WotC 4E D&D bloat (was Forked Thread: Pathfinder (PFRPG) bloat)

Forked from: Pathfinder (PFRPG) bloat (was Forked Thread: What exactly is OGL bloat?)

carmachu said:

Dude, 4e is well on its way there already.....3core a year plus other books, at what one a month?

Talk about bloat in two years....

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Compounding the bloat, WotC's plan is a new campaign setting every year with a campaign guide and player's guide. It appears they may be making the setting player's guides at least as "core" books (ie. with new races, classes, etc ...).

Also it appears they may be producing a new Adventurer's Vault book every year. Perhaps a "planes" type book every year too (ie. manual of the planes, plane below: elemental chaos, etc ...), along with a "draconomicon" book every year.

One "Power" book was released last year, while three "Power" books are released this year. One "Power" book is already scheduled for early next year. They're already on a SECOND iteration of the "Power" books (ie. Martial Power 2 in Feb 2010). Next year I wouldn't be surprised to see a second iteration of one or more of the arcane, divine, or primal "Power" books. Maybe they'll even do a "Psionic Power 1" book sometime next year too. We have yet to see what they'll be doing for the possible "Shadow Power" and "Elemental Power" books.

Heh. A minimum of nine core books released every year?

This time around, WotC is producing most of the bloat itself without much 3pp participation. The 4E "everything is core" philosophy appears to be one of the main insidious culprits.

Perhaps WotC's original intention this time around is to have an almost "monopoly" on proliferating D&D bloat and sucking up most of the 4E cash, instead of the 3pp's. They want to keep most of the "crumbs" for themselves this time around.

I think some of the 4e design was focused around bloat management. For good or ill, WotC is tied to making money, which involves selling lots of books. Its just the nature of the system. Thus far, I think that 4e does a better job of keeping the game working while dealing with rules bloat, which is really all that can be expected.

malraux said:

I think some of the 4e design was focused around bloat management. For good or ill, WotC is tied to making money, which involves selling lots of books. Its just the nature of the system. Thus far, I think that 4e does a better job of keeping the game working while dealing with rules bloat, which is really all that can be expected.

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*Nods* I think 4e has managed how to deliver lots of content (bloat) in a much more manageable and focused manner. Having very specific series of books means one can pick and choose very specific material that they want, it isn't spread out.

Also combined with DDI and the Compendium/Character Builder helps as well.

malraux said:

I think some of the 4e design was focused around bloat management. For good or ill, WotC is tied to making money, which involves selling lots of books. Its just the nature of the system. Thus far, I think that 4e does a better job of keeping the game working while dealing with rules bloat, which is really all that can be expected.

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From the Hasbro management perspective, it's probably better for them to have (relatively) tight control over D&D's destiny this time around, than for it to be heavily influenced by collective outside forces (ie. the 3pp's).

Wonder what they will have left for proliferating bloat in the future, which has not been tapped yet so far.

From looking at the WotC 3E/3.5E catalog, I wouldn't be surprised if they will start doing some "Races of ..." books again as an easy target.

If amazon.com is a reliable guide, there's already a "Player's Handbook Races: Dragonborn" book scheduled for released in Jan 2010. Assuming this is not a misprint for a miniatures set, the amazon.com listing mentions it will be a 32 page softcover book. If WotC ends up doing this for every playable race in the PHB's, they may publish 32 page softcover "Player's Handbook Races" books for:

- dragonborn
- tiefling
- human
- elf
- half-elf
- eladrin
- gnome
- shifter
- halfling
- dwarf
- gensai
- drow
- half-orc
- goliath
- deva
etc ...

It will be interesting to see how much new crunch will be in these books. If I had to guess, these races books may very well possibly lean more towards the fluff side.

If you think that 9 books a year is bloat, you should look at the production schedule of late 2e.

Hussar, most of 2. ed. bloat was focused on campaign setting sourcebooks. The Core Books bloat of 2. ed. was all the Complete Handbooks, DMG Supplements, Spell Compendiums and the Player's Option books.

How much bloat are RPG players able to handle before they suffer from information overload?

Hardcore gamer nerds like myself, a couple of my gamer friends and many posters here on Enworld are able to use 100 rule/sourcebooks for a game system but in my experience casual yet veteran gamers can't handle much more than three books.

The casual veteran gamers get the first Player's Handbook, maybe a later Player's Handbook if there is an interesting class and the *** Power book for that class. DMs usually buys all the books they can afford and have shelf space for. Computer savvy gamers have a lot of pirated content they usually can't be bothered to read.

I'm not detecting much different between now and 3E's schedule, but I haven't actually sat down and looked at the numbers. I do find it somewhat amusing that in the course of a year WotC have gone from accusations of releasing an 'incomplete' game to accusations of 'bloat'.

wedgeski said:

I'm not detecting much different between now and 3E's schedule, but I haven't actually sat down and looked at the numbers.

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From a rough count, there were around two WotC 3.5E D&D books released per month during the period from mid-2004 to the announcement of 4E in Aug 2007. This is including all the Forgotten Realms and Eberron books.

If you drop all the 3.5E Forgotten Realms and Eberron books from the rough count, it would bring it back down to around one WotC 3.5E book released per month over the same time period of mid-2004 to 2007.

In contrast, the 3E period had WotC releasing around one new 3E D&D book per month.

So far for 4E D&D, WotC has been releasing around one new 4E book per month.

It's not necessarily mutally exclusive. It are different points in time. And the "incompleteness" of the core books could be considered planned to later sell more "bloat".

I wouldn't call the core books incomplete, but it is very obvious that further material would be desired and would be sold. Regardless whether it is intentinonally or not, I think the game benefits from not having everything put out on front. It gives more time to design and see what works and what didn't work so well. Playtesting can only do so much...