The Coming Walled Garden

I get the feeling nothing in Open5E or the OSR matters. The mainstream D&D market is large enough to sustain itself, fire 90% of its customers, and make more money they were making off the 10% of the whales left in the market. What will replace them are the younger generation and a mobile gaming strategy, as they transition into that model.

Nobody in the new market will even know about alternatives, the OSR, or games outside of the coming D&D-only reality.

They have a few problems with this, a declining birth rate, a literacy rate dropping faster than a stone, and the attention span of kids these days is one minute or less. In ten years, no kid will want to read a thousand pages of D&D. I give them a better chance of selling the brand than ever hitting their target, because their mind is playing the wrong game. D&D 5E was written as an "I'm sorry for D&D 4E" by a team of D&D grognards and experts. The game went ten years of duct-taping and patching, and it was designed to compete with Pathfinder 1e and those holding onto the 3.5E-era rules.

It did that job well.

Today? 5E is the wrong game for the wrong job. It is ten years out of date, a SUV in an age of electric cars. It lumbers along because it still works, and it is easier not to sell the thing and trade up for a better, faster, more economical model. It is like owning an SUV large enough to tow a boat and hold a family, but being single and not owning a boat.

5E is too big for its own good. It is overwritten. There are too many choices on a turn. It plays horribly slow. The CR system is still broken. There are still massive exploits. Some classes are still horrible. Others are worse, and so overpowered they break the game. There is no way to fix any of this unless you adopt the MMO-model and live update and patch the rules, and force updates to all character sheets. It will be World of Warcraft, with respecs and talent point refunds.

People have latched onto this system as a panacea, do-everything, universal system.

Part of me feels the more people try to "fix 5E" the more popular D&D will get. It is engagement, discussion, and only serves to keep people in the cave rather than exploring other games where you may actually find enjoyment.

I am not saying happiness, satisfaction, the right game, inclusion, seeing yourself in something, or any of the other buzzwords. Games should only provide enjoyment. This is all they are. Making them into something more is damaging to your mental health.

Games are hobbies.

And hobbies should come with perspective.

But we are seeing a mental lock-in with these newer games, they not only define how we have fun, but they define our identities. 

And the walled garden will define everything in the game, every possibility, and every option players will ever see. Part of me feels Open 5E is doomed to fail, and to just walk away for the games I like better. A fraction of the current D&D players will decide the direction of the hobby, the whales, and those who buy in. Nothing any third-party publisher does will change this.

I can't shake this feeling.