I like whisky.
The whisky industry is in an interesting moment: more whisky is being sold around the world than ever before, and while this has caused certain problems, it has also had some benefits. One of these is the explosion in fairly small, craft distilleries who produce premium products at affordable prices. Where previously they would have struggled to find a market for their single malts and would have ended up supplying their stuff purely for blended whisky, they can now sell boutiquish, high quality single malts very easily online throughout the world.
Good examples, if you are interested, are Glencadam and Tomintoul (these two have the same owners), Springbank, Benromach, Edradour, and Kilchoman.
What these "craft" whiskies tend to have in common is a commitment to naturalness. Your average mass market single malt whisky will tend to have caramel colouring added to it to maintain consistency when on display on supermarket shelves (and also to make them look older). This makes whiskies look much darker than they really are, like a fake tan. They will tend to have the minimum level of alcohol necessary to be classified as whisky (40% ABV). And they will typically also be chill-filtered, meaning they have gone through a process of being chilled to below freezing and then passed through a filter to remove residue and make them look clearer than whisky naturally is. (Whisky should be cloudy when cool.)
Whisky enthusiasts despise all this. Caramel colouring alters the flavour. Lower alcohol results in a milder taste experience. And chill-filtration makes for a thinner taste and also a thinner "mouthfeel" - it just doesn't feel good on the tongue. So "craft" distilleries, catering as they do to whisky enthusiasts, make a big point of putting on the labeling: NATURAL COLOUR - NON-CHILL-FILTERED - 46% ABV (or whatever).
Once you have tasted whisky that has been presented in this way (particularly once you have tasted whisky that has not been chill-filtered) you really find it hard to go back.
What's interesting about this for non-whisky drinkers is the effect it has had on the industry. Because "craft" whisky has started to find a market, the big players have begun to experiment to try to take advantage. It's almost as though the craft distilleries have staked out a new market segment, and the big boys are now trying to fill it. Glenlivet, for a long time the biggest-selling single malt distillery in the world, now has a revamped "Nadurra" range which is non-chill-filtered and marketed as being "natural" and "old fashioned". Cutty Sark, one of the big blended whiskies, now has a "Prohibition Edition" which is 50% ABV and non-chill-filtered (and fucking delicious, by the way). It's not that the big industry players are panicked or running scared - they just sense an opportunity to make more money.
A very similar thing happened with the OSR and D&D 5th edition, I think. It's not that WotC were panicking that all their loyal customers were flocking to download Labyrinth Lord. (Although 4th edition didn't do well by all accounts.) It's that they noticed there was a way to make more money by playing up the "craft" aspects of what was going on in the OSR blogs and their influence on 5e. Most buyers wouldn't notice, but the crazy hardcore nerds would, and would like it. You keep your main customer base but also widen your appeal to some of the more opinionated and passionate gamers. It seems to have worked.
The question I suppose is what happens next. Will there be a 6th edition in the near future? Almost certainly not. But I expect if there is one it will take even more influences from OSR playstyles - more emphasis on sandbox play, more emphasis on random tables, and more emphasis on DMing as rulings over rules. I could be wrong; we'll see.
If you use WOTC's official written adventures/modules as an indication of what the "recommended" playstyle is at the moment it's hard to he optimistic that they're taking the core concepts of OSR play to heart. (I'm trusting Bryce's word on this, I haven't personally bought a WOTC book in years).
ReplyDeleteAs much as I think the harmful effects of Critical Role and their ilk are a bit overblown, perhaps the whiskey analogy would be more congruent if there was a subset of "whiskey drinkers" who only watched celebrities drink whiskey. To them rich, vibrant caramel color would be more important than the flavors they can't taste through a monitor screen.
Interesting perspective - there are actually some whisky "drinkers" like that too, believe it or not, who just watch people taste it on youtube.
DeleteI have to agree here. Modern, WotC-published D&D is so far removed from natural, non-filtered, cloudy-when-cool, old-fashioned D&D that I can't see a path by which it ever comes back.
DeleteWhen 6th edition rolls out, it's going to double down on linear adventures that play up the superficial, nostalgic ties to AD&D. And it will probably expand character customization again, because it will have to react against 5e's simpler model in order to sell (while also eyeballing Pathfinder 2e the whole time).
In any event, there won't be much of interest there to draw the attention of an OD&D player.
Have to agree here. My impression is that a lot of new D&D players don't stick with the game long enough to discover more interesting modes of play than the linear official version. And then I'm even ignoring that much D&D stuff is bought as reading material by people who will never actually GM (or even play often). Maybe that's why character customization rules are so popular, it's something you can do by yourself outside of an actual game. Kinda like army list building in Warhammer, another game that is probably more collected than actually played.
DeleteFandom definitely has an effect on the things we love.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Slick: The Oficial D&D Adventures are... pretty awfull, in the pretty awfull tradition of bad 3.x adventures. Even the more 'sandboxy' (like Curse of Strahd) it's fairly lineal and railroaded in the end (with the exception of, oh, the Castle Ravenloft itself).
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that, in the begining, I really liked 5e. I liked the simplicity, the 'three path' classes... But then I played it as a DM more than two years. And I saw some things that I despise: I don't like the 'avengers feel' that PC have in that edition: The PC are the chosen ones (they are the only with PC classes, I don't recall any official adventure showind a NPC with class) and they got a lot (and very powerfull) powers in no time.
Furthermore (and this is an opinion, a totally personal one) if you get a warrior, you are a looser. Yeah, the first two or three levels are OK but then, spellcasters got level 3 spells (or funny things like the broken Sneak Attack) and you are done.
None of this things 'tastes' like an OSR. It's a simpler, faster and more colorfull way of playing, yeah, but it's not OSR. Again, I'm not going to lie: I despised 'old school D&D' before but the more I played 5e the more I liked it.
And another thing: I really want to taste some of that Cutty Shark Prohibition Edition, I hope that they bring it to my country.
Cheers!
Hmm... The biggest damage dealers aren't rogues or wizards, they are warriors... and 5e has done *tons* to hold back the spellcasters a bit, especially when compared to the excess of 3e. The concentration mechanism in particular is a god-sent.
DeleteMost of your thoughts on 5e seen correct to me. It still feels corporate and stale to me but it’s going in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think you will see a greater emphasis on sandboxy play, because of the success of organized play based on clear adventure paths and “approved” magic item allotments and so forth. People like to play “the official way” by and large.
While everyone homebrews a little bit at home, developing an organized play league is going to require homogeneity. That’s been part of Magic’s amazing success so there’s no reason to believe Wizards would do it much differently with D&D.
I am no evangelist for this playstyle, but it is the gateway to expanding the community of people who discover and embrace the OSR ways. So in that respect it’s very good.
Based on the timeline of the last couple decades, I've got to believe that 6th edition will be going into development this year, to be released in 2020. Hasbro/WotC appear to have a fairly consistent plan to release new "core" books every 5 years or so...though I'd expect DND6 to be pretty "backwards compatible" with 5E when it comes out (more like the difference between 2E and 1E than the difference between 4th and 5th).
ReplyDelete5E is such a smashing success in a way that the other WOTC editions never were so I'd be surprised if they went back to the drawing board so soon this time. I predict some kind of new "set" of books, like a PHB 2 with new mechanics and associated classes (hopefully not psionics though...), a new monster manual and some big new module I guess to tie it all together?
DeleteOr they to straight for Paizo's lunch and put out a Sci-fi edition of 5E
My guess is a setting book of Al-Qadim or the like (probably one that can tap on yet unopened markets).
DeleteYeah, I expect them to resurrect another setting, though my bet would be a rehash of Planescape.
DeleteI think Slick's point is a good one that deserves a little more extrapolating. I don't have much experience with the podcast/video scene, but I have a player who has, and speaks a little of it, so I can somewhat see the direction.
ReplyDeleteThe most notable component is the emphasis on the PC as a continuous character. The ideal is to come in with a pre-generated character, some sort of 'character voice' to use, and a back-story. On the first: It's the inevitable end result of moving towards point-buy systems and arrays, and one I suppose is necessary within the system limitations of 5Es bounded accuracy. The second is just a gimmick, and hardly new-school, but is just something to note (though it is, in part I think, a symptom of having celebrity entertainers).
On the third: In contrast to the sort of old-school approach where the players shape the campaign work through deeds (Robilar, etc.) there is an idea that the players carve out a niche right from the start. Not a bad idea per se, but it does denote a different focus - one could say that, while a 5E character begins only on par with a 'Hero' level adventurer, he is encouraged to already start off with a 'Superhero' level impact on the setting.
If I were to speculate on the direction of a hypothetical 6th Edition, the biggest thing I could see being expanded upon would be the background mechanics. Feeding off of the idea of building up characters, rather than random generation, I could see something like a heavily expanded version of the Beyond the Wall playbooks, but with the random generation aspect stripped out. The game might include a note toward random rolling or point buy as a sort of system artifact, but something like "Your dad was a.... miner (starting skill: Mining)" is what I could picture becoming the main focus.
I can also see death mechanics becoming increasingly forgiving. Something more akin to 4th Edition in that regard (or so I hear - my experience with 4th involved a brutal pair of critical hit/fumble tables). The Player's Handbook I imagine will have more filled-out stuff for putting together characters, as a side effect of this overall reduction in lethality. The DM's Guide, then, will likely make a move towards pushing a more 'cinematic' campaign, and move strongly toward keeping things in a solid state of 'balance' at the 'not trivial, but you shouldn't die' level. Though I admit it's a little hard to see exactly how, without looking directly at the material.
It's entirely possible that this is all an inaccurate guess, and the 6th Edition really does move closer to a more "OSR" mentality. I think the reason 5th went the direction it did was mostly as a reaction to 4th Edition, in a bid to get customer attention off the bat. Now that the audience has expanded in the way it has, and they have alternate sources for consumer attention, I imagine they'll move in the direction where they can find the largest pool of money. On the other hand, I don't think they've finished milking the 5E cash-cow yet, and won't move on to 6th until there's a reason to abandon ship. If that's the case, then assuming there's a resurgence in old-school material, I think there's a chance that WotC will make another - and stronger - move toward authenticity, especially if WWE D&D ends up fizzling out.
Thanks for a thoughtful comment. You may be right about all of this. I tried watching Critical Role once and I just couldn't physically tolerate more than 2 minutes of it, so I'm not really very qualified to comment on that aspect of the hobby... Maybe I need to educate myself.
DeleteCritical Role is a reality TV show about playing D&D. I also find it insufferable.
DeleteTry Matthew Colville’s game. It’s people playing D rather than being a show about people playing D.
A few years ago I did a short hitch in the toy industry, at Hasbro of all places, and often wondered why the big companies didn't divert a little bit of their power to smaller, seed planting type ideas. Boutique level stuff. Experimental ventures that could afford to fail because it wouldn't break the budget the larger entity, and could pan out to be a huge success if the dice bounced right.
ReplyDeleteAt the time (around 2004-2005) the received wisdom in the industry was that that sort of thing was essentially too small for the metaphorical giants to bend down and try to pick up. Their production and distribution was geared for the mass market, and just gearing up to produce for smaller markets wasn't worth the investment.
Interesting now about a decade later that things have changed so much that the towering brachiosaurs are willing to bend down and see what the grass tastes like.
Ah well, if it results in more cool stuff, more's the better. I am and always have been a terrible customer for big RPG's. (although I love buying books from the grass roots folks. I want more ASE and I want Wampus Country to be a book someday. The only rulebook I've been using for over a decade now is a copy of Labyrinth Lord I bought in 2008, and I'm slowly being dragged toward Original Edition by Delta & Paul. :)
It's a good question - minor artists in other fields tend to get scouted and picked up by big players, but that doesn't seem to happen with RPGs really. Maybe because it's still just too small an industry.
DeleteYep. Something shiny and new in 2020 or 2021.
ReplyDeleteI don't think there's any denying the powerful effect Critical Role and similar shows have had on the industry. I suspect that, even before 6e is a thing, we'll be seeing WotC react to that. Heck, I think the random life-path thing in Xanathar's was inspired by the live-streamers.
ReplyDeleteUnlike JB, I don't think there is a plan, or, at least, there hasn't been a plan. That may have changed with the surge in D&D's popularity. (Or not; D&D is still a drop in the bucket compared to M:tG.) I think the plan has been for Hasbro to go through the couch cushions for a D&D budget, delivered with orders to keep the IP alive until someone can figure out how to monetize it. I think '20 is too soon to expect 6e, and while there may be a few ideas jotted down, it's all back-burner until 5e stops being hot. Maybe that's already started? But not from what I'm seeing. I'll probably be better able to say after the GAMA Trade Show.
That all said, I should have some words on my blog next week about The Forbidden Lands. If 5e is the industry asking if they can play with our toys, FL is the industry's love-letter to the OSR.
As a whisky snob myself I find this analogy very apt!
ReplyDeleteWhat are the cheapest natural color non-chill filtered whiskies you have found, and where do you typically find them? Hadn't heard of this standard.
ReplyDeleteHi, Kent. If you like peaty whisky Ardbeg has always been that way and you can get the 10 year old for £45 in the supermarket or less with special offers. I got the Glencadam 10 year old for about £37 in Fenwicks. You can get Springbank 10 year old for somewhere around £40.
DeleteHi David, those are the sort of prices at which I have seldom failed to find delicious whiskies but I will note your suggestions. Whiskey for me serves a function and is not a social decoration like, for example, an elaborate moustache.
Delete"Serves a function". That says a lot.
DeleteMarvelous analogy. I want a whiskey, now.
ReplyDeleteSimilar things happen with craft beer, but it's more often the big breweries buying out small breweries and then using their distribution muscle to get the bought out breweries on more store shelves. You get people wailing about the potential for lower quality in the bought out breweries which doesn't seem to be the case but there is the danger of independent breweries being pushed off supermarket shelves in favor of the bought out ones.
ReplyDeleteThe rise of craft beer is also having interesting effects on hop farming. Right now the majority of hops are being bought by craft brewers and they are willing to pay premium prices for trendy hops which major brewers are no, which means that hop farming and the development of new strains of hops is being driven by the needs of craft brewers these days which means an emphasis on hop oil rather than acid content, etc. etc. It also means the price of lovely lovely Centennial hops have crashed down. Yay.
For 6ed I expect it to be a clean up Edition, basically compatible with 5ed but wearing diwn some rough edges, balancing stuff a bitvand maybe purging out the vestiges of 4ed now that nobody gives a fuck about 4ed anymore.
Okay, I'll just come out and say it. I don't know about Scotch/UK spirits, but I've never run across "craft" whiskey in the US that isn't absolute garbage. The only people who really know how to distill are the people who have been doing it for a hundred years. And in the US all of them make whiskey in huge amounts. Four Roses. Wild Turkey. Buffalo Trace. Maker's Mark. KBD.
ReplyDeleteMicrobreweries can be great, and have really made American beer good and interesting. It turns out it's just way harder to produce a quality bourbon than it is to make an IPA.
Okay -- one exception. Westland distillery in Seattle is very good.
I think a big part of it is that the turnaround time of a good beer is far less than a good whiskey. So if you're a new distillery you've gotta push stuff out the door fast just to pay the rent which isn't conducive to great quality. Am sure it'll get better as the get some experience and develop a pipeline and move out of the "9p's brewpub" stage of know-how.
DeleteThe difference with Scottish distilleries is that almost all are very old. Glencadam for example had been distilling since 1820ish. It's just that it has come under more sympathetic ownership. There are some brand new distilleries who take a craft approach - many of them currently producing gin because they've not had time to mature proper whisky yet - but the number of those is still small. All the distilleries I mentioned are old well-established ones.
DeleteI was struck by some of the paralels between one OSR-ish system, the Glog, and 5e: short rests to heal vs lunches, a night of sleep restores all your hp, the attack bonus progression is the same for every classes...
ReplyDeleteI think that the linear adventure design noted by many is a result of large published adventures, they aren't "needed" to play 5e. And it's a system that really invites tinkering. 3-4 changes can make it feel a lot more old school, without breaking it.
To me the biggest flaw of 5e is the pacing - to have all the classes be balanced, it needs a certain number of encounters per day. I don't like that being mandated to me :/
The easiest fix for the pacing mechanic is changing what constitutes a short and a long rest.
DeleteMake a short rest be a night's sleep and make a long rest be extended downtime in civilization. So no long rests if you're out camping in the shit.
Hot take: Every single second that is reduced from the average time taken to create a 5e character will improve how "OSR" it is. If 5.5e has some kind of, idk, gigantic flowchart of all the choices you can make OR reduces the choices needed at first level, I would be *very* impressed.
ReplyDeleteThe equipment kit options work pretty good. To speed things up you just need to have a stat array and have starting skill profs be determined entirely by background and class with people getting maybe another skill prof at level 2 and 3.
DeleteThen choices would be:
-Class.
-Race.
-Background.
-Assign stats.
-Choose basket of weapons.
Pretty simple, could take a minute or two if you have a program to crunch the numbers for you.
Hard to argue with that.
ReplyDeleteContra the first commenter, I thought Bryce agreed that Princes of the Apocalypse is relatively sandboxy? I'm happy with the prospect of running it.
ReplyDeleteThere's a central quest, but the PCs are relatively free to do the pieces of each tier in arbitrary order; there are lots of adventure possibilities not related to the central quest scattered around the map, it's a Situation not a Plot; there are non-combat possibilities for contacting or even resolving several of the early stages.
I guess it's the most sandboxy early on, where there are a bunch of possible things to investigate, each of which points to one or maybe two of the four pathways into the main quest, but until you have multiple of those clues they may not seem any more significant than the leads pointing to the unrelated adventure sites...