D&D 2024 Not Selling Well?

I am not buying 2024.

Also, I don't really care.

With the 2014 edition, I purchased six books with that system: the three core, Tasha's, and two others in the second gift set. All the rest of my books were Open 5E, and the damage was done.

I know a few who upgraded, but they were more "for the love of the game" and to support their hobby. Many I see in comment sections will never buy the game due to many factors, including the OGL.

We can't make a final judgment at this point. It is too early, and many were waiting for all the books to be released before deciding to buy. Some financial statements look grim, and many use that as clickbait. We must wait for Q1 2025 statements, a mass firing, or another major shakeup.

Don't try to read Wall Street's tea leaves; you will go insane. The place does not work under the standard profitability assumptions, and its value definition can change on a dime. A company can sustain itself on promises, having and owning nothing, until another company comes along and gobbles it up to own the "value."

There's nothing there, there.

Yet, billions of dollars still change hands for "it."

I just saw another 5E YouTuber I follow walk away from the D&D game. The game is in freefall at this point. It is over once YouTube tells content creators to make videos about something other than D&D. Another day goes by, and I see more of the community quitting and walking away. It feels like a tsunami as the days go by.

This is going to wipe out a lot of good companies and creators.

I see the Wizard's VTT previews and the new starter set (by noted creators), which had less than 1,000 views on the first day. Some haven't even broken 100 views in the first hour.

The era of slapping D&D on a video and having it get tens of thousands of views is over.

I have not been happy with Open 5E. It works, but it inherits all the problems of D&D. The worst feature is the need for computerized character sheets, and the clones never have a great system that supports all the options needed to build characters. That said, Tales of the Valiant is the best-supported Open 5E out there and worthy of your support if you stay with 5E.

Later, 5E books introduced terrible rules, and the clones adopted them.

Tool proficiencies did it in for me. That was a hack for a game that needed a sound skill system but could not support it. Instead of going to college for four years to study a trade, all I need is to be skilled with the "tools," which shows the experience the game designers have with real-world trades and professions.

I bought an automotive tool kit on Amazon. Sure, I can fix your car!

Here is a box with a pencil, paper, notebook, journal, and an ink pen with a well of ink—a writer's kit. Get a tool proficiency in that, and you can be Hemingway or Shakespeare.

Some classes can even swap tool proficiencies on a rest.

I miss the days when games had great skill systems designed to support the theme of the game. And they weren't huge lists, either. They were designed to open avenues of action, force hard choices, and not limit players but enable them to solve problems. Many games have abused skill systems over the years, too. Giving me 500 skills is not game design. Please do not make this a choice between longsword skill and basket-weaving.

Tool proficiencies are as broken as the bonus action and multiclassing. It is time to clean house in the rules of 5E and simplify them again because the "professional" game designers got their hands on them, making the game too difficult to play and create character concepts in. What you say you want to do has to be filtered through chapters of "game designer great ideas" instead of the rules getting out of the way and "allowing you to do what you said you wanted to do."

After the original 5E designers left, the game had no chance, and we ended up with the 2024 rules, which feel like a duct-taped-together collection of great ideas with no idea how they all work together. It is the "Homer's Car" of role-playing games. Weapon masteries feel like tool proficiencies all over again. Bastions are even worse, and herald mobile-phone game design features coming into the game.

Beware of these games that force you through the rules to do the thing you wanted to do. If breathing was allowed, they would create special rules for it, a unique action you would need to take every turn.

I am back in the first edition; save for a few, the rest of these modern games are in the garage.