The Gaming Den

Hi! I'm new here to the Den, but not new to RPGs, or fora.

So, I've been poking around and the sentiment here seems to be that 5e is horible, Pathfinder is heresy, and that D&D should have stuck to the 3.x model, maybe just revising a few things and cleaning up that edition?

I have a couple questions;

1. Why does it matter if 5e is failing? Based on anecdotal evidence, a bunch of people here in the greater Seattle area are playing the hell out of it. Also, Pathfinder remains strong. Also, OSR stuff is picking up with whole new Meetup groups being started for specific games. It seems like people are playing the edition they like.

2. Has the Den tried making a polished version of 3.x and releases under the OGL? There seems to be a lot of designers/pros posting here. I've seen all the "Tome" threads but I'm not understanding them. Is there a "one single source" I can read about the "The Den's" version of 3.x?

The problem with 5e failing is that it means the edition will not receive new books. Obviously, if you intend to run a campaign in that edition, you'd rather it have new books coming out than not. Yes, people do play 5e. I'm running a 5e Ravenloft game (its one of the settings 5e is particularly good for, in fact). But I'd really like it if they'd come out with a new monster manual, or an equipment guide or some other expansion material. The content in the core books is quite thin.


Have you seen the community repository? It's not a unified whole, but it is all in one place. But mostly people don't run Tome games anymore because people don't really play 3.x much. It's not supported by WotC and it's frankly kinda bloaty. Pathfinder is still getting new books, but it's even worse in terms of bloat - it expects you to care about traits and feats and tiny racial bonuses that ultimately do far too little to justify remembering them all.

1. The D&D brand has been the most recognisable TTRPG of them all for some years. Its commercial failure by all past standards is a damning indictment of the current design team and a direct cause of the shrinkage of the hobby.

2. There really isn't a unified TGD 3.x. Not everyone here even likes the Tome fixes, and Frank has confessed his remorse for creating scaling feats. The closest thing to a unified up-to-date set of Tome rules is here, although there's also a GitBook in progress.

Grek wrote:But mostly people don't run Tome games anymore because people don't really play 3.x much.

Speak for yourself, my last 8-12 games have been Tome. With like, one After sundown game in there somewhere.

Omegonthesane wrote:1. The D&D brand has been the most recognisable TTRPG of them all for some years. Its commercial failure by all past standards is a damning indictment of the current design team and a direct cause of the shrinkage of the hobby.

Very much this. Until such a time as a new brand shoots upward to capture the collective imagination, D&D remains the flagship TTRPG and its failure weakens the hobby as a whole. Pathfinder may be a competent D&D imitation despite its failings, but it simply doesn't have the brand power or recognizable IP that D&D possesses - and until it produces novels that sell millions of copies or it's own Baldur's Gate it never will.

Worse, 5e is going down with a whimper. When TSR collapsed it was largely because they had overproduced. They spent their last few years spewing out content as if the path to ultimate profit was through the greatest number of words produced. A lot of that content was absolute drivel (ie. Birthright), but at least it existed, it gave the community something to work with and talk about, and in many cases to carry on with after 2e collapsed until 3e came along. 5e is an empty shell that hasn't produced any interesting content of its own. It doesn't even have a setting to call its own (even 4e managed to reboot Dark Sun).

When 5e gets pulled there will be nothing memorable that came from it, because it hasn't really produced any actual content. That's really pathetic, because even utterly awful games can produce memorable content that, while it may not actually be playable, drives interest.

trechriron wrote:2. Has the Den tried making a polished version of 3.x and releases under the OGL? There seems to be a lot of designers/pros posting here. I've seen all the "Tome" threads but I'm not understanding them. Is there a "one single source" I can read about the "The Den's" version of 3.x?

Not that I'm aware of and not everyone agrees on what that is (and yeah, like Omegonthesane says, not everyone here likes Tome).

The AwesomeTomePDF that Omegonthesane linked has a lot of items in it of questionable balance (e.g. Product of Celestial Dalliance) and a few things that have since been updated/revised.

There's a slightly more updated collection of Tome Community Material than the one Grek linked here, but if you want 'everything' you're probably going to have to look through the 'It's My Own Invention' forum.

Anyway, most 'official' (i.e. originally made by Frank and K) Tome Material can be found here (that'd be, Tome of Necromancy, Tome of Fiends, Dungeonomicon, and Races of War), but you say you've already read them so if you're interested in Tome, the most important things other than those are probably (i.e. these are things that many Tome games I play/have played in use/used):
Kaelik's Tome Errata
Red Rob's Tome Items (Replacement for Races of War items and Book of Gears)
Red Rob's Simplified Tome Armor (compatible with above)

Frank and many others recommend not using Scaling feats (like the ones in Races of War), instead opting for 'one feat per level, and also sometimes whenever you feel like it'. If you'd like to use Scaling Feats anyway (I still do... (I use a strange scaling/tome feats at 1, 3, 6, etc. in addition to 1 regular feat every level houserule) ) the ones on this thread are pretty good. There are also many community made ones (including the ones from Races of War and the ones above) here (keep in mind, many of those aren't balanced with the others, but there are some good/okay fan made ones). There are also some scaling feats in the community material repository.

I'd recommend not using the Tome Fighter and Firemage. If you're using Scaling Feats, I recommend not using Combat School.

A few things I personally recommend checking out:

Kaelik Skill Groups (Seriously, this is awesome and it's also completely compatible with non tome 3.5)

Time Mage
Elemental Siphon (My favoritest class of all time)
Thief-Acrobat (Revised)
3.5 Beguiler (Very nice with the Attune Domain/Sphere feats)
Warmage
Force Potentate
Ninja-Rogue
Sand Mage
Gadgeteer
Conduit (Revised)
Mage
Cold Dude
Kaelik Sorcerer (also recommended for regular 3.5 games)
Totemist
Soulborn (I'd recommend ditching the Charisma to saves and Endless Smiting class features)
Blighter
Spirit Shaman
Shadowcaster
Dragon
Green Mage
Marshal
Storm Lord

Buncha stuff by Koumei
Favored Souls

There's probably a bunch of stuff I'm forgetting but those are what come to mind right now and I need to get back to work.

Also, shouldn't this be in the Annoying Game Questions thread, or a new thread rather than the 5e thread as it's not just about 5e?

Thanks for the replies.

So, what is the "evidence" or ideas behind "5e is failing". Based on all the news, ENworld, etc. it seems to be doing really well.

Read the first 52 pages of this thread

trechriron wrote:Thanks for the replies.

So, what is the "evidence" or ideas behind "5e is failing". Based on all the news, ENworld, etc. it seems to be doing really well.

I don't know what news you could possibly read that would make you think an edition was doing well if it wasn't releasing the news that they were supporting that edition by making products they intended to sell for money.

Let's put this in perspective: Birthright is a setting that we would put on the second or third tier of 2nd edition product lines. It was met with critical indifference and did "kind of OK" as such things go. It was in print for 3 years, during which they produced thirty one books. Fifth Edition has been in print roughly as long and hasn't done twenty percent of that. And we're talking the entire edition rather than a single third-tier setting for an edition in decline.

Mage: The Awakening was a failed reboot of a second tier World of Darkness product line. It got shitcanned before White Wolf even dissolved because it was unpopular and didn't sell to expectations. And you know what? They still managed to print twenty five books for it.

5e doesn't look like a successful RPG line looks. Hell, it doesn't look like a failed line that has company confidence looks. It looks like a dead on arrival hollow edition that was launched with a fizzle and landed with a soft thud.

-Username17

trechriron wrote: 1. Why does it matter if 5e is failing? Based on anecdotal evidence, a bunch of people here in the greater Seattle area are playing the hell out of it. Also, Pathfinder remains strong.

I hear Catholicism is pretty popular in Rome.


As to why it matters... people like playing D&D. But the majority don't like fucking around with dead editions, or having a big debate over which edition they should play. Having more piles of shit to muddy the issue doesn't help.

People often like a healthy RPG industry, and a dead D&D makes the industry as a whole look sick. Which... given the quality and type of products being spewed out by every idiot with delusions of adequacy, it pretty much is.

Based on all the news, ENworld, etc. it seems to be doing really well.

Well, ENWorld is an echo chamber of fanboyism that simply feeds on itself (I remember getting an honest-to-fuck warning for saying that 4e plays like a super hero board game).

As for news.... what news?

EnWorld purged everyone who wasn't enthusiastic about 4e in the months after it's initial release.

The only people who are left are slavering WotC fanboys who will argue that not having content is a good thing because it stops the evil munchkins (it does not).

Does 5e release any books at all? All I can find ist adventures and some one page online articles.

For fucks sake... this is some shit I just heard from an MC "Forgotten Realms is a High Magic Setting, so magical items are rare" Fuck fifth edition. I'd rather have the dumpsterfire that was 4th edition...

The non-adventure path, non-core output of 5e so far has been one source book called the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide that included a handful of new subraces and several new subclasses and backgrounds and one new Monster Manual-ish thing which is Volo-themed and the exact name of which I've forgotten. It includes new monsters and I think some new subraces? If we're very generous, we might also call the packet of new spells and races in the free pdf of the Elemental Evil Player's Guide as a third book. Even including all three core books and all the adventure paths, that's a total of eleven books released for 5e.

trechriron wrote:a bunch of people here in the greater Seattle area are playing the hell out of it.

A bunch of people playing it does not equal a bunch of people buying it, and Mearls anti-strategy of releasing one single book all players at your table can buy (the PHB) and several other books that the players are explicitly not allowed to buy (namely, the canned adventures, MM, and DMG, because sekrit squirrel knowledge) is a recipe for disaster. In addition, Mearls has finally ran out of patsies and at this point is relying on having set expectations so low that the chairboard no longer cares.

However, someone at Hasbro eventually will, and while the best case will be that Mearls will finally get axed (and there will be much rejoicing), the worst will be that Hasbro will can d&d and then wait for a decade to re-launch it (because that's their MO).

trechriron wrote:2. Has the Den tried making a polished version of 3.x and releases under the OGL?

The Tome is there, but the Den's name is mud among the target demo (namely, paizo fans), and they won't buy anything with Trollman's name in it even if it was water in the desert.

Dogbert wrote:

trechriron wrote:2. Has the Den tried making a polished version of 3.x and releases under the OGL?

The Tome is there, but the Den's name is mud among the target demo (namely, paizo fans), and they won't buy anything with Trollman's name in it even if it was water in the desert.

Dogbert wrote: A bunch of people playing it does not equal a bunch of people buying it, and Mearls anti-strategy of releasing one single book all players at your table can buy (the PHB) and several other books that the players are explicitly not allowed to buy (namely, the canned adventures, MM, and DMG, because sekrit squirrel knowledge) is a recipe for disaster.

Yeah, "How do we justify charging for this shit?" seems to be a question that Mearls doesn't seem to think about answering very hard. A lot of people keep treating "Your group can make up whatever it wants!" as an excuse to half-ass things and offer up blog post quality GMing advice rather than produce maps, charts, sourcebooks and other fun gaming aids. That attitude is fine if you're a hobbyist just dicking around but it's hilariously self-defeating if you're trying to get fucking paid.

They must be amazing at slipping through the cracks when Hasbro starts balancing the books.

Implies they don't have much to begin with.

I also suspect the magic team is covering financially.

The outsourcing of the books only makes sense if Mike Mearls is funneling money to his friends or cooking the books he serves to his corporate masters to make rates of return look much better than they really are.

-Username17

Chamomile wrote:The non-adventure path, non-core output of 5e so far has been one source book called the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide that included a handful of new subraces and several new subclasses and backgrounds and one new Monster Manual-ish thing which is Volo-themed and the exact name of which I've forgotten. It includes new monsters and I think some new subraces? If we're very generous, we might also call the packet of new spells and races in the free pdf of the Elemental Evil Player's Guide as a third book. Even including all three core books and all the adventure paths, that's a total of eleven books released for 5e.

Most of which, including the Sword Coast thing, were outsourced. Green Ronin did most of the work on the Sword Coast thing.

Volo's picture book of monsters (and maybe 100 stat blocks) is one of maybe three things produced by the WotC team. (Strahd and something something Thunder being the other two contenders)

Which begs the question of what they do all day in their offices.

Wiseman wrote:Which begs the question of what they do all day in their offices.

Work on their personal projects to sell for money.

Wiseman wrote:Which begs the question of what they do all day in their offices.

Bitch at people on Twitter who call them out on that very question

Prak wrote:

Wiseman wrote:Which begs the question of what they do all day in their offices.

Bitch at people on Twitter who call them out on that very question

I would like to have that job. I hate working.

Minor rant from playing a test game of 5e: a) fuck puzzles. b) fuck "this room is closed off to all travel, magic and mundane untill all enemies are dead. btw, low magic, lol" c) fuck this game! let's say you are the tank and your group wants to retreat, you are before the group in the initiative order and a bunch of the monsters, you cannot delay until the rest is out. you cannot ready an action to disengage... because it does not include your movement, so... you just stand there... like an idiot. so you have to act, then your team retreats, then the few monsters before you in initiave get a swing at you before you can retreat with your party. FUCK. THIS. GAME.