D&D 5E Monte Cook Leaves WotC - No Longer working on D&D Next [updated]

talok55 · Apr 27, 2012

Well the last time I checked the 3.5 player's handbook (That's right. The one that's been out of print for about 4 years) was outselling any of the 4E books and, of course, Pathfinder books were doing even better than that. Granted, I'm sure DDI eliminates a lot of book sales, but that still shows A) How lackluster the books sales of the leading rpg have become, and B) the vast popularity of 3.5 and games based on 3.5. I agree that 5E will need to win over 4E fans to be successful, but it probably needs 3.5 and Pathfinder fans even more.

Bedrockgames · Apr 27, 2012

thecasualoblivion said:
. Regardless of the exact market shares of PF vs 4E, or what percentages of the D&D community at large they are, the 4E community is certainly big enough that if 5E fails them, 5E fails(at least by the goals 5E has set for itself).

i would agree, but it goes both ways...if 5e fails the non 4e crowd, it fails. Now my concern is all they have is people who understand the 4e crowd but not the pre-4E crowd. Pander too much in the 4e direction and the game will fail.

theuglyamerican · Apr 27, 2012

thecasualoblivion said:
Regardless of the exact market shares of PF vs 4E, or what percentages of the D&D community at large they are, the 4E community is certainly big enough that if 5E fails them, 5E fails(at least by the goals 5E has set for itself).

Well, yes, this is very much true. It's equally true that 4e enthusiasts aren't enough to carry D&D -- the brand needs both 4e enthusiasts and 3.x enthusiasts to succeed. If that weren't true, then we wouldn't be seeing 5e right now. 4e enthusiasts can feel very confident that their interests will be looked after very nicely with the coming edition. 3.x enthusiasts, on the other hand, have a grand total of...oh, let me check...no one to advocate for their side of things. 4e enthusiasts may not have liked Cook, but he was literally the only non-4e voice on the team. This is D&D's last chance with Hasbro, at least for the foreseeable future. Without 3.x enthusiasts and 4e enthusiasts both buying in, the odds are there won't be an active D&D in five years. And Cook was essentially the only chance the brand had of interesting 3.x people.

Nyronus · Apr 27, 2012

I honestly find the whole "Pathfinder is outselling 4e" to be more thna a little flawed. Besides the good points about DDi being ignored in the PF vs. 4E sales debate, the claim that Pathfinder is selling better and therefore is better also ignores that 4E books are in a deliberate tail-spin as WotC has basically washed their hands of the edition. We're getting what looks to be the last 4E books in next month, and then that's it. Nothing but system-neutral FR fluff-books until next year, and probably ever. This is on top of following a year where the production numbering and quality has gone down. Add to all of that that people are being told their investment in 4e was going to be invalidated in a year or so due to the release of Next, and I'd be more shocked if 4e sales hadn't bombed. You're comparing a game line that's having its life support pulled to a game line in the middle of its prime with full support from its parent company. Trying to prove the Pathfinder is somehow better than 4E by pointing to the dead-tree sales at the terminal end of one edition while the other is in full swing is like saying a ten year old has always been a superior athlete to a ten time gold medalist dying of stomach cancer because he can walk faster at this moment. I would have to wonder how much feather preening would die if people stopped comparing PF core-rulebook sales to unpopular 4E splats, and instead compared the two game lines when each was at its peak, and accounting for the money making monster that was DDi.

Finally, as was point out not a few pages ago, the reason 4E is being pulled isn't because Pathfinder is "beating" it, but because Hasbro set an absurd standard for DnD to live up to, and many people have rightly pointed out that its still wildly unlikely that even if we all started playing the same "edition" that DnD could make it. 50 Million a year is a lot of money to make for a Niche within a Niche within a Niche.

There is a lot of dumb B.S. going on in the game market, but Pathfinder gets too much credit for it.

Bedrockgames · Apr 27, 2012

But pathfinder was beating 4E well before next was announced. And it isn't like pathfinder just came out last week.

trancejeremy · Apr 27, 2012

Also, while I think it's true that the number of actual old school D&Ders are minimal, I think it's the accessibility of older versions of D&D that are missing in 3x and 4x, and have turned people towards simpler games, or simply to stop gaming. So I think it's a mistake to focus only on 3x and 4x styles.

I mean, yes, 1e has a lot of Gygaxian prose, But ultimately it's a very simple game, at least that's how most people actually played it (more akin to B/X than anything else, with the AD&D style multi-classing)

I mean, you went from being able to come up with monsters on the spur of the moment (the Gelatinous Cube being an example) to monsters needing to be designed by people with degrees in accounting (or at least a spreadsheet written by someone who has one). It went from a game about creativity to one about numbers.

I mean, look at video games - the old tier of consoles (Sony, MS, Nintendo) is very much in danger of being replaced by Apple and its bevy of extremely simple games, like Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, and Fruit Ninja. Sony is likely in danger of being out of business period within the decade, MS's gaming division is almost entirely supported by Windows profits, and Nintendo posted a rare loss. And Apple has more cash money than some countries.

talok55 · Apr 27, 2012

Nyronus said:
I honestly find the whole "Pathfinder is outselling 4e" to be more thna a little flawed. Besides the good points about DDi being ignored in the PF vs. 4E sales debate, the claim that Pathfinder is selling better and therefore is better also ignores that 4E books are in a deliberate tail-spin as WotC has basically washed their hands of the edition. We're getting what looks to be the last 4E books in next month, and then that's it. Nothing but system-neutral FR fluff-books until next year, and probably ever. This is on top of following a year where the production numbering and quality has gone down. Add to all of that that people are being told their investment in 4e was going to be invalidated in a year or so due to the release of Next, and I'd be more shocked if 4e sales hadn't bombed. You're comparing a game line that's having its life support pulled to a game line in the middle of its prime with full support from its parent company. Trying to prove the Pathfinder is somehow better than 4E by pointing to the dead-tree sales at the terminal end of one edition while the other is in full swing is like saying a ten year old has always been a superior athlete to a ten time gold medalist dying of stomach cancer because he can walk faster at this moment. I would have to wonder how much feather preening would die if people stopped comparing PF core-rulebook sales to unpopular 4E splats, and instead compared the two game lines when each was at its peak, and accounting for the money making monster that was DDi.

Finally, as was point out not a few pages ago, the reason 4E is being pulled isn't because Pathfinder is "beating" it, but because Hasbro set an absurd standard for DnD to live up to, and many people have rightly pointed out that its still wildly unlikely that even if we all started playing the same "edition" that DnD could make it. 50 Million a year is a lot of money to make for a Niche within a Niche within a Niche.

There is a lot of dumb B.S. going on in the game market, but Pathfinder gets too much credit for it.

Except all the stuff I mentioned was happening before the D&D Next announcement, so that completely invalidates your reason for 4E sales tanking. It's also not like Pathfinder is selling like crazy because it was released last month. It's been out for nearly 3 years. Anyway, I'm going to stop now because I this thread is getting completely off topic.

General Lopez · Apr 27, 2012

Bedrockgames said:
i would agree, but it goes both ways...if 5e fails the non 4e crowd, it fails. Now my concern is all they have is people who understand the 4e crowd but not the pre-4E crowd. Pander too much in the 4e direction and the game will fail.

This is the reason why I believe 5e will fail now. How many 3/3.5 people just lost interest in it because of this reason. Monte had rock-star status when it came to 3E. Those fans knew he understood their favorite version of the game, and would bring some of that to 5E. Who brings that now, that was not part of the 4E team?

As far as this being about money I highly doubt that. Monte is a legend in this industry that almost ranks up there with Gygax and Arneson. Imagine if 5E ended being a smashing success. Monte's name would be attached to not only one, but two editions that turned a dying D&D fan base around. Sorry 4e fans, 4E was dying that's why we had essentials, and now a new edition so quickly.

A 5E success would have cemented him further as one of the most influential people in D&D's history. I cannot see him walking away from this over money. I personally believe that for him to leave it had to been something that made him feel 5E was not going to be a success.

5E needs to bring people back from older editions for it to be a success, it will not be a success with 4E fans alone. 5E just took a huge blow yesterday one that might have been fatal.

theuglyamerican · Apr 27, 2012

Nyronus said:
I honestly find the whole "Pathfinder is outselling 4e" to be more thna a little flawed. Besides the good points about DDi being ignored in the PF vs. 4E sales debate, the claim that Pathfinder is selling better and therefore is better also ignores that 4E books are in a deliberate tail-spin as WotC has basically washed their hands of the edition. We're getting what looks to be the last 4E books in next month, and then that's it. Nothing but system-neutral FR fluff-books until next year, and probably ever. This is on top of following a year where the production numbering and quality has gone down. Add to all of that that people are being told their investment in 4e was going to be invalidated in a year or so due to the release of Next, and I'd be more shocked if 4e sales hadn't bombed. You're comparing a game line that's having its life support pulled to a game line in the middle of its prime with full support from its parent company. Trying to prove the Pathfinder is somehow better than 4E by pointing to the dead-tree sales at the terminal end of one edition while the other is in full swing is like saying a ten year old has always been a superior athlete to a ten time gold medalist dying of stomach cancer because he can walk faster at this moment. I would have to wonder how much feather preening would die if people stopped comparing PF core-rulebook sales to unpopular 4E splats, and instead compared the two game lines when each was at its peak, and accounting for the money making monster that was DDi.

Finally, as was point out not a few pages ago, the reason 4E is being pulled isn't because Pathfinder is "beating" it, but because Hasbro set an absurd standard for DnD to live up to, and many people have rightly pointed out that its still wildly unlikely that even if we all started playing the same "edition" that DnD could make it. 50 Million a year is a lot of money to make for a Niche within a Niche within a Niche.

There is a lot of dumb B.S. going on in the game market, but Pathfinder gets too much credit for it.

The goal Hasbro has set is the goal Hasbro is set, whether it's idiotic or not (and it is idiotic, Jebus is it idiotic) and D&D has to meet it or get pulled, in all likelihood. Now, I haven't seen anyone in this thread saying that Pathfinder is better than 4e because it's outselling 4e. What I have seen is people pointing out that 5e needs the 3.x people to succeed just as much as it needs the 4e people, and if it doesn't get them, it fails. No matter how good a game it turns out to be, if it doesn't get everybody, it fails. And if it fails, the odds are D&D disappears. That's in nobody's best interests.

TwinBahamut · Apr 27, 2012

theuglyamerican said:
4e enthusiasts can feel very confident that their interests will be looked after very nicely with the coming edition.

To be honest, this isn't true at all. I'm a 4E fan who doesn't feel this way, and there are many other people I've seen who don't feel that way either. Frankly, a lot of the language used by the 5E team in blog posts and such has made many 4E fans very skeptical and nervous about the game (what with the designers praising the 3E fighter of all things and at times seeming rather ignorant of 4E's mechanics and philosophy). What's more, while WotC brought Monte Cook on board to appeal to the 3E fans, many of the key figures from 4E's development, such as Rob Heinsoo, weren't brought in and don't work at WotC any more.

The fact that Monte Cook, the designer so wrapped up in the development of 3E that he publicly rejected many of 3.5E's innovations, was brought in to work on 5E was itself a source of concern for many fans who simply don't like the 3E version of D&D. He was a controversial figure from the beginning for this reason.