I think most people who play D&D regularly own their own PHB. This has been the norm for as long as I’ve been playing, and even today, when I go to the local gaming store, the cool young kids are a tables with multiple copies of the PHB. And, come on, if they can’t be bothered to buy their own PHB they’re probably not going to care about the OGL or the Pinkertons.
Who? Pretty much everybody. But I’m not going to discount CR as it’s entirely possible they’re going to take a significant chunk of WotC’s customers. Despite claims that it was to protect the community from unsavory creators, the OGL change was an effort to preserve WotC’s hegemony, so I do think they worry a bit about the competition. They’re not worried about Call of Cthulhu or Deadlands, but they’re worried about D&D clones.
Yeah, and it kind of pisses me off because I feel like I’m being lied to. If I make a character using my 2014 book I’m not using the same rules as someone who uses Tasha’s or whatever the next version of the PHB is going to be. They’ve changed the way races work, I’m sorry, species, classes aren’t going to be exactly the same, and I’m sure some of the rules are changing. But, sure, my 2014 PHB is 100% compatible.
Yeah, I agree and I dunno. Maybe they’d release conversion stuff as UA or a free download but I don’t know how much they can do that without giving away the new book.
For Daggerheart though, the only RPG that’s come close to challenging D&D was Pathfinder and that was basically a reverse of the current situation. Pathfinder found purchase because you had a bunch of 3.5e players who still wanted to play 3.5e. Daggerheart is relying on NOT being beholden to the OGL which means it needs to be different enough from 5e (and 5.5e, etc) to be its own game. There’s already a ton of sword & sorcery games that “are their own game” and they all enjoy single digit or less slices of the pie.
I’ve never heard of Critical Role prior to this thread. And I bought a bunch of D&D source material a year or two ago. Do I represent a large market? Dunno. I think I represent a non-trivial market.
Well, none. That’s sort of the point: The company that owns the rights to the game could stop making it entirely, and people will still be playing it thirty years from now.
Dueling assertions don’t really prove much. In my experience, this is overstated, but I don’t think either of us has stats to back that up.
They also make a lot of money off their partnership with WotC. Matt Mercer’s published a couple 5th ed. sourcebooks. If CR drops 5th ed, can he take the material in those books with him, or does WotC own a stake in them now?
There’s a lot more room for indie games these days, it sounds like this is more them trying to tap that market, then to upset their entire business model by switching to a whole new rule system. I’m sure the new system will show up in one-shots and guest episodes, but I’d be surprised if they switch the main campaign over to it.
That’s true. There’s a lot of non-5e fantasy games ranging from OSR titles to completely different and unique systems. And many of them go on to put out a half dozen sourcebooks/modules or go on to a 2nd or 3rd edition. It’s entirely probably that Daggerheart will be a “success” in that people will play it and it’ll make money. I sincerely doubt that it’ll threaten D&D in any meaningful way. Heck, it might do more damage to Pathfinder as the default fantasy game to play when you don’t want to play D&D.
Yes, but they paid for a cartoon that they didn’t have to pay for. I never funded their kickstarter, and I watched it.
CR fans can be fanatical. They buy t-shirts and merch, I don’t know why they’d balk at game materials.
It’s one of the few campaign settings that people that never plan to DM own. Hell, I know people that don’t even play that own the Wildmount source book.
But yeah, Forgotten Realms has a whole lot more content, more modules and campaign settings.
Then there’s no reason to buy it.
I don’t know what that means. No one plays Critical Role, other than those on the stream. I never said anything about anyone being devoted to doing anything like that. I’m really having trouble parsing out what you are trying to say here.
OTOH, what I will say is that there are a number of people who are more familiar with the Wildmount setting than the Forgotten Realms setting, from watching Critical Role. I mean, I’ve played since the mid 90’s, mostly in Forgotten Realms, I’ve even run modules in it, and I couldn’t tell you squat about the place. I could probably name the 5 of the top cities, but I couldn’t place them on a map. I only casually watch CR, and I could tell you a whole lot more about it. Like I said, they have an amazing advertising platform to hawk their system.
We are talking about two different sets of players, and the point it to contrast it against WOTC’s actual money maker.
If I invite you to come play D&D with me, you don’t need to buy anything. I can lend you my PHB, and I have plenty of dice to share. If you become a regular player, then you probably will get your own PHB, but the point is that you didn’t need one to get started.
And even then the PHB is all you need.
OTOH, if I invite you to play M:TG with me, then unless I am really nice, you are going to need your own deck. And you can buy a starter system for a small amount, and that will give you cards that you can sit there and lose with. Want to win? Spend another few hundred dollars.
That’s my point, D&D has never been the money maker that M:TG has been, but they keep trying to find a way to make it do so anyway.
And they also aren’t the ones choosing what system and setting to use.
But, in any case, long before the OGL thing came out, people’ve been bitching about WOTC since they bought TSR. I still remember the arguments over whether 2E revised should actually be called 3rd edition. There are still some serious hard feelings about the whole Ral Partha thing (though I may see that more since the remnants of the company are right down the street from the game store.) Any time I spend any time in any of my local game stores, I hear some serious venting about them, from players, DMs and often the store owner.
A whole lotta DMs, if given an option, would never give WOTC/Hasbro another cent, and if there is a viable option to keep gaming and have new content while not paying tribute, they will jump at it.
And that’s what I’m looking at. I’m not looking at what people are playing at their home game or at the game store, I’m looking at what they are buying. That’s all that really matters to WOTC, that’s how they make money.
It was because 4th sucked, and WOTC told publishers that they couldn’t make 3.5 content anymore. Pathfinder was not 3.5, it was a significantly different system, but it was better than 4th, and new content was being created. It was close enough to 3.5 that most people didn’t have a problem converting, but it was not the same.
There is very little in the PHB that is actually copyrightable. You could make pretty much exact clone, just changing names of spells, gods, and some classes, and be your own game, legally.
That’s great but there’s no reason to assume they’ll play Daggerheart either if they just like the books for reading materials. More to the point, people who DO play D&D don’t play in the Wildemont setting if years of reading RPG forums and the complete dearth of Wildemont related topics is any indication. I’ve probably seen more people asking about spells/classes/builds related to Acquisitions Incorporated than Wildemont. I’m sure it has its niche audience and someone plays it but it’s not popular.
Yes, exactly. People weren’t starting D&D to emulate Critical Role or do CR stuff, they were joining to play D&D.
Yes, you could. But then there’s no reason to say “We’re moving away from the OGL and making our own system!” if you’re just going to be warmed-over 5e with Blasha’s Nideous Laughter. The whole point of these exercises (Daggerheart, Pathfinder 2e Remasters, Black Flag, etc) is to NOT be making clones because no one likes/trusts the OGL any longer.
Same here; I use “I’m playing D&D” as shorthand for when I’m talking with anyone who isn’t a hardcore TTRPG player, as there’s close to zero chance that they’ll recognize the name of any other game.
True, I have no idea where to find such stats. All I have to go on is the local game stores, where I used to be one of the younger people, and now I’m one of the oldest. But among those, most of them wandered into the store looking to play the game they had been watching on stream, or were brought in by a friend who found it the same way.
They make a lot of money period. According to a random podcast (whatever sized grain of salt), whenever Sam does one of his sponsor spots they get $62,000.
My understanding is that the creator of a campaign setting retains the rights to it. If they republished it, they’d have to change stat blocks and names and some accoutrements to match the new system, but the setting itself remains theirs.
It will be interesting to see how it plays out. Like I said, and I don’t know if you follow CR at all, but what they are doing now in the plot is literally world changing, similar to the Time of Troubles that signalled the change from 2nd to 3rd edition in D&D.
I’m just saying, it’s quite possible that all the gods get killed off in this arc, and the gods were one of the last pieces of WOTC IP that CR was still using.
I’ve never met a MtG player who would refuse to share a deck if someone wanted to play but didn’t have any cards.
It was absolutely the same system as 3.5, with fairly minor iterations on class abilities and spell/feat descriptions. It had “3.5-OGL Compliant” on the cover, and the OGL was printed on page 569.
D&D is vanilla ice cream. Not a lot of people are wildly in love with it, but most folks who like ice cream can be content with a scoop of vanilla. (Ed. note: vanilla and d&d both happen to be my favorite ice cream and system respectively)
The new CR game might be very good. It might even do some stuff better than D&D. But it won’t become the new generic standard against which all other games are measured.
A lot of nerds are loudly predicting the end of D&D - probably the same nerds who were making the same loud predictions when Pathfinder came out. As ever, the opinion of heavily invested internet enthusiasts is not necessarily the same thing as public opinion.
Certainly D&D is at a peak. WoTC knows it can’t last; that’s why they’ve been trying so hard to secure new revenue streams.
We’ll come down from this peak, but unless WoTC itself decides to murder the system, it’s not going anywhere.
Yeah, we have three young players under 30. One of whom does mention CR (I do watch the Amazon Animated series myself, it is pretty good), but started gaming as his Mother did. (He just turned 19, has been gaming with us for several years). The other two are into D&D for the social aspects, and have never mentioned CR. So, there is a big difference between “enjoys CR” and “CR got them into FRPGs”. From what I see, it is more that FRPGS got them into CR.
I think the idea is to cash in on the online players who can’t find a in person game. I see “professional” (it is to laugh) DMs advertise on FB, so why not monetize that? I think it is not a bad idea at all.
I also bet they are gonna hold off on this for a while now.
Yeah I concur.
Well, yeah, Tashas is a supplement that adds stuff to the game, mostly more subclasses, etc. But it is the same game.
None of that has happened yet. I dont mind if they stop using the term "races’ or not. But as of now, your 2014 PHB is 100% compatible.
I agree that when 6th ed comes out, things are gonna change enough so that a lot of the 5th PHB will be obsolete. I think a 6th edition is a huge mistake at this point in time.
When I use FR, I usually skip the ToT and do my own thing. I’m also happy at all of the lore people know on these boards! Thanks so much!!
I’m still following the OGL story but I do agree this won’t end DND or WotC.
I’m really torn on all of these new and indie games coming out. Part of me wants to help support them but I am reasonably sure I won’t ever run them. Without going into my evolution as a gamer, I like systems that have rules I can use to tell my story for combat, social, and exploration. Equally, I can ignore them, add more, modify them, or whatever but I prefer some “crunch” present in the RAW. I still haven’t found one system that does all of that. Because of what I want, the OSR style games like Shadowdark or Dungeon Master don’t appeal to me. I think it’s because I like consistency, as best I can, over drama.
Finally, I’m running Level Up, which I really enjoy, and PF1, which I also really enjoy. I have run many other systems, with a Shadowrun 5E on the side as a backup campaign, but PF1, and now Level Up, will probably be the main ones I use. Even then, they are a hodge podge of things I bring in from anything that I like.
Right. Altho I enjoyed playing the one 4th Ed game I was in, 4th ed was a failure. Pathfinder capitalized on this , making a somewhat better, more balanced 3.5, which is actually what people wanted. Oddly then Pathfinder shot itself in the foot by churning out PF 2, and no one I know plays that edition. Looks kinda fun, tho…
Yep. Unless you are in a different Genre, like Call of Cthulhu or even some GURPS (which works great as a lower powered superhero game), any FRPG trying to edge into the typical medieval fantasy genre is gonna fail.
As far as D&D goes, the “over 40” is a minority but hardly a “very tiny” slice.
Yep. The “bad thing” about CR is that as a D&D game, it is very atypical. Also, it brought out the “horny bard meme” for which someone needs to have his dice cursed for.
I bought it due to the cool races- but the book was quickly made obsolete by Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse which re-did those races. When I bought it, I had no idea it had anything to do with CR!
Paper, Pencil and some dice.
The Industry leader is always attacked. Look at how they attack Disney, for example.
I would buy a cool new 5th ed book. I just bought a couple campaign books.
I just found out (via ENWorld) that Paizo is doing a revised PF2 version. While many are calling it a cash grab, I assume it’s because this is how the get rid of the OGL and put in the ORC instead. I’m fine with that. Companies have to keep producing content to be profitable.
I just don’t prefer PF2. I want to like it. There are some good things in it. There are good things in Level Up that I haven’t seen any other system do. If my players wanted to move to PF2, I would. My one group might try it again at some point. It just didn’t work for me.
Wait, we have to intend to PLAY systems when we buy them? I own an embarrassing number of system that are pretty much just for reading and maybe pulling some ideas from.
My group is actually sorta interested in the 2e Remastered system, thinking it might have some decent ideas now that it’s moving away from OGL. Of course, our current game will probably run until 2045, but there’s some interest in giving it a try when it’s actually out (as in both player and GM materials).
As for the Pinkerton thing, I doubt it’ll make any difference. Unlike the OGL fiasco which threatened a lot of 3rd party materials and game systems, this was just one dude getting harassed. Since few people are M:tG content creators, much less ones likely to get a rogue box of unreleased cards, the impact is nothing like what OGL was. Also, while there’s some crossover, I get a general impression that a lot of TTRPG players aren’t really into M:tG and vice versa. At one game shop I played at, the vibe from the D&D tables was that the M:tG players were the obnoxiously loud kids down at the end. WOTC is the bad guy in the scenario but I don’t see many players letting it influence their habits.
