gasped when I read this:
as just a general repository or the rules system, with customizable classes where you have lists of standardized feats/level options that the DM can put into a set format so that you can very easily create your own "rule books" for your own campaigns. A master spell list with an easy "pick and choose" options for your to customize the entirety of what your classes can have access to within you setting. Lean into the customization for DM's, and make it stupid easy for them to share "*their* unique worlds and lists. Meanwhile, you can print out unique PHB's and DM source books that are half monster manual and half flavor guide for existing IP worlds and whatever new worlds they wish to run.
I mean, I came to DDB hoping it would be that kind of thing. I have never tried to articulate it before, and you did a bang up job on describing exactly what I would like to see. For the last three months I have been futzing around with my class mix and structure, and the end result is a group of classes that works, a massive list of Special abilities that people can choose from (that does not contain special abilities in use by the classes), master spell lists by type of magic -- something I laughed about when I saw the doing it with the UA, and some shifts in different areas so that I could still use the 5e basis, but avoid the subclass and class blending problem while still giving away the ability to craft your own take on something.
I would add to that "if a rule is optional, include that in the set up" -- I had to redo magic because I wanted to do a spell point system -- and ended up with a damage from spells structure that is more uniform and dependent on both spell level and caster level. Something already in place would have been nice.
All of that, of course, meant I had excuses to mess with a bunch of everything else, but it is more along the lines of 1e/2e adaptations to 5e stuff.
Like you, I do not expect such a thing to come to pass. If they did that in both DDB and the VTT (which are linked together near as I can tell), then damn, they would have a killer system. Especially if they want to compete with Roll20 and WorldAnvil and that kind of thing where those are features you can do.
As it is, all I can use DDB for is the forums, the news, and the repository for when I play (and I do use it, though with new monsters and different stats, nothing I make can be used within it).
That would give them the "more settings" piece, too -- and bring back that slush pile. They could monitor and watch and see what was really popular and then make offers. I mean, not that my stuff would be all that popular, and I wouldn't be as cheap as Greenwood, but I wouldn't be pricey as all hell, either.
Not sure a "print on demand" is feasible, but a PDF it that folks can print at home? hell yeah. My game book would drop from a thousand pages to under 300 if they did that.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
That would give them the "more settings" piece, too -- and bring back that slush pile. They could monitor and watch and see what was really popular and then make offers. I mean, not that my stuff would be all that popular, and I wouldn't be as cheap as Greenwood, but I wouldn't be pricey as all hell, either.
Not sure a "print on demand" is feasible, but a PDF it that folks can print at home? hell yeah. My game book would drop from a thousand pages to under 300 if they did that.
Did I say print on demand?
I was TOTALLY thinking pdf, with standardized template blocks and a repository of images (some creative commons, some D&D specific "extras" hell, even if they wanted to give you, the user access to some of their curated AI images based on their repository, that would be fine), so you can design a handbook like you might a Squarespace webpage.
Convert to PDF for a $5 monthly fee for you to waste your own printer ink OR, for a nominal monthly fee, you can direct share it in the existing DDB to your fellow players.
Create your own world for the annual "planes of the multiverse gala" contest, where the best unique setting (your custom PHB and DMG) can win the chance to be published by WotC and author gets 1-2% royalties on the copies sold. Monthly submissions for best adventure/dungeon, and a $1.99 download/for your DM to get the story and maps.
All that is left are former game designers who sold out and became social justice warriors.
I am compelled to disclose that I am pretty much the ultimate social justice warrior.
Not only am I part of multiple different communities that exist in an area of sociolegal opprobrium, I am one of those people who actually teaches critical race theory (and laughs at the way it is used by some), and my field in general is literally the basis of "social justice", as I am a sociologist and psychologist who works professionally in the area of human rights and diversity. In short, I can count more laws being written up against me (life and work) in the US right now than I have fingers, toes, limbs and sensory organs combined.
And I went down that path because of D&D. The creative aspects of D&D led me to learn ever more about the things I wanted to create, and presto, one day I woke up and said I hated academia (proper) and after a decade in it I wanted to do something real.
You can now insert the darkwing duck monologue here if you would like.
All of which I mention because that isn't a knock except to a certain segment of the player base, and that segment is not one that generally sticks to D&D overall (and certainly not among the younger generations).
Now, I have said that, and I want you to think about my prior statements as well. The issue of "are they creative enough"? Well, probably -- but they also are in a bubble there. Bubbles and the pressures of business needs tend to collide heavily into a space of where the minimalist crap is minimalist.
I haven't liked the direction of the game since about halfway through the 2e era, lol, but that's because of bad biz decisions and poor timing and all that stuff. They at least kept the game alive and growing. WHich is what matters a lot -- especially since they are the default. Without the default,t hee would be none of those other third party products -- hell, look at the calamities of Judges guild and Mayfair and flying buffalo, who were all in the same places these others are in now.
Yes, the times have changed the size of the market is larger, the shares are bigger, but beneath all of that they are all still dependent on D&D in terms of the economic forces around it.
I don't think it is a matter of "social justice" that is the problem. That's a cop out. A way to hand wave something else, like the notion of "common sense" or a Dm who hasn't time to explain why the lich being faced seems to have broken the rules about how to become a lich.
No, it is because people don't like to lose the jobs they love, and the folks we are talking about tend to all fit a certain demographic base and so their creativity output is likely as limited as you say by that needs and pressures of that job, the tradition and history of the game, and the demands of those players who are anything but like us.
Thank heavens none of them are development anymore, only admin, right?
Wait, no, nevermind, scratch tha
As a fellow social justice warrior, I'm sure you will relate when I say, do the work, be right and let your actions stand on their own as an example. That makes one a true, honest social justice warrior.
As soon as you seek validation and notoriety, you cease to be part of the solution and become part of the problem. Social justice is about doing the right thing, not about politics. Corporations like Wizards of the Coast, have absolutely no interest in righting wrongs if no one notices, for them, social justice is a political-business move done for publicity, not the act of someone who actually cares. They proclaim themselves a "diverse company", meanwhile the entire executive branch of Wizards of the Coast is 100% white people because you know... diversity hire is one thing, letting "them/us" actually run the company and have decision-making powers.. we can't have that.
The main reason Wizards of the Coast can't produce anything good, in particular so far as settings go is because they, being the leadership of the company think diversity means "everything has to be in there so no one is left out". Which is frankly... stupid.
Creativity and diversity is born from celebrating differences not pretending they don't exist. Until they actually let loose young creative minds and let them release something without passing through "sensitivity experts", they aren't going to produce anything worth the ink it's printed on.
D&D was once edgy, sometimes it had questionable taste and even tasteless art but you can't argue with how intriguing settings like Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim, The Horde, Mystara, Maztica and much more were. These were wild and unique settings that borrowed from countless real-world cultures, putting twists on them, challenging players with thought-provoking morale dilemmas, and they wrote into these books harsh realities of real feeling fantasy settings. Like I won't defend TSR racist crap they did, but between those occasional slip-ups was a lot of really amazing fantasy content and we have not seen anything of its like coming out of Wizards of the Coast and probably never will again. Not because their is a lack of potential of something good coming out of its doors, but it's never going to get past the white wall of decision-making that governs and decides for everyone what is and isn't appropriate, built on the back of this fake social justice image they have created for themselves.
While official D&D is producing bland, washed-out and hollow versions of settings that were once great, the OSR is producing D&D settings like Arrows of India, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Blades in the Dark, Numenera, Dolmenwood and so much more. Truly unique, interesting, provocative and original settings produced by the next generation of D&D designers. Why the hell are these people not producing for Wizards of the Coast?
All that is left are former game designers who sold out and became social justice warriors.
I am compelled to disclose that I am pretty much the ultimate social justice warrior.
Not only am I part of multiple different communities that exist in an area of sociolegal opprobrium, I am one of those people who actually teaches critical race theory (and laughs at the way it is used by some), and my field in general is literally the basis of "social justice", as I am a sociologist and psychologist who works professionally in the area of human rights and diversity. In short, I can count more laws being written up against me (life and work) in the US right now than I have fingers, toes, limbs and sensory organs combined.
And I went down that path because of D&D. The creative aspects of D&D led me to learn ever more about the things I wanted to create, and presto, one day I woke up and said I hated academia (proper) and after a decade in it I wanted to do something real.
You can now insert the darkwing duck monologue here if you would like.
All of which I mention because that isn't a knock except to a certain segment of the player base, and that segment is not one that generally sticks to D&D overall (and certainly not among the younger generations).
Now, I have said that, and I want you to think about my prior statements as well. The issue of "are they creative enough"? Well, probably -- but they also are in a bubble there. Bubbles and the pressures of business needs tend to collide heavily into a space of where the minimalist crap is minimalist.
I haven't liked the direction of the game since about halfway through the 2e era, lol, but that's because of bad biz decisions and poor timing and all that stuff. They at least kept the game alive and growing. WHich is what matters a lot -- especially since they are the default. Without the default,t hee would be none of those other third party products -- hell, look at the calamities of Judges guild and Mayfair and flying buffalo, who were all in the same places these others are in now.
Yes, the times have changed the size of the market is larger, the shares are bigger, but beneath all of that they are all still dependent on D&D in terms of the economic forces around it.
I don't think it is a matter of "social justice" that is the problem. That's a cop out. A way to hand wave something else, like the notion of "common sense" or a Dm who hasn't time to explain why the lich being faced seems to have broken the rules about how to become a lich.
No, it is because people don't like to lose the jobs they love, and the folks we are talking about tend to all fit a certain demographic base and so their creativity output is likely as limited as you say by that needs and pressures of that job, the tradition and history of the game, and the demands of those players who are anything but like us.
Thank heavens none of them are development anymore, only admin, right?
Wait, no, nevermind, scratch tha
As a fellow social justice warrior, I'm sure you will relate when I say, do the work, be right and let your actions stand on their own as an example. That makes one a true, honest social justice warrior.
As soon as you seek validation and notoriety, you cease to be part of the solution and become part of the problem. Social justice is about doing the right thing, not about politics. Corporations like Wizards of the Coast, have absolutely no interest in righting wrongs if no one notices, for them, social justice is a political-business move done for publicity, not the act of someone who actually cares. They proclaim themselves a "diverse company", meanwhile the entire executive branch of Wizards of the Coast is 100% white people because you know... diversity hire is one thing, letting "them/us" actually run the company and have decision-making powers.. we can't have that.
The main reason Wizards of the Coast can't produce anything good, in particular so far as settings go is because they, being the leadership of the company think diversity means "everything has to be in there so no one is left out". Which is frankly... stupid.
Creativity and diversity is born from celebrating differences not pretending they don't exist. Until they actually let loose young creative minds and let them release something without passing through "sensitivity experts", they aren't going to produce anything worth the ink it's printed on.
D&D was once edgy, sometimes it had questionable taste and even tasteless art but you can't argue with how intriguing settings like Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim, The Horde, Mystara, Maztica and much more were. These were wild and unique settings that borrowed from countless real-world cultures, putting twists on them, challenging players with thought-provoking morale dilemmas, and they wrote into these books harsh realities of real feeling fantasy settings. Like I won't defend TSR racist crap they did, but between those occasional slip-ups was a lot of really amazing fantasy content and we have not seen anything of its like coming out of Wizards of the Coast and probably never will again. Not because their is not potential for great counting coming out of its doors, but its never going to get past the white wall of decision-making that governs and decides for everyone what is and isn't appropriate.
Now see, I was trying to be nice with my "all one demographic" note, and then you went out there and laid it flat out, lol.
That is indeed the biggest problem they have, and part of why I say they need to go back to slush piles. Not that TSR was any better (though they did unexpectedly get a Trans woman and some gay men in there) in terms of product or grasp of the situation, but part of the reason for all of that is the ame drive that pushes Disney to do all the varied versions -- yes, there is pandering, but if you pander and don't understand who you pander to, it does not succeed like an Encanto or a Coco or a Moana, lol.
And that is the problem at the heart of it -- as demonstrated, the levels of fragility are pretty high internally, and the way of seeing the world and the product is through a very narrow lens that makes itself STUNNINGLY obvious when you look at FR and Eberron and Dragonlance and Ravenloft and...
They are terrified after the debacle that we are still dealing with around ASIs for race (while ignoring the rest of it) and switching to "species" -- because to re-examine that whole thing is entirely outside their whole ability to get their heads around.
The reason they use "sensitivity experts" -- people like me -- is that they know that they have an issue and for business purposes they can't risk the fallout that would come from releasing an unexamined Al-Qadim or Maztica (surprisingly, Kara-tur was not all that bad) today, when the population of people who play the game is known to not be the same kind of people who are in charge of it right now.
And most of those people are the growth area.
I loved Maztica. Al-Qadim was, um, a major problem in some ways, even though the heart of it was still the same core that gave us Aladdin and "Prince of Persia" (and, well, even the first cartoon was wa problematic, but the live actions films mentioned were properly panned, despite underneath both lies a great story. It was the blindness that is present among the same folks we are talking about that led to those failures).
I just got done saying I could do Dark Sun in a different thread, and the same applies for all of them. Hell, I would love to do them, lol. I wouldn't be cheap, mind you, but one thing that is distinct about me as opposed to most folks who do that sensitivity work is that I have all the credentials and shit and mam more than just someone who gets a bit of it. I get crap from DEI pros because I look at deeper stuff, and the reason I do is because I play D&D, and D&D was the reason I studied the things I studied.
The point is that a lot of it is overreaction -- on the part of the "everyday person" as well as on the part of the "corporate execs". That "fretful worry" is literally part of the problem and a sign that they have issues themselves, but that's not what to look at, because that's something the have to deal with themselves.
They need a different kind of sensitivity experts -- the kind who have deep knowledge and who are deeply, personally familiar with the cultures they are bringing to life, or that can take an idea alient to western eyes and make it more conventionally useful and separate from the source. They have a wonderful "in-game" example of it that has been around since just before 1e, as well, to stud and look at without having to get into the issues of appropriation that they don't understand:
The Druid.
the history of the Druid's creation, development, and general existence is a perfect example of how one steps around a lot of the problematic stuff and gets to the meat that sounds good and fun and isn't all that crap I said (which is why I noted "strictly"). I cod make a very similar argument about the barbarian -- and these are classes. But to grasp it without getting all angry about how it is an important part and yada yada one has to understand a lot of stuff that the society we live in is still trying to keep alive on a daily basis is harmful and wrong and who has time for that, right?
For Wyrlde (my next campaign) I remade the Druid as a combination and blend of West African, "west indies", nomadic steppe, and related groups cultural role of a person who western science and study has called variously witch doctor, shaman, druid, houdon, voodoo, and more. I linked them to spirits of the world and in terms of D&D, they picked up several of the special abilities of certain Barbarian subclasses and some related stuff. The lost the wildshape, and became a bit less "nature" and a bit more "feral", lol. They are more closely linked to Bards and Witches than Rangers (who picked up the wildshape, lol), since they are also historians and seers. I took the barbarity out of Barbarians, and yet I still have a class that is obvious barbarian -- Vanguards, who shift to more of a gladiator vibe.
Those are two examples, and ones that matter because the spirits that are involved with Druids are as present and as dangerous in the world as the undead are -- but, like the spirits of focus, can be helpful and useful and will even make bargains (giving a Druid a touch of Warlock). This is to say that they *fit into the world* in the way that the original Oriental Adventures (a title that is problematic of itself, lol) presented classes and peoples as fitting into that world. I was kinda disappointed (much liek you mentioned previously for your own moments) when they made it kara-tur and then sucked all of those creative and wonderfully creative efforts into corners of FR and said whatever.
Mystara is one of the more interesting realms -- and one that this groups *could* do if they a=wanted, but as I understand it there are some odd licensing things related to that, since it was a separate entity that was only licensed for use with the OD&D stuff, instead of AD&D, which used Gygax's Oerth. I could be wrong, as it has been a while since I did a dive into all that, though.
The obvious answer is to hire people who come from those backgrounds, who understand that -- to create teams (much like they did for the Black Panther films, especially in regards the Atlantean stuff they did). Was it perfect and without flaw? No. But nothing ever is, and the little bit of concern they did get was considered minor even by experts like me who kinda went "meh".
Even in my field, the Rule of Cool applies -- it is the arbiter of cool that matters, and in these situations, the WotC team are the people who know they can't be that, and they want to be that for everything having to do with the game.
So they don't do it because they can't do it themselves, and what they are afraid of is that they have to give up that control and that "right of creation", because if they aren't needed, what the heck use does hasbro have for them?
Taldoriel is going to be interesting to watch, because it is more or less being forced on them by that combination of Mercer's loyalty to D&D, the size of the market share, and the desire to link to the first real D&D celebrity of note who wasn't a creator.
Ah well.
The real crux comes down to this:
These were wild and unique settings that borrowed from countless real-world cultures, putting twists on them, challenging players with thought-provoking morale dilemmas, and they wrote into these books harsh realities of real feeling fantasy settings.
These were not generic psuedo-medieval western fantasy settings. They were, like great books, incredibly different from what came before, and they did not draw from the same well as all the other books (even the original sourcebooks). Like I said: everyone who draws from the same well drinks the same water. There is more to that proverb, that maxim, than just talk about water.
The reason that the mainline D&D multiverse even can have rules written like sixteen gazillion kinds of elves that are all different is because all of the worlds in it draw from the same well, and that well is made up of the inspirations for the core game (and when we talk about elves, that means Tolkien, not Pini, lol). They put a ton of effort into that over years, and it is because that well is still perfectly fine but not one I am interested in drinking from any more, I can't ever use it.
There is a bitterness to its water, to me (and that bitterness is what we are talking around here).
I already said I totally agree with more strange new worlds, more brave new worlds, and what wonders await thereon, but that is going to take more than the folks at WotC have in their well, and they are not wanting to go taste from other wells because they worry about losing their own.
Forgetting, in my opinion, that it is always best to drink from many wells, lest one of them dry up. I learned that from D&D. Well, ok, and living in a desert most of my life, but still...
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
Now see, I was trying to be nice with my "all one demographic" note, and then you went out there and laid it flat out, lol.
That is indeed the biggest problem they have, and part of why I say they need to go back to slush piles. Not that TSR was any better (though they did unexpectedly get a Trans woman and some gay men in there) in terms of product or grasp of the situation, but part of the reason for all of that is the ame drive that pushes Disney to do all the varied versions -- yes, there is pandering, but if you pander and don't understand who you pander to, it does not succeed like an Encanto or a Coco or a Moana, lol.
And that is the problem at the heart of it -- as demonstrated, the levels of fragility are pretty high internally, and the way of seeing the world and the product is through a very narrow lens that makes itself STUNNINGLY obvious when you look at FR and Eberron and Dragonlance and Ravenloft and...
They are terrified after the debacle that we are still dealing with around ASIs for race (while ignoring the rest of it) and switching to "species" -- because to re-examine that whole thing is entirely outside their whole ability to get their heads around.
The reason they use "sensitivity experts" -- people like me -- is that they know that they have an issue and for business purposes they can't risk the fallout that would come from releasing an unexamined Al-Qadim or Maztica (surprisingly, Kara-tur was not all that bad) today, when the population of people who play the game is known to not be the same kind of people who are in charge of it right now.
And most of those people are the growth area.
I loved Maztica. Al-Qadim was, um, a major problem in some ways, even though the heart of it was still the same core that gave us Aladdin and "Prince of Persia" (and, well, even the first cartoon was wa problematic, but the live actions films mentioned were properly panned, despite underneath both lies a great story. It was the blindness that is present among the same folks we are talking about that led to those failures).
I just got done saying I could do Dark Sun in a different thread, and the same applies for all of them. Hell, I would love to do them, lol. I wouldn't be cheap, mind you, but one thing that is distinct about me as opposed to most folks who do that sensitivity work is that I have all the credentials and shit and mam more than just someone who gets a bit of it. I get crap from DEI pros because I look at deeper stuff, and the reason I do is because I play D&D, and D&D was the reason I studied the things I studied.
The point is that a lot of it is overreaction -- on the part of the "everyday person" as well as on the part of the "corporate execs". That "fretful worry" is literally part of the problem and a sign that they have issues themselves, but that's not what to look at, because that's something the have to deal with themselves.
They need a different kind of sensitivity experts -- the kind who have deep knowledge and who are deeply, personally familiar with the cultures they are bringing to life, or that can take an idea alient to western eyes and make it more conventionally useful and separate from the source. They have a wonderful "in-game" example of it that has been around since just before 1e, as well, to stud and look at without having to get into the issues of appropriation that they don't understand:
The Druid.
the history of the Druid's creation, development, and general existence is a perfect example of how one steps around a lot of the problematic stuff and gets to the meat that sounds good and fun and isn't all that crap I said (which is why I noted "strictly"). I cod make a very similar argument about the barbarian -- and these are classes. But to grasp it without getting all angry about how it is an important part and yada yada one has to understand a lot of stuff that the society we live in is still trying to keep alive on a daily basis is harmful and wrong and who has time for that, right?
For Wyrlde (my next campaign) I remade the Druid as a combination and blend of West African, "west indies", nomadic steppe, and related groups cultural role of a person who western science and study has called variously witch doctor, shaman, druid, houdon, voodoo, and more. I linked them to spirits of the world and in terms of D&D, they picked up several of the special abilities of certain Barbarian subclasses and some related stuff. The lost the wildshape, and became a bit less "nature" and a bit more "feral", lol. They are more closely linked to Bards and Witches than Rangers (who picked up the wildshape, lol), since they are also historians and seers. I took the barbarity out of Barbarians, and yet I still have a class that is obvious barbarian -- Vanguards, who shift to more of a gladiator vibe.
Those are two examples, and ones that matter because the spirits that are involved with Druids are as present and as dangerous in the world as the undead are -- but, like the spirits of focus, can be helpful and useful and will even make bargains (giving a Druid a touch of Warlock). This is to say that they *fit into the world* in the way that the original Oriental Adventures (a title that is problematic of itself, lol) presented classes and peoples as fitting into that world. I was kinda disappointed (much liek you mentioned previously for your own moments) when they made it kara-tur and then sucked all of those creative and wonderfully creative efforts into corners of FR and said whatever.
Mystara is one of the more interesting realms -- and one that this groups *could* do if they a=wanted, but as I understand it there are some odd licensing things related to that, since it was a separate entity that was only licensed for use with the OD&D stuff, instead of AD&D, which used Gygax's Oerth. I could be wrong, as it has been a while since I did a dive into all that, though.
The obvious answer is to hire people who come from those backgrounds, who understand that -- to create teams (much like they did for the Black Panther films, especially in regards the Atlantean stuff they did). Was it perfect and without flaw? No. But nothing ever is, and the little bit of concern they did get was considered minor even by experts like me who kinda went "meh".
Even in my field, the Rule of Cool applies -- it is the arbiter of cool that matters, and in these situations, the WotC team are the people who know they can't be that, and they want to be that for everything having to do with the game.
So they don't do it because they can't do it themselves, and what they are afraid of is that they have to give up that control and that "right of creation", because if they aren't needed, what the heck use does hasbro have for them?
Taldoriel is going to be interesting to watch, because it is more or less being forced on them by that combination of Mercer's loyalty to D&D, the size of the market share, and the desire to link to the first real D&D celebrity of note who wasn't a creator.
Ah well.
The real crux comes down to this:
These were wild and unique settings that borrowed from countless real-world cultures, putting twists on them, challenging players with thought-provoking morale dilemmas, and they wrote into these books harsh realities of real feeling fantasy settings.
These were not generic psuedo-medieval western fantasy settings. They were, like great books, incredibly different from what came before, and they did not draw from the same well as all the other books (even the original sourcebooks). Like I said: everyone who draws from the same well drinks the same water. There is more to that proverb, that maxim, than just talk about water.
The reason that the mainline D&D multiverse even can have rules written like sixteen gazillion kinds of elves that are all different is because all of the worlds in it draw from the same well, and that well is made up of the inspirations for the core game (and when we talk about elves, that means Tolkien, not Pini, lol). They put a ton of effort into that over years, and it is because that well is still perfectly fine but not one I am interested in drinking from any more, I can't ever use it.
There is a bitterness to its water, to me (and that bitterness is what we are talking around here).
I already said I totally agree with more strange new worlds, more brave new worlds, and what wonders await thereon, but that is going to take more than the folks at WotC have in their well, and they are not wanting to go taste from other wells because they worry about losing their own.
Forgetting, in my opinion, that it is always best to drink from many wells, lest one of them dry up. I learned that from D&D. Well, ok, and living in a desert most of my life, but still...
See, this is where there's an issue with "social justice" for me. Even within this context, it's very American-centric with American ideas of that west african /voodoo culture. The Ivory coast is not the same as Haiti, and a lot of the voodoo is syncretism with catholicism. None of that really vibes with the druid which is indeed shamanistic, but to give it a more authentic "voodoo" feel, (or even a hollywood voodoo feel) it would need MAJOR revisions , and divorcing it from it's nature worship roots and feel. You'd have far better luck "meeting in the middle" with something like Shinto, where you get natural spirits that can aid you.
Barbarians aren't "barbarous" in game, and although not a fan of the whole rage fighter, yeah, there's various types of fighters around the world that would use psych themselves up before fighting. They ARE based on greek depictions of celtic and nordic tribes, which fought with a ferocity that drove the Romans back. Even though the romans weren't fans, the vikings as well as the celts had a wonderfully rich history that would do just fine.
As for "Oriental"... It is offensive. but mostly to Americans. I had edited a manual for one of my jobs that a particular passage was written by a south african woman... That was delicate..
Then there was my time working for the Dane...I can't describe it as anything other than "innocent racism". It's horrifically racist depictions and things (at least to americans) with zero malice behind it.... Unless you witness it, there's just no explaining it.
Then there's the judgey Asian communities....Some of the most xenophobic cultures I have yet to see...but it's not displayed as you might expect.
But I digress.
My point is, even for your "diverse" world, you're still picturing it through the lens of your experience and your ideas of other cultures without really understanding them yourself
My long reply got marked as spam, so this is a shorter version.
Heard. I note that I wouldn’t say my world is diverse, by any stretch. Nor are those two examples of diversity, really.
I have had very much identical experiences in my career as you described.
I did and do use some elements of Shinto, and I did strip the Druid of the historic nature stuff, shifting it to rangers. Because of some professional stuff, I didn’t use the term Shaman, but it is a more accurate description in common parlance.
the game world I made came from suggestions of my players and a set of rules that started with no inspiration or sources from 1920 to 1980. I mean, I don’t consider having magical girls, gunslingers, monks who fight in mortal kombat, Jedi who patch the tears in time and space, and beings from the 8th Dimension “diversity”. I also wouldn’t call it a breath of fresh air compared to faerun or Eberron. I mean, it might not be the same well, but it sure is the same aquifer.
So yes, absolutely, there is a very USian/American basis for it. By design, even. I have a Chicago Mobster town. I have a dusty Wild West, a secretive place filled with bamboo and violence, a bunch of clockwork loving Romans, a russogermanic capital city, a magiocracy, and an Amazons-R-us tropical breadbasket. To start, lol. Over simplified, but yeah, not diverse.
when I talk about what I would do, it is based on an audience profile that would want it. And if I did a world that started with Loa who were meant to be Loa, most of the above wouldn’t exist. Probably. Because all of it is based in the core setting.
my examples are poor, meant to show a way to avoid certain risks that often come of such work. Mix well, as the package says.
My long reply got marked as spam, so this is a shorter version.
Heard. I note that I wouldn’t say my world is diverse, by any stretch. Nor are those two examples of diversity, really.
I have had very much identical experiences in my career as you described.
I did and do use some elements of Shinto, and I did strip the Druid of the historic nature stuff, shifting it to rangers. Because of some professional stuff, I didn’t use the term Shaman, but it is a more accurate description in common parlance.
the game world I made came from suggestions of my players and a set of rules that started with no inspiration or sources from 1920 to 1980. I mean, I don’t consider having magical girls, gunslingers, monks who fight in mortal kombat, Jedi who patch the tears in time and space, and beings from the 8th Dimension “diversity”. I also wouldn’t call it a breath of fresh air compared to faerun or Eberron. I mean, it might not be the same well, but it sure is the same aquifer.
So yes, absolutely, there is a very USian/American basis for it. By design, even. I have a Chicago Mobster town. I have a dusty Wild West, a secretive place filled with bamboo and violence, a bunch of clockwork loving Romans, a russogermanic capital city, a magiocracy, and an Amazons-R-us tropical breadbasket. To start, lol. Over simplified, but yeah, not diverse.
when I talk about what I would do, it is based on an audience profile that would want it. And if I did a world that started with Loa who were meant to be Loa, most of the above wouldn’t exist. Probably. Because all of it is based in the core setting my examples are poor, meant to show a way to avoid certain risks that often come of such work. Mix well, as the package says.
No worries. My point isn't to be a real criticism of the issue at hand, only a demonstration of the how the pitfalls and the whole Luke 6:41-46 verse problem that a lot of this suffers from.
The whole voodoo thing is interesting in itself, and I remember 20 years ago, picking up a book in high school about the African religions associated with "witch doctors". It was truly a fascinating read, and though just as American as you, Africa is a HUGE and diverse continent, it's a weird sticking point for me, because a lot of people in the US of various racial backgrounds, still tend to think of Africa as a unified black nation still lost in time, when there's egypt, the ivory coast, south Africa... You have Morocco and Uganda, and they're vastly different from Chad. And then to compound that with the fact that these nations are in fact very 20th century and a lot of people in the world are looking to towards the continent for the next china.
when I talk about what I would do, it is based on an audience profile that would want it. And if I did a world that started with Loa who were meant to be Loa, most of the above wouldn’t exist. Probably. Because all of it is based in the core setting my examples are poor, meant to show a way to avoid certain risks that often come of such work. Mix well, as the package says.
No worries. My point isn't to be a real criticism of the issue at hand, only a demonstration of the how the pitfalls and the whole Luke 6:41-46 verse problem that a lot of this suffers from.
The whole voodoo thing is interesting in itself, and I remember 20 years ago, picking up a book in high school about the African religions associated with "witch doctors". It was truly a fascinating read, and though just as American as you, Africa is a HUGE and diverse continent, it's a weird sticking point for me, because a lot of people in the US of various racial backgrounds, still tend to think of Africa as a unified black nation still lost in time, when there's egypt, the ivory coast, south Africa... You have Morocco and Uganda, and they're vastly different from Chad. And then to compound that with the fact that these nations are in fact very 20th century and a lot of people in the world are looking to towards the continent for the next china.
It's.... interesting to say the least.
So, my paternal grandmother was Malian, my paternal grandfather was Lakota (Sioux).
That study I mentioned I just finished? For Sudan. I am not a "deepest, darkest Africa" sort, lol, and while I have never walked in the Sudan, I have walked in the Sahara, traded tales of the nommo, and learned the arts of one of my many heritages and what my role is.
Part of the reason that I put a shaman in was that one of my longest term players -- whom I have had as a player since my very first time DMing in 1979 -- asked me to do something akin to my role when I do visit "home". Since that word is in quotes because I have three sides to reconcile, it gets interesting with the whole finding a path.
I am most familiar, intimately, with Dogon traditions, and Yoruba (which is where about 70% of the non-christianized basis for Vodou comes from) and igbo are familiar. Hausa gets a bit dicey, but is ok. I really fail once you get to the more isolative cultural groups, but having at least a familiarity with Hausa and Yoruba gives me a good in among all of it (as well as the varietals of islam, of course, and the SB training always comes in handy, even if I am never going to be ordained, lol).
I know Africa well. I can no longer name all the nations, but I can usually do a run through on the top 15 cultures and their distinctions, lol.
I can say the same of South America, but only down to the pampas regions -- much of southern SA is out of my AoE. I have a deep knowledge of about 90 southern Pacific/Indian ocean populations because of my work in 'Nesian cultures. I am worse than most when it comes to everything north of malaysia, south of Nepal, east of India, and west of China, lol. So not uite all of SE Asia, but the bulk of it. Those I leave to some colleagues. I have a bit more than passable knowledge on crossroads nations, and I am familiar with the Steppe regions that flow into the Cradle regions. Weak on Slavic, strong on Danube. Pinay is out of my area.
In short, yeah, I've got the stuff to do it, but I am not foolish enough to think i am anything but an USian -- a term for Americans that is equal parts critical and declaratory.
And all of it (except my specific skill in predictive modeling) is directly a result of my playing D&D and being the person of complex background and nature that I am. More D&D since I used the creation of fictional worlds as my base motivation -- figuring out why people were so damn mean was secondary.
Funny enough, I have historically avoided using Egyptian anything. I have a strange aversion to all of it -- despite my original sponsor at the UN being a member of the Egyptian delegation, lol. I am not well versed in their current cultural state, and I never went pre-ptolemaic in my history beyond basic core timeline stuff. I will use Nubian, but not egyptian. Only just realized that now.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
Oh, it is a morning and I have responses! I am not particularly adept at the multi-quote thing, so I will just quote as I go (sorry):
This I can agree on as well. I mean, I better -- I've spent the last five years working on massive setting that does exactly this and starts with a basis of no inspiration from works created between 1920 and 1980, thereby erasing most of the core ideas that give D&D its character. And that started three years before my last campaign ended (this summer).
It *is* the default, the least common denominator, the baseline, the familiar. The mechanics of business (blah blha) kinda dictate that in order to grow it needs to be able to reach the most people without pushing any out. But this, this pertains specifically to the settings -- the places where things take place. In this, I am very much more kin to Gygax and his thoughts about the whole oriental adventures thing: it really is a separate basis, and that's whyt he classes in it were so very different from the mainline classes at the time. I don't mean the later changes, I mean from when OA was first released, 1e era.
I am of the mind that what he did there was really the key approach, and that the rest of this is just meant to provide a framework approach for people to do things like that. I have 16 classes, and I have rules for creation of a class that prevent it from becoming too much like any other class, and I have no subclasses -- but I am doing all of that with the same basic 5e systems using the special abilities and such that allows a character to build something impressive and distinct, even if it dos have some things in line with others, it will never be another class.
The rules have layers to them -- pure mechanics, mixed mechanics and flavor (class, race, anything that deals with the setting), and then pure setting. In the sense that what the published works provide is a baseline, a simplification of large ideas and a common level of familiarity, yes. But at the same time, if they push into the main rule books those distinct permutations and say "this is the way", they discourage folks from branching out beyond the published settings (which are, as you noted, kinda meant for anything to be any way).
In short, it is generic fantasy because in order to maximize the life of the object, it needs to be generic. Familiar. Easy to digest, to grasp, to understand (hence the influence of video games from the players side, not the devs). For folks who just want the generic stuff and then want a special cool version of Faerun or Eberron (or however many settings they have right now, lol) and want to be able to do it like a video game, well, DDB and the upcoming VTT are the tools for that. And if they pump too much of that into the core rules outside those sources, well, folks like you and I who have decades are going to go away and the heart of the game will die, because the heart of the game is still *our* creativity, not theirs.
And if that comes across as a kind of odd defense, well, that's because I want the core game to stick around, I think their business model should be "core game free, custom worlds not", and they should be punching hard on empowering and picking up creative word building -- with less focus on "this is everywhere" and more on "this is here". But they don't pay me, don't even know who tf I am, lol, and I don't use more than a smattering of their stuff.
Dark Sun wasn't ever going to be a big enough market to justify the investment, but what they don't realize is that after what, 40 years of building off Greenwood's work, they have a crap ton of potential merch *and it is generic*, and they could be creating a crapton of merch that isn't. And Sun could have been that -- still could be -- if they start really giving it a build out and license it properly. I mean, freaking Bionicle exists, and that captured an entire generation that now wants to put bionicle into the D&D game. They can pull it off if they get into the right mindset.
The underlying imbalance between DM and Player stuff -- I agree, but like I said, I am an old lady who is fussy and grumpy and the kids I play with are loving that superheroes thing. Watching a 10 year old grow over three years while playing the same character and watching how they change in play style as they grow is shocking and rewarding and so different from my own nostalgia tinged memories of my teen years doing the same thing.
But it also taught me (more so than years of running open games where anyone could come in with any character and having groups of 15 to 20 playing) that the real job of a DM isn't to be able to out power the players. It is to be able to let them be the heroes -- give them something to be heroic and super about. So I would say the big thing they need to do there is give more tools. They need to simplify and streamline the CR system, explain it better, make it more explicit and then make it the foundation for folks to go and have fun and do stuff with it, which they cannot do if they don't understand it.
That kinda defeats the VTT purpose, lol, but it just one of the ways in which a tool that works great for a computer game fails when applied to a direct personal game.
Mechanics-wise, I am closer to OSR than I am 5e, but I see 5e as a base on which to build -- like a kind of AD&D lite, or starter set, lol. And I don't mind admitting I yanked out my old 1e and 2e books just to add more stuff in.
It does to me. After a decade of not doing any dungeons (despite my love of them -- I was an OG Grimtooth's user, lol) I whipped up the simplest setting I have ever done, and it was centered around a dungeon. Seven months of dev work, years of play. And it still had entire side story arcs and exploration and more. Took them through 20 levels. Mostly straight 5e. Mostly.
And magic items were a big part of that. They just suddenly became a different sort, and required a lot more work, because the characters didn't need a ring of invisibility by level 10, and by level 20 they thought they were akin to gods. Didn't work out that way.
But yes, we had magic items and they made a difference -- but that limits player feels, and a lot of those magic items are being downshifted to "everyday magic" and they never did come up with a decent way to keep monty hauls out of the game. Too many variables.
--------------------------------
telling complex, interesting stories in a generic world is easy. Telling them in a world that is crafted to the story is much more cinematic, more theatrical, moore enriching and rewarding for DMs and Players, and that's where I see a lot of the disconnect.
For a lot of folks disconnecting the rules & mechanics from the setting is hard. Hell, for WotC it's hard, because they include an optional rule for using spell points and then freaking ignore it forever after. They stub in psionics and then bury it as just magic with a different name. But those kinds of things are mechanically linked to the setting.
Kurtz's Deryni stories couldn't be told in D&D 5e, unless you block everything and make new subclasses and only allow certain spells and then you'd still have to create them. A lot of modern day paranormal fiction operates on the idea of the caster only having so much "energy" to cast spells with -- and if you are going to do that, then spell slots don't work. I was asked to have a zoom call about someone who wanted to do a conan style world (i chuckled) and they couldn't figure out how to make magic work in one be ause you can't do that kind of stuff in D&D -- it is too big.
COmbat, environment, sociocultural stuff, psychosocial elements -- all of the are fine. But a lot of the stuff to make a character is dependent on having a function of the world that supports that race or that class. I mention above how I solved for Rangers by redoing Druids -- because the default archetype for Druids simply has no basis on my setting, so I had to come up with something that worked, and what I got used elements from four different subclasses to create a more grounded, more real sense of what would otherwise be called a Shaman (unless, like me, you are overly educated and aware of the issues around the use of the word shaman).
Monks are the same way -- what if there is no special place or school for them to learn these arts at? Sorcerers? What if wild magic is something that affects everyone, and wizards are the metamagic users? What if Warlocks don't have all the options for a patron, and didn't you need some kind of elementalist anway?
Each of these different things is attractive in some way to some segment of the larger playing population -- and that's where the bland comes from. Yes, the published settings are generic. They needed to be to get the game this far.
I think they need to start expanding them, even if the history of trying to do so was an utter failure the last time they tried to do it. They keep making the core rules bigger, but that just changes the core rules for all the published settings and creates issues for WotC like the damn OGL stuff -- but they can overcome a lot of that by putting it into custom settings, where if they are tied into that setting, then things become much more "controllable" from an IP standpoint (meaning the corp masters are happy) and much more interesting for the different segments of the audience at large.
It isn't blandness so much as it is the baseline, the minimums. They need to create things that expand meta-possibilities instead of focusing on how to refine things down to a handful of interchangeable settings that are not bad settings, they are just minimalist ones.
They need to stop encouraging mediocrity (no in the bad sense, but in the meaning of "conforming to the least common denom") and start encouraging creativity. More "how to", and then a way to feature the work much like they have for the whole homebrew stuff here.
If anything, the homebrew system, however deeply tied tot he traditional settings it is, is perhaps the most incredibly part of the site. Because it allows us to share all the things we do ourselves.
My predictions for this next iteration haven't changed. What I would like to see is them to keep D&D alive, even if it does shrink in market size. Hell, a 33% marketshare would still be fine and is likely the worst case scenario (they currently still have well above double that), but they can take it beyond a "cottage industry" model if they chose.
Once I finish this dang setting and rule set for it, I will be putting it out there for free myself -- and I make no bones about it being D&D even if it doesn't look like it to some people. I tweak it constantly even as I keep developing it, and I do so knowing that it will never be something that will work with a VTT.
So over half the market will never even want to deal with it. Because that's how it is going. And I won't be selling it through marketplaces or anythign else because i would be sharing it for the love of the effort.
But if I had to make it my living, I would do a lot of things differently.
Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
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Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
What you are talking about here is kind of the underlying issue with the game. The problem is that different people want different types of fantasy. This is why you have different settings, some are about kingdom management and being rulers like Birthright, some are about going on epic, Lord of the Rings like quests and leading armies like Dragonlance, others are about solving mysteries, being detectives and working a case like Eberron, others still like Mystara or Dark Sun are about are low powered heroics, survival and grit.
None of these things exist anymore in modern D&D. There is one type of fantasy in D&D, power fantasy.. that's it there are no other options unless you go outside of official D&D to seek them out. Right now D&D is winning because it so happens that the power fantasy is all the rage and so the audience is big, but fads have a way of starting abruptly and ending abruptly and unfortunately, Wizards of the Coast has done a lot of damage to their settings at this point. Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance in particular are absolutely ruined, they are unrecognizable at this point. I mean I read the Dragonlance book and honestly, there was almost nothing about it that separated it from Forgotten Realms, it was generic gibberish.
Very much so, though I should point out:
"those darn kids, coming in here and making everything about them!"
mostly because if I am not laughing at my own foibles, I am missing the joke.
And that is why the vtt and even DDB itself aren't for everyone. They are for the folks who want to be that way, which is, without question, the overwhelming majority of Players.
Not DMs. Players.
Since at least 1977, there has been a sense of antagonism between Players and DMs, and the game as it is designed right now leans in favor of players, whereas in the older editions it leaned in favor of DMs.
This is also part of why I say they need to start producing more non-generic settings and dropping their sub-classes and special abilities there, in a way that *doesn't* work well for places like Faerun and Eberron.
I mean, if you take out Vance, Tolkien, Moorcock, deCamp, Pratt, Leiber, HPL, and Merrit from the game's underlying basis, you suddenly have to look a LOT more closely at a lot of the conventions that are used, and you suddenly need new mechanics and new approaches that do not fit in with the multiverse basis they have right now that enables Spelljammer.
Each of them supplied what became a core mechanic and the basis for it. Without them, the mechanic becomes unmoored and now you have to see if you really need it, or if it needs to change.
But also, by doing that, D&D -- which essentially created the default, generic fantasy setting as it is understood today -- suddenly gains the ability to start monetizing something other than just more core rule books, and can (in the eyes of hasbro) start to develop new IP setups. That, in turn, will preserve the game as a whole, and still enable them to develop new iterations of core rules -- although with more of that construction kit (structuralist) type set up that will support Dms while retaining the feature freedom for players.
Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
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Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Thats the thing. Publishers are taking 5e and other D&D rules systems and making unique settings, stylized sub-sets of rules and supporting unique playstyles, it's just that Wizards of the Coast is not one of them.
They only support a sub-set of the D&D community and while D&D is popular, its not so popular that it doesn't have competition and its bottom line is a lot bigger than most RPG companies out there. I mean Paizo has a couple of bad quarters its no big deal, Hasbro has a bad quarter and they lose half a billion dollars.
I guess I'm wondering if Wizards of the Coast can really ignore this other aspect of fantasy role-playing market that is capturing frustrated D&D players who are looking for something a bit more interesting than super hero power fantasy.
I guess time will tell.
Zero Argument from me. I like exploration and survival style games, as a strictly personal preference, and despite my love of using dungeons, lol.
the particulars around Dragonlance are, well, fascinating, as gossip and BTS stuff, but the end result is a bowdlerizing of a distinctive world that I may not have liked much, but was built around an epic story all by itself. Hell, egg of the Phoenix is still one of my fave modules, and it was in between the Ravenloft and dragonlance stuff. And Ravenloft is still very much stuck in the same -- the official rules for it call for the use of Sanity as a score, yet you cannot even include sanity in DDB.
With the 90's era emphasis on settings being blamed (instead of poor fiscal management) for the weakness in the game during that time and the later failure of 4e, there has been very little interest on their part to truly develop beyond these very basic, very much interchangeable worlds. I think it was you who pointed out the have been strip mining the past -- the 1e and 2e era of serious module work -- and since they have pretty successfully done that I am seeing more creative stuff coming out.
mercer's stuff has forced them to take another look at stuff outside -- the fame is a problem, perhaps, but if they can look there, they look at other sources.
There's hope.
Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
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Perhaps, but I'm hedging my bets on modern designers and modern publishers, rather than official WotC sources when it comes to who will produce fresh and new creative content going into the future.
I mean initially for example when I looked into Dolmenwood I was sort of like.. meh.. another OSR homebrew, but then I watched some of the youtube content and read the early release stuff and it was sort of like ... wow. I mean, no one at Wizards of the Coast even has the talent to produce something this good even if they decided they wanted to. It is simply beyond their skill. Perkins, Crawford and Mearls combined have less talent than the average D&D enthusiast so I would not hold my breath that they will surprise us anytime soon.
The same is true with Flee Mortals, I mean, MCDM effectively fixed D&D 5e with that book by making monsters actually fun to fight. It is like next-level good, far beyond anything WotC could ever even conceive.
The real professionals, the real artists in this business have all abandoned Wizards of the Coast long ago. All that is left are former game designers who sold out and became social justice warriors.
If WotC can produce something I'm willing to pay for in the next 5 years I will eat my hat, but I'm not holding my breath.
Flee, Mortals makes every official D&D monster book look embarrassingly bad. The amount of intentional creativity and sheer fun behind the monsters in Flee, Mortals (and their accompanying mechanics/traits) should make any reader of it immediately ask "Why the f**k wasn't the Monster Manual like this?"
Its a good question and while I would first point out that there is a shortage of talent in WotC in general, which has to do with their hiring practices, that is just a surface issue. I think it has more to do with the fact that they spend entirely too much time listening to their audience's solutions, notably an audience that is not made up of game designers and too little time listening to their audience's complaints, their actual problems.
I see this in my work as well, I'm an IT guy, I work as a solution architect and in my work when someone is describing a problem to me, almost always they are also giving me a solution in the process. The thing is the people who are giving me their problem, god love them all, don't know the first bloody thing about IT work, they are in effect worse than clueless, yet they are demanding and truly believe that it's their job to provide a solution that I should implement. Almost always they are completely wrong about the solution, but their problem is real and it's my job as a solution architect to solve the problem, not to listen to their solution and implement it, but to listen to their problem and find a professional solution to that problem.
This is the approach Matt Colville and MCDM took to solving the problem of D&D combat, namely the balance issues and fun factor of monsters in combat. They didn't reach out to their audience to ask them what they think they should do, they asked them what problems they were having, they observed the problems themselves and worked on a design that addressed those issues. There were no surveys, Matt never asked anyone outside of his design team what they thought they should do. They are professional game designers, they did their job and designed a book that solved the problems players were having.
Yeah. I've come to the conclusion that the survey approach WOTC is taking is a mistake. The most they should've done is solicit how folks think 5E is broken, and then gone to work on fixing that and anything else they decided could be improved based on almost ten years of field testing and experience.
that office isn't set up to produce fresh new ideas. it's there to curate the brand. wizards of the coast is a bunch of employees hired to do a job. a bunch of well-meaning people all doing as little wrong as possible and keeping their dreams within bounds. it's like a big, clean, quiet museum with a flurry of activity at the gift shop.
I am compelled to disclose that I am pretty much the ultimate social justice warrior.
Not only am I part of multiple different communities that exist in an area of sociolegal opprobrium, I am one of those people who actually teaches critical race theory (and laughs at the way it is used by some), and my field in general is literally the basis of "social justice", as I am a sociologist and psychologist who works professionally in the area of human rights and diversity. In short, I can count more laws being written up against me (life and work) in the US right now than I have fingers, toes, limbs and sensory organs combined.
And I went down that path because of D&D. The creative aspects of D&D led me to learn ever more about the things I wanted to create, and presto, one day I woke up and said I hated academia (proper) and after a decade in it I wanted to do something real.
You can now insert the darkwing duck monologue here if you would like.
All of which I mention because that isn't a knock except to a certain segment of the player base, and that segment is not one that generally sticks to D&D overall (and certainly not among the younger generations).
Now, I have said that, and I want you to think about my prior statements as well. The issue of "are they creative enough"? Well, probably -- but they also are in a bubble there. Bubbles and the pressures of business needs tend to collide heavily into a space of where the minimalist crap is minimalist.
I haven't liked the direction of the game since about halfway through the 2e era, lol, but that's because of bad biz decisions and poor timing and all that stuff. They at least kept the game alive and growing. WHich is what matters a lot -- especially since they are the default. Without the default,t hee would be none of those other third party products -- hell, look at the calamities of Judges guild and Mayfair and flying buffalo, who were all in the same places these others are in now.
Yes, the times have changed the size of the market is larger, the shares are bigger, but beneath all of that they are all still dependent on D&D in terms of the economic forces around it.
I don't think it is a matter of "social justice" that is the problem. That's a cop out. A way to hand wave something else, like the notion of "common sense" or a Dm who hasn't time to explain why the lich being faced seems to have broken the rules about how to become a lich.
No, it is because people don't like to lose the jobs they love, and the folks we are talking about tend to all fit a certain demographic base and so their creativity output is likely as limited as you say by that needs and pressures of that job, the tradition and history of the game, and the demands of those players who are anything but like us.
Thank heavens none of them are development anymore, only admin, right?
Wait, no, nevermind, scratch tha
Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
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Ok, just snagging the bits I wanted to address here.
1. First of all, I never said as a DM that you're supposed to overpower the players. That's not good DM'ing. You SHOULD challenge your players though. Being superman is only fin for five minutes. It's like when you're a child, learning a game and realizing that the adult teaching you is basically letting you win.
That's the feeling D&D fosters with its mechanics as they are, or at least that's what any player who actually wants to step beyond the childish wish fullfillment. (I could speak volumes on how everyone's reverted to the morality and drive of five years olds, but that's a diatribe on society that I don't really feel like getting in to).
The goal is to give enough challenge and enough threat that you COULD die to make it challenging and fun within the challenge. If my players are looking pretty close to death, I can "kill" them and just say they were knocked out and dragged somewhere where they get a chance again, or something.... But the fact that there was actually a bit of doubt that they might lose... That's an important tool within the DM's box that the system removes through overpowering players and underpowering the DM's monsters.
2. theatrics is important, and to some they can't homebrew or storycraft or setting craft. I know I can, you probably can, and maybe OSR here can, but even in the DM forum I can see that there are people who struggle....
And the published content is great for that. But more setting guides and more original adventures rather than retreads of retreads that have existed since first edition. In the past 40-50 years they really have such a hard time coming up with new content?
3. That's kinda what I was alluding to. Give us our rule books and guides in print, etc. but there's a huge wasted opportunity with D&D Beyond and even to a degree the "One D&D" branding where they COULD have it work as just a general repository or the rules system, with customizable classes where you have lists of standardized feats/level options that the DM can put into a set format so that you can very easily create your own "rule books" for your own campaigns. A master spell list with an easy "pick and choose" options for your to customize the entirety of what your classes can have access to within you setting. Lean into the customization for DM's, and make it stupid easy for them to share "*their* unique worlds and lists. Meanwhile, you can print out unique PHB's and DM source books that are half monster manual and half flavor guide for existing IP worlds and whatever new worlds they wish to run. The current rule set would be the "Ur-D&D" or "OneD&D" that would be both the repository for all official play pieces, for which to use to craft the sub-games. MY cheap ass would actually pay for that kind of tool set rather than screwing around with janky half baked excel spreadsheets off the internet
Give us easy dungeon crafting tools, and honestly, the user generated content will feed itself.
Of course that's all very VERY wishful thinking...
EDIT a few points I missed/forgot.
The third party publisher/hasbro antagonism has to stop. I'm sorry, but publishing a third party source book should (and the anti-intellectual property part of me is SCREAMING here), somehow be willing to give a 1-2% cut for the license, OR, WotC should be trying to be more open about creating a way to submit homebrew content and buying the publishing rights to it.(hasbro publishes it and pays the creator 1-2%)
That whole uproar over the open license was BS, especially by youbtubers whom are more than happy to let big daddy youtube/google take a MASSIVE cut for the use of their platform and pay them fractions of a fraction of a penny to show ads, and are far more "cease and desist" friendly to corporate sponsors.
But then, back to what I said about everyone having the morality of a 5 year old. Hasbro was a bit of a jerkface about how they went about it too...
Critical role also needs to stop being referenced as some "renegade small group" Maybe their first few years, but they're a full fledged corporate entity in their own right, and with now 2 game systems of their own and merchandising and an amazon deal? They're pretty much everything hasbro is and more...
2. You a "Social justice warrior"? would have never guessed from your response from the species problem... (I also assumed you didn't get the edits I did back then. I am NOT one to side with the group, but its a matter or how ferverent others are, and how that dedication can blind them... I'm not a conservative type by any stretch of the imagination either).
I don't see the changes being enough to declare that D&D has a social agenda, but I DO say they're seeing their demographics shift and are virtue signalling the shit out of whatever they can... for profit.... just like everyone else.
But honestly, it's fantasy. If you aren't used to gender exploration or swapping, or alternative lifestyles including polygamy, homosexuality, and so on.... Ungh.... you haven't read much from... well... any of the years D&D has been a thing...
You did not ever say that and I apologize if it seems like implied or stated you did. well over half the questions I see here in the forums and then that I get from young Dms who reach out (and seriously, I wonder why? I mean, I've met me, I wouldn't) are that kind of thing, though, where they feel that antagonist role overwhelming them.
Much like OSrR I am of the "well, they feel like they wanna die, let them die" variety. I have what I think are relatively few TPKs (since I started tracking in early 90's, fewer than 10), but I also don't like to pull out a deus ex machina unless it is key for the players (for whatever reason of personal investment). Death has to be on the table -- especially early and especially in a new campaign, so you can show the stakes.
But there are worse things than dying. AMong them being railroaded, but ganging a party that just gave itself to you can sometimes be a good team building exercise. Yeah, that's it.
So, Wizards was never big to begin with, in terms of employees, and the D&D section isn't with Hasbro, plus the corporate culture thing and, well, to be blunt, the kinda weird videos they've been making of late...
... yeah, that probably is all they could do so far, between top town thinking, limited resources, and so forth. Remember that in early days, most of the modules produced were slush pile efforts. They reached *outside* the core group to get stuff. The early contract with Judges Guild, the original CSOTIO, the much more open to the community fo players and DMS stuff, hell even Dungeon and Dragon mags. There was a lot of "close to" "almost direct" and direct release material from folks outside the bubble of the core team.
Honestly, I am *shocked* to see the Mercer based third party world released -- that's the kind of thing they need to do more of. Dragonlance and Ravenloft were pitches from outside TSR -- hell, so was freaking Faerun from Greenwood.
Do I think they have the talent in-house to handle it? No. They could, though. But Wizards has been a "we'll do it ourselves" kind of company from the start, and while I don't know Hasbro's corp culture, I don't think it is supportive of external input without really key reason (like Critical Role, lol). And to the points raised earlier, yeah, that is a major part of why they screwed up 4e and why 3e spawned so much secondary material outside of their control. Wizards is not good at D&D, even if MTG did start out as a D&D game.
But they do get mechanics. But also, they are a bunch of players, not DMs. Or at least, that's how it seems to me. See that Hero Player thing again.
I gasped when I read this:
I mean, I came to DDB hoping it would be that kind of thing. I have never tried to articulate it before, and you did a bang up job on describing exactly what I would like to see. For the last three months I have been futzing around with my class mix and structure, and the end result is a group of classes that works, a massive list of Special abilities that people can choose from (that does not contain special abilities in use by the classes), master spell lists by type of magic -- something I laughed about when I saw the doing it with the UA, and some shifts in different areas so that I could still use the 5e basis, but avoid the subclass and class blending problem while still giving away the ability to craft your own take on something.
I would add to that "if a rule is optional, include that in the set up" -- I had to redo magic because I wanted to do a spell point system -- and ended up with a damage from spells structure that is more uniform and dependent on both spell level and caster level. Something already in place would have been nice.
All of that, of course, meant I had excuses to mess with a bunch of everything else, but it is more along the lines of 1e/2e adaptations to 5e stuff.
Like you, I do not expect such a thing to come to pass. If they did that in both DDB and the VTT (which are linked together near as I can tell), then damn, they would have a killer system. Especially if they want to compete with Roll20 and WorldAnvil and that kind of thing where those are features you can do.
As it is, all I can use DDB for is the forums, the news, and the repository for when I play (and I do use it, though with new monsters and different stats, nothing I make can be used within it).
That would give them the "more settings" piece, too -- and bring back that slush pile. They could monitor and watch and see what was really popular and then make offers. I mean, not that my stuff would be all that popular, and I wouldn't be as cheap as Greenwood, but I wouldn't be pricey as all hell, either.
Not sure a "print on demand" is feasible, but a PDF it that folks can print at home? hell yeah. My game book would drop from a thousand pages to under 300 if they did that.
Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
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Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Did I say print on demand?
I was TOTALLY thinking pdf, with standardized template blocks and a repository of images (some creative commons, some D&D specific "extras" hell, even if they wanted to give you, the user access to some of their curated AI images based on their repository, that would be fine), so you can design a handbook like you might a Squarespace webpage.
Convert to PDF for a $5 monthly fee for you to waste your own printer ink OR, for a nominal monthly fee, you can direct share it in the existing DDB to your fellow players.
Create your own world for the annual "planes of the multiverse gala" contest, where the best unique setting (your custom PHB and DMG) can win the chance to be published by WotC and author gets 1-2% royalties on the copies sold. Monthly submissions for best adventure/dungeon, and a $1.99 download/for your DM to get the story and maps.
As a fellow social justice warrior, I'm sure you will relate when I say, do the work, be right and let your actions stand on their own as an example. That makes one a true, honest social justice warrior.
As soon as you seek validation and notoriety, you cease to be part of the solution and become part of the problem. Social justice is about doing the right thing, not about politics. Corporations like Wizards of the Coast, have absolutely no interest in righting wrongs if no one notices, for them, social justice is a political-business move done for publicity, not the act of someone who actually cares. They proclaim themselves a "diverse company", meanwhile the entire executive branch of Wizards of the Coast is 100% white people because you know... diversity hire is one thing, letting "them/us" actually run the company and have decision-making powers.. we can't have that.
The main reason Wizards of the Coast can't produce anything good, in particular so far as settings go is because they, being the leadership of the company think diversity means "everything has to be in there so no one is left out". Which is frankly... stupid.
Creativity and diversity is born from celebrating differences not pretending they don't exist. Until they actually let loose young creative minds and let them release something without passing through "sensitivity experts", they aren't going to produce anything worth the ink it's printed on.
D&D was once edgy, sometimes it had questionable taste and even tasteless art but you can't argue with how intriguing settings like Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim, The Horde, Mystara, Maztica and much more were. These were wild and unique settings that borrowed from countless real-world cultures, putting twists on them, challenging players with thought-provoking morale dilemmas, and they wrote into these books harsh realities of real feeling fantasy settings. Like I won't defend TSR racist crap they did, but between those occasional slip-ups was a lot of really amazing fantasy content and we have not seen anything of its like coming out of Wizards of the Coast and probably never will again. Not because their is a lack of potential of something good coming out of its doors, but it's never going to get past the white wall of decision-making that governs and decides for everyone what is and isn't appropriate, built on the back of this fake social justice image they have created for themselves.
While official D&D is producing bland, washed-out and hollow versions of settings that were once great, the OSR is producing D&D settings like Arrows of India, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Blades in the Dark, Numenera, Dolmenwood and so much more. Truly unique, interesting, provocative and original settings produced by the next generation of D&D designers. Why the hell are these people not producing for Wizards of the Coast?
Now see, I was trying to be nice with my "all one demographic" note, and then you went out there and laid it flat out, lol.
That is indeed the biggest problem they have, and part of why I say they need to go back to slush piles. Not that TSR was any better (though they did unexpectedly get a Trans woman and some gay men in there) in terms of product or grasp of the situation, but part of the reason for all of that is the ame drive that pushes Disney to do all the varied versions -- yes, there is pandering, but if you pander and don't understand who you pander to, it does not succeed like an Encanto or a Coco or a Moana, lol.
And that is the problem at the heart of it -- as demonstrated, the levels of fragility are pretty high internally, and the way of seeing the world and the product is through a very narrow lens that makes itself STUNNINGLY obvious when you look at FR and Eberron and Dragonlance and Ravenloft and...
They are terrified after the debacle that we are still dealing with around ASIs for race (while ignoring the rest of it) and switching to "species" -- because to re-examine that whole thing is entirely outside their whole ability to get their heads around.
The reason they use "sensitivity experts" -- people like me -- is that they know that they have an issue and for business purposes they can't risk the fallout that would come from releasing an unexamined Al-Qadim or Maztica (surprisingly, Kara-tur was not all that bad) today, when the population of people who play the game is known to not be the same kind of people who are in charge of it right now.
And most of those people are the growth area.
I loved Maztica. Al-Qadim was, um, a major problem in some ways, even though the heart of it was still the same core that gave us Aladdin and "Prince of Persia" (and, well, even the first cartoon was wa problematic, but the live actions films mentioned were properly panned, despite underneath both lies a great story. It was the blindness that is present among the same folks we are talking about that led to those failures).
I just got done saying I could do Dark Sun in a different thread, and the same applies for all of them. Hell, I would love to do them, lol. I wouldn't be cheap, mind you, but one thing that is distinct about me as opposed to most folks who do that sensitivity work is that I have all the credentials and shit and mam more than just someone who gets a bit of it. I get crap from DEI pros because I look at deeper stuff, and the reason I do is because I play D&D, and D&D was the reason I studied the things I studied.
The point is that a lot of it is overreaction -- on the part of the "everyday person" as well as on the part of the "corporate execs". That "fretful worry" is literally part of the problem and a sign that they have issues themselves, but that's not what to look at, because that's something the have to deal with themselves.
They need a different kind of sensitivity experts -- the kind who have deep knowledge and who are deeply, personally familiar with the cultures they are bringing to life, or that can take an idea alient to western eyes and make it more conventionally useful and separate from the source. They have a wonderful "in-game" example of it that has been around since just before 1e, as well, to stud and look at without having to get into the issues of appropriation that they don't understand:
The Druid.
the history of the Druid's creation, development, and general existence is a perfect example of how one steps around a lot of the problematic stuff and gets to the meat that sounds good and fun and isn't all that crap I said (which is why I noted "strictly"). I cod make a very similar argument about the barbarian -- and these are classes. But to grasp it without getting all angry about how it is an important part and yada yada one has to understand a lot of stuff that the society we live in is still trying to keep alive on a daily basis is harmful and wrong and who has time for that, right?
For Wyrlde (my next campaign) I remade the Druid as a combination and blend of West African, "west indies", nomadic steppe, and related groups cultural role of a person who western science and study has called variously witch doctor, shaman, druid, houdon, voodoo, and more. I linked them to spirits of the world and in terms of D&D, they picked up several of the special abilities of certain Barbarian subclasses and some related stuff. The lost the wildshape, and became a bit less "nature" and a bit more "feral", lol. They are more closely linked to Bards and Witches than Rangers (who picked up the wildshape, lol), since they are also historians and seers. I took the barbarity out of Barbarians, and yet I still have a class that is obvious barbarian -- Vanguards, who shift to more of a gladiator vibe.
Those are two examples, and ones that matter because the spirits that are involved with Druids are as present and as dangerous in the world as the undead are -- but, like the spirits of focus, can be helpful and useful and will even make bargains (giving a Druid a touch of Warlock). This is to say that they *fit into the world* in the way that the original Oriental Adventures (a title that is problematic of itself, lol) presented classes and peoples as fitting into that world. I was kinda disappointed (much liek you mentioned previously for your own moments) when they made it kara-tur and then sucked all of those creative and wonderfully creative efforts into corners of FR and said whatever.
Mystara is one of the more interesting realms -- and one that this groups *could* do if they a=wanted, but as I understand it there are some odd licensing things related to that, since it was a separate entity that was only licensed for use with the OD&D stuff, instead of AD&D, which used Gygax's Oerth. I could be wrong, as it has been a while since I did a dive into all that, though.
The obvious answer is to hire people who come from those backgrounds, who understand that -- to create teams (much like they did for the Black Panther films, especially in regards the Atlantean stuff they did). Was it perfect and without flaw? No. But nothing ever is, and the little bit of concern they did get was considered minor even by experts like me who kinda went "meh".
Even in my field, the Rule of Cool applies -- it is the arbiter of cool that matters, and in these situations, the WotC team are the people who know they can't be that, and they want to be that for everything having to do with the game.
So they don't do it because they can't do it themselves, and what they are afraid of is that they have to give up that control and that "right of creation", because if they aren't needed, what the heck use does hasbro have for them?
Taldoriel is going to be interesting to watch, because it is more or less being forced on them by that combination of Mercer's loyalty to D&D, the size of the market share, and the desire to link to the first real D&D celebrity of note who wasn't a creator.
Ah well.
The real crux comes down to this:
These were not generic psuedo-medieval western fantasy settings. They were, like great books, incredibly different from what came before, and they did not draw from the same well as all the other books (even the original sourcebooks). Like I said: everyone who draws from the same well drinks the same water. There is more to that proverb, that maxim, than just talk about water.
The reason that the mainline D&D multiverse even can have rules written like sixteen gazillion kinds of elves that are all different is because all of the worlds in it draw from the same well, and that well is made up of the inspirations for the core game (and when we talk about elves, that means Tolkien, not Pini, lol). They put a ton of effort into that over years, and it is because that well is still perfectly fine but not one I am interested in drinking from any more, I can't ever use it.
There is a bitterness to its water, to me (and that bitterness is what we are talking around here).
I already said I totally agree with more strange new worlds, more brave new worlds, and what wonders await thereon, but that is going to take more than the folks at WotC have in their well, and they are not wanting to go taste from other wells because they worry about losing their own.
Forgetting, in my opinion, that it is always best to drink from many wells, lest one of them dry up. I learned that from D&D. Well, ok, and living in a desert most of my life, but still...
Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
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See, this is where there's an issue with "social justice" for me. Even within this context, it's very American-centric with American ideas of that west african /voodoo culture. The Ivory coast is not the same as Haiti, and a lot of the voodoo is syncretism with catholicism. None of that really vibes with the druid which is indeed shamanistic, but to give it a more authentic "voodoo" feel, (or even a hollywood voodoo feel) it would need MAJOR revisions , and divorcing it from it's nature worship roots and feel. You'd have far better luck "meeting in the middle" with something like Shinto, where you get natural spirits that can aid you.
Barbarians aren't "barbarous" in game, and although not a fan of the whole rage fighter, yeah, there's various types of fighters around the world that would use psych themselves up before fighting. They ARE based on greek depictions of celtic and nordic tribes, which fought with a ferocity that drove the Romans back. Even though the romans weren't fans, the vikings as well as the celts had a wonderfully rich history that would do just fine.
As for "Oriental"... It is offensive. but mostly to Americans. I had edited a manual for one of my jobs that a particular passage was written by a south african woman... That was delicate..
Then there was my time working for the Dane...I can't describe it as anything other than "innocent racism". It's horrifically racist depictions and things (at least to americans) with zero malice behind it.... Unless you witness it, there's just no explaining it.
Then there's the judgey Asian communities....Some of the most xenophobic cultures I have yet to see...but it's not displayed as you might expect.
But I digress.
My point is, even for your "diverse" world, you're still picturing it through the lens of your experience and your ideas of other cultures without really understanding them yourself
Ok then.
Bob_the _fish:
My long reply got marked as spam, so this is a shorter version.
Heard. I note that I wouldn’t say my world is diverse, by any stretch. Nor are those two examples of diversity, really.
I have had very much identical experiences in my career as you described.
I did and do use some elements of Shinto, and I did strip the Druid of the historic nature stuff, shifting it to rangers. Because of some professional stuff, I didn’t use the term Shaman, but it is a more accurate description in common parlance.
the game world I made came from suggestions of my players and a set of rules that started with no inspiration or sources from 1920 to 1980. I mean, I don’t consider having magical girls, gunslingers, monks who fight in mortal kombat, Jedi who patch the tears in time and space, and beings from the 8th Dimension “diversity”. I also wouldn’t call it a breath of fresh air compared to faerun or Eberron. I mean, it might not be the same well, but it sure is the same aquifer.
So yes, absolutely, there is a very USian/American basis for it. By design, even. I have a Chicago Mobster town. I have a dusty Wild West, a secretive place filled with bamboo and violence, a bunch of clockwork loving Romans, a russogermanic capital city, a magiocracy, and an Amazons-R-us tropical breadbasket. To start, lol. Over simplified, but yeah, not diverse.
when I talk about what I would do, it is based on an audience profile that would want it. And if I did a world that started with Loa who were meant to be Loa, most of the above wouldn’t exist. Probably. Because all of it is based in the core setting.
my examples are poor, meant to show a way to avoid certain risks that often come of such work. Mix well, as the package says.
Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
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Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
No worries. My point isn't to be a real criticism of the issue at hand, only a demonstration of the how the pitfalls and the whole Luke 6:41-46 verse problem that a lot of this suffers from.
The whole voodoo thing is interesting in itself, and I remember 20 years ago, picking up a book in high school about the African religions associated with "witch doctors". It was truly a fascinating read, and though just as American as you, Africa is a HUGE and diverse continent, it's a weird sticking point for me, because a lot of people in the US of various racial backgrounds, still tend to think of Africa as a unified black nation still lost in time, when there's egypt, the ivory coast, south Africa... You have Morocco and Uganda, and they're vastly different from Chad. And then to compound that with the fact that these nations are in fact very 20th century and a lot of people in the world are looking to towards the continent for the next china.
It's.... interesting to say the least.
So, my paternal grandmother was Malian, my paternal grandfather was Lakota (Sioux).
That study I mentioned I just finished? For Sudan. I am not a "deepest, darkest Africa" sort, lol, and while I have never walked in the Sudan, I have walked in the Sahara, traded tales of the nommo, and learned the arts of one of my many heritages and what my role is.
Part of the reason that I put a shaman in was that one of my longest term players -- whom I have had as a player since my very first time DMing in 1979 -- asked me to do something akin to my role when I do visit "home". Since that word is in quotes because I have three sides to reconcile, it gets interesting with the whole finding a path.
I am most familiar, intimately, with Dogon traditions, and Yoruba (which is where about 70% of the non-christianized basis for Vodou comes from) and igbo are familiar. Hausa gets a bit dicey, but is ok. I really fail once you get to the more isolative cultural groups, but having at least a familiarity with Hausa and Yoruba gives me a good in among all of it (as well as the varietals of islam, of course, and the SB training always comes in handy, even if I am never going to be ordained, lol).
I know Africa well. I can no longer name all the nations, but I can usually do a run through on the top 15 cultures and their distinctions, lol.
I can say the same of South America, but only down to the pampas regions -- much of southern SA is out of my AoE. I have a deep knowledge of about 90 southern Pacific/Indian ocean populations because of my work in 'Nesian cultures. I am worse than most when it comes to everything north of malaysia, south of Nepal, east of India, and west of China, lol. So not uite all of SE Asia, but the bulk of it. Those I leave to some colleagues. I have a bit more than passable knowledge on crossroads nations, and I am familiar with the Steppe regions that flow into the Cradle regions. Weak on Slavic, strong on Danube. Pinay is out of my area.
In short, yeah, I've got the stuff to do it, but I am not foolish enough to think i am anything but an USian -- a term for Americans that is equal parts critical and declaratory.
And all of it (except my specific skill in predictive modeling) is directly a result of my playing D&D and being the person of complex background and nature that I am. More D&D since I used the creation of fictional worlds as my base motivation -- figuring out why people were so damn mean was secondary.
Funny enough, I have historically avoided using Egyptian anything. I have a strange aversion to all of it -- despite my original sponsor at the UN being a member of the Egyptian delegation, lol. I am not well versed in their current cultural state, and I never went pre-ptolemaic in my history beyond basic core timeline stuff. I will use Nubian, but not egyptian. Only just realized that now.
Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
Wyrlde.com
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Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds