Play D&D 6e Today!

So I have a clickbaity title for this coming Sunday's show tied to a commentary and a tip:

"Play D&D 6e Today"

The premise is that now that D&D 2024 is out, people are already speculating and wishing for a D&D 6e. I hear things like people wanting WOTC to take the design of D&D in all new directions. They want WOTC designers who are unconstrained by commercial trends and middle-of-the-road safe design ideas.

I argue we already have that. Many designers of D&D over the past 20 years (probably further!) have shown us exactly where they'd want to take D&D if the gloves were off.

We already have 6e D&D. We have several D&D 6es:

We've seen what these designers would do with D&D because they've already done it.

"But Mike, no one knows about these games!"

Now you know about them. I just told you!

"But Mike, I can't get my players to play anything but 5e"

Talk to them. Ask to run a couple of sessions of one of these other systems. Talk to them about it. Maybe recruit players from your group who are interested in trying these other systems.

Let's talk about Starbucks.

There's a reason Starbucks can sell a $6 coffee and you can't. No one knows who you are. You can't crash a van into a wall in front of a person, jump out wearing a hood, and shout "buy my $6 coffee!". You're scaring them. Don't do that.

People buy Starbucks and McDonalds and Coke because they know what they're going to get. They've had a lifetime of trust built up.

The same is true for D&D. D&D is a lifetime brand. It's been around longer than the average age of a D&D player according to WOTC's demographic surveys.

So you bring players into your group through people's trust of D&D but then, once they trust you, you can start to experiment with other games.

Do the puppy dog sale. No, you don't have to keep this dog forever. Just try it out for three days.

We're not abandoning 5e but let's try two sessions of Cairn to see what we think.