To my understanding, they are with a few current sets reprinting really rare cards of older sets; But collectors and investors that acquired the cards (purchase or otherwise), their value will drop maybe dramatically.

Imagine having as a collector, several dozen cards each worth $100 or much higher, maybe thousands. Then a new set comes out, and they drop to say $30 per card... Considering one really rare card sold for like 30 Million dollars a few years back i think i heard, this would REALLY tick some people off. Oh it may not matter to the casual player, but they aren't the ones buying booster packs by the crate either.

Though if there's other mismanagement i haven't kept up enough to know beyond what i've said.

No way! 3e was post sale and is by far the best. 2e slumping hard (along with the previous Williams' rule) is what led to the sale.
4e was a competent to good *game* system. Just a poor role-playing game. And it was also saddled with similar restrictive crap like they are trying to enact here for 6e after people learned the joys of openness.

But 5e somehow succeeded despite itself, being among the least useful RPG systems ever released. It is not good at anything and is mediocre at best at anything it does do. Anemic is a good descriptor.

As for recommendations:

Pathfinder 2e* if you want extremely rigid (overly so, IMO) forced balance. Every character is within a very narrow mathematical range of every other. Most decisions are just flavor decisions. There's a lot of good in the system, but I am personally of the opinion that RPG decisions, for crunchy mechanical RPGs anyway, should have impact and not just be flavor decisions. It also is gonzo/wonky/over-the-top anything-goes anime style nuts, like "swim up waterfalls" and "jump on clouds" and "shoot while jumping to jump higher" crazy.

PF1e* if you truly want the best crunchy/mechanical experience you probably could ever hope for. Highly customizable if any of the myriad options don't work for you (including 3rd party content or backporting from D&D 3e).

13th Age* is the love child of the designers of D&D 3e and D&D 4e, and it feels like it. A 2nd edition is currently in development, but is expected to be backwards compatible as much as it can be. The system is good for a romp, and the enemies get flavorful neat powers. It's a bit open-ended loosy-goosy outside of combat though.

For 5e players, PF2 or 13th Age is going to be your easiest conversion... Though don't ignore considering going all the way to to PF1. As a note, all of PF1's core books (that were originally hardcover) are still in print as scaled-down softcover ("pocket editions"), so it's still very much available even physically.

If you want to go outside of "crunchy fantasy RPGs":

Fate* is a spectacular narrative-first RPG system. It's crunchy enough still to be a game though. It's all about the players setting "dials" with adding/subtracting customized subsystems to their content. The three default flavors, Core, Accelerated, Condensed -- I prefer Core. Accelerated is best for one-shots or short arcs. Condensed is, to me, and unnecessary simplification of Core. The Golden and Silver rules, along with Bronze "Fate fractcal" ("anything can be a character") also makes it good for a wide variety of types of play.

Band of Blades* or Blades in the Dark* are great for a hybrid (but mostly narrative) game designed around a campaign with a cast of characters and the group "building something" outside of just each individual character. It uses a highly-customized version of Powered by the Apocalypse*, but changed enough I like it. (I tend not to like PBTA games.)

I, sadly, have too much of a life that there are others I haven't tried to say I recommend or not (tops being Chaosium BRP*, Cipher System* and Savage Worlds [though that may be soon]). I have plenty of other good games I can recommend for niches, but not in a general RPGs post. If someone wants to hear them, let me know.

But if you've never played any RPGs and want to try a single one-shot game... my favorite overall introduction product is the mini-adventure from the (Unisystem) All Flesh Must be Eaten demo kit. Don't let the players know or see what it is in advance, lest it ruin the surprise!

*=System is open.

Inundating the market with new releases and card variants, not giving a damn about the community and/or local game stores. Being lazy and disrespectful with regard to their own IP and lore so they can have sponsorships and crossovers and sell you Fortnite/Warhammer/Street Fighter/whatever Magic cards (a thing nobody wants or asked for), anything goes nowadays. Making their joke 'un-'sets partially legal in some formats of play in hopes of selling more copies that way. The list goes on.

The most egregious thing to cap off the year was celebrating the 30th anniversary of the game by trying to sell a limited release of proxies (cards not legal for play in any format) of the original Beta cards at $1000 for 4 booster packs, making them effectively more or equally as expensive as some of the real cards. Oh, and the packs are random with standard rarity distribution and worthless bulk included (so the most likely result is getting proxies of cards you could get the real version of for pocket change). To give you some context, the original Collectors' Edition from back in the day came with one copy of each card in Beta, plus lands, for $50.

Of course, this was to be a sale exclusively through WotC's online store like the rest of their limited sales (nothing says 'celebrating the community' more than cutting it out of the equation completely) but in a generous show of support they decided to allow each WPN local game store one (1) whole copy.

It was an insult on every level and received as such. They pulled the sale within the first hour after it became clear people weren't rushing to buy this trash. It doesn't get any better from there, with Bank of America calling them out on their greedy business practices (LOL) and downgrading Hasbro's valuation and this ft article.

Yeah. When the Magic brand strategy is led by a guy they hired from the fashion industry who was all about "limited release collectible sneaker drops" and the like... He was hired on I think around 2018 and it's been nothing but downhill since -- and at an ever-increasing rate of accelerating shit.

A couple things you missed: uncountable variations of each card. Including variations of booster pack product for each set that have different possibilities of each type of card in the different packs. (There is no more "this card is in the set or not" -- you have weird card that are in the set but not in the set!)

They've also been printing intentionally pushed-power cards to "eternal" (non-rotating; as in cards always available unless banned) formats in supplemental products, instead of all cards naturally entering these formats through normal introduction via normal products and rotation. I.e, "buy it or you're going to lose" cards that turned previously-eternal formats that got 1-2 "new useful cards" per set [if that] into pseudo rotating formats.

You also used pretty mild wording on the cross-promotional "Let's advertise these other products to Magic players!" sets. They're literally selling paid [as in you buy them] advertisements for things in Magic card format now, like you can buy playable advertisements for The Walking Dead (coinciding with its final season), Stranger Things (coinciding with its season), Street Fighter (coinciding with its new version announcement), etc (coinciding with its etc).

I read somewhere that, apparently, in Pathfinder 2e, build options are more about adding versatality rather than raw power. While in 1e a wizard might take feats to make their spells more effective, improving the save DC and spell penetration, and metamagic effects for more powerful, in 2e such a wizard might, instead, take a multiclass dedication feat in order to get access to another type of magic (like getting Heal by going with Cleric or Druid dedication, ability scores permitting (and you can boost secondary ability scores without slowing down progression on your primary stat), or just getting some semi-decent fighting ability, or even taking certain skill feats to become a decent non-magical healer (something that's actually viable here, unlike in 1e where the Heal skill is nearly useless and far outclassed by healing magic).

It also has a tendency to break down at higher levels. You get to the situation where the difference between being good at something and not being good at something ends up being bigger than the size of the die. You get situations where one PC can easily hit an enemy on a roll of 2, while another needs a natural 20 to hit.

There's also the fact that boring feats, like spell focus/penetration, or weapon focus, end up being necessary to keep up, leaving less room to take actually interesting feats, like metamagic feats, or Spring Attack (which in turn requires taking 2 other feats, one of which is a boring +1 AC boost).

GOG...

... if you're watching this situation with Hasbro / WotC...

... I'd suggest taking notes on Paizo's masterful exploitation of the situation.

They are attracting players and generating goodwill by promoting their own open license (ORC).

IMHO there's application to GOG's mission (and my guess is there will be a number of exploitable situations coming soon in the video game world)

And if OGL 2.0 wasn't enough...

D&D Beyond has gone insane!

* Base $30/mo for all players
* De-autthorized OGL 1.0
* no homebrew at base tiers

(and more)

It now feels like we're watching WotC commit suicide

Which means there should be a basic homerule of those prerequisites being removed somewhere mid-level, or just ignoring them entirely. Or like the skill feats you get some now, and later it gets stronger. Or if you ignore the prerequisits, then taking a said 'feat' you get the prerequisites for free (under some limitation, like only 1 level down or 1 prerequisite, or 1 free per level, etc). Lastly it's suggested a number of DM's will let you swap out a feat when you level up so long as it doesn't break anything. So you might start with dodge, but take create potions later instead.


A while back in order to try to calculate classes worth in order to make some custom races and/or classes, everything had to convert to something. That something ended up being feats. It had been a while, but feats were roughly worth 3 hitpoints, 5 skill points, 1 stat point, 3 spells + 1 caster level, 1 class feature, or 1/2 a major feature. Using this i calculated something like fighters got like 7-8 feats, the weakest, while everything else got closer to 10 per level.

Some of the less interesting feats I'd probably say were half feats, +1 to hit with specific weapon, +1 conditional AC, +2 to X skill, Gain 2 power points or qualify as a 'caster' to take prestige class, etc.

You're looking for the product Trailblazer, or Buy the Numbers. Both do a mathematical investigation of the values of things behind the scenes. (Both available as PDF on drivethrurpg).
There are multiple fan systems for rearranging "feat taxes" in Pathfinder 1e. One people refer to a lot is "elephant in the room"

As for breaking down at high level play, that's reportedly true even in the non-system that is 5e, or the rigid-balance of PF2. I don't think it's a given, but I think it's superhuman to do right so it's still fun throughout, but not break down at high. A lot of people use "e6" or "e8" to reduce this. (In those, your class progression stops at whatever N is chosen, except you perpetually get new feats at as the GM rewards them.)

One problem I have is that e6 and e8 are too low for my tastes, as they are below the level that you get a healing spell that isn't weak, and I actually would prefer to play a character who can be an effective combat healer (to the point where healing would be the best option for this character in most situations where some party member needs it).

Also, I don't like low level caps. Thing is, much of my attraction to RPGs (and this applies to both TTRPGs and CRPGs) is seeing characters grow more powerful over the course of the game, and games where you go multiple multiple-hour sessions before you see any character growth just aren't enough for me. I'd prefer to have a higher level cap with each level meaning less, but coming more frequently, or a system where your stats gradually improve during play rather than the D&D approach of getting a sudden boost after no improvement for a while.

This particular effect has another issue, in that having bonuses like this pidgenholes the character into a specific weapon type, and I don't like that. (It's particularly an issue in CRPGs, where, on a first playthrough, you don't know what weapons are going to be available ahead of time, but it could be a problem in a TTRPG with a bad GM who's not willing to tailor magical treasure to what the PCs can effectively use.)

Mhmm, makes me really like Herosystem more. For a couple points you can get decent bonuses on a specific weapon or set of weapons, but you can always upgrade that later to include other weapons or just be in general for all weapons. More a 'i'm going to use this Beretta to start with, so i might as well get better usage cheap'. Though those level of limitations are more for very low powered characters, where you might have say 50-150 points to work with.

Interesting, though i'm unlikely to look into it too much. I don't play enough to make much for custom content.

IMO...

... no, you are correct.

While having some great gameplay mechanics and being a sponge for any and all pop-culture fantasy designs, ideas, and tropes...

... TSR became its own worst enemy.

WotC took over the mantle and is on the same path with the property.

Still, I would contend that if D&D wasn't owned by Hasbro, none of this would be happening. Hasbro's toy losses are all being piled on WotC / D&D...

... but role playing is easily brand agnostic.

Hasbro will learn that soon.

I started this thread worried about the change to OGL 2.0... and although I do worry about small publishers and video game devs (ie Knights of the Chalice dev)... I think the breakup of what was becoming a somewhat monopolized RPG space will be good a good thing in the end.

(and I'm rolling thinking about those AI DMs!)

Nearly every dnd session I was a part of always had combat with tough monsters in some barren field somewhere with barely any tactical options, like we're supposed to poke at it with our weapons and magic powers until it dies. Every DM I've had has done at least one gauntlet style campaign or otherwise be some sort of "test" for some powers that be, narratively speaking. It's almost like they're copying each other's homework, and this has basically soured me on dnd as a whole, because every session I play opens up how flawed the system is and despite doing my best to roleplay, they all end up being cookie cutter combats.

So I wouldn't say you're that off base, because Monopoly is only so much fun and usually runs the same circles each time.