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Comment by csydas | Hacker News Reader

> They also sell so many overpriced kits with not much going on in them (just a few pieces of paper, not enough dice, sub par instructions ). Or really expensive character toys.

For me this is the most telling part that Hasbro doesn't quite get what you're actually selling if you have a tabletop company; it's not the ruleset, that will be leaked as soon as you sell a single copy and people actually play the game. It's instead ideas and world building visions from the people who were directly involved in creating the world and rules the company tries to sell to people. People are creative, but even the best story tellers wouldn't turn their nose up at some lore to help spark creativity, long as the lore isn't needlessly restrictive.

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For me the naive part is focussing on player options.

I understand that groups generally have one DM and 4 players, do if you include player options you might sell 5 books instead of one. But that's the shallow, cash-in-now-fuck-next-decade mentality.

Meanwhile they haven't put out a decent adventure in a decade. The internet is awash with people trying to glue their ramblings back into coherent campaigns and running D&D (always a huge time sink) is becoming a worse experience every year as they keep flooding the market with crap.

I love running games but I've come to the point where I'm not really interested in starting a D&D group anymore because of all the bullshit.

WOTC: support your DMs or die.

> Meanwhile they haven't put out a decent adventure in a decade.

Lost Mines of Phandelver, the adventure from the intro box, is pretty good (except when it switches to "every room has a monster" later on). It's very big for an intro adventure and there's tons of stuff in it.

But it's quite possible that it's the only good one they made.

They did expand on it with "Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk," which I understand to be quite good. Unfortunately it seems like most other paths are ok at best. I'm currently running the Dragonlance adventure, Shadow of the Dragon Queen, and that's very much how I'd describe it: ok. There are some really weird omissions where the game doesn't have info you need to run an encounter as described, and the world-building and information included in the book is woefully inadequate to "color outside the lines" without making up lots of details out of whole cloth. For a book that represents the first Dragonlance adventure in many years, it's a disappointing introduction to the setting.

I regret to inform you that was released in 2014, almost a decade ago.

That's longer ago than I thought, but still just within the decade, so it counts.

I admit it's a depressing performance by WotC.

Only a true D&D player would rules-lawyer the decade definition like that.

Sounds like a rollplayer, not a roleplayer.

I'm actually not a D&D player; I'm currently involved in Shadowrun, Blades in the Dark and Pathfinder 2. Despite that, I don't consider it very controversial to count a decade as 10 years.

Lost Mines was a terrific pack-in adventure - I got so much mileage out of it.

I would love to see WotC publish more adventure booklets of comparable quality.

> The internet is awash with people trying to glue their ramblings back into coherent campaigns

Cases in point, for the unaware: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/44214/roleplaying-games... https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/41217/roleplaying-games...

I've gotten a lot of value out of Dragons of Stormwreck Isle that came in the new D&D Starter Set. That said, I'm now using it as a base for jumping off into OSR (Old School Renaissance) modules after the OGL debacle and now this.

> WOTC: support your DMs or die.

good thing WotC isn't the only company writing adventures for D&D 5, then?

Yes. But more importantly, there are lots of creators making excellent stuff for systems that are not compatible with their bullshit player option supplements.

No Steve, you cannot be extra-planar half-staplerkin half-mongoose demi-lich paladin/sorcerer with a lemming patron. I don't care what Tasha's Bulging Cupboard of Crap or Volo's Yard-sale of Absolutely Everything has to say about it.

This was a problem in 3 and 3.5 era too and was only exacerbated by the rise of forums and wikis. I don’t think it’s possible to release one-size-fits-all-the-crap-that’s-out-there campaigns that are going to be actually interesting. At some point the DMs job is to make decisions about what fits and what doesn’t, and to help cultivate a culture of collaborative storytelling.

Yes, 100%. I DMed during the 3 and 3.5 era, and the “bullshit player option supplements” were a major problem. Players want to ask for the most out of pocket stuff they pick up from the splatbooks. It was beyond difficult to build a coherent party of players when everyone was using radically different concepts to build their characters. Game balance went out the window. 3 and 3.5 had terrible game balance to begin with, but once you bring in books like Exalted Deeds, it was even worse.

4E fixed a ton of problems here. Character classes were much more balanced and there were not many supplements with new classes and options—partly because it takes a ton of effort to make a new 4E class.

Game balance in 3rd Edition was gone from the PHB onwards, out of like top 5-7 most broken classes in the game, 3 were in the PHB (Wizard, Cleric, Druid). A lot of stuff people consider broken (eg. Tome of Battle) isn't even really a power level boost for melee classes, just lets them in on the same move action + interesting option playstyle casters were doing since release (just at a much lower power level) vs. charge-> full attack full attack.

Not to say there wasn't broken shit in splats, but like half of broken nonsense was Core to begin with.

Yeah, core 3 and 3.5 was broken. You want to make an overpowered character? Play a straight cleric, but don’t bother healing the rest of the party. I have no desire to replay those editions.

I DM'd during the 2nd edition era, and yeah... Some player's option supplements had decent things going for them. Others were pure munchkin galore (looking at you, Bard's handbook).

> It's instead ideas and world building visions from the people who were directly involved in creating the world

Yes, but someone needs to impress their boss/shareholders this very Quarter, and then the next, and then the next. Planning for the long haul requires a vision and patience that is not on the table. Hasbro mentality is (probably) "release the game mid-December, let it sell tons for Xmas, rake it in, start planning for next Xmas release".

I don't know if 'slow burn' is in their scope. It would be interesting to hear from them on this.

Lore and adventure supplements are wonderful. Not only do I enjoy playing them, I enjoy reading them as their own form of literature.

This is where I always thought the vampire the masquerade games excelled. In fact, they seemed to have so much content that the game itself was less important. I spent way more time reading vtm books then DND books. But I played way more dnd. But maybe it's because it's a lot harder to convince people to play vampire.

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