They want a clean break with the "old, white, stale, and male" audience that has brought D&D to its high level of cultural prominence and want to replace it with a completely new "wider audience" that is hypothesized to be racially diverse and politically progressive. Unfortunately highly progressive people are too busy politicking on Twitter to play D&D and also think hobbies like gaming are for gross, basement-dwelling creeps. In other words, they intend to chase figments of their marketing department's and stockholders' imaginations, while maligning current D&D players. You can look to the implosion of the Western comic book industry to see a rough sketch of what is to come for WotC and D&D, as Western comic books were one of the first adopters of this business model.
Presumably because they want to trick people into believing it is still the same as the overall well-liked 5th edition, and not its own different version. Leveraging consumer interest in 5e and perhaps lack of in-depth knowledge about the differences to the new stuff.
8:51 In reference to your comment about "Breadth" and "a dozen multiverses" I think the real issue is that none of these multiverses will dare to change the game in any fundamental way. All of them will be functionally interchangeable. We will not get any setting specific rules of the kind we got in the old AD&D Setting boom. We won't have the in-depth domain management from Birthright or the reshuffling of classes and magic we saw in Dark Sun. Strixhaven is an example of this already happening. Strixhaven was supposed to have new character backgrounds that would allow all classes to have Spellcasting in order to better reflect a Magic the Gathering world. However when these were previewed in Unearthed Arcana, a vocal minority were VERY unhappy. So WoTC scrapped the new backgrounds and just... left the negative space they were meant to fill.
My main concern is a growing trend over many platforms where depth is being lost. It's all about churning out more, going with what's popular at this moment, rather than putting in the time and effort to make something with detail, believability, something to actually care about rather than something that will entertain you for 5 seconds before moving on to the next thing. Esper, you made a great point years ago when you were doing your demon ranking videos and pointed out how it was interesting that, in a game with violence, demon-summoning, etc., that anyone would care that a demon's breasts be covered up. WotC cannot appease everyone all at once. They need to choose their audience and give them everything they've got, don't water it down to try and appease the masses. They'll ruin it for those of us who loved it to begin with.
During the Era of 3rd Edition and especially 3.5 the number of source books released per year was significantly higher than now. You can argue that those books were better than newer books, but the writers most certainly did not take their time making them.
I’m someone who started on 5e as my second big TTRPG just a few short years ago and as a DM I love going back to older editions’ ideas for monsters. Lovely thing about a 50 year old system with 5 editions and near constant updates is that there’s one hell of a backlog. Add in the fact that a lot of people have both great homebrew and conversions of old books and that’s awesome for people who want to make things more interesting. The 5e conversion of Libris Mortis and the work of Dungeon Dad and 3rd to 5th are crystallizations of good stuff brought forward well. And for free at that. Plus homebrewing is fun from monsters to subclasses to items to expansions on playtest ideas like Weapon Masteries.
"Some things will be better, but a few things will be worse." Congratulations Esper, you've just described the difference between literally every edition D&D has had.
To paraphrase President Pompidou, real art may question and challenge us, and demand change. Without that spirit, the game will just be a popcorn movie
Lately I've been delving into Keith Baker's 3rd party Eberron books, as well as Eberron: Rising from The Last War, and I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt in my mind that THIS is exactly what the rest of D&D is missing lately. Current D&D is so wide in scope, but about as deep as a puddle when it comes to anything other than game mechanics. I find Eberron to be such an interesting setting with its magic-punk aesthetics, but more than that it just has so much detail put into the world itself. I now own Eberron: Rising from The Last War, Exploring Eberron, and Chronicles of Eberron in PDF and physical book formats, with a plan on getting both versions of Frontiers of Eberron: Quickstone when it finally launches. Eberron: Rising from The Last War is the only official WoTC book I've actually paid money for (bought from a 3rd party seller of course), and I bought it AFTER the OGL debacle because Exploring Eberron had hooked me so much. I don't care about 100 different settings with books that barely go into depth on them, I want more from specific settings and not just a single book. I want details, immersion, worldbuilding! I wanna know the ongoing political machinations of specific groups, the inner conflicts of various factions, how certain systems within the world operate, differences in cultures/art/architecture/traditions between differing peoples across the setting's world, what runs the economy of each nation, etc. etc.
Removing statistics for hybrid races are actually something I've been wanting for a while, that's one upcoming change I love. But removing the game mechanics options doesn't mean they're not in the setting or in the game. They're absolutely in the setting, many important characters in the Forgotten Realms are Half-Elves, even the recent D&D movie has a Half-Elf as one of the main characters, you will be able to play a Half-Elf, nothing has changed in that regard 🤔
Yeah, but WotC's solution to so many things is to simply remove it and make the DM come up with it or reimplement it instead. They're making a DM's job harder instead of easier.
Say that to the character that was a half-elf in Lost Mines of Phandelver that got race changed into a drow, don't be surprised if you never see any new half-race characters and previous half-race characters get race changed to be pure races too. All for the sake of "being against racism".@@GergeCoelho
I mean reasonable points esper made aside, nothing makes you realize your generation has become the new "olds" than having every conversation we have start with "dam the young ppl, they ruin everything i love!" 😂
It is less mature, you are correct. They already said that they wanted us older players out of their game. They have no idea what real D&D is. WOtC is a terrible company, and I said this was going to happen when they took over D&D. It just took a few more years than I thought.
indeed it hasnt been real dnd for some time now, they are killing themselves in real time, theirs no one left with talent and no one who loves dnd either. Go and check out the OSR to see where the real future of this hobby is at cant encourage people enough to check it out!
4:23 I disagree that this is made to appeal to the younger audience, who actually tends towards the edgier side in my experience. Instead, it appeals to fans of what I personally call "Pop fantasy". It's the style used in the recent DnD movie or Heartstone in which everything is silly and weightless. It almost feels like it's trying to be subversive, but fails because it doesn't understand what it is subverting, akin to Rings of Power when compared to Tolkien or Peter Jackson's trilogy.
Seeing as WotC is firing its writing and publishing staff, good luck 6E. They will most likely subcontract modules to Paizo, Kobold Press and Goodman Games. They might as well just subcontract D&D and stop all development because WotC can't write. WotC isn't writing a RPG, its writing a power fantasy where the player never dies, the DM builds a world with no consequences and the game sucks.
I don't see WotC firing its writing team as necessarily a bad thing because the last half-dozen books have sucked and they're not likely to improve in the near future. I don't know the details, but I suspect that WotC has fired a fairly large chunk of the blue-hairs that are completely unqualified to write material. Hiring people that check all the boxes except talent has cost a lot of companies a lot of money and the bottom dollar is all these major companies care about so the trash is getting taken out.
@@PsyrenXY I understand you're not speaking to me, but your comment is snarky and doesn't help anyone. I've been DMing for a little over 30 years so I have no issue adapting to how "easy" 5e is for players, but the game has attracted A LOT of new people in the last few years so they have very little idea of how to tweak the dials to make encounters more suitable. You sound like a prick that I'd never want to play a game with.
I agree, except with the helmets situation. I think a *tiny bit* of coolness can be injected into things. But I'll wear the ugly helmet if it's magical, and it being magical *and worn* is non neogtiable.
Indeed, I enjoy the half naked muscle bound men and scantily clad female adventurers from the 80's and 90's, so a missing helm is not too big a deal for me. That's what amulets of protection are for. 😆
9:00 so true, man, so true. Conflict is erased from the game- fights become with no risk, labour's with no option to fail, sacrifices- without loosing anything, live without hindered, friendship without efforts, adventure without drama. I see it in all fields of knowledge and activity - from fictional books to movies, from psychology and therapy to parenting and education. Once again, really nice to see deep understanding of human nature (as in chaos gods video) and ... (hope I chose the right English words for it) broadcasting real values in your videos. Not so many youtubers are able and can afford to do this. I'm with you 👍🏼🤝🏼
I agree with the pc changes. People are always so ok with being murder hobos or just mercilessly slaying their enemies, but somehow the actual darkness of the world is heavily limited. Old fantasy books and artbooks were something I loved reading and looking at with my grandpa and it sucks to see that genre go away and get replaced with cookie cutter fantasy
I'm kind of worried, I wish I had remembered which interview it was, but they were selling the new edition on they won't use the word race to describe orcs, dwarves, elves etc... and the revision of spelljammer taking out the one class was a slave race. What are they going to do with all the underdark enemies? They are almost all slavers. I worry about everything being rewritten and make no sense
In one way or another, these things have been said about every new edition of D&D... younger audience, style over substance, social trends. None of these significantly impaired the growth of D&D. So, I agree D&D will continue to be popular. Most of the criticisms you mentioned aren't that big of a deal because the game is still tailored by the DM and the players at each individual table.
Well said. The 'sanitation' and corporatization of the game is completely counter to what much of the old guard like myself are looking for. Speaking as a big fan of 5E when it launched in 2014, we've mostly moved back to our 2E roots at this point. ⚔ 5.5E will likely be the first edition this millennia which I don't purchase at launch...and perhaps not at all.
Nailed it! You are so right Esper! Can we please get a darker, shadier game without politics and "yay everyone loves everyone" (Orcs can be your friends, and Orc women are sexy...) Boring! I would like my game play to be darkness and pain... Where death means something. Where every step you take and every decision you make could be your last. I played AD&D in the mid 80's early 90's and man was that fun! Can't stand "The Little Mermaid" of D&D... Just my couple of coppers...
I have very little faith that it will be quality material. Good writing is a rare commodity these days. That combined with not wanting to offend anyone to an extreme level...like we can't call a class druids anymore? Have you met any "druids" that are offended by fantasy roleplay? Me neither. Corporate politics nails it on the head.
It's a money issue. They claim a 6E now, all their books stop selling as well. By claiming its just "dnd forever" allows them to make small tweaks forever, meaning people will need to buy new, updated books and stuff to stay up to date instead of one big drop once per edition. That's just my cynical opinion though
I am pretty sure that when Companies like WoTC, Disney and Games Workshop claim to worry about not offending anyone, and being for "everyone" what they really mean is we don't want to offend anyone who agrees with ideology and feels the way we do. If you do not agree, then as Games Workshop said, "you will not be missed!"
Shallow and flashy - that's what I fear will continue, yes... And what you say about the artwork is so true (since years, esp. since 4e)... I sometimes use either digital or printed images to show certain monsters, characters etc to my players and always use a rather grim, dark, earnest and by times even offensive (bloody, disgusting) approach to those. If not using images my descriptions tend to be the same. Coming from a 2nd ed background it try to keep the spirit from those time with the rules of 5e so to say... And regarding the "falling in love" with publications - I had a slight hope for the renewed Planescape (I was and am so in love with the original one) setting but got beaten back to reality, haha.
The silver lining is that as a DM I can reject all the things I hate about the cooperate direction. I love running morally grey plots with political intruige. Allowing players to ponder more univeral and moral conflicts not stoked in modern day connotations. It's when it becomes sanatized it becomes worse and makes games less compelling and worse.
I think the new edition can be summed up to say, it is designed to be played within a vtt environment. That is the reason for the shift in game and thought. Personally I am going to keep playing 5th edition, and wait till they come out, if ever, with a more solid version of a tabletop edition.
I don't think it's a good idea at all. Right now, everyone and their brother is writing their own RPG and only a fraction of a fraction will do well financially. It would be a waste of Esper's time. A better alternative would to simply write a detailed set of variant rules and new mechanics that address all of the holes in 5e. That's what I've done and it works extremely well.
For quite a while now WotC has been extremely hard against any form of roleplaying... oddly enough. Youre not allowed to roleplay as a racist, youre not allowed to roleplay as a sexist etc etc... Everything is literal, there is no roleplaying. You ARE a superhappy tolerant lovebringer, you're not allowed to roleplay. ...Good thing they dont have the power to control people in their homes, but damn did they wish they do
While i do agree overall with you , i love playing disney like villains very much and being evil as a role can be fun and hate theover sanitasing of media , there is A point where it doed become basicly a power fantasy for some who "cant be like that in real life" i had a gamer guy at my table and he basicly did the holocaust to the lizard folk talking it away as roleplay , i doubt though he had any problems with it in real life too . Roleplay can reveal aspects of ourselves and if not spoken and corrected in some way, cam be stuff that spirales into dark dark places
@@theimmortaleye7511 Youre playing as a disney villain? You are literally evil, you are personally responsible for the murder of Mufasa. According to the insanity of WotC that is
Another thought: If tolerance of another's race or sex is not your natural inclination, then stepping out of your own mindset to portray tolerance *would* be roleplay, moreso than if you were to keep creating characters with such biases.
@@justinr5433You could keep creating racist characters over and over and over and over and you would still not be a racist. That is the literal core of roleplaying.
Would love for pathfinder to become more popular as its dnd but just better at the moment. Though I find some of the fan base can be rather toxic when it comes to actual issues the game has. Which isn't many but it's strange to see. Whe 5e is so riddled with issues it was a joke in my grp to say that it had more holes than road. But that's an entire other issue lol.
Honestly it's pretty easy to make an edition that's backwards compatible if all they do is change the PC classes. Monsters and even NPCs in 5E have always been more or less standalone creatures that don't follow any kind of rules. It's not like 3E where we have NPCs that are built as PCs, so if you change how rangers work, then every NPC ranger changes along with it. But in 5E, there are no NPC rangers, only NPCs that have very ranger-like abilities and you can change how rangers work and leave the NPCs easily untouched. Really all that's going to change is potentially a few spells, assuming they don't touch the base math, which I doubt they will.
What I find weird is how everything seems so human oriented. Its like people want hundreds of races to play that are all just basically humans. The Dragonborn bard artwork you showed is an example. Wouldn't you think Dragonborn have their own instruments and regalia and not using human based stuff? The idea of large metropolis cities where every person is some sort of demon, rhino man or plasmoid is just weird to me why are they all acting and organizing like humans in human cities all the time? Am I making sense here? Its like the more races they add the more it just becomes furry or scaly humans cosplaying.
That would be cool. Instead we get either: A. Incredibly underdeveloped lore B. In the few settings that have a lot of lore (like Forgotten Realms), the lore and even the setting's style have been changed so much over the years that it's an incoherent mess if you study it much.
These predictions are terrifying and most likely correct. Wouldn’t it be nice if D&D went complete opposite from the trends. Kind of like what Dark Souls did for video games when at that time most games were easy to finish. Put some stakes back into D&D
the books have always been guidelines and not set in stone rules. do whatever you want at your table as it is your game. you have the option of picking and choosing what to use and what to skip. have fun it is a game.
The problem is the current trend of removing said guidelines entirely. "What's the rule?" "Make it up." "What's the lore?" "Make it up." "What are you actually publishing? " "Numbers and art?" "At least you're using real artists instead of AI" "Um... right. Totally."
@@DrLipkin 100% this! It's a huge problem. WotC are charging folk for rulebooks that barely contain rules. Sure, we can all just play a ruleless game of make believe, but then why are we buying these products to begin with if what we want to do isn't supported at all by actual rules? A GM buys a rulebook hoping it contains rules to support various characters, scenarios, etc, not to be told it's up to them to make something up.
My issue with 5,5e is that it's not 6e. I want a completa overhaul of dnd that's more rules heavy and has a lot of systems in it. I want a better poisons, I want a crafting system, I want better support for the exploreton pillar of the game and better wilderness exploration rules, I want detailed advice for how to run campains underwater, on the sea, in the desert, in the arctic, forests of any kind, feywild, shadowfell, the outerplanes, I want the skill challange rules to be in the DM's guide and not the in an adventure like how it is now in Ghosts of Salt Marsh. Basically I want a new edition that addreses the lack of rules that 5e has that people have been complaining for years at this point.
Woah, that sounds like it might require the book to have actual rules instead of just telling the DMs to figure everything out. WotC doesn't want to do that kind of work. Um... I mean that they don't want to restrict your creativity. Yeah, that's it.
WotC is consistently dumbing down and sanitizing the game. NPC spell casters have greatly reduced spells so that they are less intimidating to use, while simultaneously being more confusing. Because what's the difference between a "spell" and a "spell-like effect?" Can a spell-like effect be counterspelled? Potentially triggering or problematic lore is excised. Specific lore is replaced with generic lore, so that monster manuals are setting agnostic. Races no longer have specific cultures and aptitudes, instead being largely interchangeable with a few ribbon traits. The idea of largely or inherently evil races is gone entirely. The justification given is that DMs can still make whatever choices they want, but instead of giving us a bunch of options and allowing us to pair back to what we want to use, they're giving us an empty box and telling us to fill it. The goal is seemingly to make the game more accessible to a broader audience. The problem is that by making it the DM's responsibility to come up with specifics or add complexities, you make the DM's job harder. An experienced DM can probably handle it, but a new DM is going to be adrift. And DMs are really the chokepoint of the hobby, because you can't have a game without one. I don't know how many times I've seen someone say online "When I find a group, I'm excited to play!" The obvious solution to lacking a group is to make one yourself, but WotC doesn't make it easy to become a first time DM. I work at a game store, and we have a shelf full of books that simply will. not. move. We have a packed DnD night every week, plus home games that make use of open table space during daytime hours, but the books don't sell. Because why would they? Regulars don't need books. They already own or have access to a PHB. Maybe one in six regulars is a DM, severely limiting the number of potential buyers for DM targeted books, even before you address the lack of substance that said books offer. There's a reason that WotC is putting out shallow books with broad appeal. They make more from new players than from regulars. They're trying to cast a wide net, because the players they already have aren't buying. DnD is more popular now than it has ever been, yet it's vastly less lucrative than something like Magic: The Gathering. This is why they are focusing so much on the VTT. But in doing so, they are neglecting the people that have kept the game alive for decades. A new DM is more likely to learn the ropes from watching an experienced one than by reading the DMG. If experienced DMs aren't taken care of, new DMs are going to have to take their cues from books, and from Actual Plays. As discussed, the books are bad. And nothing against actual plays, because I love several, but trying to learn how to DM by watching them is like trying to learn about sex from watching porn. It breeds unrealistic expectations.
The purpose of the new edition is to shift D&D to a live service with monthly subscription model. That's why they are removing features like monster spellcasting. It is so it is more easy to implement on a computer. I doubt there will be widespread adoption of 5.5, as it is a blatant money grab. It looks like WotC is going the way of TSR, and the next real edition will have to be made by someone else (if at all).
My response to this take is: kind of? I think that the more that a ttrpg (or any media really) tries to be universal, the less it can do without contradicting one design goal or the other. I think it's possible to make things deep and philosophical, in some cases gritty, without making them offensive (though people have wildly different definitions of the word), it just takes a much more deliberate approach. The crux of the matter is that as long as they try to waffle back and forth in the middle, everyone will be a little displeased.
It's a matter of priorities. We should not make inoffensive the top priority. Neither should trying to be offensive be a top priority. The main focus should be great stories and great characters that win people's hearts and capture people's imaginations.
As much as I enjoy D&D 5E, I do find myself gravitating away towards simpler D20-related systems where my investment in 5E can still be used. Lately what my players and I have been doing is just letting them choose what they want when they level up, in terms of class improvements. I work with them to mix, match and homebrew class abilities to make their own thing, which is pretty rewarding creatively, which I think is another facet of TTRPGs. It keeps things fresh and the players feel like they're actually getting what they want from their character.
9:22 this reminds me of the ending of Brave New World (spoilers i guess?) when the Savage confronts Mustapha Mond, one of the World Controllers. He states that he'd rather live with pain, death, disease, war, suffering, and all of the bad things, then in the world presented in the book, where Everything Is Fine, and the only feelings everyone ever feels are happy, and content, and fun, where there's no conflict, nothing to worry about, just living your life in an eternal present, where we don't even need stories anymore, we can just forget about our past and our art. All the rough edges have been sanded out of humanity. Everything we've got to worry about now is doing the things that make us happy, and consuming the products that will make us happy, and only happy, because they do not have any thought or artistic vision behind them, having only a vacuous, market-researched, corporate friendly message, and nothing that could ever cause discomfort on the consumer.
I really liked the depth of the video: honest and strait forward analysis of D&D state of play and thoughtful predictions. But if the d&d system stay dominant (mostly because it's robust and convenient) but the official settings and adventures get more and more tasteless then there should be space for new interesting settings?
I'm not sure swapping out the settings will fix the root of the issue. Forgotten Realms is an amazing setting but its been watered down and the people doing this will absolutely find a way to do it in every setting they write for.
Couldn’t agree more with everything said here. As a guy who’s been playing D&D since 1982, this feels VERY much like the schism 4E created, only worse. WotC’s creative decisions late risk alienating their core customer base for precisely the reasons stated here. 5E started out brilliantly, but the changes make it feel less and less like D&D, and more like Fortnite with a bubble-wrapped Fantasy aesthetic over everything. It REEKS of Current Year corporate HR and Marketing influence, rather than what D&D has historically been. I know that my own 8-yr gaming group won’t be moving over to 5.5 - we will either use a hybrid of the 5E materials that we already have plus 3rd party content, or we’ll make the switch to an OSR system. I say that as the Forever DM of my group, who buys 99% of the stuff we use, amounting to probably $10-15k over the past decade. If WotC is going to lose OG’s like me, their future looks grim.
Reading your comment makes me even more interested in creating an RPG. I would want it to be something that goes really classic and at the same time really innovative.
@@esperthebardI think you're certainly talented and experienced enough to do it (Esoteric Emporium is easily the best of the 3rd party books I've ever backed) but I fear that there are so many OSR systems out there that the market for another system is already over-saturated. If I could give WotC some advice, I'd tell them to split D&D into two production lines. The nice, safe, inoffensively fluffy version they're currently making, and a grittier, darker, more mature version for the people who are sick of WotC's pandering to the 'D&D-as-therapy' crowd. Creators like you are ideally suited to make content for that more serious market, and it would save all sorts of duplicated effort from really talented people being spread out over a dozen or more OSR clones, all trying to re-invent the wheel.
@@madaxe606 I've said something similar for a long time (and in this video too): Have a D&D that is lighter, simpler, more aimed toward a younger audience, and also have a D&D that is darker, more complex, and more aimed toward a mature audience. Like a production studio that makes some PG movies and also some R movies. In terms of trying to create my own RPG, I wouldn't do it unless it was sufficiently innovative, like really did some new and interesting things to stand out from the crowd and pioneer in the RPG landscape.
The worst thing is that Wotc refuses to provide actual rules and systems. They want to provide back story and leave the rules up to the DM in the name of "choice" They have been drifting in the direction since the start of 5e. I think it'll get worse. They're afraid to make a rule about anything because someone will be offended somehow.
I think this is a larger trend in all of society. Its kind of like genres in music for a long time people said genres were stupid "who cares if my music sounds like deathmetal I'm calling it bluegrass". But that doesn't work in reality people who are actually into bluegrass will turn your music off immediately because its not whatever you say it is its an actual sound that has a genre. Recently because of this we've seen a return of the "gatekeeper" in genres like deathmetal and rap which has IMO led to better less confused music because its actually made with a purpose.
I can understand the marketing spin to not want to call it 5.5 but rather 5e anniversary edition or 5e revised. There will be a lot of refinements in the mechanics. The things where it will be worse is that everything will be run through 'sensitivity training' and feel very antiseptic and unauthentic (I agree with you on this). The spellcasting vs magical abilities for NPCs/Monsters is a result of the ill-considered counterspell they added to 5e. I agree that they will try to appeal to younger gamers and ensuing watering-down. And I am so tired of the 'multiverse' and ensuing baggage (though D&D has more history and connection with that idea than most modern media that has jumped on the bandwagon).
I feel like it's a really bad take on the half elves and half works. You can make a half anything race but the prior handbook only had two written down. There was no half tiefling, there was no half Gnome. They're also was no full orc. Now we have those things and you just make up your own half race if you want to play a mixed race
I miss 80s-Early 2000s pulp art in general. It’s all too often we get rounded more cartoony artwork in our comics or general game art. I want less new DC style art and more White Dwarf front cover art.
My prediction for the 2024 incarnation of D&D is that I won't be purchasing it. I want the D&D IP to be purchased by someone that actually knows how to handle it properly, so the less Hasbro earns from it, the sooner that happens. I'll still buy 3rd party material for 5E, but nothing from WotC/Hasbro.
You know? I just watched a video about why JRR Tolkien hated Disney... It was somewhat similar. He saw his cartoons as not respecting children. Written for the intelligence of children in order to achieve mass appeal. And in stripping away depth and danger and darkness, you were, in effect, ruining the story. Like, famously, he watched Snow White with CS Lewis, and while CS Lewis appreciated the animation and art, they hated how the Dwarves were all just goofy little fellas who served as comic relief. And so, he said he never wanted Disney to make an animated adaptation of his work. Given, I am just paraphrasing the video... Personally, I like old Disney (but that's likely nostalgia), but it seems they are just doing the same, but now to our "modern fairy tales," and I hate it... So perhaps I simply just did not grow up with the original stories... And having, for all intents and purposes, grown up with D&D (although, even mine was a lot more "safe" than older D&D), I see it, too... We can't have intellectually challenging content, but it is no longer JUST for mass appeal; it is a cultural mandate as not to offend. What if someone is not up to the challenge? We can't have that. I expanded on that comment more than I intended to, my apologies.
Question, in the FF franchise there is a monster called Molbro it's attack is a breath attack that inflicts every known status effect in the game aside from petrified multiple debuffs DOT's and 2-3 kinds of polymorph depending on the game. Is there a way for a player in D&D to have this attack?
The only thing that comes to mind is using the spell shape change to a monster that can do that, it is however a 9th level spell and most DMs don't wanna deal with that
Hi Esper - Firstly, thank you. I agree with a lot of what you said, and am hopeful of the mechanics improvements but wary of the loss of the 'grit' as you put it. I know it could be a lot of work but I think you'd be well placed to do it: Create supplement adventures, built for this new 5.5 that make no sacrifices in tone and bring forth that love of mythic storytelling - I'd certainly pay for it and think soon more than ever there will be a generation hungry for it
Only foam swords (aka. pool noodles) from now on, that's safe and won't offend the orcs and goblins. Players will be asked to sympathize with mind flayers and aren't those intellect devourers cute? Will there be a My Little Pony cross-marketing effort like they do with Magic: The Gathering?
Magic the Gathering Arena recently had a My Little Pony-themed fundraiser with a few MLP cards (not official, tournament legal cards). magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/join-wizards-and-support-extra-life-2023
Softer rulebook art will not change how my game is played, and it shouldn't change yours, reader. Sure, it might feel nicer to be pandered to with every new release, and it can feel cold when the spotlight moves off of you and your sensibilities. But now, when you run a dark fantasy game on WoTC rules, you can pat yourself on the back for being subversive and rebellious. Get smug, not whiny.
Honestly if you want dark, you're better off running another system. Modern D&D just isn't designed that way. It's not just flavor text, its mechanics. It's super difficult to have a PC die without it just being a TPK, because it's ridiculously easily to heal up a dying PC to fighting level such that combat turns into a silly game of whack-a-mole. If you really want to be a rebel play one of the many non-D&D games out there.
Haven't played 5e for over 4 years. I went to OSE and now that Dragonslayer is out, I've never been happier. And it's edgy, just look at the Lamia in that book, or even better, watch the Dragonslayer trailer.
I honestly think I'll end up keeping the things from 5e that I like and I might snag a thing or two from 1DnD. I doubt I will invest into it as much as I have with 5e. As a D.M I personally don't care for most of the vanilla calls they have made to 5e. I like dark, dirty, bloody, and somewhat realistic fantasy. From what I can tell my players like that as well. Thanks Esper, I like your prediction, and I agree with it.
Have you looked at DC20? D&D has been usurped twice as far as I know when VTM and Pathfinder surpassed them. Because it happened before it could happen again. With all of the new systems coming out now, it might be that time.
It's probably an unpopular opinion, but this is one of the reasons I have left WOTC as a gaming company. They have neutered and politicized the game so viciously that I honestly feel it's one of the worst things to ever happen to Role playing, and I use 1st edition rules or even switch to GURPS and make house rules. This was a very good video. I will not rant about how I feel D&D has been changed by WOTC. suffice to say im not a WOTC fan and thank the old ones for house rules. White Wolf and WOD used to be my Go to over WOTC D&D a long time ago. Not so much anymore. Very good video, Esper!! I've subscribed to your channel! Thanks for this video.
You have some valid points but you are skirting a little close to sounding like culture war BS.I'd rather sya that n tryign to offend no one we end up serving no one. Let's look at pathfinder who went throyg a similar thign wittheor lore last they changed editons, all references to slavery were removed. Never mind that it was basically something evil aligned states practiced, and the main idea was to struggle agisnt it in all but evil campaigns. We're in a situatuion where a campaign based of the life story of John Brown would be considered offensive. A campaign inspired by the american civil war would be considered offensive. I udnerstand the game needing room for those who don't want to deal with these real life issues in their games. But it must be equally valid to say "these are things that happened, these are struggles peopel go through every day". I played a female character ina recent campaign who was actually three times older than she looked part of her thign as that she was always treated as not knowing thigns her opiniosn less valid by those in power. Because that's a thing regular women go through, but if word of god says there is no sexism in DnD then it leaves no room for us to tells stories about these struggles. And no we can't just say "People can add that if they want", because adding something that comes with stigma is not as easy thing to do, not without getting some consent from the setting. If you take a setting with no slavery in it and add slavery to it people will look at you weirdly. I've seen it, my first character was a barbarian who was a pitfighter and the DM refused because there was no slavery in his setting. I managed to get him to accept it as underground bloodsport, biu it's not really what I had in mind. We're not being progressive by painting over everything unpleasent in the human experience. We are pretending everything is fine and thus we are doing real damage. People pretending racism doesn't exist any more is a real issue. I can't see that we placate those that wish to bring it to the fiorefront by saying "fatnastic racism doesn't exist". Look at star trek, it's the most progressive thign ever and they had plenty of fantastic racism, because haivn it meant they could use it as a lense to reflect reality, and talk about difficult topics.
6:30 okay Spiderman Into the Spider verse and Across the Spider verse were not made by Disney. They both also are incredibly good movies unlike plenty of recent Disney products. It's unrelated to the video topic but I wanted to point that out since it very much was not in line with the point made where another clip would have worked. Overall in terms of the other points made though, you were pretty dead on. I don't have issues with anything else. I think other RPGs might become higher up there but none will topple D&D but rather people might play them both more or simply find an RPG that fits them better. Hell some might try jury rigging them together. I personally have become more of a Pathfinder guy myself in recent years but I love D&D still.
Insightful as always, Esper. You should take a look into ESG. It's the reason why corporations get into politics. Aside from all that, would you be willing to test out a new system sometime this year?
"The" reason seems oversimplistic at best: corporations get involved with politics because it enhances their bottom lines. It's why there's such extensive lobbying against unions and laws that promote/protect unionization. It also serves as a strong advertising opportunity to help consumers associate their brand with "good stuff". ESG is just the next iteration of greenwashing: Cocacola wants people to be pissed about them being """woke""" instead of being angry about the human rights abuses and resource exploitation they engage in.
@@marktaylor526 ESG facilitates both because the government protects corporations that promote ESG. Aside from this, these companies carry out the will of the government.
@@marktaylor526 ESG encourages corporations to give their boardmembers bonuses by hiring diversity and green activists that do nothing but ruin things. Its really the most ugly side of communism mixed with hyper capitalist corporatism into one big abomination.
I'm not really interested in 5.5e, or anything else WOTC produces at this point. I'm over them as a company. Probably there will be a few interesting things that I hear about later on and home brew into any 5e games I might still happen to be playing, if any, but I'm not buying their new books and have zero hype. They lost claim to my hype when they published spelljammer, and to my money in general with the OGL situation a year or so ago.
Our group just dropped WotC after 20+ years and went Shadowdark. Been having a blast. Also working on making our own system. Feels good to forget this mess.
I think the conversations of what is and isn’t triggering and sensitive topics should be had at the session 0 between the players. While yes having certain species be evil or product of r*pe is problematic, I think most half decent DMs can modify them easily and still keep the main aspects of the race intact.
I'd have to disagree there. It's always been silly for people to apply the real world standards of race to that of fantasy. It's correct to say that no real world race is fundamentally different from any other, but we're all just humans. Orcs aren't humans. Elves aren't humans.Tabaxi aren't humans. If they existed in real life, who's to say they'd be anything like us in terms of morality or psychology? They're an entirely different class of being.
Dude is fixing to get labeled as right wing just for saying that the game which was meant to be gritty and dark should focus on being gritty and dark instead of focusing on being inclusive and unoffensive. He could entirely fall in like with the left politically and they would never care, just because he had the gall to have a slightly different opinion on anything at all.
Honestly plenty of people on the left can appreciate dark and gritty. He hit the nail on the head that it's not a left/right issue, it's an issue of corporate marketing appealing to the lowest common denominator. There's no woke illuminati conspiracy that's doing this, it's all corporate. And there's some historic backing. Back when they tried to really revamp and get experimental with 4E, it backfired in their faces and Pathfinder was beating them. So the lesson they learned was to be as milquetoast as possible with 5E and were greatly rewarded for it. It's no surprise they're continuing that trend into 5.5 or whatever this revision is going to be called. D&D 5E is a pretty bad game, it's just that it's designed in such a bland and inoffensive way that few people outright hate it, so people generally agree on playing it for that reason.
I'm ok with the 'corporate culture' blandwashing it all to normal. It allows for a wider group to play without feeling ostracized. Like many have said, these are lowest common denominator. The DM's out there will ultimately decide what to include.
I agree with your sentiments in general, but then I played Pathfinder 2E, which honestly I just feel is D&D done better, and I've played through all the editions of D&D.
