Niches in Mirror May be Smaller Than They Appear

Early indications are that the 4e third party business is not what was hoped for. That is not a scientific measurement, just my impression from a handful of industry posts, off-handed comments on fora, and the visible lack of 4e products coming down the pipes. One Bad Egg has closed shop, while the Skarka has posted recently asking what the people really want. So what the heck is the deali-o? Allow me to speculate.

4e Does Not Lend Itself to Third Party Expansions

This has been touched on here and there. Bottom line: it's hard to offer the same value WotC can. Mechanics are hard to write. Some stuff is easy, and therefore trivial. New powers, new feats, and so forth can be drafted all day by someone with the right kind of imagination. Naturally, this puts them in direct competition with all the other creative types who can do the same thing. On the other hand, designing a coherent, balanced, fun class with its own unique style is a formidable challenge which involves, among other things, designing dozens of powers whose utility hinges on the other powers. Putting out even one or two 4e classes could consume nearly the entire creative output of a small operation for weeks at a time. And when you've finally created your masterpiece... very few people will care, because it's not in the Wizards character builder, and hence off the radar for the typical player.

Fun in a Box Versus Fun Outside the Box

Let's look at the 4e versus 3.5 Pathfinder split in practical terms. Now it's probably safe to say that in most major respects, the 4e and 3e crowds are similar, and it's important to keep in mind that a lot of players play both. But insofar as there is difference, it's important to think about what the nature of the difference. For the most part, your archetypal 4e player is looking for a mechanically streamlined system, the ability to throw some materials together and start playing quickly, a mostly tabletop-oriented experience that does not delve into grand sagas, and generally less math and less material related to the situation at hand. In short, the 4e crowd, on the whole is not composed of tinkerers but of people who are looking to play a game. In consideration of what I said above about 4e players and third party extensions, it should be occuring to you that at this point, new classes that cannot be easily "plugged in" to existing web tools, modules, and the like is going to be extraordinarily unattractive. New mechanical systems are unwanted; instead, players are looking at inventive ways to write up abilities that can basically fit on a notecard and make one monster or PC build stand out. In contrast, the biggest spending 3e players probably purchased a variety of d20 and OGL products ranging from books on Experts to town building to historical campaign settings to plain old monster books. 3e players, raised on a diet of late 90s RPGs, multiple campaign settings, and a highly modular core D&D system, are used to thinking of D&D as a game which allows different play styles and experiences. Mechanical complexity is the price paid for customizability, expandability, and basic versatility.

Loss of Consumer Loyalty

3e was like the second, well, third, coming, for a lot of players. It "fixed" D&D in a number of respects, and while some AD&D players were probably the hardest converts, many appreciated the changes. More importantly, a virtual army of former D&D players returned to the fold. The resurrection of D&D was a consumer event. Along with the rebranding, the OGL came with a promise of greater hobbyist involvement, more engagement with new and imaginative writers outside the halls of Wizards, and a sense of welcome. d20 did not exactly conquer the world, but it colonized and altered the landscape in important ones. Some spun off games, like Mutants & Masterminds and Spycraft, have become virtually their own phenomena.

Then 4e came along. It came too sudden and too soon for a lot of people who still viewed 3e as a system evolving and developing. The end of the OGL and the clumsily constructed GSL ticked off open gaming enthusiasts as well as loyal and enthusiastic third party publishers who felt pushed out of an industry they helped nurture. Wizards went a decade back in time by pulling PDF products on thin justification, including many OOP products coveted by collectors and fans. A subscription system married gamers to an ongoing financial relationship with WotC in order to continue to play D&D. Traditionally, D&D was a product that helped GMs design their own games, not a product created for consumption. Subcription services basically implied a dependence by the fans on WotC for more inspirational material, rather than the converse.

Many, many people were thrilled with 4e. Most of the rest did not suddenly become haters but did become, shall we say, less happy with WotC. So who split? People who felt a loyalty to some version of D&D but no longer associated Wizards with the game they enjoyed. Creative, forward thinking hobbyists and creators. Tinkerers who enjoyed 3e's sufficient complexity and modular capabilities. History and mythology geeks. AD&D setting loyalists who opposed setting changes. In short, the changeover alienated a substantial portion, if not a majority, of the people who had fed the plant up until them. The publishers interested in doing 4e stuff are a fraction of the cultural treasury that made 3e walk, run, and dance. Even people who play and enjoy 4e are not motivated to become 4e developers, any more than someone who enjoys Monopoly is motivated to become a Monopoly developer. The people who essentially made 4e possible have, for the most part, rejected it. What passes for a mainstream market in games would play any version of D&D which is well designed, which by a reasonable set of criteria 4e certainly is. But the people who constitute the gaming hobby, the writers of today and tomorrow and the day after, the people who say, "What would happen if you changed X?", the people who catalog FR deities or invent their own pantheons, the people who, above all else, play games besides D&D, are deeply divided.

The Economy

The economy never helps, but we've gone from an economic surplus fueling every hobby imaginable, even to the point of indirectly funding vanity projects, to a new situation where a product that isn't earning black is probably causing pain to its publishers. The PDF market for d20 was small, slim, and agile, but 4e products tend to be, as noted above, labor intensive if they are worth doing, and the bar for production values is much higher in the post-d20 world.

The Bottom Line

Considering the challenges facing meaningful development of 4e expansions, the lack of engagement by hobbyist designers, the loss of consumer loyalty to the WotC D&D line, and the economy, the real question is not, "Why is 4e third party support so halting?" but why so many people were surprised. There is still a market for 4e products, but the market is very different than the d20 market was. Consumers want and need different things with 4e, and if it isn't, at some level, a ready-to-use consummable, the market is just very small. If there is a future for 3PP in the new world, it is probably going to require greater engagement with Wizards, and on their terms.