I have weekly games, both IRL and on call, plus a PbP project I'm handling because if you want an alternative to DnDslop you gotta write it yourself, but sometimes I do get that itch and want to check Westmarches out on Discord, which is genuinely retarded and I only have myself to blame.Blogposting aside, given at this point I'm not finding much stuff other than 5e, I've observed a bunch of them, occasionally participating. And what seriously kills any hope I have for these zoomers is the plethora of dicebots I find every time. I used to handle forums and servers playing 3.5 and Pathfinder at its most autistic, and most of the sheets were PDFs or Mythweavers, while people who play 5e in its most unseasoned RAW form need DnDBeyond to calculate everything for them.They can't remember the most basic rules for a game in which the majority of the classes literally require you to choose a fighting style and a subclass, and where casting genuinely feels crippled compared to old editions. Like, you need a bot to track the ONE concentration spell you have on? Like, they vastly prefer to learn a shitton of Avrae commands than to actually understand how to play a game made basic and bland by design. And obviously, due to them being limited by the bot's commands, they can't create anything on their own without going through a thousand hoops, so no custom monsters or magic items or anything of that ilk. You're gonna buy some slop on DnDBeyond and you're gonna enjoy it.Genuinely insane.
>>98001053I agree.Plus now, D&DBeyond is paywalling a lot more of its content; spells, feats, races, etc.It's a "you pay us to hold your hand", when TTRPGs are supposed to be about playing the kinds of characters you want in the kinds of worlds you want. D&D has become the antithesis of its original vision.
>>98001116>>Plus now, D&DBeyond is paywalling a lot more of its content; spells, feats, races, etc.There was no reason to do any of that but I guess people are willing to fork over a buck if WotC is going to release a 15$ new Homebrew Class and new Homebrew Player Guides/Campaign Settings for 30 to 40 bucksThey could have saved themselves the PR disaster if they left the piecemeal alone
>>98001285>if they left the piecemeal alonePeople were complaining about $2 spells and feats back then as well. Now you have to buy the fucking ebook if you want Silvery Barbs, or enter it manually.
>>98001435>or enter it manuallyThe fact that you can "homebrew" everything premium without having to pay money as long as you're willing to put in the time is funny to me.
>>98001540They're profiting off of the people who don't even belong in the hobby.That's kinda cool, make the retards pay more for what they could easily do themselves, but it's still corrupt.
>>98001053Do you think other games don't have retards that can't keep track of their shit?
>>98001435>People were complaining about $2 spells and feats back then as wellThe Piecemeal was better because you didn't have to purchase a whole book for the one or two things you were fixing forIf I wanted to play as a Goliath I'd just pay for the a buck for the race and if I wanted to play Bladesinger or cast a spell I'd fork over some change for that as well>>98001540>The fact that you can "homebrew" everything premium without having to pay money as long as you're willing to put in the time is funny to me.Probably an oversight on WotC's part
>>98001589There aren't enough people playing other games to accurately gauge a ratio of people who have basic cognitive functions : those who don't for each game.
>>98001589I suspect this is a property of DnD; not because it happens to be a particular retard magnet by definition, but because popularity disproportionately attracts more retards than other intelligence levels. If you have to go out of your way to learn about something, then the number of fools attracted to it decreases dramatically, with others being affected to a lesser extent.
>>98001540>without having to pay money as long as you're willing to put in the time Only if your time is worthless.
>>98001862that goes without saying, otherwise you wouldn't be here having this conversation
>>98001862Only if you find engaging with your hobbies 'worthless'.
>>98001862Homebrew is the only way to engage with this hobby.Get used to it or get out, paypig.
>>98001862It's unlikely that your players will need every spell or character option, and they can make their choices outside of Beyond before making the character, so the real question is "is a few minutes of your time copying and pasting information into Beyond worth the price of the entire module it's from?"
>>98001053I recall seeing something from one of D&D Beyond's programmers who said that they were mostly intending to just make the process easier and faster, but that they realized far too late that what they'd done accidentally made it so players didn't have to read the books, understand the rules, or know how to make characters, which became a problem with them not knowing how to handle the rudimentary bookkeeping and short term memorization needed to play the fucking game.
>>98002076>is a few minutes of your time copying and pasting information into Beyond worth the price of the entire module it's fromNTAIndividual mileage may vary with that one.For instance, I'd rather spend years of my life bomebrewing the game I want to play than to sit at yet another D&D table just to get dicked over and not actually play a game.
>>98002202>bomebrewingFuck my eyes.That's supposed to be homebrewing.
>>98002090>rudimentary bookkeeping and short term memorizationThe root problem there lies more with bad parenting and a shitty educational system.
>>98002223It is certainly a bigger issue than D&D, but also I can't help but feel like if DNDB hadn't come around and made it retard-accessible, the amount of people who might have sacked up and read their fucking books and actually tried to learn the rules.When I was a wee lad, I almost exclusively played JRPGs on the SNES and PS1, and being forced to read made me a better reader and gave me a huge vocabulary for my age. Even had teachers assuming I was cheating because I was able to tear through the assigned reading and novels so fast. If a kid is never challenged and never made to do things that aren't easy, they'll never grow. No pain, no gain, and all that. But that's also the same issue you were talking about where bad parenting and bad schooling makes kids into the kind of retards who can't fill out a character sheet.
>>98002048It used to exclusively be like that, like, admittedly I hadn't touched a module in my entire gaming career until 5e arrived and people started collecting those. "Everyone has to play Strahd at least once, anon" and shit like that. Like, I kinda miss the times when people picked up the setting books and made their own adventures. It genuinely feels like these people don't like TTRPGs, they don't like the rules, they don't like inventing and writing stuff, and their writing/roleplaying is the least genuine shit ever. They're doing it online too so there isn't even the excuse of just passing an evening with the boys and getting drunk in front of spreadsheets.
