I think the personality of gamers is involved too, even if it was exploited.

D20 killed gaming for me as a purchase habit, I stopped buying RPGs for many many years, and you know me, I'm a compulsive shopper for games, so you can tell how utterly repulsed D20 must have made me.

@Taskerland @pteryx @cy @foolishowl

@Printdevil I think incompetent and predatory business practices can be blamed for what happened to ttrpgs in toto but it definitely makes sense to look at specific mis-steps and consequences that snowballed. The collapse of clubs and specialist shops after the D20 collapse did enormous damage as did the failure to rebuild. @pteryx @cy @foolishowl

@Printdevil D20 definitely ended my initial love affair with the hobby. I played a bit after and play now but it is on very different terms. @pteryx @cy @foolishowl

The number of people who just went "but why should we ever learn another rule set, we know D20" drove me out of the clubs. I could see the issues with monocrop so far off, and it was just.. disheartening.

@Taskerland @pteryx @cy @foolishowl

@Taskerland @Printdevil @cy @foolishowl
Yeah, that's kind of what I was trying to get at: that one of those missteps was assuming that combat-focused game = $$$, and that $$$ is the only goal, and therefore the "proper" direction for D&D was to zero in on the combat parts more at the expense of what video games can't really do so well and CCGs can't do at all... and this, in turn, had knock-on effects on the rest of the industry because of the severely unbalanced network effects of D&D.

@Printdevil @Taskerland @cy @foolishowl
Even as someone who *likes* 3.x, I thought the d20 Everything trend was excessive and detrimental to the industry. It's not really a one-size-fits all system... and 5e is even *less* so.

Half of my old club group evaporated to play CCGs when they arrived because they loved having something to spend their money on as "young professionals" that they felt gave them an advantage in games, and once you entrench that personality RPGs are just ... lost to them

@pteryx @Taskerland @cy @foolishowl

@Printdevil @Taskerland @cy @foolishowl
Which does make me wonder if TTRPGs were even the kind of thing they wanted to play in the first place, or if their participation in something so *cooperative* was more of an imposition from their perspective. Kind of like how even today, there are wallflower "players" who only "play" because that's what the rest of the group is doing.

(I mean, I don't mind audience members, but they shouldn't pretend to be players...)

I'm pretty sure RPGs were a placeholder game for a lot of people till the surge of boardgames, LAN games, MMOs, and CCGs

@pteryx @Taskerland @cy @foolishowl

@Printdevil Yeah... what people with thosextaste once got out of ttrpgs they now get out of other systems but the bulk of the industry is still chasing them. @pteryx @cy @foolishowl

The whole combat effectiveness type approach to gaming is why I find it hard to chat to local gamers, in a gaming shop, who are gaming.

Because it just looks like an RPG

But it isn't.

@pteryx @foolishowl @Taskerland

@foolishowl @Printdevil @Taskerland
What bugs me the most is that *because* of a combination D&D tunnel vision and people's refusal to learn new systems (which is less about "system mastery" as *I* understand the term and more about sheer laziness combined with a failure to understand the concept of "right tool for the right job"), people *try to design games* that are supposed to be very different from D&D, yet use 5e mechanics because they don't understand the distinction between them and RP.

@Printdevil @pteryx @foolishowl @Taskerland It's a computer game ethos. If you play [insert name of currently popular computer game] you are playing _exactly_ by the rules. That's how a lot of modern D&Ders seem to play too. But even when I still played D&D, and in basically everything I've played since, the overwhelming ethos was "if there is a conflict between rules correctness and what the GM wants, the GM wins". Sometimes that meant you didn't play with that GM again, fair enough.

@pteryx @foolishowl @Printdevil @Taskerland Yeah, they drift into the GURPS forums and ask "is this character build legal", and get very surprised when everyone replies "ask your GM".

There's a tremendous antipathy towards GMs in currently RPG-Company circles because they tend to be the only ones who buy stuff, and that doesn't suit corporate who love VTTs and things everyone should "have to sub or buy"

@RogerBW @pteryx @foolishowl @Taskerland

@Printdevil @pteryx @foolishowl @Taskerland That's a whole separate thing. I think that this whole wail of "GMing is really hard and unrewarding", "GMs are often terrible", and "nobody wants to be the GM" is actually much rarer than one would think, but is selectively promoted to push people towards computer GMing.

@pteryx @Printdevil @Taskerland I kind of meant to point to system mastery in the sense that it's something valued at all.

As in, I've seen it said of some narrative-style games that it's not really necessary to understand the rules, it just helps things go more smoothly if you do. Some rules light systems are intended to be too simple and consistent for system mastery to be the interesting part. Some OSR systems, I suspect that confusion is an intentional part of the experience.

@foolishowl @pteryx @Printdevil @Taskerland Gary valued it highly. I would much rather have a player with a clear vision of the world, who says things like "I try to sneak up behind him" or "I want this strike to go home even if it means I get hit in return" rather than "stealth check" or "all-out attack"

That's because if you can GM, or you are in a group with a good GM - which could be 90% of gamers, you don't spend your time on youtube trying to find out how to GM or wondering if your GM is bad. You aren't the target audience for the beardlord's slop.

@RogerBW @pteryx @foolishowl @Taskerland

"is this build legal" is a terrifying thing.

It sounds like an MOT

@RogerBW @pteryx @foolishowl @Taskerland