Dungeons & Dragons turns 50 this year, and there’s a lot planned for it
Dungeons & Dragons turns 50 this year, and there’s a lot planned for it
It started with "a new line of miniatures rules" and became a global phenomenon.
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WOTC is an evil company that is trying to milk D&D fans for all of their money as they tank their product quality. Highly recommend people who want to play D&D explore one of the several other fantasy rpg systems that are out there.
I cannot stress this enough. They are owned by Hasbro. Last year was a massive win for both Dnd and Magic the Gathering yet they still layed off thousands of the people that made this possible. Even Sven Wincke of Larian who developed Baldur's Gate 3 said he couldn't even properly thank the DnD people he worked with because they were gone short after release. BG3 is probably the best game of the decade if not more and MTG is more popular than ever yet the people making them still get fired. Meanwhile, Hasbro and WOTC CEO's personally made millions in salary and bonuses.
So no, you are not supporting workers and artists by buying their products. You are proving them right.
Between that and the OGL shitshow, I've been doing my best to stop giving them money. I'll even see new merch and think to myself "man if only WotC had just stfu, I would totally buy that".
I've already invested a ton of money into many different RPGs over the past year though, and Free League Publishing is by my far my favorite new publisher.
Unfortunately, not a lot of people are that involved in the game to care about OGL and its ramifications. Most only want to play what they've seen in Stranger Things or Critical Role, they don't give a fuck about the rent people they watch and like have to pay to WotC. I believe that's what Hasbro is banking on. They will not back out of OGL1.1 as they knew some more hardcore players would criticize them. But the way news and stories are consumed nowadays, they also knew this would quickly get buried by the unending stream of "information" people consume and ultimately be entirely forgotten or ignored. Most people don't care about businesses practices if it doesn't affect them directly. Mix that with the crazy amount of IP crossovers they made in the last couple of years and you start to see how they are setting up a model so basically anyone who's tempted to try table top gaming will most likely be funnelled into their ecosystem.
That may be partially true, but I think those that got into DnD from Stranger Things, Critical Role, etc., will either not stick with TTRPGs or stick with them long enough to eventually discover other games. Especially considering Critical Role is working on and actively showing other systems.
I've played for maybe 15 years since 3.5e, and in my experience, the few that seemed more adamant about sticking to DnD are the older players that have been with it since AD&D. Players my age or younger (that I've encountered) seem to be more open to at least trying other games. And the OGL is the biggest reason why I started branching out more, and I try to tell that to anyone that brings up TTRPGs in conversation.
The hardest part I've found is finding others willing to GM said other games.
But with all that said, Fuck Hasbro. You just had to be (obstructively) greedy.
Agreed, and in my bias toward them I will shamelessly mention the MCDM RPG that's currently in development. They are very open and showcasing their process, and I think their attitude not only regarding TTRPGs but also in terms of business practices is very healthy and commendable.
Yes, MCDM is a great one. Also recommend Pathfinder 2e if you want something that exists today.
Always been a much bigger fan of Steve Jackson Games and GURPS
GURPS people always recommend it but never explain why. What's actually good about it compared to something like Pathfinder 2e? It seems to me it would be really hard to find players. With Pathfinder I can at least tell my players it shares a legacy with D&D so they were receptive to switching systems.
Is there anything GURPS does particularly well over other systems? I know hardly anything about it. With PF2e there are a few easy-to-rattle-off features that drew me to it like the three action economy and better tools for game balancing as a GM.
GURPS has two letters that I think are the best: Generic and Universal. You can run anything in it and switch it up as much as you want. You could run campaigns similar to any of Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, Sliders, Brisco County Jr, Walking Dead, Harry Potter, etc., and have the ability to do crossover episodes.
I can see how that would be a selling point for a lot of groups, but most D&D-style rpg players I've played with don't really think about RPGs as a way of playing in cinematic universes that aren't relatively generic fantasy. Even my slightly steampunk-ish 1800s-style homebrew setting that I used for D&D and now use for PF2e often throws my players for a loop.
Edit: also, Starfinder 2e is coming soon and is planned to be built in the same mechanical system as PF2e, meaning that the two systems will be compatible. So that idea of a generic system for different genres of fiction is not going to be as unique.
Ok, then it's not for you and you don't really have to make a counter point.
Yeah I just always wondered what the draw was. Is it really just that it doesn't have a set genre? Because that honestly seems like a relatively small list of killer features compared to being able to say that "it's really well balanced" or "combat feels really fun" or something like that. It's not as though it's hard to reflavour the mechanics of a D&D-style rpg to fit different kinds of fiction if you really want to. I've seen people use 5e as the backbone for lots of different kinds of genres. And like I said, Pathfinder will soon have Starfinder integrated so that will make things easier too.
Plus, SJG is a genuinely awesome company full of people who are really dedicated to the love of gaming. You don't feel like you're being exploited by fashion and capital. You feel like you're collaborating with your friends.
Yeah I'd say that's true of Paizo as well. Does GURPS release all of the game content under an open license like Paizo does?
Not all of the content (you're talking shelves and shelves of books) but the basic rules are free.
I don't know anything about Pathfinder but compared to even the TSR days of D&D, the culture is so much better around SJG, and it really shows in the quality and depth of the source books. They are absolutely amazing. The CIA confiscated early drafts of the Cyberpunk source book along with all their computer equipment, insisting, "This is real!" I learned so much as a kid about world religion from their primary Fantasy setting source book. The rules are very simple and elegant, exploiting the naturally occurring normal distribution provided by 3d6, which maps very well to the normal distribution of real life events and makes the plusses and minuses (or "adds" if you remember Tunnels and Trolls) a lot more meaningful, realistic, and interesting because +/-1 means something completely different in different situations.
What I appreciated most was the depth of character creation, while staying incredibly light weight. D&D always seemed like a video game where your character is nothing more than a class, some equipment and some basic stats, like it's specifically designed to produce dungeon grinds, and if you want to do anything else, that's up to the DM to figure out and mix in, but it's optional. With GURPS, you're designing an actual character in the literary sense, who has stories to explore and interests that necessarily interact with other character's interests. It's an actual role playing game.