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Back when 5e was first announced in 2012 I was incredibly thrilled. I loved the game all through the playtest, some iterations of it more than others, but we got the final game back in July of last year. Since then we have the Monster Manual, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and a two-part campaign. But my interest has fallen, my participation in my local Adventurer's League has become sporadic and I'm looking around at other games to play. So here are my Top 5 Reasons why my interest in the game is waning and what Wizards can do to fix it.
5) Serious Lack of Digital Tools. In this day and age where computers are everywhere, not having some kind of online character generation system is practically a sin. Having the basic rules of the game on a web page is a good first step, but it is not enough. It is kind of hard to accept a game that wants to be the flagship game of the industry that is technologically behind the times. I know this one takes time and personnel (two things the D&D team does not seem to have much of) to fix so it is at the bottom of the list.
4) No PDFs (except for the basic game). I split this one off from digital tools because that is how important this one is. I live on a computer of some sort or another almost constantly. What don't I carry with me: bookshelves. I want my whole library with me at all times and I have it on my tablet. Except for D&D. So if I am waiting for something, I can just pull out an electronic device and start reading. When I go to local conventions, if I like the game I just go to an online store, purchase it, and download it right there. I can't do that with D&D. This one is the easiest one to fix on the list. PDFs were already made of the books to ship off to the printer, and while I know it is a completely different layout for a PDF instead of a print book, it is still a starting point that other points on this list simply do not have.
3) Nothing Much to Look Forward To/Lack of Product Diversity. Of all of these, I think I am the most upset about this one. Folks at Wizards have said they want to focus on adventures. Ok fine. Where are they? To date, one came with the beginner's set and there was one campaign in two books. What if I don't want to play in that campaign? What if I want to play something else? The Tomb of Elemental Evil campaign is coming up; what if I don't want that either. What if I know my group can't handle a long campaign and instead want a series of short adventures with the same characters. There are no 32 page stand alone adventures to download, no dungeon magazine to subscribe to. That is game mastering help that the game seriously lacks right now. GMs not getting the help they need will make them look to other games. Personally, I have never been an adventure reader (some people are and more power to them). I have always been a setting reader. There is no setting material for this edition to read. I get a full campaign setting takes a long time to write. But what about a 32 page setting book that told what area is like for the Horde of the Dragon Queen campaign, or the Elemental Evil campaign. I might not run the adventures, but I can use the setting to make my own. Why not that? Without something to fuel my imagination, I am bored and am going to look elsewhere. Now lets have a frank discussion, Wizards has said they want to focus on adventures because releasing too many splat books (specifically books filled with player crunch options) made the system far too heavy for later development and killed it. While I understand that and to a degree agree, you've swung too far the other way. Some players at the table are those optimizers that do not have anything to look forward to and will look elsewhere. All in all, to keep the varying types of players and game masters happy, there has to be a balance. At present, there isn't any balance. All the products out there, beyond the core 3 books, are geared for the long-term GM.
2) The Waiting. Waiting is not something that our society does well these days and it does not look like it is going to change any time soon. I didn't even bother looking at the Fantasy Flight Star Wars game because it took them 2 years to publish a book on Jedi. I considered giving up on 13th Age but they finally released the PDFs this past December to physical books they released the previous January. You guys, the two and a half year wait from announcement to final game was perfectly fine because I was that excited for it. The wait from PHB to DMG is fine since you were publishing the system. Now that is all done with, I am done with waiting. What is coming? I want to know. 1 campaign isn't cutting it. Tell us what you are working on. Grand total, I have been waiting for 3 years now. I believe I have waited enough.
1) No OGL (or some kind of compatible license). The above points could be fixed if there was some kind of license for other companies to use. You could focus on long campaigns if other companies could write the short adventures. I could run my own game and invite those that do not play (and they would in turn buy the PHB) if I had some 5e compatible setting to keep my interest and could read it anywhere since I got it in PDF. Someone could even turn the rules into an app, meaning you don't have to. And best of all, I could have it now, to get me over the dry hump while I'm waiting for your book. Do you think that if I bought a compatible book on elves that I wouldn't largely ignore it, if not completely ignore it, when your book on elves comes out. But it gets me some racial development to cover the meantime. All the problems I see right now could be fixed with the rules being OGL. All of them. The worst part is that, you had over 2 years to prepare for the launch. You could have hand picked several publishers to release compatible books timed with your other releases for your game. But instead you wanted the initial time frame completely your own. And now I am looking elsewhere.
So that is my reasons why my interest in D&D is waning right now. How is your interest in D&D 5e? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
My interest is strong, I guess. I'm writing 2 campaigns (DM-ing 3 ongoing groups) and playing in 1 game.
Your list of stuff, for me, is in the "nice to have" category. It's not critical to my enjoyment.
I'd like clarity on the license issue because I might want to sell a campaign - but I'm not fussed about it.
Imagine how much excitement there will be when there is an OGL and in March, the new material hits the shelves. The anticipation is killing me.
bawylie wrote:
Rhenny wrote:
DaleMcCoy wrote:
Dougan_Axehammer wrote:
DaleMcCoy wrote:
DaleMcCoy wrote:
It's amazing to see how far the hobby has come along. When I was a kid playing back in the 80s, I considered it a stroke of luck to find a store in the big city that carried any of the manuals. The magazines and modules were pretty much out of reach. When I was a tween I made three-hour pilgrimages to get copies of Dragon and didn't always manage to find the latest issue. I had to make do with books from mismatched editions, and maps hand-copied out of books on castles I got from the bookmobile - because I didn't even have a public library in my area.
I am pretty grateful just to have a whole edition that I can get from a bookstore withough chick tracts stuffed in them and a community where I can share ideas with other GMs. All the other stuff is just gilding on the lilly. But I do see how for a player used to the multimedia offerings that thehobby has to offer now, that what are fripperies in my mind really are vital to being competitive in the market.
DaleMcCoy wrote:
I don't have my favorite pasta bowls anymore. They were a wedding gift and have all broken or cracked. Strangely I still love pasta.
however I do look forward to character generators PDFs etc for he sake of convenience.
My interest is weak because I have PDFs for at least 30 BETTER systems on my tablet. It's unfortunate the industry's 10,000 pound gorrilla that is taking everyone's attention is dumber than all the chimps you can't notice.
DaleMcCoy wrote:
60% of the problems you have with the edition will be corrected when the official 3rd party license opens up. It's my assumption that this will correspond with the release of the Adventurer's Guide.
20% of your issue is the lack of Digital Tools. Hasbro has seen the demand for digital tools, they have seen that 3rd parties were making money off them, and they ordered them down - Common sense dictates that they're doing that to eliminate competition. Digital Tools will likely be a thing, you'll just have to wait for them.
The last 20% of your problem - You are the minority when it comes to holding a physical book vs. having a PDF. It's not an overwhelmingly small minority, but a minority nonetheless. Anecdotal evidence aside, one of the common questions in the playtest review packets was whether you prefer physical or digital media, and physical was preferred every time. That being said, the Basic Rules, Adventurer's Guide, and many of the complimentary D&D Encounters products are PDF's and entirely free to download. While I am sure WotC has their reasons for NOT providing one (Driving sales to physical media, for example) I am sure that in the near future (within the next several months) this will likely be rectified.
The biggest problem here is, you have to wait. This isn't something that's optional as a consumer OR as a developer. They can't just rush out their products because people demand them, there's an extensive QA process they go through to (hopefully) avoid shipping a defective product. The 3rd party license has to be reviewed and revised a hundred times over by their legal team to make sure it's as foolproof as possible and doesn't damage the integrity of their core product. Things like this take time, and it's difficult to accurately estimate exactly how much time it's going to take.
Be patient, be strong. We waited two entire years for the edition to launch after the first playtest. We can wait for more support to launch with it.
I think I understand the OP's position, but I don't share it. That's probably because we want different things from D&D.
For me, D&D is a medium for creating stories. It helps to structure the activity of my group of story-weavers. It's the creating of the stories that's fun, rather than just the hearing of them. Previous editions did that too, but, somehow, 5e adds an extra je ne sais quoi that feels good. But now that the core books have been published, we have all we need. The framework is stable and we can settle back, let the debate over the details of the framework fade into the background, and get on with the fun part, which is weaving stories. We will never get bored, because we are not relying on having a constantly-changing framework to entertain us; we are entertainng each other through the framework that is D&D.
WotC have done a great job in bringing us 5E but they've done that, and now it's down to us to entertain ourselves with the game they have made. As long as we enjoy creating stories, we can go on enjoying D&D. If the creative spark fails, well, no amount of add-on technology is going to make any difference. That would be a sad thing to happen. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, "when a man is tired of D&D, he is tired of life".
I don't know about you, but dming about 1/week for 3 hours, I'm finding the playtest material and the official 5e releases more than enough to keep me going for years and I'm not even developing my own campaign (other than modifying and adding here and there).
There are so many 1e, 2e, 3e adventures out there for use and inspiration too.
As someone who wants to publish material like the op, I can see the frustration, but as a DM and player, really, I don't need more than 2 to 4 new things each year. Any more than that would make me a pure consumer not just a user. I like consuming for use rather than consuming just for consumption sake.
FFSAA wrote:
FFSAA wrote:
Personally this pace by WOTC is perfect for me, I have a full time job and other activities I tend to. The DMG has me so busy creating things for my own campaign, in the meantime I'm running the HotDQ for my friends. There is so much to learn yet and read with what has been given for 5E. Maybe it's players that are bored or waning with 5E but then I would put that on their DMs with the adventure/story they are running. I run two games, one weekly and another every other Saturday. The books have worked fine for me, yeah I would prefer PDFS but no way has that hampered my group.
So glad WOTC didn't go with the splat frame of mind. The only thing I'm impatient about are the minis they I have to wait for. 
Personally my only problem is that I still have to work for a living since I haven't won the lottery yet. That darn work thing is really cutting into my game time availability. 
OoftaMeg wrote:
FFSAA wrote:
Not surprised a certain person posted in the thread, sure a few others that General take every chance they can to post how bad 5e is will do the same.
I too understand the OPs mindset but like most I don't follow it. My interest is strong, reading various adventures I missed during the play test and builing maps with tabletop connect (3D vvt which makes 2d roll20 look like kindergarten art - check it out and be amazed) really enjoying the system after taking a break when 4e came out.
Im really looking forward to the ToEE coming out in March, preordered it myself, ahead of time too.
Yeah, well, PDFs are going to be a problem. They were when you could buy them on Paizo.
Simply put, they don't want you sailing into pirate bay instead of buying from them (and, please, spare me the lengthy lecture on 'how it can be done...' or examples of this or that other place that has PDFs, I'm well aware of them; our mutual understanding will never change risk-averse corporate security policies. Never). We can pretend otherwise, but we all know once they have PDFs they will be pirated. After all, I saw OCRs of the core 5e books before they hit the shelves of the FLGS.
They are probably balancing it so that the first wave buys physical books and establishes game interest before they allow PDFs that, once released, are going to cut into physical book sales (more so than poor B&W OCRs will, anyway). After all, some systems may be OK with downloading them for free; it builds interest in their other products. For 5e though, there are few other 5e products to be bought, so initial interest has to be monetized.
FFSAA wrote:
Rasmenar wrote:
My interest remains strong. My group just finished HotDQ and we are getting ready to start RoT. OGL, digital tools and pdfs don't matter to me. While some of them may be nice to have, they do not limit/hinder my enjoyment of the game. As for waiting/product diversity, the three core books have more than enough material to keep me busy for the forseeable future.
Play something else for a while. We dont have an Adventure League on our island. But our group is also playing Paranoia. We were playing a lot of Savage World between the playtest and 5e release. We played Paranormal X and Savage Space Marines and Space Buxx using the SW system. In the 6 months we also played iron kingdom and Amborse Anime. Some of the guys I play D&D5e still meet to play Pathfinder. We also take a break for board games. I would get bored of D&D what ever edition if that is all I played.
PS 13 sessions in, most at level 4 I feel that our group has barely touched 5e at this point.
The OGL is the last hope for me, in addition to someone that is willing to release a variant of 5E that grants martial classes maneuvers similar to spells. But I doubt WOTC is going to let that cat out of the bag again.
Uchawi wrote:
I'm pretty happy with it.
I might be one of those odd people who finds my interest is *held* by the lack of deluge of supplements.
Crunch and Character options for the sake of it rarely engages me, even if there are some gems amoungst it.
Currently it means I can debate from a position of having pretty much the whole system.
I also find character gen pretty simple, so not really missing any online tools.
Having the spells and descriptions to hand could be pretty useful I suppose. (This arguably exists in the form of the power cards)
Saying that: an encounter builder could be useful.
Not fussed by published adventures. They rarely match how I run games.
Campaign settings could be useful, but again most already exist in a very good form with prior editions, and much of the information is identical.
- Again I prefer homebrew to using existing settings.
FFSAA wrote:
Caliburn wrote:
Illithidbix wrote:
DaleMcCoy wrote:
CCS wrote:
feartheminotaur wrote:
DaleMcCoy wrote:
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OoftaMeg wrote:
RCanine wrote:
bawylie wrote:
CCS wrote:
I'm not saying I know the OP or his motives. But given his posting record, and that he advertises his game publishing business in both his avatar and sig, my wild guess is that the bulk of his waning interest may be a direct result of his lack of ability to use 5e as a springboard to make money.
But that's probably just the curmudgeony pessimist and misanthropic skeptic in me...
I, like nearly everyone else who's posted in this thread, find the opposite to be true thus far. My interest is only growing and intensifying.
Until there is more to look forward to I have no reason to stop playing 2e. Why should I switch to over to the new edition if the game isn't supported? Heck even the community can't support this edition.
I might reconsider playing 5e if and when Dungeon Magazine returns and WotC opens up the system to third party developers.
dmgorgon wrote:
dmgorgon wrote:
CCS wrote:
ChrisCarlson wrote:
Diffan wrote:
JohnLynch wrote:
Not that worried about a lack of splat books. Kinda miffed about a lack of adventures/Dungeon Magazines and HoTDQ did not do it for us and it is a bad adventure in anyway.
If you are not interested in any mega adventure from WoTC (RoT/Elemental Evil) there is not a lot not play in 5E. I would like to be able to buy some adventures as prep time eats into other time for other things I would rather be doing.
DaleMcCoy wrote:
akr71 wrote:
JohnLynch wrote:
DaleMcCoy wrote:
CCS wrote:
dmgorgon wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
OoftaMeg wrote:
The nice thing about the slow 5e release is that it gives me space in my RPG budget to finish filling out my 4e library and to pick up some other really interesting books like Numenara, 13th Age, Savage Worlds, etc (as well as more PF supplements). I've started buying minis, too.
But, if 5e was the only thing I played, and if I didn't know about older modules or didn't want/wasn't able to convert them, I'd probably be bothered by the lack of adventures. If I was completely new to the game, I'd probably just think that this is how it always is and wouldn't complain (but might still be frustrated/disappointed).
I'd also like to know what WotC is working on and planning for the future, but I understand that they don't want to announce things and then change the schedule and get ripped by demanding fans. It might be a good time for somebody to do an interview talking more specifically about possible future 5e material, though.
Did somebody ask you what you thought of 5E D&D? What's the point of the OP?
edwin_su wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
caecafortuna wrote:
Hi,
My five cents is that I would like to see some updated material for the Realms. I get the stuff from the forums about who is the latest Blackstaff and who the current Open Lord of Waterdeep is etc. but I enjoy writing scenarios that are set in place and it is this kind of detail that :
a) Provides inspiration for scenario ideas
b) Allows for player originated side quests as they pick up on a particular happening and choose to explore it
c) Lets players feel that there characters are in a "familiar" location via tradition and themes local to the area.
Basically I enjoy making up the plots and main ideas but having the little details to fill in the smaller moments and background detail makes it feel more "real." I would like digital tools as well - particuarly useful was the monster builder from 4th edition. This allowed you to set the challenge rating for any monster to anything you liked and add in powers and abilities from other creatures and spells and would mechanically set these numbers (to hit rolls, saving throws and damage levels) to appropriate settings for the new challenge rating. When designing adventures for fourth edition I just had to have the ideas - actually populating the scenarios with monsters and treasure was a breeze and this is the way it should be. Don't get me wrong fourth edition was my least favourite out of them all but it did have strengths and removing the strain from DMing was one of these.
Shasarak wrote:
caecafortuna wrote:
DaleMcCoy wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
So that is my reasons why my interest in D&D is waning right now. How is your interest in D&D 5e? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
OP has valid concerns.
Here's an example of how bad things are. One of our players (and part-time DM) is as mental for DnD as anyone. He has been a gamer since high school, as has his wife, and they brought their daughters up playing DnD. They played through parenthood with one hand moving minis and the other literally rocking a cradle. He has a problem though: he is visually impaired. He needs to use a magnifying glass to read some of the books now and when he was setting up to DM his first 5e campaign, he found it very hard to read the small writing of the new books. He emailed DnD support to see if he could get an electronic version so that he could increase the font size; they just brushed him off.
Sorry to beat an Archer meme to death, but 'Do you want piracy? Because this is how you get piracy.'
The game needs robust online tools, both for the benefit of digital-age players and for a revenue stream for DnD itself. The most vital time to have these is at the game's launch: I know the 4e character builder literally convinced many people to give the game a try. Yet for the first crucial six-months of 5e, and apparently for a while longer at least, we have nothing. If you can't see that that is a problem, then I really don't know what to say to you.
All I see from WotC is a skeleton crew tasked with keeping the lights on. If 5E is not delivering what you want out of D&D right now, I wouldn't expect that to change in the future.
thecasualoblivion wrote:
My interest has waned already, somewhat.
I, too, followed the playtest and had hopes for 5e but the end result, although not bad, was not impressive to me.
Personally I don't care that much for premade adventures and this kind of things, as I prefer to design my own custom settings and campaigns. What I seek is a good, solid and fun, base system to build my stuff upon. So I tried 5e for a while after the release, both adapting old campaigns of mine and starting new ones. But after a while I just reverted back to how we were playing before.
5e is not bad. It's just not as good as 2e or 3e in my opinion. So I saw no reason to insist on it. It's new and different, so it was interesting to see how it went, if nothing else at least as a curiosity. But it isn't necessarily better.
Currently I play 2e with some elements of 3e thrown in. Same I was before trying 5e out.
And so as not to say that my dabbling in 5e was useless, I did pick a few 5e elements (like advantage/dissadv and attribute-based saves) and imported them to my 2e game.
I'm still following the news about 5e and checking out what's being released. And I would have no objections to playing a 5e game, as a player.
It just didn't convince me enough to be my edition of choice when DMing my own campaigns.
Hurin88 wrote:
That makes no sense. Heck, my Character Builder barely holds just my characters. The people who want books, want books. In fact the character builder was almost a nod to PDF requesters. Sure, it's not quite the same thing, but it did give you searchable, digital access to the game information.
SleepsInTraffic wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
SleepsInTraffic wrote:
Ranthalan wrote:
dmgorgon wrote:
thecasualoblivion wrote:
thecasualoblivion wrote:
thecasualoblivion wrote:
Farmer42 wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Farmer42 wrote:
OoftaMeg wrote:
What works best for my group, when you lose interest. set it aside a few sessions, then come back to it when you get the itch.
thecasualoblivion wrote:
Tony_Vargas wrote:
thecasualoblivion wrote:
Tony_Vargas wrote:
dmgorgon wrote:
SleepsInTraffic wrote:
thecasualoblivion wrote:
thecasualoblivion wrote: