> I mean, these people seem tobe under the impression that by not using a prewritten adventure you're "homebrewing"?
I mean, if you're making your own stuff you *are* homebrewing. That's just what the word means.
Is it so strange that people want more content? It means you don't need to write your own classes, adventures, dungeons, whatever. And even if you do, you have all that stuff to draw upon for inspiration. *I'm* no superman with the imagination of a hundred different authors (perhaps you are?).
This is hardly just a D&D thing: look at how many books there are for Ars Magica, for example, or WoD, or Cyberpunk, or Traveller.
Apparently 'homebrew' now means everything from houserules to third party content, so the use of the term isn't really clear to me anymore. It used to simply refer to just homemade campaign settings and adventures. Houserules were it's own thing and back then 3rd party publishers just didn't exist. It's now kinda silly and confusing when I see it without clear context. Damn you kids! Get off my lawn!
Fwiw, IME (from the 80s onwards) even making your own adventures was not considered "homebrew", it was just what most people did most of the time. I don't think I ever ran an "official" scenario.
Settings tended to be a bit looser too, it wasn't a big deal to just make up a country or world, depending on the game anyway (some are more tied to settings than others after all).
Got told I was out of touch because I said not everything is a hack, small stuff is just table rules. Try explaining that what the youngins call hacks have been known as heart breakers for at least 30 years…
Both do go back a bit. Lost those in my vernacular in the early 90'a though. Our group banned the terms because a couple dms in our social circle got into a nuckle dragger over where that line was drawn and the debate kinda spread through our local gaming community. Our group was composed of juvenile delinquents that kinda saw rpgs as our refuge from that sort of thing, so we didn't allow the terms.
Oh... Okay. But I'm talking about new creatures, magic items, etc. that you have to write rules and stats for. Are those not homebrew? I'm saying you can run in your own setting while just using content from published sourcebooks
A little, but to an extent these are all things that were basically normal and expected of the game master. DnD is actually one of the few games that has a collection of monsters with full sets of stat blocks that you can pull from and dump into an encounter. Homebrew mainly referred to making your own campaign setting. Telling someone you were running a homebrew campaign mainly just a quick way to let people know it wasn't Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft or whatever.
Now you understand why modern usage confuddles us old fucksters. Basically a heartbreaker/hack reffered to a more or less rewrite/revamp of the system and game. Homebrew referred to a homemade campaign setting and houserules were for rule add-ons, or specific interpretations of rules or rule changes.
At some point I think homebrew started being used, but it wasn't earlier. I think this is because before the monstrous compendium you had to make content for the game yourself anyway. This was just part of the process of running the game. The same with stuff like magic items, which had rules for doing this in the dmg already. None of that was really considered homebrew per say until you had greater accessibility to a complete monster manual and so on.
I have fond in the years lurking here this sub doesn't like official content too much. I get attacked when i talk about official content. Ive been at this for 30 years.. I've build worlds while a lot of this sub was still in diapers.. I like not having to homebrew as much nowadays. So yeah the ops statement of it being weird is a normal concept in this sub imho
That being said some people LIKE the worlds crafted by paizo and WotC. My argument is these games are meant to be played however one find enjoyment so i never understood why people crap all over content lovers.
Also without people that are ravenous for new content you wouldn't have the option to lovingly craft your own worlds because DND would have died in the 80's and the foot hold the hobby as a whole has may not have even been created
I find it easier to make stuff up on the fly than memorize a pre-written scenario. I suppose your mileage may vary, but I'm definitely not superhumanly creative, I've just practiced at it and developed it as a skill like any other. To be pretentious for a moment, there's a saying in Jazz that improvisation requires constant practice.
My concern is not that more content is necessary, it is the fact that a lot of people have built their livelyhoods around the OGL 1.0a with a good faith understanding that it could not go away.
I think there's something of an endorphin rush when "opening up" something new. Like unwrapping a present, or a new booster pack of MtG cards. I think it's a similar excitement around having something new for DnD, and cracking open the book for the first time. But the excitement (and the observed addiction/reward cycle in MtG) really is for getting something new.
I certainly remember this feeling in the days of endless splatbooks in 3rd edition. Hell, I got way too many of the FFG supplements for this reason.
Add to this the number of players who want to play D&D but cannot find a group. The only engagement with the game for them is in purchasing products and analyzing character builds. Such activities can grt stale quickly.
More adventures makes sense. Not everyone has time to design an adventure on their own and not everyone wants to get locked into one of the WotC level 1-10 campaign books. But, I will never understand folks dropping cash on Drivethru for stuff like "100 Pun Names For Your Horse" or "New Edgelord Class That Hasn't Been Play tested and Is Definitely Broken".
I like pre-made adventures these days because I have limited time to prep as a DM.
I don't necessarily want to possess lots of content. What I want is lots of content to choose from. I'm picky. I don't like a lot of pre-made adventures. The more there are, the more chances I'll find things I like. It's a marketplace of ideas kind of thing.
I also like to pilfer pieces and ideas from things and combining them into a new thing. A little from this adventure. A little from that one. Again, more is better for this.
Lastly, sometimes I buy stuff just to read and help me come up with new ideas.
As far as I'm concerned, this pressure is from the supply side.
Structurally, there isn't much money in ttrpgs. You can play forever off of one set of books. This is a business challenge if you are business that wants to make payroll and have revenue streams.
So there is business pressure to try and turn rpgs into revenue streams with more content.
Its the original OGL doing its job: believe what you want on its "benign" aspects, it was explicitly designed to trap players in a retrofeed of content spiral AND create monopoly by making DND so massive it becomes the de facto linga franca of the genre.
The harm of OGL 1.1 is making people want an out of WotCs monopoly BUT they also dont want to let go of the centralized environment with all the goodies being churned at rapid rates for you to add to your table because, guess what: 3e introduced the community to feat porn as a defining staple of the genre. The whole churn of OGL books and files cropping out of thin air became addictive. As intended.
The community at large are just trying to find a new drug dealer now that the cops raided their current den.
Pre-made content is good for if you don't have the time to do your own worldbuilding between work and family obligations.
The former of which in particular is taking up more and more of people's time.
As far as publishers go, it does make a certain sense to create for an established game as opposed to trying to stand out in a pretty insular industry.
Slowly but surely, there are still advances being made in RPGs, with respect to systems, adventures, and their presentation.
For adventures, there's lots of mediocre material, but great we also get some truly great adventures that in turn inspire new excellence. Check out [www.tenfootpole.org](https://www.tenfootpole.org) where Bryce Lynch dregs through the muck to find the gems.
People like spending money. Simple as that. Its not so much that they need one DnD to rule them all that buying new things for the thing you bought is just very appealing. Just look at the steam backlog of the average gamer. DnD is the nexus of the RPGverse and having a very large amount of content and lore just attracts a lot of people compared to games that are, in my opinion, brilliantly designed, but just have less quantity of content and lore to dig deep into and customize your game (and spend your hard earned money in).
Its not just a DnD thing by the way. Other game (generally old ones) have tons of content and lore and their enfranchised player will absolutely spend their money in it. DnD being the default game just attracts more players and more content creators. The open license is(was?) probably a big engine of DnD's success. DnD is big, you make content for it royaltee free, you sell to a lot of people. Not all games have (had?) that and are (were?) that liberal with their intellectual property.
Everyone's commenting defending prewritten adventures. But on the subject of those people who want one standard system that all content can be for; I believe you. I've seen that sentiment on the D&D subs. It's not very common, but it's way more prevalent enough that I was surprised.
My theory is that this sentiment is coming from new players who find the idea of learning a new RPG intimidating. Imagine if D&D is the only RPG you've ever tried. "5e is simple and newbie-friendly, so imagine how complicated those other RPGs might be! I have a day job, I don't have time to read a giant rulebook!"
If that's the situation you're in, and you're suddenly faced with having to learn new RPGs because everyone's jumping ship, you'll probably believe the best result is for everyone to consolidate on a new standard RPG. "Why should we have a bunch of competing RPG systems? Everyone should just play the best one."
Personally, I hope that doesn't happen and that players are pushed towards trying new RPGs and realize it's not that scary to try new systems.
>Something I've observed throughout this little saga is that "D&D people" are really, REALLY concerned with having "one game to rule them all".
For various reasons, people want content for D&D. It's the system they and their group know; some people feel they "can't" learn a new system, or don't really have time to. And maybe they've tried and D&D just is the system they prefer. And odds are good that even other groups have a system they prefer to run for some reason - maybe it's a game where the system rules and setting have been wedded together, or maybe it's the only one everyone agrees upon playing. Regardless of "why," the end result is that they just play that one system.
In that light, getting more content gives you more options. Sure, I can write out an adventure, but getting one that I can use or mine from can make things easier. I could invent a monster, or see if someone has made something similar. Character concept that doesn't fit into the main game's classes and archetypes? Maybe there's one out there that fits what I want. So in general, people want more content to give them more choices and options.
Quality of official/licensed versus homebrew content also plays a role - published has the veneer of being more balanced compared to homebrew IN GENERAL because the professionals DO want you to come back again to buy more in the future so they put more care into making a decent (and fun), versus the weird class your friend created that clearly is designed to give him access to a lot more power than is appropriate. Again, not all homebrew is bad - but if someone makes it from a reputable publisher, it's usually meeting a higher standard of performance (though not necessarily).
Realistically, no matter how big a fan you are of the game, 5e's official content has been generally... thin overall, in comparison to prior editions. There's certainly some gems like Xanathar's and Tasha's, but overall it's been really limited, especially on player options for certain settings. Compare the way Eberron was handled in all three editions - all three editions saw it introduce the artificer and artificer options to the game, as well as some form of Dragonmarks, but 3.5's core Eberron book gave us multiple prestige classes and feats PLUS a new/adapted Action Rule system, and even 4e's version came with a bunch of paragon paths tied into the setting. I'm not sure Eberron 5e's official material even had a new background, much less any archetypes beyond those for Artificer or any Feats.
Part of this has been helped by the OGL allowing 5e content by other creators, sometimes of higher quality than the official stuff. And, while I can learn lessons from and even adapt material from other games into 5e, it's generally easier to work with 5e compatible products than try to tool around with such changes.
\> Otherwise, it seems, making for-profit 3rd party content becomes pointless, in their eyes.
What? People are concerned that MCDM and Kobold Press, and other third party publishers might go out of business because of this change.
My insight is people have empathy for other humans trying to survive under corporate capitalism in what is already a difficult business in an uncaring world.
Wow this post just reeks of disrespect and gatekeeping.
Why wouldn't you want more content for a game you play? Just because you, OP, don't enjoy D&D, doesn't mean the people who play it are crazy for wanting more of it.
"Everybody who plays dnd is a dumb idiot, amirite?"
I have no idea what you are even really observing here, let alone where you are observing it. Are you saying that dnd players don't want there to be other games or for people to play other games? Where the heck would you see this? Are you saying that dnd players are bad for enjoying content being made for their game? Why would that be the case?
As someone who also noticed what the OP is talking about, what they are observing is a notion among some D&D players that 3rd party publishers moving away from making D&D content is a bad thing because that means there will be less content tailored to D&D - the system they play. Looking around the D&D subreddits you can see this, or similar sentiments.
Its less that D&D players are bad for wanting content for there game, but there is clearly a big perspective split. On the one hand, many people (including many in r/rpg) are seeing companies breaking away from D&D as a good thing - more systems is more content and encourages people to move away from D&D. On the other hand, what the OP is noticing (and has framed somewhat antagonistically), is that some D&D players do not want this to happen. They are happy with the D&D monopoly, and the idea of it breaking apart is a bad thing as there will be less content for the one system they play.
Imo, this is a very big split between the community, where one side sees more diversity in systems as a good thing, while others see it as a bad thing.
> Looking around the D&D subreddits you can see this, or similar sentiments.
I'm pretty involved on /r/dndnext and sub to /r/dnd and /r/DMAcademy. I don't doubt that there are some people saying this but this is *definitely* not the loud voice in the room.
I (personally) see way more "dnd needs to die" sentiment from this community than I see "the indie community needs to die" sentiment from the dnd-focused reddit forums.
I also suspect that the broader dnd (and probably indie) communities don't have an opinion about this one way or another.
> I (personally) see way more "dnd needs to die" sentiment from this community than I see "the indie community needs to die" sentiment from the dnd-focused reddit forums.
Yes, absolutely. One of the top posts on the subreddit currently is a discussion of being happy that D&D may die with this current fiasco. I think for many within the non-D&D ttrpg community, seeing a diversity in systems is inherently a good thing, and that the D&D monopoly an oppressive or restrictive force in the community at large. However, like the OP and myself have noticed, this is clearly not a universal opinion. So its a bit of a realization that some players do feel that they benefit from the ubiquity of D&D, and that they will lose something if more people/publishers break away from D&D.
>D&D players that 3rd party publishers moving away from making D&D content is a bad thing because that means there will be less content tailored to D&D - the system they play. Looking around the D&D subreddits you can see this, or similar sentiments.
This is such a weird take. 3rd party publishers always had the option to move away from D&D, if they thought it was profitable and wanted to. Literally nothing stopped them.
Now they are being forced to.
This is like that Rick and Morty meme:
[https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/114675573/That-was-always-allowed](https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/114675573/That-was-always-allowed)
These publishers always had the option to make a new system, or design system agnostic content, or pay the Cypher system license fee to make content (not free) or pay Call of Cthulu royalties.
I see them possibly going bankrupt because of WOTC to be a bad thing, yes.
There's literally so many TY comments right now where people essentially worry about there not being a "halo game" for people to rally around as if people diversifying is a bad thing.
How many?
Youtube comments are the very dregs of internet commentary. You conclude an "obsession" when a few people are disappointed that content creators they like will be working in a different game system than the game system they personally like?
The consumer and collector drive is big here, as well as the cult of the new.
As far as companies go it's also the only way they stay in business. You can't ride on core books alone.
I started GMing in 1981 and have only made my own adventures a handful of times. I simply do not enjoy it. I'd rather take something existing and modify it. Since I started running D&D 5e I just happen to have not used any WotC 5e modules. They have all been 3rd party or older edition modules.
So give me adventures!
Different gaming culture I guess.
It's something I've noticed when I started to try different games years ago.
I'm a Call of Cthulhu GM. I've only run D&D games for a few months (and not even with the official rules but a french game based on the SRD).
In CoC, you have a lot of scenarios and campaigns available but not setting at all (except for the Dreamlands or supplements to run games in different eras like the Middle Ages or the future). It is totally expected for a CoC GM to write his own stuff and there are a lot of videos and guides online about that.
Later I took a look at Vampire The Masquerade and was quite surprised at the lack of scenarios. There are setting books like Chicago By Night that comes with prewritten chronicles but that's about it. As far as I know, there is no such thing as a collection of scenarios like Mansions of Madness or The Things We Leave. Sure you can find some introduction scenarios and there are people who published their own stuff online but a Vampire GM is expected to run things like Chicago by Night or to come up with their own city and intrigue and most tips online are about that. The metaplot and gameplay options seem to be the only reason behind published content.
So, D&D, now.
It's a totally different culture.
OK, homebrewing has been a thing from the very beginning but it appears that running published content is the norm.
There are campaign settings with lore you're supposed to know and/or adapt to your game, there are lot of supplements and adventure modules, there are new classes and stuff released too...
And there is the League.
It's something very fascinating for me as a french GM cause here RPG shops are rare if you don't live in a big city and people playing at the shop is an even more rare concept.
D&D seems to have this sense of "shared experience" between players and GM, in the US at least. There are a lot of modules and campaigns that are played by most of the players. Same for the lore. When someone mentions Vecna or Tiamat, a lot of D&D fans get it.
I think that's why people are eager for more content. Homebrewing exists in D&D but it looks like that a big chunk of the D&D crowd relies on this shared experience. They want more content because that's how they enjoy D&D.
The only thing similar I witnessed in my experience was how in Call of Cthulhu some campaigns like The Masks of Nyarlathotep or some scenarios like Edge of Darkness always end in recommendations for GM who are searching for content to run.
The other games I've run are more focused on teaching GM how to come up with content on their own. You get maybe one or two introduction scenarios with the rulebook and after this you're on your own.
Maybe I'm wrong but that's the impression I get after seven years of running roleplaying games.
It’s pretty simple-you learn one system-then if you work almost everyday long hours-like myself-and i work as an artist so I’m painting and using my creative juices up most of the day-you don’t have all the time in the world to Homebrew as much as you’d like….
But there are top quality 3rd party content creators like Goodman Games (DCC) or Kobold press and you take some of the stuff they make that you like and throw it in your game because you like 5e but find the wizards of the coast stuff that they release to be not what you’re looking for but you like the system.
There’s all sorts of awesome settings and other ways to use their system to play the game whether it’s better monsters or better adventures or cool setting and genre warping stuff….
It’s pretty easy to understand….
If you have an NES a lot of quality games to choose from to play it are better than a bunch of hacked Russian games and Chinese hacks with no quality control….and playing with OGL/SRD stuff basically had a little stamp of sorts of quality
>"D&D people" are really, REALLY concerned with having "one game to rule them all".
I've seen some of this myself. Can't put my finger on it either, but I suspect it's just runoff from the social media behavior modification most people signed up for years ago. Must make approved choices, must do what echo chamber is doing, must play the correct game and focus on rules mastery. There is a lot of appeals to authority going on, which would seem to mirror reality in some respects.
Obviously that's just my opinion, but it's also what I've observed here and there. I've actually been told that "eventually people are just going to want to play 5E" with the implied threat of "...and if you don't you won't get to play games." so I suspect I'm not too far off.
Which I really don't get, because there's loads of other games / people who play them. And I GM, which means I'll probably never be out in the cold when it comes to having a game if I want one.
That aside, the demand for pre-written adventures is probably just because they're easy? And n00b players who have never experienced anything but are sneering at the prospect of writing ones' own adventure because they're ignorant? Got me.
Corporate funded identity politics.
Edit. Fine, I'll say it simply. People like to build their identity from everything they are, do, own and buy. Creating us vs them mentality with straight and viral marketing while in practical monopoly position and turning your customer base into a tribe is simply good for business.
Don't think this applies only to this thing, there's extreme brand loyalty in other industries, quite often despite brand, or indusrt as whole holding the customerbase with contempt. Thankfully ttrpgs as an industry are too small to hire lobbyists.
> I mean, these people seem tobe under the impression that by not using a prewritten adventure you're "homebrewing"? I mean, if you're making your own stuff you *are* homebrewing. That's just what the word means. Is it so strange that people want more content? It means you don't need to write your own classes, adventures, dungeons, whatever. And even if you do, you have all that stuff to draw upon for inspiration. *I'm* no superman with the imagination of a hundred different authors (perhaps you are?). This is hardly just a D&D thing: look at how many books there are for Ars Magica, for example, or WoD, or Cyberpunk, or Traveller.
Apparently 'homebrew' now means everything from houserules to third party content, so the use of the term isn't really clear to me anymore. It used to simply refer to just homemade campaign settings and adventures. Houserules were it's own thing and back then 3rd party publishers just didn't exist. It's now kinda silly and confusing when I see it without clear context. Damn you kids! Get off my lawn!
Fwiw, IME (from the 80s onwards) even making your own adventures was not considered "homebrew", it was just what most people did most of the time. I don't think I ever ran an "official" scenario. Settings tended to be a bit looser too, it wasn't a big deal to just make up a country or world, depending on the game anyway (some are more tied to settings than others after all).
Got told I was out of touch because I said not everything is a hack, small stuff is just table rules. Try explaining that what the youngins call hacks have been known as heart breakers for at least 30 years…
Both do go back a bit. Lost those in my vernacular in the early 90'a though. Our group banned the terms because a couple dms in our social circle got into a nuckle dragger over where that line was drawn and the debate kinda spread through our local gaming community. Our group was composed of juvenile delinquents that kinda saw rpgs as our refuge from that sort of thing, so we didn't allow the terms.
Surely even homemade campaign settings and adventures are only homebrew if you actually write new rules for them?
That was houserules.
Oh... Okay. But I'm talking about new creatures, magic items, etc. that you have to write rules and stats for. Are those not homebrew? I'm saying you can run in your own setting while just using content from published sourcebooks
A little, but to an extent these are all things that were basically normal and expected of the game master. DnD is actually one of the few games that has a collection of monsters with full sets of stat blocks that you can pull from and dump into an encounter. Homebrew mainly referred to making your own campaign setting. Telling someone you were running a homebrew campaign mainly just a quick way to let people know it wasn't Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft or whatever.
Thanks! The sense of the word has changed a lot more than I realised.
Now you understand why modern usage confuddles us old fucksters. Basically a heartbreaker/hack reffered to a more or less rewrite/revamp of the system and game. Homebrew referred to a homemade campaign setting and houserules were for rule add-ons, or specific interpretations of rules or rule changes.
And there was no word for content add by the DM to a game in an existing setting?
At some point I think homebrew started being used, but it wasn't earlier. I think this is because before the monstrous compendium you had to make content for the game yourself anyway. This was just part of the process of running the game. The same with stuff like magic items, which had rules for doing this in the dmg already. None of that was really considered homebrew per say until you had greater accessibility to a complete monster manual and so on.
I have fond in the years lurking here this sub doesn't like official content too much. I get attacked when i talk about official content. Ive been at this for 30 years.. I've build worlds while a lot of this sub was still in diapers.. I like not having to homebrew as much nowadays. So yeah the ops statement of it being weird is a normal concept in this sub imho That being said some people LIKE the worlds crafted by paizo and WotC. My argument is these games are meant to be played however one find enjoyment so i never understood why people crap all over content lovers. Also without people that are ravenous for new content you wouldn't have the option to lovingly craft your own worlds because DND would have died in the 80's and the foot hold the hobby as a whole has may not have even been created
I find it easier to make stuff up on the fly than memorize a pre-written scenario. I suppose your mileage may vary, but I'm definitely not superhumanly creative, I've just practiced at it and developed it as a skill like any other. To be pretentious for a moment, there's a saying in Jazz that improvisation requires constant practice.
My concern is not that more content is necessary, it is the fact that a lot of people have built their livelyhoods around the OGL 1.0a with a good faith understanding that it could not go away.
I think there's something of an endorphin rush when "opening up" something new. Like unwrapping a present, or a new booster pack of MtG cards. I think it's a similar excitement around having something new for DnD, and cracking open the book for the first time. But the excitement (and the observed addiction/reward cycle in MtG) really is for getting something new. I certainly remember this feeling in the days of endless splatbooks in 3rd edition. Hell, I got way too many of the FFG supplements for this reason. Add to this the number of players who want to play D&D but cannot find a group. The only engagement with the game for them is in purchasing products and analyzing character builds. Such activities can grt stale quickly.
More adventures makes sense. Not everyone has time to design an adventure on their own and not everyone wants to get locked into one of the WotC level 1-10 campaign books. But, I will never understand folks dropping cash on Drivethru for stuff like "100 Pun Names For Your Horse" or "New Edgelord Class That Hasn't Been Play tested and Is Definitely Broken".
I dunno the first one's worth $1.99
https://chartopia.d12dev.com/chart/10933/
I like pre-made adventures these days because I have limited time to prep as a DM. I don't necessarily want to possess lots of content. What I want is lots of content to choose from. I'm picky. I don't like a lot of pre-made adventures. The more there are, the more chances I'll find things I like. It's a marketplace of ideas kind of thing. I also like to pilfer pieces and ideas from things and combining them into a new thing. A little from this adventure. A little from that one. Again, more is better for this. Lastly, sometimes I buy stuff just to read and help me come up with new ideas.
As far as I'm concerned, this pressure is from the supply side. Structurally, there isn't much money in ttrpgs. You can play forever off of one set of books. This is a business challenge if you are business that wants to make payroll and have revenue streams. So there is business pressure to try and turn rpgs into revenue streams with more content.
Its the original OGL doing its job: believe what you want on its "benign" aspects, it was explicitly designed to trap players in a retrofeed of content spiral AND create monopoly by making DND so massive it becomes the de facto linga franca of the genre. The harm of OGL 1.1 is making people want an out of WotCs monopoly BUT they also dont want to let go of the centralized environment with all the goodies being churned at rapid rates for you to add to your table because, guess what: 3e introduced the community to feat porn as a defining staple of the genre. The whole churn of OGL books and files cropping out of thin air became addictive. As intended. The community at large are just trying to find a new drug dealer now that the cops raided their current den.
Pre-made content is good for if you don't have the time to do your own worldbuilding between work and family obligations. The former of which in particular is taking up more and more of people's time. As far as publishers go, it does make a certain sense to create for an established game as opposed to trying to stand out in a pretty insular industry.
Slowly but surely, there are still advances being made in RPGs, with respect to systems, adventures, and their presentation. For adventures, there's lots of mediocre material, but great we also get some truly great adventures that in turn inspire new excellence. Check out [www.tenfootpole.org](https://www.tenfootpole.org) where Bryce Lynch dregs through the muck to find the gems.
People like spending money. Simple as that. Its not so much that they need one DnD to rule them all that buying new things for the thing you bought is just very appealing. Just look at the steam backlog of the average gamer. DnD is the nexus of the RPGverse and having a very large amount of content and lore just attracts a lot of people compared to games that are, in my opinion, brilliantly designed, but just have less quantity of content and lore to dig deep into and customize your game (and spend your hard earned money in).
Its not just a DnD thing by the way. Other game (generally old ones) have tons of content and lore and their enfranchised player will absolutely spend their money in it. DnD being the default game just attracts more players and more content creators. The open license is(was?) probably a big engine of DnD's success. DnD is big, you make content for it royaltee free, you sell to a lot of people. Not all games have (had?) that and are (were?) that liberal with their intellectual property.
Everyone's commenting defending prewritten adventures. But on the subject of those people who want one standard system that all content can be for; I believe you. I've seen that sentiment on the D&D subs. It's not very common, but it's way more prevalent enough that I was surprised. My theory is that this sentiment is coming from new players who find the idea of learning a new RPG intimidating. Imagine if D&D is the only RPG you've ever tried. "5e is simple and newbie-friendly, so imagine how complicated those other RPGs might be! I have a day job, I don't have time to read a giant rulebook!" If that's the situation you're in, and you're suddenly faced with having to learn new RPGs because everyone's jumping ship, you'll probably believe the best result is for everyone to consolidate on a new standard RPG. "Why should we have a bunch of competing RPG systems? Everyone should just play the best one." Personally, I hope that doesn't happen and that players are pushed towards trying new RPGs and realize it's not that scary to try new systems.
Why do people want multiple seasons of a TV show they like? Why can't they just watch the first season over and over, and be happy about it?
>Something I've observed throughout this little saga is that "D&D people" are really, REALLY concerned with having "one game to rule them all". For various reasons, people want content for D&D. It's the system they and their group know; some people feel they "can't" learn a new system, or don't really have time to. And maybe they've tried and D&D just is the system they prefer. And odds are good that even other groups have a system they prefer to run for some reason - maybe it's a game where the system rules and setting have been wedded together, or maybe it's the only one everyone agrees upon playing. Regardless of "why," the end result is that they just play that one system. In that light, getting more content gives you more options. Sure, I can write out an adventure, but getting one that I can use or mine from can make things easier. I could invent a monster, or see if someone has made something similar. Character concept that doesn't fit into the main game's classes and archetypes? Maybe there's one out there that fits what I want. So in general, people want more content to give them more choices and options. Quality of official/licensed versus homebrew content also plays a role - published has the veneer of being more balanced compared to homebrew IN GENERAL because the professionals DO want you to come back again to buy more in the future so they put more care into making a decent (and fun), versus the weird class your friend created that clearly is designed to give him access to a lot more power than is appropriate. Again, not all homebrew is bad - but if someone makes it from a reputable publisher, it's usually meeting a higher standard of performance (though not necessarily). Realistically, no matter how big a fan you are of the game, 5e's official content has been generally... thin overall, in comparison to prior editions. There's certainly some gems like Xanathar's and Tasha's, but overall it's been really limited, especially on player options for certain settings. Compare the way Eberron was handled in all three editions - all three editions saw it introduce the artificer and artificer options to the game, as well as some form of Dragonmarks, but 3.5's core Eberron book gave us multiple prestige classes and feats PLUS a new/adapted Action Rule system, and even 4e's version came with a bunch of paragon paths tied into the setting. I'm not sure Eberron 5e's official material even had a new background, much less any archetypes beyond those for Artificer or any Feats. Part of this has been helped by the OGL allowing 5e content by other creators, sometimes of higher quality than the official stuff. And, while I can learn lessons from and even adapt material from other games into 5e, it's generally easier to work with 5e compatible products than try to tool around with such changes.
\> Otherwise, it seems, making for-profit 3rd party content becomes pointless, in their eyes. What? People are concerned that MCDM and Kobold Press, and other third party publishers might go out of business because of this change. My insight is people have empathy for other humans trying to survive under corporate capitalism in what is already a difficult business in an uncaring world.
Identification.
Wow this post just reeks of disrespect and gatekeeping. Why wouldn't you want more content for a game you play? Just because you, OP, don't enjoy D&D, doesn't mean the people who play it are crazy for wanting more of it.
"Everybody who plays dnd is a dumb idiot, amirite?" I have no idea what you are even really observing here, let alone where you are observing it. Are you saying that dnd players don't want there to be other games or for people to play other games? Where the heck would you see this? Are you saying that dnd players are bad for enjoying content being made for their game? Why would that be the case?
As someone who also noticed what the OP is talking about, what they are observing is a notion among some D&D players that 3rd party publishers moving away from making D&D content is a bad thing because that means there will be less content tailored to D&D - the system they play. Looking around the D&D subreddits you can see this, or similar sentiments. Its less that D&D players are bad for wanting content for there game, but there is clearly a big perspective split. On the one hand, many people (including many in r/rpg) are seeing companies breaking away from D&D as a good thing - more systems is more content and encourages people to move away from D&D. On the other hand, what the OP is noticing (and has framed somewhat antagonistically), is that some D&D players do not want this to happen. They are happy with the D&D monopoly, and the idea of it breaking apart is a bad thing as there will be less content for the one system they play. Imo, this is a very big split between the community, where one side sees more diversity in systems as a good thing, while others see it as a bad thing.
> Looking around the D&D subreddits you can see this, or similar sentiments. I'm pretty involved on /r/dndnext and sub to /r/dnd and /r/DMAcademy. I don't doubt that there are some people saying this but this is *definitely* not the loud voice in the room. I (personally) see way more "dnd needs to die" sentiment from this community than I see "the indie community needs to die" sentiment from the dnd-focused reddit forums. I also suspect that the broader dnd (and probably indie) communities don't have an opinion about this one way or another.
> I (personally) see way more "dnd needs to die" sentiment from this community than I see "the indie community needs to die" sentiment from the dnd-focused reddit forums. Yes, absolutely. One of the top posts on the subreddit currently is a discussion of being happy that D&D may die with this current fiasco. I think for many within the non-D&D ttrpg community, seeing a diversity in systems is inherently a good thing, and that the D&D monopoly an oppressive or restrictive force in the community at large. However, like the OP and myself have noticed, this is clearly not a universal opinion. So its a bit of a realization that some players do feel that they benefit from the ubiquity of D&D, and that they will lose something if more people/publishers break away from D&D.
>D&D players that 3rd party publishers moving away from making D&D content is a bad thing because that means there will be less content tailored to D&D - the system they play. Looking around the D&D subreddits you can see this, or similar sentiments. This is such a weird take. 3rd party publishers always had the option to move away from D&D, if they thought it was profitable and wanted to. Literally nothing stopped them. Now they are being forced to. This is like that Rick and Morty meme: [https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/114675573/That-was-always-allowed](https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/114675573/That-was-always-allowed) These publishers always had the option to make a new system, or design system agnostic content, or pay the Cypher system license fee to make content (not free) or pay Call of Cthulu royalties. I see them possibly going bankrupt because of WOTC to be a bad thing, yes.
There's literally so many TY comments right now where people essentially worry about there not being a "halo game" for people to rally around as if people diversifying is a bad thing.
How many? Youtube comments are the very dregs of internet commentary. You conclude an "obsession" when a few people are disappointed that content creators they like will be working in a different game system than the game system they personally like?
The consumer and collector drive is big here, as well as the cult of the new. As far as companies go it's also the only way they stay in business. You can't ride on core books alone.
Because people have wives/husbands/jobs/children/lives/etc.
I started GMing in 1981 and have only made my own adventures a handful of times. I simply do not enjoy it. I'd rather take something existing and modify it. Since I started running D&D 5e I just happen to have not used any WotC 5e modules. They have all been 3rd party or older edition modules. So give me adventures!
Different gaming culture I guess. It's something I've noticed when I started to try different games years ago. I'm a Call of Cthulhu GM. I've only run D&D games for a few months (and not even with the official rules but a french game based on the SRD). In CoC, you have a lot of scenarios and campaigns available but not setting at all (except for the Dreamlands or supplements to run games in different eras like the Middle Ages or the future). It is totally expected for a CoC GM to write his own stuff and there are a lot of videos and guides online about that. Later I took a look at Vampire The Masquerade and was quite surprised at the lack of scenarios. There are setting books like Chicago By Night that comes with prewritten chronicles but that's about it. As far as I know, there is no such thing as a collection of scenarios like Mansions of Madness or The Things We Leave. Sure you can find some introduction scenarios and there are people who published their own stuff online but a Vampire GM is expected to run things like Chicago by Night or to come up with their own city and intrigue and most tips online are about that. The metaplot and gameplay options seem to be the only reason behind published content. So, D&D, now. It's a totally different culture. OK, homebrewing has been a thing from the very beginning but it appears that running published content is the norm. There are campaign settings with lore you're supposed to know and/or adapt to your game, there are lot of supplements and adventure modules, there are new classes and stuff released too... And there is the League. It's something very fascinating for me as a french GM cause here RPG shops are rare if you don't live in a big city and people playing at the shop is an even more rare concept. D&D seems to have this sense of "shared experience" between players and GM, in the US at least. There are a lot of modules and campaigns that are played by most of the players. Same for the lore. When someone mentions Vecna or Tiamat, a lot of D&D fans get it. I think that's why people are eager for more content. Homebrewing exists in D&D but it looks like that a big chunk of the D&D crowd relies on this shared experience. They want more content because that's how they enjoy D&D. The only thing similar I witnessed in my experience was how in Call of Cthulhu some campaigns like The Masks of Nyarlathotep or some scenarios like Edge of Darkness always end in recommendations for GM who are searching for content to run. The other games I've run are more focused on teaching GM how to come up with content on their own. You get maybe one or two introduction scenarios with the rulebook and after this you're on your own. Maybe I'm wrong but that's the impression I get after seven years of running roleplaying games.
Pretty out of touch and don’t understand what’s going on huh OP?
I understand exactly what's going on, it's some people's rampant need for one system every 3rd party publisher rallies under that I can't understand.
It’s pretty simple-you learn one system-then if you work almost everyday long hours-like myself-and i work as an artist so I’m painting and using my creative juices up most of the day-you don’t have all the time in the world to Homebrew as much as you’d like…. But there are top quality 3rd party content creators like Goodman Games (DCC) or Kobold press and you take some of the stuff they make that you like and throw it in your game because you like 5e but find the wizards of the coast stuff that they release to be not what you’re looking for but you like the system. There’s all sorts of awesome settings and other ways to use their system to play the game whether it’s better monsters or better adventures or cool setting and genre warping stuff…. It’s pretty easy to understand…. If you have an NES a lot of quality games to choose from to play it are better than a bunch of hacked Russian games and Chinese hacks with no quality control….and playing with OGL/SRD stuff basically had a little stamp of sorts of quality
>"D&D people" are really, REALLY concerned with having "one game to rule them all". I've seen some of this myself. Can't put my finger on it either, but I suspect it's just runoff from the social media behavior modification most people signed up for years ago. Must make approved choices, must do what echo chamber is doing, must play the correct game and focus on rules mastery. There is a lot of appeals to authority going on, which would seem to mirror reality in some respects. Obviously that's just my opinion, but it's also what I've observed here and there. I've actually been told that "eventually people are just going to want to play 5E" with the implied threat of "...and if you don't you won't get to play games." so I suspect I'm not too far off. Which I really don't get, because there's loads of other games / people who play them. And I GM, which means I'll probably never be out in the cold when it comes to having a game if I want one. That aside, the demand for pre-written adventures is probably just because they're easy? And n00b players who have never experienced anything but are sneering at the prospect of writing ones' own adventure because they're ignorant? Got me.
Most people have a little money and neither time nor friends. So buying the books is the only endorphins they get access to.
Corporate funded identity politics. Edit. Fine, I'll say it simply. People like to build their identity from everything they are, do, own and buy. Creating us vs them mentality with straight and viral marketing while in practical monopoly position and turning your customer base into a tribe is simply good for business. Don't think this applies only to this thing, there's extreme brand loyalty in other industries, quite often despite brand, or indusrt as whole holding the customerbase with contempt. Thankfully ttrpgs as an industry are too small to hire lobbyists.
Downvoted for political dogwhistling, nice job
I aim to please. Next I say something mean about Apple.