What is considered to be "modern" RPG design?

[Orca]

This is spooky. Tussock is not, IMO, wrong.

[Guts]

I say [D&D 5e] is not giving people much of anything, because it isn't. Physically, almost no rules. People do things with it, but those things are unique hand waving. The game itself insists that it has no flaws because the GM can fix everything. Which is just garbage, that's terrible, awful to see in a game, bad enough in 1989 let alone now. It means everyone's 5e experience is massively different to everyone else's, they're not even talking about the same thing when they talk about it, other than to insist people having problems just need a new GM.

I agree. But then, isn't this DIY / "Rulings, not rules!" / "Each table it's own game" ethos the point of the OSR movement? If so, that's a clear call out to OD&D grognards. Mix that with some exception-based granularity taken from 3e/4e, and we have exactly what Mord is saying - a game that was made to acommodate all range of D&D fans across editions. Oh, and with Inspiration + Backgrounds you also attract the narrative crowd. In other words: a Market aware product, more so than any edition before it.

Also, this wouldn't be the first time a game without a clear mode of play was successful or popular. See Vampire the Masquerade in early 90s. No two tables played it the same way.

[Mord]

This is spooky. Tussock is not, IMO, wrong.

tussock is always wrong, at all times, about everything, because he is not able to think. He is the kind of moron who would, from the statements "Socrates is a man" and "all men are mortal," reach the conclusion that "all men are Socrates." I'm beginning to suspect that he's actually a prototype for Woke Cleverbot.

[Whatever]

All I know is that you know nothing.

[deaddmwalking]

I don't know that 5e was market aware. Stranger Things probably has more to do with any success of 5th edition than anything the designers planned or released.

The one thing that it did well is have a low bar for entry. I've known a lot of people that have advocated for a 'simple' version of D&D (maybe call it Basic or something) that can be used as a starting point that is generally compatible with the full edition (maybe call it Advanced or something).

Simple play, quick-start, easy to begin is a great way to position a game to find people who are interested in it. Offering a way to expand that with additional options without killing the game (I'm looking at you, Pathfinder) is good.

[Kaelik]

Yeah I'm pretty confused by people talking about the brilliant marketing of an edition that released, no one fucking bout it, and then 5 years later became popular because of a TV show and people doing twitch streams who are unrelated to company.

Usually if you are good at marketing you get sales when you release your product, not years later.

[Guts]

Yeah I'm pretty confused by people talking about the brilliant marketing of an edition that released, no one fucking bout it, and then 5 years later became popular because of a TV show

2 years later, not 5. In 2016 the D&D 5e Player's Handbook was already the all-time best selling D&D book of the WotC era*.

*source: https://unpossiblejourneys.com/how-well ... s-selling/

[Guts]

The one thing that it did well is have a low bar for entry. I've known a lot of people that have advocated for a 'simple' version of D&D (maybe call it Basic or something) that can be used as a starting point that is generally compatible with the full edition (maybe call it Advanced or something).

Simple play, quick-start, easy to begin is a great way to position a game to find people who are interested in it. Offering a way to expand that with additional options without killing the game (I'm looking at you, Pathfinder) is good.

In other words: Marketing.

[erik]

Taking anything Mearls says at face value is loco. Imagine the least impressive thing twisted to sound the most impressive and you're probably closest to the truth when interpreting his sales boasts. He will always use vague undefined terms. Likely he was referring to lifetime amazon sales, comparing to editions that made most of their sales in stores rather than online.

[virgil]

Yeah I'm pretty confused by people talking about the brilliant marketing of an edition that released, no one fucking bout it, and then 5 years later became popular because of a TV show

2 years later, not 5. In 2016 the D&D 5e Player's Handbook was already the all-time best selling D&D book of the WotC era*.

*source: https://unpossiblejourneys.com/how-well ... s-selling/

Didn't you come here like a year ago, referring Mearls's tweet, and we countered with objective research?

[Guts]

Didn't you come here like a year ago, referring Mearls's tweet, and we countered with objective research?

Did I? Sorry can't remember, apologies if that's the case. Regardless, it seems from 2017 onward the sources in the article get unambiguously objective, right? Amazon, Orr group, etc. That's the point. D&D5 is a huge success, no matter how you see it.

[tussock]

But then, isn't this DIY / "Rulings, not rules!" / "Each table it's own game" ethos the point of the OSR movement?

Sort of. OSR is a lot of things. Most of it is re-creating a particular feel, but they also focused pretty heavily on cleaning up old rule sets and mostly shifting everything to modern mechanics. It took off in the late 3e era and they were 3e players doing it.

A lot of OSR games have consistent rules for far more than D&D has had in decades. There's ones like Adventure, Conqueror, King; which is both minimalist and fully complete, it has rules for everything it ties to do and they all work, right up to kingdom stuff. Castles & Crusades was an early one and is basically a streamlined 3e laid out to look like AD&D.

Some examples. Swords & Wizardry is a good look at what the OSR movement intended by those statements, the author is one of the main proponents.

Disintegrate
Spell Level: M6
Range: 60 ft
Duration: Permanent

The caster defines one specific target such as a door,
a peasant, or a statue, and it disintegrates into dust.
Magical materials are not disintegrated, and living
creatures (such as the aforementioned peasant) are
permitted a saving throw. The Disintegrate spell
cannot be dispelled.

Disintegrate
6th-level transmutation
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 60 feet
Components: V, S, M (a lodestone and a pinch of dust)
Duration: Instantaneous

A thin green ray springs from your pointing finger to a
target that you can see within range. The target can be a
creature, an object, or a creation of magical force, such
as the wall created by wall of force.
A creature targeted by this spell must make a
Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, the target takes
10d6 + 40 force damage. If this damage reduces the
target to 0 hit points, it is disintegrated.
A disintegrated creature and everything it is wearing
and carrying, except magic items, are reduced to a pile
of fine gray dust. The creature can be restored to life
only by means of a true resurrection or a wish spell.
This spell automatically disintegrates a Large or
smaller nonmagical object or a creation of magical
force. If the target is a Huge or larger object or creation
of force, this spell disintegrates a 10-foot-cube portion of
it. A magic item is unaffected by this spell.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a
spell slot of 7th level or higher, the damage increases by
3d6 for each slot level above 6th.

When they said "rulings, not rules", they meant for the fiddly stuff, the edge cases, the bits of the game that are overly fussy to sufficiently pre-define or narrate across the table in play. The OSR does not have a table of +2 or -1 modifiers for the twenty things you might run across while climbing a wall in case no one bought a grappling hook, because the default (+/- 2 for whatever) is almost exactly the same in play, if they even go that far.

Things like stealth in 5e is a giant clusterfuck of cross-references across five chapters and errata that mostly invalidate each other, where in S&W it's a line that says you get +1 on 1d6 for surprise checks. Both make you ask nicely to have stealth please, but OSR games give you a result that does a definite thing and 5e you have to make that up too.

If so, that's a clear call out to OD&D grognards.

I saw one change to 5e (who was paid to) and a dozen that didn't. Most of the major OSR crowd are still putting out more new books from their basement than WotC does for D&D. Nothing in the OSR would make you imagine people buying a 316 page PHB that barely covers dungeon bashes, it's not what they're about.

Mix that with some exception-based granularity taken from 3e/4e, and we have exactly what Mord is saying - a game that was made to acommodate all range of D&D fans across editions. Oh, and with Inspiration + Backgrounds you also attract the narrative crowd. In other words: a Market aware product, more so than any edition before it.

Mate, 5e backgrounds are terribly restrictive character design, seriously. Their marketing said appropriate things for the market, but they did not deliver. Those things are not in their game in the ways you imagine.

Also, this wouldn't be the first time a game without a clear mode of play was successful or popular. See Vampire the Masquerade in early 90s. No two tables played it the same way.

It's not so much the genre conventions that vary in 5e, it doesn't really support a lot of different types of play, it's the outcome of trying to do the same thing in the same place that varies a great deal which is a problem.

That's what bearworld games do. Those are bad games, deliberately empowering of abusive DMs and not helping anyone else in the slightest. The thing is, bearworld is open about it, it's a design goal, in 5e it's just the rules are such a mess you never know what you're gunna get.


...

That's the point. D&D5 is a huge success, no matter how you see it.

Man, do not get into Mearls' quotes. The least generous interpretation possible is usually over-generous. The man is king of marketing himself and playing up "growth" by fiddling numbers.

Let's see, Amazon rankings are a mystery, they keep changing how it works, it's conceivable a product which just sells about the same for a long time will keep rising in their ranks, rankings usually over-respond to recent acceleration, and that price is very much on sale just in time to get that place in the rankings. Roughly, sales are steady, maybe growing, and they're gaming it higher with price shifts before report dates.

Those VTT games available stats are basically bogus, with 3 million members and 620k games a year? That's most people not even signing in. I'd expect well under ten thousand regular players, and a whole lot more who play one session and then vanish.


Anyone that concludes 5e has outsold 3e and 4e but not 2nd edition, is high as a kite. They released numbers for AD&D, 2nd ed, and 3e back long ago, and the key is in numbers terms 1st edition AD&D plus Moldvay Basic was the 2nd highest seller, and 3.0 was the highest seller ever, and nothing else came anywhere near it. 2nd edition never really sold well, if you're not beating it, there's no way you're beating 3.0, or 3.5, though probably you're beating 4e because 4e.

Like, you need tens of millions of books shifted to beat 3.0, and if they did that they'd have more than a handful of staff putting out a couple books a year. It just doesn't work.

--

Hey, it's very likely that 5th edition has sold more than 4th edition. 4e was quoted in a court of law of every single book in the edition, in total selling under a million copies, early on but it just got worse for them. I would think 5e could break a million, easy.

Similarly, they likely outsold Pathfinder at some point, because Pathfinder didn't beat 4th edition every quarter, it just lived a bit longer.

And that too, to be beating Pathfinder a bit, when Pathfinder is between editions and unsupported and never sold all that much in the first place, to be 60% against "other" RPGs, like 3.0 was 99% of games, brick and mortar shops opened to sell 3rd party compatible books. Sales crashed in 2003, but 01-02 was gigantic. This is not that.

[erik]

+1 everything tussock said.

I remember when 3e was so dominant that not only were stores full of their material but also there was an even larger halo of 3rd party products capitalizing on its ubiquity. 5e is just what’s left and half its material is 3rd party not because it is so dominant that there are countless imitators, but because wotc cannot figure out how to make money doing it themselves. Only reason 5e has any shelf space is because not much else is being made today other than garage retro works sold on kickstarter and 300+ page “rules light” garbage.

5e has almost no products to sell but no competition to speak of either.

[Guts]

@Tussock,

About D&D 5e sales numbers. Even ignoring Mike Mearls words, it's not only Amazon and Orr group. According to this article here (http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.ph ... est-Seller ) the New York Times, USA Today, ICv2, among others also list D&D books among best selling rankings (sometimes even in 1st place).

But let's not miss what started this line of the discussion: that part of that success is in it's marketing strategy to embrace fans across all editions and styles (even outside the D&D branch). I'm not saying D&D 5e is a great OSR product, nor that it's a great narrative game, or that it's a great exception-based tactical combat simulator like D&D3/PF, just that it have adapted it's design enough to please part of those crowds. I'm big fan of narrative games and I don't consider "Background and Inspiration" good narrative mechanics, far from it. But I can see how the existence of those rules may be worth points with the narrative crowd, enough for some them actually giving the game a try. By your example of "rules x rulings" (which I totally agree) a OSR fan would probably feel the same.

Notice too that I'm not judging the quality of D&D 5e as a D&D game. I've played it a handful times and had a good time, but couldn't take a good, deeper reading on it (specially because it's not my favorite style of game, so I probably will never GM it). Maybe it's the worst D&D edition ever, I don't really care, honestly.

[erik]

The best seller for non-fiction is a competitive ranking, not quantitative, and is only for that week only for that category of books. That forum post/pseudo-article compared it to beating out a med school text book... that’s fairly niche.

[deaddmwalking]

From the list provided, Volo's Guide went from #1 in December 2016 to completely off the list in January 2017.

I think when the goal is to make it appear on the list rather than to actually sustain sales, it's easy to create a misleading picture of overall sales.

As far as a I can tell, they no longer track that category. But seeing ALL D&D books eclipsed by a stress-relief coloring book for adults isn't a great sign of dominating the hobby.

[Ancient History]

Voice of a cynical and broken manchild here, but sales don't equate to good game design.

Part of the success of D&D3 was both a rules evolution and an increase in production values - neither of which were automatic; early D&D3 still had a lot of real conservative hangovers from AD&D 2nd edition and was pumping out shitty paperback splats like Sword & Fist and Song & Silence. Part of the real success story from a design standpoint wasn't just the move to a unified d20 mechanic or simplifying - the main ruleset was still 3 hefty hardcovers - it was the Open Gaming License.

Wizards of the Coast invited other companies to write material for their game. It embiggened their market and encouraged a generation of game design to spin off their material.

Of course, this also led to a bloat of unsalable products on the market, and encouraged competition - some of which, like Pathfinder, is still going today. 5e hasn't had anything like that level of success, and it isn't likely to. Gaming is still recovering from the last boom-&-near-bust.

If there's a hallmark of contemporary game design, it's largely outside the real of the rules themselves but how they are marketed to the customers: higher production values, specialized limited edition products, made possible by crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, and Ulule. Brick and mortar outlets are dying; it's the age of DriveThruRPG, Amazon.com, and Lulu.com.

And the big thing about those kinds of outlits? It allows niche interests to flourish, if you can find a market with ready money and interest. Retroclones aren't surviving and proliferating because they're selling tons of product through traditional storefronts or Booksamillion. Call of Cthulhu kickstarters for luxury editions have become almost commonplace. It's an era where one game almost can't dominate the market - it's too diverse and decentralized; it's not a matter of shelfspace to display in stores anymore...and it hasn't been for a long time.

[Guts]

Ancient History post is spot-on*. That's the same pattern we have in music, movies, etc. A huge diversity of products sharing the spotlight instead of one or two monolithic ones like in the past. The very spotlights are multiples/diversified these days.

*I only disagree that we don't have actual rules design being made. One must be really myopic to ignore the impact that Fate, PbtA, Gumshoe, Cortex, etc. have in the current face of the hobby. Even new OSR are stretching the old D&D formula into new grounds (see Beyond the Wall for e.g.).

[Guts]

Another trend of modern design, this time by someone else I've read in the webz, and agree with:

I would add:

- Explicitly designed for short term or even one-shot play.
It's not just the difficulty of picking up a new set of rules that discourages people from picking up a new game; it's also the implied length of commitment.

When I pitch Ten Candles or Fiasco or Lady Blackbird, I'm innately and pretty much necessarily saying, "Hey, do you want to try this new thing for one night?"

Pitching something like GURPS or Eclipse Phase or Shadowrun is far more likely to be saying, "Hey, do you want to play at least 10-12 sessions of this over the next 3-6 months of our lives? Maybe even more?"

[erik]

One shots = modern is a pretty myopic view. I mean Paranoia is older than most posters here probably. Low entry RPGs aren’t exactly new. Premade characters have been a thing forever, and I’ve played tons of single session adventures even for DnD where zero continuity was required. The relative popularity of one shot rpgs if improved recently is probably more an indication of general decline of the market.

[Guts]

Paranoia playstyle was an exception by the time it came out, and continued to be until post-00s. So bringing it up actually corroborates Justin Alexander point, in my view.

[virgil]

First: Your quote of Justin's says nothing about trends in modern RPGs.

Second: How does bringing up Paranoia, and its age, corroborate Justin's point that some games include a contextual implication of commitment?

Third

Paranoia playstyle was an exception by the time it came out

Citation needed. Paranoia came out in '84, when RPGs were barely a decade old - almost everything was new and fresh if it wasn't D&D.

You keep intimating how low prep games are a part of modern design, like a damn broken record.

Leaving aside that you're definition of modern includes 14 year old games, let's stick with just games made from before the turn of the century.

• Tunnels & Trolls - '75
  Monsters! Monsters! - '76
  Paranoia - '84
  Toon - '84
  Judge Dredd - '85
  TWERPS - '87
  Over the Edge - '92
  FUDGE (aka Fate) - '92/93
  RISUS - '93
  Feng Shui - '96
  Hong Kong Action Theatre - '96
  Munchausen - '98
  Kobolds Ate My Baby! - '99
  Puppetland - '99

These are just the highlights of the available RPGs that were part of the landscape. That people just played in one-shot formats with something like D&D was also a thing that happened. Not to mention the innumerable, forgotten homebrew systems people made for themselves when publishing had a higher barrier to entry than they do now. For as long as gamers have been interested in gaming, there has been an interest in quick-play. You are being myopic to think that Fate (which is old, see the list above) or PbtA are bringing something new, as opposed to being part of an evergreen industry of people commenting that gaming doesn't have to be a longform campaign.

[magnuskn]

Pathfinder was "lets keep playing 3rd edition, please, because the GSL is poison and they took Dungeon and Dragon off us and we want to work in this industry still!" Pathfinder 2 seems to be "let's keep playing Pathfinder, please!"

2E seems to failing rather spectacularly at keeping at least half the previous fans interested. I'm sticking with 1E and that seems to be widespread sentiment on the Paizo boards.

[saithorthepyro]

You know it's a failure when the Paizo boards didn't rally behind it. In other communities it's even more dead. Mythweavers has essentially rejected it en masse and is down to maybe one or two supporters. People are not happy about a number of issues, whether it's the Feat Bloat, Resonance, the lack of character options, shield system, and so on and so forth. The actual playtest was also a major disappointment. It's telling that less than a month before official release, and there is no real buzz for it coming out even on reddit.

[Libertad]

You know it's a failure when the Paizo boards didn't rally behind it. In other communities it's even more dead. Mythweavers has essentially rejected it en masse and is down to maybe one or two supporters. People are not happy about a number of issues, whether it's the Feat Bloat, Resonance, the lack of character options, shield system, and so on and so forth. The actual playtest was also a major disappointment. It's telling that less than a month before official release, and there is no real buzz for it coming out even on reddit.

This leaves the question:

Will Paizo stick with their unpopular system due to Sunk Cost Fallacy, or give it up and continue publishing 3.75 products for eternity?

If the former, which third party company will pull a Paizo and take up the mantle of "true 3rd Edition" from then on out?