Re:Dungeon Magazine
by whatshisface on Thursday January 14, 2021 @05:54PM
(#25784075)
>a game that used to be associated mostly with unwashed cloistered incels.
In the same way that "pro-life" does not literally mean anyone who is in favor of life generally, I think you're misusing that term, which refers to a particular culture that did not exist in 1978 or even 2004. Come on, somebody has to defend 80s nerds. ;)
Way out of scope, but I'd argue that "incel culture" absolutely existed in the 80's (one of the reasons I picked the term). It just hadn't been named yet, and no one had thought to try to politicize its leanings. And yeah, I say that as a long-recovered 80's incel.
This 80s nerd played many campaigns rife with white jeans and polos (and we had to ditch our gfs to play)
I'd personally attribute far more of that to the cultural zeitgeist of (a) name brand power and (b) a variety of streamers using 5e for streams of real games, than to any inherent property of the actual rules.
Well... 4e's failure was due to its actual rules. I might have been too young to see all the details, but my impression is that they tried to turn D&D into tabletop World of Warcraft, and it just didn't feel like the same game, or any sort of good one, anymore.
See, I think this is wrong. People didn't, in fact, stick with D&D at the point where Pathfinder launched. Pathfinder was (relative to the third party RPG market) a huge success. And 4e D&D was objectively a failure in the market (though sure, it sold more than Pathfinder).
Where Wizards won was with the 5e rules. And the 5e rules are better than Pathfinder in fundamental ways that lead to higher sales and more player satisfaction.
And the reason is that 5e is, really for the first time since the Holmes Basic Set of 1978, accessible to the mass market. Kids like D&D again! Prior to covid, I ran a 2-year campaign for my 10-12 year old son and a bunch of his friends and they loved it. Some of them are hooked hard now. Likewise, couples play 5e; random groups in offices. You can watch people play it on the internet, and apparently that's a big thing too. There are communities of women and queer folks plugging a game that used to be associated mostly with unwashed cloistered incels.
It's a straightforward, easy game that gets out of the way and exposes the actual fun part of in-person RPGs to people who would never have had the patience to read through the tomes full of prestige classes and feats that 3.x/Pathfinder require.
Basically: with 5e WotC finally got back to the promise we all saw in the early 80's. Pathfinder is a fine game, but it's really just trying to hang on to a player culture from 2004 that doesn't have a lot of growth in it.