I feel like the "everything is dnd" mindset is one of the biggest rocks to crush on the way to making any other game ever have a chance at wide spread success

@KenronTheGamer

29 күн бұрын

@mortthepirate6318 Exactly, this pass weekend I was reading my new Kingmaker book at a cafe killing time and someone ask if that was a DnD book. I explained nicely it's Pathfinder a different ttrpg. He was like I didn't know there was other games like DnD

@l33tninja1

28 күн бұрын

I think a big part of it is also the stories being more grabbing in d&d

@Dlnqntt

28 күн бұрын

Man, I feel this in my soul. Anytime I talk to someone that is not intimately familiar with the hobby I default to explaining that I play D&D. I never mention Pathfinder, Blades in the Dark, or any of the other systems when talking to those that know nothing about the hobby.

@mbg4681

27 күн бұрын

@@Dlnqntt >> I never mention Pathfinder, Blades in the Dark, or any of the other systems when talking to those that know nothing about the hobby. Congratulations on perpetrating the myth.

@Dlnqntt

27 күн бұрын

@@mbg4681 Randomly aggressive response is random.

The difference is, Blades in the Dark didn't send the Pinkertons after someone...

@dungeondr

28 күн бұрын

Idk why but I've got an image of John Harper personally breaking down someone's door now. And it's glorious.

@mech12478

20 күн бұрын

As a West Virginian. I have real problems with companies that work with the Pinkertons.

Praising D&D for its RP rules is like praising a cookbook for helping you assemble your new table. You might like your new table. You can enjoy your table with friends. But the cookbook had nothing to do with helping you get there.

@silvertheelf

20 күн бұрын

This is incorrect, it’s more like praising the image of a table in the cook book. There are a handful of RP rules you can find, and especially in older additions, be it as hidden away and useless as they are. In the DMG there’s some tips and tricks if you look for them.

@innocentsmith6091

17 күн бұрын

RP isn't just talking. It's every choice you make for your character. Not every choice requires a game mechanic, and which those are depend on what kind of game you want to make. But paradoxically, rules for social interactions or even story game rules can have the opposite effect of reducing RP by turning everything into a number on a character sheet. Think about how many puzzles and dungeon hazards have gotten turned into "roll number to win." Light combat rules plus very light "RP" rules is the best way to make an RPG, IMO, even if 5e isn't necessarily the best implementation.

@thomaskiser3886

15 сағат бұрын

It’s the first RPG system in existence with rules for the masses….yea it did that….come on

Thing with homebrew that people don't realize is that unless you're planning on publishing your stuff, your characters only need to be balanced with one another so that no one feels left behind or feels useless in a fight or game. Even if they are stronger than their level would indicate just treat them as higher level for the purpose of monsters and challenges. The only place that could be a problem is if you use established Adventure paths and even then just award less Xp until the adventure catches up to the subjective player level. That's it. There's no auditor that's gonna take your DM licence away.

@hellfrozenphoenix13

29 күн бұрын

This! I'm running a highly homebrewed campaign with overpowered players (Dual Class and Free Archetype is a strong combo, surprise) but it's so much fun! Seeing them beat monsters about 3 levels higher than them is insanely fun and letting them have a huge power fantasy is enjoyable for me

@stmtom2811

29 күн бұрын

Great thing about TTRPG’s they can be changed to however we want to play them.

@hellfrozenphoenix13

29 күн бұрын

@stmtom2811 yeah, kinda like modding a game but the mods have no limitations on them.

@tonyblitz1

29 күн бұрын

I just recently bailed on a "Cowboys vs Undead gunslingers" game. Because the DM banned all full casters, artificers, warlocks and bloodhunters. So I started rolling up a path of Giants barbarian and asked if I could flavor a lance as a short range, 10ft, shotgun. Which I can give a 20-60ft "thrown" range and add elemental damage at level 6. Which they refused and said I had to use a gun from the official books. On a Barbarian. Where half their abilities say: "When you roll an attack with Strength" Or "When you attack with melee weapon" So Barbarian is *effectively* a banned class as well. I just bailed on the playgroup entirely, I don't have any patience for DM that won't even allow reflavoring to make stuff work. The Rulebooks aren't holy texts.

@danrimo826

29 күн бұрын

@@tonyblitz1 if you don't want to play the game the way the DM wants to play the game, then yes it is better you don't play that game

I've fully abandoned WoTC projects and D&D as a whole. They've shown and proven to be an untrustworthy and awful company, and there's other games to play.

@danrimo826

29 күн бұрын

Other *SUCH GOOD* games to play

@vman0113

29 күн бұрын

cool might i recommend world of darkness the devs actually play the system and listen to player feedback

@mikeyrambo2742

29 күн бұрын

I agree that is why I self published my own game on Amazon. It's called (From Peasants To Palaces.)

@Dudeman715

29 күн бұрын

I made the switch to pf2e because wotc made me kinda sick with the shit they were pulling

@Lordchronos

29 күн бұрын

They did that with 3.0 & 3.5 when they knowingly withheld Grapple mechanics and others

The original video started strong for me, but it became more and more obvious it comes from a place of having 5E as their sole solid perspective. And watching the reaction video and hearing "in some way, the entire tabletop scene didn't really kick off until D&D 5th Edition" just seals it as a 5er's perspective. He justifies it by using a mountain allegory, where trying a new TTRPG "Mountain" would require you to step off the D&D mountain and lose all your efforts. But that's ridiculous! "Try Pathfinder/DCC/Call of Cthulhu/other" does not mean "swear off D&D"! The skills developed with D&D make climbing each subsequent "Mountain" easier, and when you return to your first D&D cliffside, you'll find you're able to get higher and faster on it than before, so to speak! It's like being in Plato's Cave allegory, and hearing someone using solid logic and making decent observations... but that someone is still discussing shadows in the cave.

@SwitchbackCh

27 күн бұрын

Yeah, I'd appreciate his perspective more if he talked about giving other games a fair shake. Right now it feels more like "Everyone's arguing about what I love, what happened to just enjoying the game?", which is a valid enough experience for the sake of encouraging civil discussion and discouraging toxicity, but not exactly nuanced or encouraging new tabletop experiences.

@Seth9809

16 күн бұрын

Yeah, except the RPG space barely existed until 5e. "But what about that thriving ecosystem". The RPG space got like 10 times bigger after 5e, and it got 2-10 times bigger for 3.5 D&D. So historically, there was decades of games before 5e... But based on player numbers... There was nothing before 5e.

@AlexBermann

15 күн бұрын

​@@Seth9809This simply is not true. D&D has been very influential culturally in the 80s which you even can see in some movies of the time. RPGs for computer and consoles drew heavily from RPGs and continued to do so for quite some time. There was even a mediocre cartoon show and two bad movies that tried to cash in on the brand. When you get to the 90s and onward, other systems proliferated. You can ask around in people who grew up in the 90s and TTRPGs are one of the more common nerd hobbies. The late 2000s just were a particularly bad time for TTPGs. The nerd scene became more online and with Forum RPGs, excellent video games of the genre and Word of Warcraft and its social aspect, not many young people got in the hobby. It is without question that the hobby has grown since, but it was alive and well before D&D5 came along. We just experienced a generational shift

@TheGreatDanish

12 күн бұрын

​@Seth9809 DnD in the 80s helped create an entire genre of games, RPGs. Saying that table top games weren't influential or non existent until 5e, you're being actively obtuse. The entire genre of Japanese western fantasy is literally riddled with ideas that come from translation errors in DnD. This shit was huge. You were just unaware of it.

@Seth9809

11 күн бұрын

​@@TheGreatDanish Dude, you have to be clueless to think that RPGs aren't vastly more popular after 5e than before. I have spent DOZENS of hours watching/reading the entire history of DnD and older RPGs (Pre-2000s). Even people who played a lot remember the hobby stigmatized and enjoyed by a niche subculture. The third biggest RPG company of pre-2000s seems to have been Palladium , and today only people who grew up with their books or inherited them even know what that company is. We have extroverts who refuse to play even boardgames playing DnD, and the number of women playing has shot up a lot. TSR literally went under because 2nd edition wasn't selling enough. 3rd edition sold something like 10 times more copies and led to an explosion in interest in D&D and RPGs in general. Hobby stores were flooded with 3rd party OGL stuff for years and years. 5e basically did the same thing all over again. - TLDR: Whatever happened back when RPGs were 1% as popular (Pre 3.0 D&D) is barely important to the culture, because something like 80-99% of RPG players know nothing about whatever happened before 5e or 3.5 D&D, and they straight up don't care.

I'm gonna push back on the social RP thing. The fact is, you can RP in literally any system no matter how crunchy it is. No matter the system, folks can sit at a table and talk things out and play and what not. The difference between 5e and PF2 in this capacity isn't folks' ability to RP and have a 'less combat focused' experience - that is universal. The big difference here is that if you, as DM, try to set up a social scene, you have no real guidance beyond 'vibes' in 5e, while PF2 actually has a reasonable scaffold to work with and a means to generate progression a DM can track that is at least superficially similar to games like PbtA while being its own beast. You can say the rules are buried, sure, but they at least exist and if you're a newcomer or a GM, that's hella useful. The idea that you 'have' to be permissive to 5e not providing any design space as a form of 'open air creativity' is basically, well, corporate apologism, y'know?

@eatwifing-gj7bq

28 күн бұрын

You can RP in any system or no system (whomst remembers the freeform play-by-post forum RP of the early 2010s?) but the more real-world time you spend leveling up and resolving combat, the less time you can spend doing social RP or developing the plot. My recent experience with this is a game called Lancer, a roleplaying game about mecha pilots in a space opera future. I'm having a blast but the game mechanics definitely favor long combats. The players' mechs have to lose all of their hit points four times before being destroyed, whereas enemy mechs typically go down as soon as you take them to zero, resulting in GMs needing a lot of enemies to make combat a challenge for the players. The game also goes out of its way to give players a lot of options in combat, with lots of abilities and a pretty flexible action economy. So with a large number of combinations of actions and targets to choose from, individual turns can take a bit of time to resolve, and it takes a bunch of turns to resolve a combat encounter. The upshot being, even though we all enjoy roleplaying, and even though the RP mechanics aren't too different from D&D 5e, the system is such that in two hours of gaming, we maybe get 20 minutes of social roleplay to set up a fight that takes an hour and forty minutes

@FURognar

19 күн бұрын

Indeed. My group roleplayed the hell out of Hero system and Rolemaster. Two of the crunchiest games on the planet. Any RPG at my table will involve heavy roleplaying regardless of system crunch. Thats just how we role.

When all this conversation about D&D popularity ups and downs with 3rd, 4th and 5th edition comes, I allways se people missing two important factors (and Pathfinder 1e is none of them), and I've only seen Two KZreadrs tackle on it: Matt Covile and Ronald the Rules Lawyer. Which are: Board Games and World of Warcraft. Stick with me: back in 2003 I moved to a bigger town the one where I was born and I finally got to meet other people that played TTRPGs and not only people that I, myself introduced to. I was very excited to play with them and see what playstyle they had, or just be a player instead of a GM. The most popular game at that time was certainly D&D 3rd edition. When they finally invited me to play after a long time of begging, their group had fallen apart because all the 4 players were spending their weekends playing some MMORPG. I though I was the only one who has gone through that experience, but a video made some years ago, Matt Covile tackled the matter on how World of Warcraft, released in 2003 directly impacted the sales of TTRPGs, and we all know how they tried to make 4e similar to an MMORPG. WoW didn't get an oficial server in my country until 2011, but people played other games like Tibia, Ragnarok and Lineage nonetheless. And we didn't see a drop in WoW players at least until 2015. LIke Covile said, think about it: A MMORPG gives D&D players most of what they want, a colaborative experience of kiling monsters, exploring dungeons and leveling up with friends, without the need for a GM. Of course nothing compares to what sort of stories and infinite narretives a GM can provide, but it does the job pretty decently. Most GMs, myself included felt betrayed. The WoW thing has a bit of that "New Shining Toy" thing. MMORPGs have been around pretty much before WoW, but for the majority of players it was their first experience with MMOs, and even the first experience with INTERNET itself. Getting to play with people from diferent corners of the world was all new to us. Getting in the internet in the early 2000 was a way to escape reality, unlike today that people are logging off to do so. At the same time, something that I've seen only Ronald adrress is the Rise of Geek Culture and Board Games: in the 2010s we had not only the rise of geek culture, but a reinascance of board games. People were getting a bit tired of video games, and started to hang out with friends to play phisical games that had lots in common with their favorite video games. There are lots of board game caffess now (there are at least 14 near where I live in São Paulo) and more and more people were joining in for the party. TTRPGs and Board Games share a lot of simularity. 5e and Criritical Role appear just at the right time for the party. They are a Catalyst for that. D&D, Being Nerdy is cool. Being Nerdy with your friends and generating meme-fueled stories and injokes at your table. Just like board games were in a reinascance, the interest in D&D was as well. 5e and Crivital Role didn't "created" a new wave for TTRPGs, they just hoped on It with a good surfboard and made the best manouver possible. They're not the wave, they just surfed it very well.

@nicholasromero238

18 күн бұрын

Yeah, I'm been playing war games for like 25 years, grew up around ttrpgs my whole, and started playing them 20 years ago as a teenager. I find it a little wild how people tend to think its a new thing; like, I know nobody actually believes d&d started in 2014, but it was a big thing in "nerd" communities since forever; it's just that pre crit role, most people were introduced by word of mouth. Hell, it's the board game renaissance of the 2010s that got my college friends into d&d. Hell, I remember 5e's early days when it promised to fix everything wrong with pf1 😅, and we all discussed if we wanted to move over to it (we didn't, people didn't like the simplification; I was one of the few who had a somewhat positive response to it because I had a good experience from the 5e playtest)

@nemamiah7832

17 күн бұрын

I am not sold on the idea of "step away from the game to rekindle your love for it". I wasn't a fan of 5E when it was released, I'm still not a fan of it and the only reason I have a decent amount of playtime in it - my friends decided to play it quite a lot. And I enjoy playing with my friends. Now that they've finally branched out to different systems and homebrew, I pretty much just refuse offers to play 5E. I think it suggs. A lot. People are free to enjoy it, what do I care? But I struggle to find good things to say about it. Battlemaster is good, I guess. So good, we just make every Martial Class a Battlemaster by Default in addition to whatever other features they have. Monk? Battlemaster. Paladin? Battlemaster. Rogue? Battlemaster. Barbarian? Battlemaster.

@nicholasromero238

17 күн бұрын

@nemamiah7832 eh, I stepped away from GMing for a bit because a horribly toxic player that treated me like I was a computer whos sole purpose was to write customized OP MC fanfiction about his drizzt clones and would throw twmper tantrums every time an encounter was more difficult than a blank field where the monster sits and sligs it out with him. It eventually rekindled my love of GMing again.

@nemamiah7832

17 күн бұрын

@@nicholasromero238 I think it's also an issue of a misalignment of wants and expectation. We are playing Dark Heresy 2E rn with a mix of old hands and "I played Rogue Trader CRPG" newbies. And new guys expect very different things from the game. What I consider unimportant and solvable in a short description and a check, they think deserves a whole minute scene with NPCs and roleplaying. Like going to gather some info. Or what "old hands" expect to have a massive logistical solution (we have three different threats in a Hive, that might endanger the whole planet system), they expect to fix with a heroic venturing forth with just six of us. Because generally that's how it goes in modern DnD (not 2E, you have retainers for that) or in titular Rogue Trader. While I do agree that taking a break is important, if the system doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you. The amount of relief I feel that I'm not playing 5E is hilarious. Mind you, I went 3.5 -> WoD -> 4E (decent wargame, actually) -> DH2E -> Only War -> 5E -> Blades -> 2E -> OSR. I didn't start with those oldschool rules. I have no nostalgia factor.

I don't have an issue with people recommending systems, as long as they're not obnoxious about it. There is such a variety of systems around that have strengths and weaknesses, and D&D is such a default historically that people often go to immense effort trying to get it to do things it isn't particularly good at, whereas a switch to Call of Cthulhu, Cipher System, FATE, World of Darkness, Shadow run, etc might already do what you're trying very well, and with less effort than forcing D&D out of its own comfort zone. My rule of thumb is: when planning a campaign, pick the rule system that best supports the type of narrative you're telling. If the tone changes for a single adventure, however, don't ask your players (or yourself) to learn a whole new system for a few sessions. Adapt what you're already using.

@JoelFeila

29 күн бұрын

problem is I can't guarantee the other person won't find my post obnoxious regardless of my intent

@velinion1

29 күн бұрын

@@JoelFeila I mean, sure, but that's true of any social interaction. You just have to do your best, and respond accordingly to feedback. If someone says they're about to run an Eldritch Horror game set in the 1920s, and how best to get that to work in D&D, I would probably ask if they'd considered _Call of Cthulhu_ as it already does most of what they're looking for out of the box. If they respond that they're not interested in switching systems, or that they're looking forward to the challenge of getting gunplay and library research to be major systems in D&D, I'd drop it and not bring it up again.

Happy to have another comment section to comb through for feelings and advice. I know the video is a bit abrasive towards the Pathfinder community's passion, but I love 5E (even vanilla 5E) and just wanted to help remind people that doing so was okay! Play responsibly and however appeals to your group the best. For me, it'll be a page of D&D homebrew, a custom setting, and the official books I bought before the WotC scandals

@jsgdk

14 күн бұрын

Its not actually a bad system, I do not think its exceptional but they did some smart things with it imo. I think most of its critics here just do not want to give WotC money.

I think the whole metaphor of ‘a TTRPG is a mountain’ is _why_ I hate that D&D is the primary entry point for new people into the hobby, and why for a long time I preferred board games as a hobby. A new gaming system doesn’t have to be this dreadful thing that looms before you that you have to overcome before you have fun, you can have fun in the learning. Or fun in the teaching to new players. Or you can just mess around with them without making these big commitments to them, this is a very cheap hobby. ETA: it feels like D&D _conditions_ people to see the game as a mountain and I wish a game that didn’t engender that mindset was the entry point instead

@szegediadam8793

29 күн бұрын

You are so right! I lookimg forward for my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness KS. It's going to ship on the next two month! It will be stupidly complicated but who cares we going to kowabunga some ninja ass XD

@ultimatekie

29 күн бұрын

YES! Thank you! I was so confused by the original video acting like trying a new system is this huge ordeal. Frankly as a GM you SHOULD learn other systems to learn why different games utilise their mechanics to create different feelings for their setting. Like aside from D&D, Pathfinder and Shadowrun basically every system I've tried you can get players set up in an hour or two. Most systems are really easy and more flexible than really crunchy systems. D&D 100% gives the wrong impression of how difficult it is to learn a system. Hell even Lancer I'm about to play learning it as a player only took like a weekend of reading over the book and watching few videos.

@velinion1

29 күн бұрын

Yeah. It sadly didn't really help with my players, but running Numenera was eye-opening after running AD&D 2nd edition, Pathfinder, and D&D 5e (plus a little Cyberpunk and Vampire) for years. Instead of a mountain, it's a curb. And it ran so fast too.

@NXPhoenix3

28 күн бұрын

This is doubly so when you go down the indie rules light rabbit hole. The hard rules sections you need to know are FAR shorter and can be described in 10 to 20 minutes or less. Learning a new system can be soooooo much easier.

@Seth9809

16 күн бұрын

@@ultimatekie Well like 90-99% of people would rather die than learn another system. Hell, a ton of people didn't even bother to learn D&D halfway.

I'd argue that 5 completely new players to TTRPG's shouldn't start with 5E. The game is built with over 80% of the onus to learn the game on the one person who decides to DM. Where many other game systems, PF2e included, spread that more evenly between DM and players. 5E is great for bringing a new player/s into an already established game or a new one run by a knowledgeable DM and honestly this was part of why it spread so fast. A player could just jump in with a simple concept and the DM can lead them through their first few sessions.

@tgialyxander

6 күн бұрын

Hard disagree, especially if you start with the Starter Kit instead of the core rulebooks. The only thing a DM actually needs to know over the players is how to read stat-blocks, which aren't hard. Otherwise, you just need to know how to read a character sheet, how the action economy works, and what your party is probably capable of. Most rules are optional and can be substituted with a skill check if you don't know them.

I've branched out into other systems 3 years ago, and I'm glad I did. For me, BG3 is the last hurrah of quality D&D content. I'm loving World of Darkness, Warhammer 40k tabletop, Mothership, and Cyberpunk red. I may even try Pathfinder some day! But... D&D is dead to me.

@iantaran2843

29 күн бұрын

SAME Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and Lamentations of the Flame Princess saved the hobby for me.

@geoffdewitt6845

20 күн бұрын

All those games kick ass. Good on ya!

Leaving Hasbro/WotC products has blessed my table and group in ways I couldn't have imagined. It's crazy how much a passionate creator and community can make a good system when a corporation isn't involved.

The whole "if you change a systems, it's forever" comes from the fact that the younger fans/community bases are more likely to be absolutists than the older community is/was. The younger generations as a whole have a a lot of hang-ups over change and ambiguity so they're just more likely as a community to be up-in-arms defensive. It's frustrating, especially when you're one of those people who're always open to new ttrpg experiences. I've played so many in the last three years now, especially over Covid and it's been an absolute joy. It's a shame some people in the community have a hard time wrapping their heads around that. Just because D&D hasn't been "for me" since 4th ed and I've mainly done Pathfinder, doesn't mean I begrudge anyone for sticking with D&D or finding a third or even fourth option.

@nicholasromero238

17 күн бұрын

@MoonLitChild from my experience (20 years of it), this is less about younger and older players, and more that autistic players tend to be like that. The secret is establishing out the gates, specifically and explicitly, that "I withhold the right to change house rules as the need arises." It solves a lot of your problems because you have a rule to point to if people get cantankerous, and it sets an expectation. I also preface a lot of more extreme rulings that "this only works one time" if it's an approach that works well and you like something for the situation, but you don't want to become part of the standard playbook

@Seth9809

16 күн бұрын

It's because people barely are able to learn 5es rule and also they don't want to switch campaigns. A lot of players are straight up anti-learning... They want to play but not actually need to know how anything works.

@Anthonyspartan514

8 күн бұрын

@@Seth9809 than how are you going to paly game without knowing how it works for example every board game in existence or video games

You reacting with the nuance you do is why you're among my favorite creators. Nuance is just as valuable (and rare) as respect too.

18:15 Soccer is a game that only needs 4 sticks and a ball. It's brilliant. If you remove the ball, its not soccer anymore. If you change 80% of the rules in pathfinder 2e and your friends want to play pathfinder 2e then they're not going to get what they want. The first rule you posted says as long as your group agrees, then you can make a change. I'm not sold on the idea that anything can be Dnd, like if a DM doesn't track hp then we're not playing dnd or pathfinder. We're playing movie mode.

@dungeondr

28 күн бұрын

I agree. Rule sets are there to provide players a common consensus on the rules they will follow while playing. When you change that significantly, you're not playing that game anymore: but you are still playing a TTRPG. But I think there's some debate over what is the core rules of D&D that makes it D&D. Tbh, I dislike the idea of a "D&D community" at this point. It's so isolating from the rest of the TTRPG community from which people who only play D&D could learn so much.

@person664

28 күн бұрын

I agree, but I would like to point out that there's nothing wrong with the game not being D&D or Pathfinder anymore. In fact if the players enjoy movie mode better then it's a good change to make. I don't think you were trying to say that the game "not really being D&D" was worse but I think that someone reading your comment may misunderstand and think you're attacking their fun as invalid. Now have a nice day or something.

@elivcdxv1852

18 күн бұрын

I'll edit this to be more concise once I'm home- But Kobold, wouldn't the core system and what the rules are being substituted for matter a lot? Joking aside, for some odd situations one of our DMs changed the bosses HP to be a total number of dice, our damage rolls didn't matter for the situation, but the max amount, for context it was effectively the finale of the campaign and the final stretch was basically to exhaust all of our resources before the final slugfest- If we were using our actual HP values it would've been over super quickly, but even though it wasn't just exclusively describing what was going on, having HP be subtracted by the pure attack roll (or in the case of saves or things like firebolt, damage rolls, which remains the same) changed how the system worked without taking a lot to understand- I genuinely feel like however drastic the core changes are definitely matters- how quickly it takes to convey those changes seems super important. reimplementation of Touch AC vs changing the core classes to different homebrew ones and not allowing them to play would definitely go over differently. (not saying you're saying they wouldn't) It's not like a switch from a low magic campaign without spellcasting, or one with exclusively spellcasters or a single class, but something that would take far more time to understand or get a good understanding of like if classes were stripped entirely and Xp was spent on class features and feats instead.

@Seth9809

16 күн бұрын

Except they changed 80% of the rules between white black and 5e, and it's still somehow D&D. Think about that.

The current D&D community is odd to me. So many people seem so obsessed with it. I started with AD&D 2e, then moved on through 3e, 3.5, PF1 (we gave 4e a hard pass), 5e and PF2, so I know what I'm about, but the whole time I played, all the groups i was in explored different systems. Back in the day, it was Big Eyes Small Mouth, Cthulhu, Champions, Deadlands, and, I kid you not, the Buffy: The Vampire Slayer RPG (using the All Flesh Must be Eaten core mechanics). Now in present day, we fuck with Stars/Worlds/Cities Without Number, Fate, Blades in the Dark, City of Mist (using the PbtA system), and a host of others. The truth is that unless you've explored multiple systems with a critical eye and observed the empirical results, you're unlikely to be a well-rounded player or GM. The more games you play, the more you can judge them by their feel and results and the more you can cherry pick things you like and things you don't to achieve the optimal result for YOUR group. I'm not shitting on 5e; I'm running a 5e game right now. But it's a Frankenstein-ass fantasy in space in 2050 near-Earth game, using the Ultramodern5 REDUX book, as well as tips and tricks i've gathered over hundreds of games, poscasts, and books. TL;DR: You SHOULD encourage your players to try new games, but you don't have to do it by shitting on the game they already love. You shouldn't sell all your 5e books to buy every new Pathfinder book. Maybe get your group into the mood of new types of games by getting a 3rd party 5e book with a very different flavor. BUT as much as I don't think you should shit on 5e as a way to get people to try other things, I 100% support shitting on Hasbro and WoTC.

I think the one perspective that was missing is that 5e pushed out a lot of other systems with its popularity and made it difficult to find games in other systems in smaller cities. There are players that have never liked 5e and only played it because their friends and people in general only wanted to play 5e. I don't think that I'm ever going to feel bad about trying to get people to play Pathfinder when I had to play 5e or nothing at all for 10 years. It took the OGL debacle to generate enough interest for people to play Pathfinder in my city, and I welcome every once of hate for the 5e system, I've never liked it. It is the skyrim of tabletop games, its slop that needs to be modded to be good, and it puts all that pressure on the DM and the players. Like skyrim pushed the industry away from crunchy games, so did 5e. It's watered down for casuals, and the serious players are left with fewer people to play and less variety to play in

@newtpondskipper

28 күн бұрын

I tried to build a Pathfinder group, but like you said, it was all about 5e with the younger players as they saw all the popular content on that game. My older players were more into older editions as they felt there was too much bloat and also they saw the popular gamers and thought there was too much super hero games. I finally was able to gather enough of both sides and we ended up playing Advanced 2nd edition as the comfortable middle. I'd still like Pathfinder 1st edition but at least I get games in.

@batteredskullsummit9854

17 күн бұрын

I jumped to OSR games. Pathfinder is way too tedious and slow. I prefer the fast and loose go-with-the-flow of rules light games

@colinrobertson7580

17 күн бұрын

@@batteredskullsummit9854 specifically 1e or 2e as well?

@Seth9809

16 күн бұрын

I don't understand why people didn't just play 5e, and grandfather in 3.5 content or pathfinder 1e content bit by bit.

@colinrobertson7580

16 күн бұрын

@Seth9809 when I have DMed 5e, it ends up being at least 50% pathfinder; without editional content, it is nearly unplayable for me.

"World's Most Expensive Errata" -- D&D 2024.

@phillconklin382

26 күн бұрын

Not really.

@simonfernandes6809

20 күн бұрын

Nah, not really.

4E was eventually balanced, but monster hp was borked on release. Made things a real slog

@HenshinFanatic

29 күн бұрын

I'd argue it wasn't, if you had two strikers for every one of each of defenders, controllers, and leaders. Or to put it simply it was balanced (unintentionally) around the five person party, not the four person party of prior editions, though they attempted to realign back to the four player party later it never really evened out that way IMO.

@infinitedm5396

29 күн бұрын

@@HenshinFanaticthe balance was still superior to any other edition of DND or similar rpg

@HenshinFanatic

29 күн бұрын

@@infinitedm5396 yeah, but I'm talking about the so-called "HP Bloat" issue.

@Jabberwokee

28 күн бұрын

@@HenshinFanaticI’m a 4e Stan and I STILL play it (and have played since launch) and I agree with the sentiment that early HP was too high (before the errata and MM3 onwards alteration) It’s a fantastic game but there nothing wrong with pointing out the issues it (once) had That said, I’m on my 5th campaign from 1-30 (players are lvl 19) so I’ve obviously stuck with it lol

@gloomy_gus

28 күн бұрын

Man, I wish there was a digital version of 4e like they originally planned. That edition would have been so much fun if you could just make a computer track all the modifiers and everything.

Honestly because you kept saying "play D&D if you prefer..." you convinced me to check out Pathfinder 2e, Now my old play group is checking out not just Pathfinder, but also Panic! At The Dojo. Meanwhile my new play group has started a Lancer campaign, But also continue to play D&D. Do I prefer one group over the other? Absolutely not, I love all these systems, Even if Paizo and Hasbro are not on equal footing, Their games are equally valid to me.

Just a bit of a follow-up to the idea of when online TTRPG stuff kicked into high gear. I feel like the Lockdown REALLY kicked it up a notch. Especially so for VTTs getting a boost up.

I used to resent Pathfinder 2e because many of the players I've met seemed hellbent on proving how 2e is such a vastly superior system to 5e and that behavior was super obnoxious. People like you, nonat, helped me realize that not only those "2e is better" players don't speak for everyone who enjoys the game, let alone thr game itself, but also that pathfinder is a fun game. And it does some things straight up better than 5e. And that's ok. Both can co-exist. It just means more fun for everyone to have. So, I guess what I was trying to say is that I learned to get over the community.

Don't forget the layoffs and hiring Pinkertons (literally cartel behaviour)

The point about D&D being D&D even if you home brew 80% of it away, could have done with some nuance. What I agree with: The game is yours, do what you want with it. Most people play with a dedicated friend group, and only need to consider the particular needs of the people in that group. Customizing a system everyone feels comfortable with is a fine way to get to the goal of having the game you want. Don't let ANYONE stop you from enjoying your game in your way, especially not strangers on the internet. Homebrew IS the lifeblood of the hobby, and ultimately is how we get more games. What I disagree with: Everything everyone does with D&D is D&D. Just, no. The people doing all that homebrew work? THEY deserve the credit, ESPECIALLY if they're changing large portions of the game to get it to a place where they enjoy it. To be clear, this isn't an objection about "Well YOUR D&D isn't REAL D&D!" Your punk is absolutely punk enough, my gripe is not about being official or valid. My gripe is about crediting D&D with all the elbow grease and imagination that gets spent shoring up its shortcomings. Skyrim was mentioned, and is a perfect example of where this line of thinking gets us. Skyrim, for all its fame and accolades and fanfare, is a janky, nearly incomplete, mess of a game. Most of the faction storylines are incoherent drivel, and overall Skyrim gets overhyped because it's an Elder Scrolls game. The MODS for Skyrim? Master work. The effort and dedication of the fans make Skyrim playable, and more than that ENJOYABLE! I think the modding community gets a slightly better shake in terms of credit for being the solution, than D&D's community members do, but I also think that has everything to do with most of the custom content for 5e being private and distinct to people's home groups, rather than being sold or shared publicly. The magic is the MODDERS/PLAYERS, not the designers. They handed you an unfinished work, and asked you to pay full retail for it. So no, D&D is NOT a skeleton key that opens every doorway to imagination. It's a set of picks that fits into MANY locks, but almost always needs to be supplemented by bits of string, chewing gum, hair pins, and copious amounts of elbow grease that must be provided by the users. (And usually ONE user in particular, at each table.) As above, if this sounds like a good deal to you, keep rockin' with it and let no one get in your way. But the idea that this is just how it is? The "GREATEST roleplaying game in the world," a three core book investment of $50-60 a pop, only gets you PART way there? And that's like an acceptable standard that no one should question? Nah, miss me with that. It takes far less effort to stop and think about what your gaming group wants to emphasize, take an evening or two to shop around for a game that does that thing, pick up an indie game sub 150 pages for $10 on pdf, and TRY it, than it does to overhaul the greatest game the world has ever seen and create a 30+ page google doc of house rules from scratch. Just, the notion that players should EXPECT rules to impede them, and that the first, best solution is to just throw them away, is harmful to the hobby and the industry. The RIGHT rules wont get in your way, and more than that they'll HELP you get where you want more easily. But you'll never discover them if you only play the one system you're so comfortable with that you felt the need to change most of it.

@ianstewart-vital

27 күн бұрын

100% this right here.

@Seth9809

16 күн бұрын

No one said D&D gets all the credit. They were saying that people who homebrew the game 80% different are still part of the community.

@MrBlackhaloStudios

16 күн бұрын

​@@Seth9809Be pedantic if you want, I said what I said, and I explained it clearly. Being part of "the community," is first, a separate topic, and second is not automatic. And as with my original point, it has nothing to do with not being legit or "D&D enough." It has to do with honest willingness to participate with said community. D&D players CAN absolutely be part of the TRRPG community if they want, the same way Chess players CAN be part of the board game community if they desire. But lots of Chess players really just like Chess, and don't play any other board games. And that is 100% ok. Likewise, lots of D&D players just like D&D, and that's ok too.

@jsgdk

14 күн бұрын

Its still D&D as in the cultural phenomenon created by nerd dudes in a basement, most of whom are dead now. WotC bought the name but who cares, they do not actually own D&D.

3:08 Why are recommendations a problem? HAVE you considered Call of Cthulu, or Pathfinder, or Blades in the Dark? Have you not considered that, if people "dogpile" the same answer, maybe there's something to it? Is it also "dogpiling" when people incessantly bring up D&D instead of referring generically to the TTRPG hobby?

@dashua1735

10 күн бұрын

Nothing wrong with recommendations, but trying your damn hardest to make people quit 5e for another system only proves your toxicity

@mbg4681

10 күн бұрын

@@dashua1735 No, *_toxic behaviour_* proves toxicity. Recommending TTRPGs to an avowed TTRPG fan is, in and of itself, just common courtesy.

@dashua1735

9 күн бұрын

@@mbg4681 I second my comment, learn the difference between recommending a TTRPG and trying your damn hardest to make people quit 5e and play other things.

@mbg4681

9 күн бұрын

@@dashua1735 Physician, heal thyself. "Trying your damn hardest" is totally fine in and of itself.

@dashua1735

8 күн бұрын

@@mbg4681 You fail to explain why.

I do have to correct you about something. The developers at wizards were always clear on the 2024 books NOT being a new edition. The one dnd banner was used by the developers to say that Dungeons and Dragons is done with editions. That the future 5th edition books would not be called 5th edition or 6th edition, it would still be 5th edition but it would just be called Dungeons and Dragons. Edit: also my favorite game is the genesys system because I like to focus more on social and other encounters and I like theater of the mind so exact distances and maps aren't something I like to worry about. So combat having vague distances of short, medium and long range is just better for me. I also like how the dice system makes all skill checks non-binary both combat and non-combat skills. Because combat is all skill checks too. But I also still play dnd and pathfinder as well. The best game is the ones we play with our friends.

@occultnightingale1106

17 күн бұрын

This is not the first time WotC has tried to "move past editions, and make it all just D&D." Last time they tried, it became remembered by the name "3.5e."

@jsgdk

14 күн бұрын

They can say whatever they want though, we do not have to actually take then seriously.

That bit about D&D being the "go to" is super accurate. The same rule applies for anything Warhammer, League of Legends, Fortnite etc. You could go off and learn a smaller or niche RPG but the largest player base in your area is likely to be one of the big popular ones and if you want to get any games at all you either need to convince 3+ other people to learn a new system(and I find the newer average ttRPG player doesn't want to unless they are the forever DM) or just play what everyone else is playing. Also, as a tangent, despite loving Pathfinder 2e I find the general discourse/advice given that I've seen online tends to be build optimization(which I think in a ttRPG is the least important thing but I know folks get fun out of that stuff) and for the person who kinda just wants to play more structured pretend with friends(Which is the general vibe people get from watching live plays) and explore a shared world it's off putting seeing people dropping "excel spreadsheets" on a reddit post about someone saying "Look at this cool cleric I made!" and then watching them get torn apart and being told they are taking dumb feats/wasting DPR or will be a liability to their team. Even from the more rational content creators here on youtube I find PF's general vibe to be a bit more fixated on the rules and how they work than just the vibes. For us and our group we tapped out of 5e because it becane dull for US, while you have the freedom to RP any character you like there just wasn't the mechanical backing that we wanted to feel unique and different. Two champion fighters always feel the same where as in Pathfinder(and Starfinder) we felt SO liberated. And so we swapped over as our last 5e campaign just died from lack of investment and interest. Outside of that: Always be homebrewing You're playing a game fundamentally based in the imagination of you and your players so tell YOUR stories. Create your own worlds, weird and wonderful NPCs, make up monsters, hell change halflings to small dog people if you want. In 5e especially balance is nonsense and more an art than a science so change stuff on the fly if you're worried about the more mechanical side of things. You don't NEED permission, that's the beauty of ttRPGs I found that in 5e a ton of new players got caught up and stuck in to running modules or predefined adventures and it's kinda sad. There is fun there but also so much unused personal creative potential. Actually I find a lot of online PF2e stuff also tends to be folks running Adventure Paths(usually Kingmaker or Abomination Vaults) which I also wish wasn't the most common case.

@Giozize

29 күн бұрын

That's what tends to be more popular in discourse regarding 2e because that's kinda what's unique about 2e, is the thing. If you wanna talk about roleplay tips, cool story hooks etc, those tend to be more system agnostic, so when you talk about them in a video or something, you would do it in either a system-less kind of way, or just call it DnD because that's what pulls most viewers. DnD ALSO is just it's rules, but since it's so big, DnD is both DnD and a generic catch-all for things that work in all places (one exception is lore stuff, and a lo of people are pretty heavy into Golarion lore) That being said, you definitely aren't alone! My group is also one that does 2e because we got tired of every character being the same in 5e, having to homebrew everything, putting all the work on the GM, etc -- not because we care about build optimization or high numbers! It's about all the stories the structures allow us to tell, and we do so in homebrew campaigns as well!

@syndraconic

29 күн бұрын

@@Giozize It's true! Despite us having old school experience with 3.5, original PF, 4e etc. 5e was so breezy to play we thought that layering on the extra rules might kind of take away the RP or the freedom of it. Maybe it's because we hadn't played a crunchier system in a while, and again looking online the general vibe of most conversation seemed to be math, but that just turned out to be nonsense. A more robust rule system gave as so much more flavor and character than we've ever had in 5e. I will say I still think 5e is probably the best system for most new folks to start with though, it's low commitment on learning the rules and makes for a more chill power fantasy style game that lots of folks want from their sessions. I also think 5e does a better job of making a character doing something solo feel good in combat. So splitting the team up and each person handling an aspect of a combat plays smoother(like breaching a building from two sides). Where as with pathfinder it's so heavily balanced around teamplay that you can easily get overwhelmed if you scatter the group even if it feels like the right thing to do.

I'm an adamant advocate for second class systems since WotC told they don't care about the Hungarian community, and no matter that the first 4 books are translated, the starter box came out already, all the papers were signed. They told the Hungarian distributor "nah... Too small market... We don't feel like it". I played many one shots and 3 years long campaigns in 5e. We even played after they f...d up our country. I knew that was the last time I payed for them anything because those who spent countless hours with the localization our my friends and they did not deserve to get screwed over like this. And than came thw ogl. Now if someone asks for ttrpgs in our store, I show them Pf2nd, Fantasy Age, Dragonbane, Call of Cthulhu, Savage world, Root, Fabula Ultima, vampire 5th, cyberpunk red, so basicly anything but dnd. Am I petty and a bad person. Yeah. But the "dnd mindset" is just not exist. It's ttrpg mindset. And the system is basicly indifferent. You can play drunk and stupid, or deep and meaningful in anything. So f them capitalist monsters! :D

@firechaser4095

29 күн бұрын

You can dislike WOTC and like D&D, those are not mutually exclusive. D&D Is the best TTRPG system out there in terms of popularity and ease of access, that's why people love it.

@amayasasaki2848

29 күн бұрын

@@firechaser4095 You can do that, but as to D&D being the best TTRPG system in terms of popularity, and especially ease of access, if all the books for the game aren't readily available in your native tongue or your local region, in that area,it may not be what you claim. America is not the world.

@szegediadam8793

29 күн бұрын

@@firechaser4095 I think dnd is on the easier end for players to start but realy hard for GMs, who never played before. Just think of Mines of Phandalver, and how many times it starts with a tpk, at the first goblin ambush encounter. Full newby party starts, and they just try to follow the rules, and they miss the perception dc against the goblins, and boom, surprise attack, and one dead cleric, and one dead wizard. Next round one dead rogue, next two round one dead fighter, that's all folks. And the gm will not understand what they did wrong, and to be fair: they did no mistake there. Many system less swingy at the begining. And this swingyness is something an experienced gm could deal with, without blatant cheating.

@szegediadam8793

29 күн бұрын

​@@firechaser4095 plus dnd with it's two book minimum (phb mm) policy can't compete with archives of nethys and pathbuilder in terms of accessibility :)

Regarding sharing D&D with others, 3e era had the internet, but it was bulletin boards like ENWorld. That kind of format was most conducive to discussing rules (the common denominator for all players), rather than sharing the experience at the table.

@shinon748

21 күн бұрын

3rd Edition also had Neverwinter Nights 1. Where people could play pseudo-MMOs using 3e rules. For those that wanted a shared online role playing experience. But yes back then we mostly user forums like ENWorld and Giants Playground to discuss rules and builds. Not so much sharing stories unless it was talking about some of the more popular pre-made adventures like "The Red Hand of Doom."

This is not a video! (According to the latest video)

@mattsullivan2458

29 күн бұрын

The last video was a scam created by Big NonNat to sell more NoNat 😩

"Not everyone has the time to play 2 campaigns"... And then there is me, i have a casual Dungeons of Drakkenheim 5e game, a seperate streamed Drakkenheim game, a Theros 5e game and a one ring campaign, i am a player in, but also run my own Abomination vaults PF2e game... each of those games are on a 2 week rotation (drakenheim casual and streamed alternate weeks, as do One ring and pf2e) plus starting this week, we are also trying out Delta Green, which may also turn into a campaign. Also have squeezed in one shots of deadlands and call of cthulhu, and have talks of one of our group running wrath and glory 40k rpg. Guess i am just super lucky!

@reddragon9064

29 күн бұрын

I remember a time I played in 11 games a week 1 every day except Friday which had 5 to point moment one ended another started so I was in a dnd game for anywhere between 10-20 hours non stop. I don’t recommend it I had fun but I will never do it again lol Was much easier only being a player though.

@TheStilf

14 күн бұрын

I run two a week, am in 4 currently. Thank fully some are play by post so they are slow and easy to multitasking with.

@dylanburmood2139

12 күн бұрын

I run and play in dnd 5e Run multiple Wod games that are all in the same world And I run the occasional Coc Oneshot. It good to see other people who aren't hyperbolic and are the type to ride or die on any one systems. (Of course this comment isn't about people who only have time to play one game or even who just theres groups preferences of one system thats a different conversation)

See, I love Pf2e and I refuse to play D&D. But that is MY choice and NO ONE else should be affected by it. If my friends want to play d&d? Go for it! Thats the problem. Tribalism is bad in gaming of all kinds, and the TTRPG scene is REALLY bad about it. I recommend this: Try different things. Find what sticks and stick with it. You will find others who like it, and then you will have a BLAST with it. I plan to get Fabula Ultima at some point because it seems awesome. And once I do? Ill find others to try it with me.

I legitimately despise D&D, I think it's poorly designed, doesn't really achieve what it wants to be (if it even knows) and that it's holding on way too hard to past conventions that doesn't really jive much with modern gamers but I don't hate people for playing it, cause they find it fun, so I just ignore it, except when I get a chance to laugh at WOTC, but that's cause Corporations are fun for a quick laugh, then I go back into my hobbit hole and play whatever random game I'm interested in at the time, simple as

@skippy9273

28 күн бұрын

It's funny reading this comment section and seeing one person go like, "I don't hate D&D, I just hate WotC." And then another person goes, "I don't hate D&D players, I just hate the system. And then you see people just come out like, "I hate D&D players."

When people who know Pathfinder very well listen to your videos, what you say reinforces their knowledge. Once in a while they may hear a new way of seeing something and they will appreciate that. For me, I listen sometimes to videos about the old AD&D modules simply because of the nostalgia -- it makes me feel good because playing in those modules created so many fond memories.

Watched Blaines video, wish I hadn't. "Creative" is the nicest thing i can say about it.

I'll add to what others are commenting: Your first system to learn will most often be the hardest to learn. Sometimes a background in videogames can help with concepts like HP, resources, loot, NPCs etc. But you still have to learn so much. And a whole group learning a new system is always challenging. With D&D you could argue for some literacy through shows, even in "mainstream" media. It's always easier to learn when at least one person knows a) how RPGs work and b) how the system works and c) can teach others. That's why it's great when you can test out a game at a convention, you watch others play (online or even better IRL to ask questions right then and there) or even play in a group looking to include someone new. 5e can often be the common denominator, in some of my group it's the system most can agree to play. Some like it more combat focused or crunchy, some like it more roleplay heavy. But we can play together, so it's fine. I'll just play my Thirsty Sword Lesbians game with my drama loving queer disasters xD

I know you "say" that the advantage disadvantage system was very useful but as a long time game designer I always saw the GLARING flaw in it ie that it was TO simple. Ie lots of abilities come off as feeling very samy with no variety, similarly the simple fact that having advantage or disadvantage more than once on any roll doesn't do anything let alone the fact that one could have say several of one and one of the other and then you just have a normal roll makes the entire system fall apart as players have more situations where adv/disadv are applied. It always kinda surprised me how players where ok with this and it wasn't called out more, like if I have 4 things giving me advantage but 1 thing giving disadvantage it feels dumb that I wouldn't have advantage and just do a normal roll or vice versa. It waters down alot of tactical play to borderline pointless since one adv or disadv is no difference than stacking things that should help you or hurt your opponent and all if it can be completely negated by one boon or bane. I also don't find the fact that people need to delve into an abundancy of house rules to make the game more fun a good thing. Like don't get me wrong, I like that a game can be house ruled that's' fine, but in my 30+ years of gaming I've rarely seen a game that leans more on house rules than 5e and that just screams poor game design that so many people find them necessary to make the game fun.

@dwebus1020

29 күн бұрын

The 1 disadvantage offsets 100 advantages is unsatisfying to me.

@Pit_Wizard

28 күн бұрын

You've hit the nail on the head. The over reliance on the adv/disad system is one of 5e's crippling flaws. There's not enough nuance, not enough dials for tactical play. It gets boring. Also, to the point about 5e's reliance on community created content: in the 3.5 days, WotC created over 60 new classes. In the 4e days, they made 20 something new classes, plus dozens of hybrid classes. In all ten years of 5e (longer than the life of either previous edition), they have released exactly ONE new class, and they couldn't even be bothered to include it in their new revision to the game. What are they even doing over there?

@BlueTressym

27 күн бұрын

BESM 4E actually took the Adv./Dis. system and made a more granular version. In BESM, you roll 2d6 instead of 1d20 and have Edges and Obstacles, with a Minor Edge giving you +1 d6 to roll and take the best two as your result, a Major Edge instead giving you +2 d6 to roll and taking the best two. Obstacles do the same but you have to take the lowest two. They also offer suggestions for how to handle stacking one with the other.

@ianstewart-vital

27 күн бұрын

​@BlueTressym I don't remember what edition I played, but man I miss BESM.

I saw a women's shirt once that showed two dice landing on 20 and it said "Yeah, their natural"

Okay, I went and watched the original video, and tbh I was a little disappointed. Well, more frustrated with the long pauses. So thank you for filling them! 3:45. Completely agree with your disagreement. 8:55. That wasn't my experience, but I can't speak to the trend as a whole, since (leaning in to your "5e gained popularity online" comment) I was mainly an in-person player at the time. But, I remember 5e being mostly embraced as a "WotC listened to the 4e criticism and are returning to their roots, plus I won't have to add 34+17 on the fly anymore". 14:10, I agree with your point entirely, that 5e has a lot of shortcomings for diehard fans of the extremes of the roleplay/rollplay spectrum, but, calling back to your frustration at the start of the video, I find it weird that pointing to a game that does a certain aspect "better" gets such a visceral backlash from people, and that some people are so against just trying something new. Maybe I'm just old. Or they've experienced people saying it badly so much that it's now the only way they hear it. But, I started my TTRPG experience with like 4 different systems at once, so I just can't relate to a "5e or die" mentality. Or a "2e or die" mentality, for that matter. 14:30, I was also surprised when he didn't go the direction I was expecting, tbh this is the first point in his video that I started getting a bit lost trying to follow. 27:00 I'm glad you're back to having fun with your content. =) 27:45 Completely agree here too. When I started out, it was much easier to roleplay when I didn't have to be "on" for 100% of the time, and could just sit back and roll dice sometimes to recharge my batteries. 33:54 that is mad haha! Glad you can laugh it off. 36:12 maybe in the same way that some 5e players now have a visceral reaction to the word "pathfinder", I have that same reaction to the word "handouts" in this context. Using it like it's a dirty word just feels like such an entitled point of view, because I only hear it in the voice of millionaire politicians arguing that people living under the breadline should have even more of their dignity stripped from them.

@18:15 DnD is definable, it has an essence. It'd be like saying "I am swimming" when you are not in a body of water and then claiming "its still swimming if you want it to be, theres no set way to swim."

Most of us 3.5 DnD players moved to Pathfinder.

The most basic TL;DR of EVERYTHING wrong with 4th Edition D&D: -Number Bloat -Class Homogenization -Loss of Multiclassing -Oversimplification -Rigid Design (hard to homebrew) If you've played 5th Edition, it carries over a lot of the structures, but walks back a number of things towards the 3.5 design.

You are so right about the whole "departure" thing. I decided to try out pathfinder when the OGL situation arose. While I am a big fan of pathfinder, there are certainly things that i like better in d&d (looking at you vancian spellcasting). But just because I chose to try something different doesn't mean I'm cutting all ties. Just because I'm not a fan of the company, that doesn't mean I hate the game.

@tomraineofmagigor3499

29 күн бұрын

One of the reasons I'm making the game I am is that I don't like vancian spellcasting

@ArborusVitae

29 күн бұрын

Is Pathfinder not like...mechanically identical in terms of spellcasting to 5e? I've played both pretty extensively and couldn't tell you the difference.

@dcohen1359

29 күн бұрын

@ArborusVitae Pathfinder uses something called vancian spellcasting where each individual casting of a spell at each various spell level must be pre-planned every day. Whereas in 5e you can just prepare a spell and cast it as many times as you want with whatever spell slots you have.

@ArborusVitae

29 күн бұрын

@@dcohen1359 That's only for prepared casters. Spontaneous casters can just cast whatever they want with their slots, including up or down-casting signature spells. Some casters even have unlimited signature spells letting them freely up or downcast everything. You also have the flexible spellcaster archetype if you want to use that as a prepared caster to do what you're describing.

@dcohen1359

29 күн бұрын

@@ArborusVitae That's true, but it makes wizards a real hassle for me personally. Guess I'll just stick with sorcerer. 🤷‍♂️

I enjoyed listening to your thoughts on the video and I made it to the end. I think we should make an effort to remove dnd as the "face" or "trunk" of TTRPGs. There are countless other games that are also worthy of being someone's first TTRPG. It's important to recognize that when WoTC wants to market their products, they reach out to content creators. DnD large presence was built by its fans(when I say fans I include content creators) and it can easily be dismantled. This was clearly shown last year There are several people making great TTRPGs and it's a shame that they are just considered to be DnD alternatives. Imagine if we talked about videogames like this

Thanks for a very nice reaction video. On your advice, I went and watched their video and, although I don't 100% agree with it (or even your reactions), I think there's a lot that folk could learn from Blaine's commentary. Again, thanks for the solid content.

Blaine killed it as always But I'm with ya we don't talk as often anymore but I'm glad I got to meet you dude and I know whenever we end up hanging/talking again we would get along like no time has passed at all

Just to let you know, Nonat, I like your way of covering Pathfinder content. I'm still playing 1e, so I feel like through your videos, I won't be completely lost when I eventually pick up a 2e group. I'm glad that you're still going at it.

18:25 and here is whrer i'm going to completely disagree. I do guess its the Argo arugment but if 'you can play however you want, ingore any rule and make you own stuff up!' Why would i spend any money on a book i won't use?

@MrBoredinthedorm

29 күн бұрын

I'm with you on this. The rules make the game. The more rules, sure, the more minor changes you cam make, and it still be pretty much the same game. Look at drinking a potion as a BA. The whole community pretty much decided it was a better rule, so much that One D&D made it official. But if someone came up and was telling me of their last session and started talking about their Barbarian casting spells while raging, or the wizard concentrating on three spells at once. Like cool beans, sounds awesome, but it doesn't sound much like 5e to me.

@SwitchbackCh

27 күн бұрын

And if you're going to ignore that much of 5E while having fun, what's stopping someone from learning the bare minimum of another RPG and doing the same, especially when so many have easy quickstarts for new players too? It calls the whole "tabletops are a mountain" thing into question.

Would be sufficient to say, that much of "drama" and "hate" spilled out by the masses, ( not content creators themselves ), stems from an inherent fear, their chosen game of choice has been overshadowed by DnD? I don't want to say, overshadowed by corporate giantism, but that does kind of apply as well. What I mean is, like me I'm a D6 system/Mini Six system user and GM ... I do make "homebrew" games based off it, but not commercially. However, if i go to local game stores, or have some online presence where I am in contact with other RPG players, they look at you funny, and eighty percent of the time look at you funny when you say, you do not play DnD , or Pathfinder. DnD is synonymous with TTRPG , something that works for that game specifically yes, but it also is the "generic umbrella" term many use to describe fantasy TTRPG. But, who'd gonna play , or WANT to play my obscure system, of a dead company that was notorious for producing bad film and TV show RPGs , IF they even knew this much. When the big name system or systems, have not just the spotlights, but also modern day content and facilities readily available? Not many at all. So I think good bit of it all, is that "fear" for a lack of better way to express it , is My Game of choice X , is better for me and what I want to do, but no one is gonna know it, or care, or pay attention as long as the big brand , keeps waving it's flag around, regardless if it's positive or negative in aspect. I believe that's why we get, "Pathfinder is better than DnD" , or "This RPG is the new DnD killer". Not just for content creators to have material, but out of the RPG community at large. People are wanting to lash out, with their frustration , and its the only way to express it, as there's no way to "knee cap" the giant persay, and provide easier paths to showcase what they prefer.

@ianstewart-vital

27 күн бұрын

I think this is a big part of it. It is why I tend to push PF2e, though I do try not to be a dick about it.

IT IS YOUR DUTY TO GET EVERY SPECIFIC RULE RIGHT!!!111!!!111! Man this video was spot on and I am glad you mentioned, along with him, that it isn't about playing a specific system, it is about enjoying the hobby with friends the way your table enjoys it regardless of what system they play. I have been an advocate for that for a very long time, but so many bad actors try to strawman me and say it is me saying don't play D&D (because I think it IS a bad system for what it is supposed to be). It is always about trying new things to take a break.

D&D is a genre. That is why WotC’s current debauchery of it is transient. While rules can be bad (hello 4E), and settings can be ruined, the genre will persist and always gravitates back to its true north of heroic fantasy. The era of proms, coffee shops, and moral relativism will end quickly, and soon enough characters will be back to slaying evil and gathering treasure.

@nicholasromero238

18 күн бұрын

It's about slaying evil and getting treasure now; it just doesn't assume you're Always Evil because of your birth ancestry

I will be eternally grateful for DnD for introducing me to tabletop rpg's . I started playing becmi and 1sr ed in the late 80's, unfortunately dnd today is barely recogniseable as dungeons and dragons and does not faithfully encompass the core aspects of what the game should be. 5e may be more popular but thats like saying burger king is the best burger because it sells more.

I had forgotten about you making EXP to LVL3 in Pathfinder and that vid was KILLER. :D

Well said buddy! I feel like those of us wanting to only focus on positivity in the gaming space is such a small space, mostly because they don't get the views. But my mental gas tank just can't do the drama channel stuff. And as I always say, as long as no one get's hurt "You can't have fun wrong". More RPG's, is more tools in your tool box. Every tool has a use, but they're all useful in some way.

I left the DnD Community basically around the time of the OGL drama. I have kept a pulse on events but honestly it sounds exhausting.

43:20 I think he just took a shot at Gale from Monarch's Factory. I'm going to email this to her Grandma.

I always homebrew, and i love to come out with different mechanics based on the character and the player. So, to help my narrative impaired brawler that always go "i throw a punch" and make him have fun with just throwing dice, i made a round-based fight without damage, just a dice battle where the first to get 10 points wins, the thing is that this turned into a personal immersive heavy decision-making and punishing fight kinda like The Raid, where he was incentivised to use his brain, gaining automatic advantages with coherent actions and automatic losses with morronic decisions, so much so that he decided to thrust his metal arm in the enemy mouth, and this was an instakill before the battle reached 10, and he said "wow, so i can tell exactly what i want to do and win the fight?!" and i was like "yep, i hate dices, but i want to empower you.". Sadly he died in the same session. Now, i'm a player in a D&D campaign, and the pace is so different it hurts, the constant dice throwing to everything, the high dependency on mathematics and the ammount of effort i have to make so the decisions of my character reflect the rules of D&D is kinda..... boring. I feel constrained.

Not finished with the video yet but want to say that this video and Blaine’s video is a breath of fresh air with all the criticism circulating around. Also your humbleness ,maturity and growth with your approach is what we all need in the ttrpg world especially online. I recall being put off by your videos when they were full of criticism. Let the haters hate. Let’s celebrate instead. I was also in the boat of “down with wotc” but business is business. Marketing to the masses is what exactly I would have done to expand the hobby.

I just wanted to sat, I'm glad to see you again. I've aleardy left my 'I made it' comment on blain's vid. During the ogl debacle, I did check out other systems, and I binged your content starting with your class vid. Watching you made me ignor the agressive reditors and try the system Not for mer, but I'm glad I tried. Thx

Couple of things; Pathfinder as a game, intiatially as a clone of 3.5 and then as it's own entity over the following years, started in 2009. Yeah, Paizo still can't compete with "Hasbro's Marketing Budget", but they have managed to create the second most popular and well known TTRPG without. It certainly can be done especially if we are entering another era of "bad edition D&D". You know, like 4th Edition. Secondly, while hating D&D might not be the right thing to do (and we probably confuse the term D&D for WotC/Hasbro), we certainly have reason, a freaking mountain full of reasons to hate WotC. There is no pretending otherwise.

"Hi! My name is No-nad..." Wait, wtf did he just say?! *Double checks channel name* Ohhhh, glad i just misheard that.

@TheShrewdMonarch

12 күн бұрын

Chuckled

Your comment about not fearing homebrew is spot on, sir.

Public awareness has indeed grown, but i wouldn't say 50% of the people would understand what a nat20 is. I believe i watched Blaine's video a while ago.

Blaine's opinion that D&D just became popular with 5th edition is simply a byproduct of his awareness of D&D & ttrpgs. The hesitation of learning a new ttrpg is only a thing for newcomers.

Quick reminder to everyone that ADnD 1e and 2e are more similar to each other than 5e and OneDnD OneDnD is a new edition whether you like it or not, because new edition=/= massive overhaul.

IMO, the fact that 5e's skills are WAY lighter and less in depth than other systems is actually its strength in helping newbies feel empowered to roleplay. They don't need to understand anything like the specific skill crunch of Pathfinder 2e or anything about clocks or anything of that sort. Just roll a dice with a few number bonuses and the dm can just determine the result mostly based on vibes. 5e does have ALOT of issues (Especially balance-wise), but I think the super light skills system is part of what made it easier for me and alot of others to get into the system Also, the dogpiling you mentioned earlier often, in my opinion, only serves to drive 5e players back to the 5e community where they won't get bashed for starting off with 5e. Thank you so much for being kinder to those of us who are still dipping our toes into unfamiliar systems!

16:04 I think you really hit the nail for me in some of these discussions. I understand that Dnd in and of itself for alot of people can be a time sink, setting up sessions can be hard, finding people to play with etc but it does sort of bother me that how learning a new system can be seen as "a new mountain to climb" one of the best parts of RPGs is technically only one person needs to own the rules to run a game and alot of really good games have SRDs online for free (PF, blades in the dark, fate core, OSE) so you can try before you buy with little to no commitment outside of running and organizing the game. maybe the new thing wont be your MAIN thing but it can open your eyes to new ideas and even inspire new homebrew that you can use to enhance your own games. Even if you're the type of GM you has basically turned Dnd into a completely new game and uses it as an avenue for practicing game design its good practice to peak over the fence every now and again and see what other games do well and what makes it work.

So I consider myself an OG gamer because when I was in high school it was AD&D. After graduation I enlisted and stopped playing for probably 20 years. I got out and started a new job and met another married guy like myself that played AD&D with his families so our families started gaming together. He introduced me to Pathfinder and we switched to that. After 2nd edition we didn’t really like to so changed to 5th edition. After the OGL controversy we opted to no longer support the game so I bought the remastered box set and I am running it now. So we are back to Pathfinder lol

What I would suggest about the whole running out of content thing, is for one I liked the comparison video you did of the 5e barbarian and pf2 barbarian, it would be neat seeing those comparisons for other classes. Second, maybe do stuff thay isn't rules-based and more story based? Like storytimes.

Here is a thing I recently learned/thought about: Tabletop Roleplay Games are basically systems, yeah? It is a set of rules for you to use as you see fit. The moment you start using those rules, you are a game developer. It is no difference in the basics from using PF2 than writing a game in C#.

12:30 everyone hates d4 fours nobody respects the caltrop

I have to agree, having had fun playing AD&D 2e back in the 90s, and been through the 5e, it's exhausting keeping up with the multiple issues afflicting D&D. Caused me to focus on Cyberpunk Red and the Palladium system.

The Rule of Stone is that there aren't any rules written in stone. Keep what you like, change what you want, and make the game your own. After all, games are meant to be played for enjoyment.

Savage pathfinder is what I like now.

This came at the right time. I felt inspired to make some abomination that mixes elements of pf2e and 5e. This has given me more motivation to work on it

just an idea for future videos, i would love builds. There are so many DND build videos that seem to focus on how to exploit breaks. Id love to see videos that give examples on how to use all the ABCs in PF2e to build a concept, especially the different ways to accomplish a concept build

I am fine with a bit of homebrew with 5e. Likewise with PF2. I agree with you that we are not fused on a given community (?) : we can play one table with Rolemaster, another with 5e, etc.

The way I see it is 5e is a pretty good skeleton for a set of rules. My group uses the rules as is for the most part but changes quite a bit of subclass features, minor mechanical changes & we love to make homebrew items.The word "Homebrew" kinda leaves a bad taste in my mouth because my mind defaults to like.. a class some random person made on reddit or something. I prefer "house rules" where we as a group come up with something unique ourselves. I'm probably still going to get the new 5e books but mostly as just a reference/inspirational tool.

@iantaran2843

29 күн бұрын

That's exactly what the old guard did with the older editions. There are Grognards STILL making homebrew for B/X, 1st edition AD&D, ECT 😅 There is an entire community because of it. As much as 5E disappointed me, I understand people sticking with a framework they are comfortable with.

*Squints* Winco corn flakes? Someone lives on the west coast. Rolling for more insight.

Hasbro/WOtC are Dr. Frankenstein. They took parts of a beautiful woman and have made the monsters bride. The villagers are here with torches

We played 3rd edition on IRC

Growing up I primarily played DnD but also played GURPs, Shadowrun, and Star Wars. I have never felt the need to be critical of other games. I found something enjoyable in each one.

I play a weekly pf2e group and I dm a weekly 5e group. I sometimes get rules mixed up (types of saves I ask for) but I love both

I play my setting using 3 different systems: City of Mist for RP heavy stuff lacking combat, 5e for general roleplay and combat, and P2E for deep dungeons and deep technically combat. There's nothing stopping you from using multiple systems besides elitisms and worrying about what other people think of you. Trust from me, it can be very fun, don't let it hinder your potential joy.

I am in 2 dnd 5e campaigns, and 2 pathfinder 2e campaigns. And I love all 4 of those campaigns.

Here’s a thought: you can find older editions of DnD OR make the game the way you want. Just like the original vision of the game. DMs take control of your games and make the world yours - this is from way back in 2nd edition

I left fifth edition DND over eight years ago lol, I found the system lacked any sort of creative outlet or character development and the advantage/disadvantage system was the worst thing I have seen invented in a role-play game ever. Is lack of a rules framework for anything outside of it. Bad combat design left much to be desired. Ask for respect, I can respect another human being without having to respect their decisions or choices they make and as a human being and entitled to critique and or criticize them as long as I do so in a polite manner. The flaw and you respect logic is respect, is earned by people not simply given because they feel it is deserved, and the attitude that you should give everyone respect without them earning it is one of the problems in our society at the moment. And same play in the game you like is fine, that point I agree with, but when most people have to homebrew for fifth edition or literally rewrite rules or create their own rules for a game that in itself is a condemnation of the game design and the creators of the game in the first place, it meant it was lacking structure, or a complete framework and should not have been released until probably vetted and ready to be utilized. The system is meant to be permissive towards players, it doesn’t build any sort of challenge nor teach people that failure is acceptable outcome in the situation, the monsters are intentionally designed a weaker than the players, etc. This type of video by you is why I almost never watch your material.

The last D&D book i bought was when it was owned by TSR. I bought my 3rd edition books used on ebay and stole my 5th edition books from online. I only pay for splatbooks made by small creators.

I started playing back during the Basic set and then Advanced DnD. I've played games such as Talislanta, Paranoia, Ghostbusters (box set), GURPS, Call of Cthulhu, etc, etc. I remember the Satanic Panic and how when you played these games you almost had to vet people before you felt comfortable about talking about playing TTRPGs and I am glad to see that it has become largely mainstream due to the involvement of celebrities and the advent of the internet. Plus, I love seeing how others run their games. As much as I hate WoTC, DnD will always hold a special place in my heart. I'm a recent convert to Pathfinder and so far, I like it, but the crunchiness is well, crunchy. It is hard for me to wrap my head around some "feats" that seem to be parts of skills or even a lot of the verbiage that is used. There are points when reading the rules where the rule isn't broken down Barney style, especially rules where you may have an ability that gives a second attack but the MAP isn't figured in until after the initial attack...looking at you fighter Double Slice. Anyway, back to the video, Wizards did themselves a big disservice by splitting the community, however, most of the people that left, influencers especially, went right back.

This was the first time I've heard of this Blaine guy.

DND is World of Warcraft of Tabletop. To me was a great system and with their continuing to streamline what made it special for me and then the corporate screw ups made me dump it. Much like how every MMO in the 2000s was the WOW Killer, DND had the DND Killer stuff right now but nothing will kill DND but itself much like what happened with WOW.

Blaine's video has said nothing new, many people of smaller staure have said much the same, but even if that is so, than maybe the popularity of this video and the reactions to it will make people consider being nicer, and for that, he has my gratitude. Perhaps now i can look into new systems without people berating me for coming from D&D. The irony of being told to play a different system then being called various denigrating things for daring to not being a tabletop virgin.

The video is an incredible video! It is overdue to hear these opinions that I assumed others also have. I have only being playing and running 5e since late 2019 and it's a wild hobby. But it is a hobby after all. (Not to discredit the lucky ones that can successfully earn money while doing it) Let's all be glad to be able to enjoy what we each believe is fun. And we all need to stop yucking everyone else's yum.

In Jon Peterson’s The Elusive Shift, he quotes someone in a zine in the ‘70s saying something like, “We played D&D, using Runequest’s rules.” A bit of the Kleenex effect.

I started in 1998 in 2nd Edition, playing with people who played since the 70's, and the culture and system have changed to the point of being unrecognizable. 3.5 was peak in terms of systems, but I'd say the culture of the players from the 70's and 80's was peak. Tbf, it was during 3.5 that the real commodification of DnD began, with the endless books, but somehow each of them was still fun and seemed to add something. This brought in normal consumers, and with that, ever increasing amounts of hand holding and reductionism began. 4th edition basically tried to be a pen and paper World of Warcraft, and everyone hated it. The people I learned from ALL had their own worlds, mythos, races cultures, and I inherited that and have had a world I've been expanding and evolving for 20 years. When 5th edition came out, I had so much invested in my 3.5 based world I had zero interest in learning a new system and modifying my world to match it (and what I considered a watered down system anyway)

I "departed" from D&D in the early 90s and didnt play it again until Covid because I was introducing my kids to it. The idea is you depart from D&D and dont go back because you will find games exponentially better than D&D and will have no desire to go back.

And I am back from the Original Video!

Addendum: A great many people played 4e and it sold well, it just didn’t meet the new requirements that Hasbro imposed when they bought the company If it had not sold well they (Hasbro) would have never green-lighted 5e (no, seriously, Hasbro would have scrapped the entire thing if it hadn’t at least “sold well” because they’re RUTHLESS) Any documentation you can find from that era about sales proves it was still, unequivocally, the highest selling tabletop game of the period (multiple magnitudes greater than several of the top competitors combined) Might wanna stop spreading false information my dude