The Lessons of D&D 5e as the next Iteration Approaches
Since I haven't written about D&D much, who am I? I've been playing the game since the early 80s (AD&D and Basic D&D), mostly as a DM, but sometimes as a player. I've played every edition and I've enjoyed 5e the most. I do play other TRPG's ( Call of Cthulhu particularly), but D&D is my favourite. As I've discussed before ( cf ), it's not easy to figure out what exactly has made Dungeons & Dragons so popular of late ( graph source ). We know it's not the edition (which came out in 2014), although its accessibility helps; it's not Critical Role (2015), although its existence helps; it's not references in Stranger Things (2016), although that helps; and it's not just D&D Beyond (2017), although that platform is almost ubiquitously used now. The only conclusion I can reach is that it's an accumulation of many things, with its beginnings coming from things like Harry Potter (1997), which introduced fantasy elemen