But if players don’t want to make mechanical choices, maybe they’d be better off playing something like Dungeon World. I don’t miss nested requirements when games hardly ever last long enough to use them, but the number of interesting gameplay choices to make in D&D is teetering on the edge of losing strategic appeal.
Oh I 100% believe that the majority of D&D 5e players would be happier with a different game. For many different reasons. Some because they want more crunch, some because they want less. Some because they don’t actually want to play a resource management dungeon crawl game at all. I mean, just look at how many players do one-fight-per-rest, and how many people cram social conflict into D&D despite the threadbare rules for it.
Unfortunately, D&D is such a big brand it just sucks all the air out of the room. Other games don’t have the community or branding.
I mean, there’s Pathfinder, but that’s kind of the blues brothers “we’ve got both kinds of music: country and western” situation. It’s very similar to D&D. I guess the next biggest is Vampire? And then way down at the end of the long tail there’s like Fate, Gurps, shadowrun. I guess PbtA and Blades games are gaining some currency lately, too.
But if players don’t want to make mechanical choices, maybe they’d be better off playing something like Dungeon World. I don’t miss nested requirements when games hardly ever last long enough to use them, but the number of interesting gameplay choices to make in D&D is teetering on the edge of losing strategic appeal.
Oh I 100% believe that the majority of D&D 5e players would be happier with a different game. For many different reasons. Some because they want more crunch, some because they want less. Some because they don’t actually want to play a resource management dungeon crawl game at all. I mean, just look at how many players do one-fight-per-rest, and how many people cram social conflict into D&D despite the threadbare rules for it.
Unfortunately, D&D is such a big brand it just sucks all the air out of the room. Other games don’t have the community or branding.
I mean, there’s Pathfinder, but that’s kind of the blues brothers “we’ve got both kinds of music: country and western” situation. It’s very similar to D&D. I guess the next biggest is Vampire? And then way down at the end of the long tail there’s like Fate, Gurps, shadowrun. I guess PbtA and Blades games are gaining some currency lately, too.