Wizards of The Coast ruined D&D.

Lorry killed D&D, Wizards just bought the corpse and turned it into profitable puppet it is today.

>>95883149
fpbp

>>95883123 (OP)

>>95883123 (OP)
D&D was never a good RPG.

>>95883331
But it IS an RPG! The first one to be a published product for the mass market, in fact.

>>95883352
Just ignore the edgy kid

>>95883331
D&D was good and had good time feels with friends, fren. Sorry you never had friends who didn't suck ass.

>>95883331
This. Being the first doesn't change this.

>>95883123 (OP)
Agreed.

>>95883474
Almost anything you do with friends is fun. The bar for being good should be higher than, "Does not ruin friendship".

>>95883331
DnD before 4e was good, but then niggers of the coast saw 4e not being as popular as it should have been and went all the way to lowest common denominator mass produced slop with 5e. Then the theater kids joined and now everyone is just playing calvinball and calling it DnD

>>95883627
>DnD before 4e was good
3e brainbroke an entire generation of players
>saw 4e not being as popular as it should have been
>the highest selling game of it's time, outselling 3.5 book for book
Idiot take.

>>95883149
D&D may not have flourished under Lorraine, but it would have died a lot faster if Gary had remained in charge. There's a reason she was able to take the company from him without any objections from anyone else there.

>>95883652
I said 4e wasn't popular enough for wotc, not that it sold poorly

>>95883627
3e launch was such a disaster that fucking Vampire became top dog for a couple years until they finally got their shit together

>>95883123 (OP)
D&D ruined Wizards of The Coast.

>>95883652
>3e brainbroke an entire generation of players
The damage 3.5 did to multiple generations of TTRPGs and video games is bad enough to be worthy of study.

>>95883741
Without necessarily contesting your conclusion, I'm curious as to where you draw the line between "influenced" and "damaged".

>>95883123 (OP)
My AD&D boxed sets are still on my shelf. I've had one of them since 1989 and not once has a WotC employee ever come by to demand that I turn it in.

WotC has released a lotta new shit over the years. I've even bought some of it. But the stuff I didn't like or buy had absolutely zero impact on any game I've ever run. WotC CAN'T ruin D&D. It's physically impossible. All that they can do is release some products I'm not interested in.

>>95883677
She killed TSR by milking DnD too damn hard, she aimed for publishing new splatbook every month back when customer base was much smaller and every book had to be made in physical print and shipped to brick and mortar stores. She expected demand will grow with the supply. It didn't. Economy 101 rookie mistake.
Of course Gary didn't object to putting her in charge, he did not give a fuck one way or another as long as he gets paid. The only part that's up for debate is whether that was his natural leniency or his cocaine habit driving that decision.

>>95883937
>She killed TSR by publishing too many supplements
Yep. We're all quite lucky she destroyed the company to produce such fucking gold. Frankly, we should probably be thanking her for it. It caused a ttrpg rennaissance, and that was after bankrupting the company to produce the best supplements that D&D has ever offered.

>>95883652
>3e brainbroke an entire generation of players
>>95883741
>The damage 3.5 did to multiple generations of TTRPGs and video games is bad enough to be worthy of study.
Optimization emerges spontaneously in any adequately complex system. Just look at the speedrunning community.

>>95883970
>and that was after bankrupting the company to produce the best supplements that D&D has ever offered.
Maybe best-tailored, but their failure to sell at the scale they were printed is why the company folded.

>>95883123 (OP)
What a brave and controversial thing to say

>>95883331
Correct. It was just the first one that got any traction.

>>95883123 (OP)
D&D is getting better with every edition. Cope.

>>95884038
Speedrunning didn't emerge spontaneously though. It was a result of DOOM showing your time and giving a way to record runs that was shareable on 90s internet.

>>95883149
Counter-point: Lorry put D&D on life support after all the profits were wasted on hookers and blow by Gygax and Co.
There is a solid chance WotC would have nothing to buy without her.
Which retroactively makes her ten times worse

>>95883627
>How to tell people you started with 3.5 without saying so directly

>>95884038
>their failure to sell at the scale they were printed is why the company folded.
Yes. And it was absolutely worth it. Best thing that ever happened to D&D.

>>95883578
>Almost anything you do with friends is fun.
not that you would know

>>95884038
Optimisation isn't the damage caused by 3.5 :)

>>95883123 (OP)
Yup

>>95883123 (OP)
That's whatever.
I play 5e (2014) with some friends, and 3.5e with another, and neither group ever thinks about what WotC is doing at any given moment, it quite literally doesn't affect us.
If D&D as a game were to stop releasing books and die tomorrow, we'd carry on, maybe even pick up another system like Shadow of the Weird Wizard or whatever.

>>95883677
Only the MOST liberal minded "strong woman = Good" mindset can ever think that vapid cunt did a good job. Even the people that worked with her who liked her do not mention her skill at running a company. She did a shit job. Gygax ALSO did a shit job, however, every time some dumb shit tries to say Lorraine did a good job, I can smell the onions stench coming off them through the fucking screen.

>>95883741
>The damage 3.5 did to video games
There wasn't a lot of 3.5 vidya. Neverwinter Nights, Elemental Evil, and DDO are the only ones that come to mind.

Bizarrely, 4e would have made an amazing tactics game but I think Sword Coast Legends and Neverwinter were the only games that used that system (kinda).

>>95883149
nah, she was shit but didn't kill it, it'd have died faster with Gygax in charge

>>95884923
Notably, I didn't say she did a good job. I said Gygax had been doing a worse one.

>>95883123 (OP)

>>95883681
Yeah, the problem wasn't outselling 3e. It failing to sell as much as MtG, something 3.5 would've failed to do even at it's height.

>>95883123 (OP)
Hasbro ruined Wizards of the Coast.

>>95883123 (OP)
To me, D&D is just "roll a d20, add your modifier, and compare it to the target number"
Everything beyond that, is flavoring.

So I think D&D is really great.
It's elegantly simple, scales predictably, and gives you just the right amount of granularity.

People say things like "oh, these classes aren't balanced!"
And it makes it sound like they're playing a video game.
They expect it to already be everything they want, instead of making it what they want.

Is that asking too much of them?
I don't mean to be hard on people who say that.
Maybe they just don't understand.

>>95887006
Everything is asking too much of /tg/, anon. Every single board on 4chan is just a generic formula for endless ragebait about "I am better than you because blank" with the board topic being a farcical attempt to make what you're doing look like anything other than masturbation. I am told it used to be different, I am unconvinced.

>>95883123 (OP)
It's reductive to say that, especially when you don't say anything about what qualifies as "ruined" or how Wizards is responsible for that. Low quality.

That aside, I put more blame on the parent company, Hasbro. They're really abusive to Wizards, and the properties that fall under Wizards.

>>95884038
Optimizing wasn't the issue, it was the fucktarded way it went about it and poor understanding of math scaling and printed abilities.
Anon, straight up, any game that has a 'Fighter' type class that is actually bad at FIGHTING outside very specific combinations of abilities is a shittily made game.

>>95883352
It was a hack of a wargame. At its core, it was a wargame with slapdash RPG elements, and that has yet to change. It has no mechanics that tie into roleplaying.

>>95883474
see
>>95883578

>>95887006
I understand but you don't. The process of accomplishing something should be as important than accomplishing it, sometimes more. The game is more than a single resolution mechanic. Expecting me to do the work you should have already done for a paid product, for free, on my own time, is not acceptable.