Curious, because I have witnessed the exact opposite. Personally, I resent muchkin characters and, as a DM, have encouraged the players to come up with interesting characters and then playing them in an interesting manner rather than optimizing everything as much as they can get away with. Despite this one of the players has decided to play a kobold druid with all kinds of infernal heritage and shit thrown in, and he specifically told me he wouldn't bother with an interesting background "because the first few characters die anyway." Well, they would if the DM has no motivation to keep them alive, wouldn't they? He has even prepared for the death of his first few kobolds by planning a clan that he can use to spam new characters like they were T-model Fords, which to me sounds a lot like filling out a character sheet, making several copies and writing a new name on each one. He probably plans on making an interesting individual once they're in a high enough level to ensure survival - whatever the hell that means, since I can always spawn more and bigger shoggoths - and if that's the way he wants to play, I wouldn't be at all surprised if something were to happen to his precious clan fairly early in the campaign.

It's not just him, unfortunately. There's a campaign where I play a character, and of the original eight characters or so only two remain. Okay, so the other one is a walking barricade of a thing that the DM has admitted being a real bitch to kill, but my tiefling rogue/assassin is hardly our party's MVP. Also, these characters happen to be played by the two players who make the most effort to roleplay them and flesh out their backgrounds and personalities (which, admittedly, a long life does facilitate). Hell, sometimes when I'm drinking with the other guy we momentarily assume the role of our characters and roleplay them sharing a keg of beer and a bottle of whiskey, talking about their past encounters with various people, their opinions on other party members, laughing at each others' mishaps throughout the campaign. Everyone else seems to fiddle about with some numbers until they come up with something that's statistically interesting but completely devoid of character.

AD&D has new shit literally every year. Not all of it is good (the new Forgotten Realms is pretty lackluster compared to what it was, plus some bullshit handwaving to explain it) but it is there. Dungeon Command is great, D&D Essentials supplements suck, 5th Edition playtesting has begun and should result in what could be called "awesome-sauce", forget-the-name-but weekly modules run for prizes at stores (currently about the Drow, the entire party is evil), etc.

I played the NWN MMO at PAX, it's really pretty good looking, based on 4E rules, the graphics, sound, and fun are all just right.

I can't complain about D&D, really, they've finally thrown off the shackles of the 3.0/3.5 rules lawyers bullshit and become way more accessible. I never sit down to a D&D table solely with guys anymore, often time there's someone just along for the ride, or just getting into it as well. Hell, my DM at PAX (the last time I played) was a younger gal, pretty, smart, the antithesis of the stereotype D&D had while I was growing up.

If you want into D&D, one simply gets into D&D, for 40-100 USD in books you're set for the life of the ruleset (unless you want to DM with less work and more ready-made materials). Updating books every 4-6 years is okay by me, that's one cheap fucking hobby.

Strange, I can't find my comment that Pathfinder is the new D&D.

Not that I play it, but I get spam from the Paizo CEO herself. :) Just today she advertised the D&D documentary Kickstarter to me. Which is fine, I do think it can be good.

Still, it looks like it's an active brand, and with a Pathfinder MMO in development it should gain even more traction.

I loved D&D and have palyed most of the D&D video games from 2.0-3.5, althoguh I mostly run 3.0-3.5 campaigns.

What killed D&D for me was 4th edition. The change in mechanics, roles, etc just seemd to much for me-it was jarring. Worse however is what they did to the forgotten realms setting in 4.0. The forgotten realms setting was essentially hit it with a massive wall of retcons and needless changes that were completely unnecessary and ruined a massive portion about what made the setting unique in order to appeal to a wider audience. (did we *really* need a dragon-man nation shoehorned into the setting?) Of course, there was also the spellplague. For me, this has killed all interest I have in future D&D video games, considering that the majority of their video games are from the forgotten realms, a setting I now consider to be ruined. In the forgotten realms games I run with friends as DM, I ignore anything that happened after 3.5 as a rule of thumb.

I'd love another Dragonlance game. We had, what, one SSI gold box trilogy and DragonStrike? Anything else I've missed?

This is hardly a modern, non-roleplay idea. The idea of characters having roles before they're rolled up is hardly the One True Way of roleplaying! It's a Tabletop Silver Age idea and has lead, imho, to reams and reams of ugly railroading to keep these precious characters (so carefully built up by their players!) alive where they otherwise wouldn't deserve, ruining the difficulty and verisimilitude of the world. Indeed, I've found it leads to munchkin mindset you seem to resent, as since the 90s, bad players have demanded their carefully crafted characters be stronger and stronger to match their Mary Sue'd vision. The characters that existed before this roleplaying methodology were thieving guttersnipes; the ones that came after were behemoths that could split tanks without min-maxing (god help the campaign world when they did). The connection is not at all tenuous. But it doesn't have to be about the bad roleplayers, and I think we'd both agree that those are the bad roleplayers. It seems that your assumption is that the "wait to see who survives" method of character building is inherently inferior, which it is not. Indeed, it is the original system used by roleplayers to build their characters at all. It was the way of forming characters organically, rather than the DM cramming in characters and forcing the world to maintain them.

While your friends may otherwise be Munchkining, for all I know, the idea of letting characters develop organically is hardly a munchkin idea. The recent Old School Renaissance game Dungeon Crawl Classics starts with the idea that players should control around 4 "0-level" characters to see who survives the meat grinder just to encourage this method of character building! The system is more organic, and makes sure that characters not only fit seamlessly in the setting in terms of goals and the organically developed background, but easily puts away the diva Roleplayer problems of White Wolf games. What you're taking as an affront to true roleplaying is actually the oldest form of roleplaying character development, and as old as D&D itself. Older, even, since it goes back to those early, roleplayed tabletop wargames that preceded D&D, Diplomacy and that.

http://grognardia.blogspot.ca/2011/05/dcc-rpg-and-character-death-in-old.html

"Tell me about your character?" I don't know anything about my character! We've just met.

Personally, I think it is because Wizards & Hasbro mismanaged 4th Edition in three big ways.

The first is the Virtual Tabletop, which would have allowed players to meet and play with each other across the globe. Wizards were very slow to find a new developer to create the tabletop, who in turn just took ages. In short, they should have had the table ready and polished on day one - it isn't just convient, it is a marketing vehicle by allowing players to engage in D&D more easily. That is a serious flub.

Their handling of videogames in relation to D&D was more than a bit questionable in my opinion. I was introduced to the whole concept of roleplaying and the franchise through Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, and Neverwinter Nights 2 - I think that videogames are a important keystone to attracting gamers to roleplaying games, because it presents the rules and ideas in a way that is friendly. That is incredibly important, because taking your first steps in roleplaying can be a nervewracking experience. "What if I suck at roleplay? Would these people mind if I play with them? Just what is THAC0?". Having the basics down before going into session with actual humans is invaluable.

Furthermore, videogames could have really been perfect for showcasing 4th edition. Look to handheld consoles like the Gameboy, DS, and 3DS, which have all kinds of strategy games and dungeon crawlers - which would have been a perfect fit for the way 4th edition did things. Better yet, they could have demonstrated the qualities of their various settings, much like how Planescape Torment did for me.

The third nail in the coffin is the abandonment of the OGL license. Sure, D&D wouldn't be insulated from a horde of terrible material being produced, but it also gives vitality by allowing companies and players to have more options in how they can approach D&D. By having a restrictive OGL, Wizards lost a serious edge in making their brand being remembered, which is more important than having tight control in my opinion. "The tighter you grip, the more star systems would slip from your fingers", if I remember rightly. It is very possible that we could have had multiple D&D virtual tables competing against each other if Wizards had a more open license. Remember, competition is healthy, especially if it is between your own products because you will find out what does and doesn't work.


Personally, I really enjoy 4th Edition, but the lack of a virtual table did nothing to help me - I don't have people to play with in my area, and the various solutions I tried over the years were just plain unfriendly or expensive. I am hoping that Wizards would continue the pedigree of 4G long into the future, as it felt much better than the other editions I had played.

There were more Dragonlance games, but I don't think you missed something good:
http://www.mobygames.com/game-group/dungeons-dragons-campaign-setting-dragonlance

That's interesting. As a writer, I usually create personalities and background before I begin rolling dice or applying points. I find it easier that way. It doesn't matter if a character dies, because I can always come up with another character and another Idea.

My strongest issue with the current state of dungeons and dragons is that it fails the creativity test and forces players to choose only certain options. That's why I'm a GURPS player primarily.

Oh, sweet, the new D&D movie was released in the UK. I really liked the second one (and watched the first one far more than anybody really should have), any idea when it's coming to the US?

Afnord and Magnitus summed it up: Business.

D&D has to compete with a lot more RPGs than there were in the 90s and they simply don't have the funds to run alongside the big boys at Microsoft and Blizzard. Those guys make it much more difficult to attract top talent. I'm not saying they don't have good people that work around the D&D universe but it doesn't get publicised to the same degree as Bioware's talent (many of Bioware's guys are former BG guys! they just got sick of fapping about with the D&D rights and wrote Dragon Age in their spare time). Finally, they are entrenched in a history and have a nostalgic fan-base that makes it difficult to evolve and break into new markets without sacrificing the core.

The games (BG and NWN) are what has helped them expanded during this last decade but now they have to compete with Dragon Age, a beefed up The Elder Scrolls, and that Undead Abomination World of Warcraft which is showing no sign of ending any time soon. DDO and BGEE just aren't going to generate the kind of hype that D&D needs to return to its days of dominance. Then there is that stigma from the 80s witch hunt that just won't go away and America's Bible Belt still believes that D&D will possess teens with demons.

It's not just from the games and RPG market that we are losing out, awful teenage books about undead have replaced the public's idea of fantasy fiction. It's to such a point that I would be in favour of removing all undead from the D&D universe if it meant I wouldn't have to explain the difference between vampires again.

It's not all doom and gloom. D&D material is still featured in every comic book store and respectable hobby shop and it's popular enough that you can find a D&D group in your city or county no matter where you live (so long as you live in the US/UK/CA). Even if the D&D universe was stopped today there would still be enough material to keep new adventurers occupied for decades, it's just a matter of where we go from here and where is our niche in the fantasy genre?