D&D 5E Does WotC suck at selling games?

Neonchameleon · Sep 18, 2014

Astrosicebear said:
So it comes down to who has the better players/team? I'm OK with that.

A bit more than that. I won't say Lisa Stevens and Eric Mona are better at running a business than anyone at WotC. But they are definitely better at running an RPG business than anyone there. Wizards' A Team is on the thing that makes 90% of their money: Magic the Gathering.

Holy Schneikies... But devils advocate, how much of that was profit from services? After overhead, server costs, author costs, payouts to failed products, etc...

A lot of that is where WotC has a structural advantage. Server and bandwith costs are cheaper in bulk - and WotC has MtG and MtGO. So the overheads are for things they are already buying. Author costs: Pretty low I think. A lot of Dungeon/Dragon was volunteer. And I know of one product that actually failed; the systemless Menzobaranzan.

Any other current RPG company would call DDI a success beyond their wildest dreams.

Thank Dog · Sep 18, 2014

Neonchameleon said:
On the other hand 4e worked out of the box. 4e did not make monsters where the DM had to refer to the PHB to find out what they actually did.

Not quite sure what you mean by that. DM's referencing a monster entry has been a requirement of all editions, as has the requirement to reference rules about what it can and can't do. Is there something specific that you're referring to?

Neonchameleon said:
It did not make a mockery of its balancing system with such things as a CR2 Intellect Devourer.

Well, I think the Intellect Devourer is just fine as a CR 2 creature so I think the matter of whether or not it's balanced is more subjective than you seem to think it is.

Neonchameleon said:
The 5e landmines aren't at first level (although the number of kobolds in HotDQ is absurd).

Now that I can agree on but at the same time, the adventure was apparently written when the rules were in flux and so a lot of it might be out of whack solely because of that. Having said that, I'm absolutely dying to run the first episode as written for a 1st-level party just to see how it plays out. I've played it in Adventurer's League but due to the nature of organised play and changing PC's, we had a lot of concessions made and a higher level than we would in a home game so it ran fairly smoothly all up. The parts I've DM'd of it have been pretty breezy as well. I ran the very first part of it as an AL DM for a group of novice players and they got to the keep without any deaths, despite the fact that they decided they'd confront and kill all four groups (they snuck past one group so they got an extra group).

Neonchameleon · Sep 18, 2014

Thank Dog said:
Not quite sure what you mean by that. DM's referencing a monster entry has been a requirement of all editions, as has the requirement to reference rules about what it can and can't do. Is there something specific that you're referring to?

Having to reference other sources - namely the PHB to look its spells up.

The Hitcher · Sep 18, 2014

Just read the rant. Haven't read much of this thread but just wanted to say that I couldn't agree more.

ExploderWizard · Sep 18, 2014

pemerton said:
I think there are lots of examples of non-D&D games which have better ways of presenting and explaining how to GM the game.

I'm going to disagree with @roadtoad's post upthread - for me, Chapter 8 of Moldvay Basic is far-and-away the best version of GMing instructions ever written for D&D.

Because B/X is mostly an exploration-oriented game, those instructions tell the GM, step-by-step, how to construct an area to be explored. With a properly-worked example.

More modern editions of D&D make action resolution a much bigger part of the game. So the key to GMing becomes adjudication of action resolution. But the advice on that - incuding in 4e - is just terrible. For instance, both the 4e DMG and the Essentials RC/DM kit included examples of skill challenge resolution in which the GM uses techniques that are no where called out or explained in the instructional text. Only someone who was already familiar with those techniques (most likely from reading better-written rulebooks for other systems) would be able to work out how the GM did what s/he did in the example.

Perhaps the RPG market really is saturated. But that's really not an excuse for writing terrible manuals, when good examples exist and one of them is over 30 years old and wholly owned by WotC.

Yup. There isn't a good reason why the DMing section of Moldvay basic couldn't be incorporated into an updated document for 5E and included in a starter set or online.

Thank Dog said:
I have to strongly disagree on this point. I constantly see in discussions and people asking about how to DM this notion of "doing it right". I think it's vitally important that players and DM's find their own way to do things rather than being told by others what is the right and the wrong way to do it. Throwing DM's and players in the deep end is, IMO, the most fun part of learning how to play and fosters a more creative and passionate player as they tend to be less tied to rules as laws and more inclined towards rules as guidelines.

Playing with the generation of players who began with 3.x or Pathfinder is, for me, exhausting. The encouragement in those systems to strictly adhere to RAW has been a major part of why I haven't enjoyed or participated in such games for the last decade. What I'm finding with new players in 5e is a willingness to let their imaginations fly and the result is a far more enjoyable game for everyone. I'd like to see that encouraged and a DM's guide is something that I think will only serve to discourage that type of play.

I feel that this is the largest barrier to DM entry. The perceived (and sometimes real!) pressure to get it "right" and be close to perfect right out of the gate is keeping quite a few prospective DMs from giving it a try. The DM is the focus of attention in a game session and a brand new DM feeling his/her way through the process while being under the microscope of demanding players is asking quite a lot of someone for a relaxing activity that is supposed to be fun.

What is really required is something that WOTC or any other company cannot provide- patient and understanding players willing to play with a new DM and not be jerks during the learning and adjustment process. So the DM screwed up and TPK'd your starting party with an ambush by 6 ogres, big deal. Talk it over, discuss why things turned out like they did, roll some new characters and play some more.

Until the DM is recognized as a fellow participant and not some appliance that is supposed to provide entertainment on demand there isn't going to be much progress made on new DM creation by any company.

Boarstorm · Sep 18, 2014

Generally speaking, I am in agreement with Angry about a lot of things.

This is not an exception. A lot of people in the first half of this thread either didn't read the article, or got stuck on the "sell" terminology. To be clear -- this isn't about moving product. This is about expanding participation in the hobby.

And I'm guilty of not doing my part. I don't post about D&D on my social media. I don't mention it when someone I've just met asks about my hobbies.

If nothing else, maybe this article has done some good by getting me (and hopefully others) to recognize that the era of being ostracized for your hobby is coming to an end and to realize that we can be more open about our "geeky-ness."

Hell, that's a win in-and-of itself.

If you love something, advocate for it.

keterys · Sep 18, 2014

I really want some sort of very simple online computer game for learning how to play, then run D&D. It can be simple, that's fine.

I was recently checking out cardhunter - which is a tongue in cheek card-based version of D&D that has little bits poking fun at D&D - and I realized that in many ways, with just a few script changes and polishing, that it would introduce D&D better than anything I've seen in ages. An odd thought, but it does a pretty excellent job of teaching the game it's actually showing you while informing you of the genre. I'd love something for D&D like that, which showed you the silly dice as they showed up, let you fill in your skills when it became appropriate, then after showing you a really cool adventure that starts solo and acquires a couple other people, has you run through a process of designing an adventure to show you how easy it is to run. Then says, now go get your friends and a table - here's a link to download the rules and a link to buy the actual product.

skotothalamos · Sep 18, 2014

pemerton said:
I'm going to disagree with roadtoad's post upthread - for me, Chapter 8 of Moldvay Basic is far-and-away the best version of GMing instructions ever written for D&D.

Fair enough. We'd moved on to AD&D by the time I was DMing, so I have no recollection of Basic's DM advice.

pemerton said:
For instance, both the 4e DMG and the Essentials RC/DM kit included examples of skill challenge resolution in which the GM uses techniques that are no where called out or explained in the instructional text. Only someone who was already familiar with those techniques (most likely from reading better-written rulebooks for other systems) would be able to work out how the GM did what s/he did in the example.

I'm not seeing the problem with the Skill Challenge example on DMG 77, but maybe I've internalized the Skill Challenge rules too much to notice. It seems to follow the "Running a Skill Challenge" structure described on page 74 just fine. There are checks, DCs, roleplaying, a use of the "DM's best friend." What's the problem?

TheAngryDM · Sep 18, 2014

Hey all. Thanks for reading my article and giving it fair consideration. I won't go too crazy here because I've already spilled enough words on the subject, but I want to respond to a point Morrus made about timing and patience.

I was very happy to see Greggy B. say they had future plans. But, I think it is perfectly valid to call the lack of a true Entry Level Product right now a major failure. See, right now, at release, D&D is getting press. New York Times and Forbes have written about it, it's making news on Amazon by selling out, and so on. Right now, the eyes of the outside world are on D&D. Right now. And those are eyes no one had to pay for. Those aren't ads, those are news stories. So any outsider whose curiosity is peaked by the news that "this D&D thing is really super popular and now is a great time to get started" doesn't have an entry point.

Now, Morrus and I can respectfully disagree on how good or bad the Starter Set actually is. I wonder if he is reading it with a beginner's mind, as the Zen saying goes, but that's a different argument too. But this is not impatience. This is a golden opportunity squandered and anything they do next month or next year will have lost out on today.

Astrosicebear · Sep 18, 2014

TheAngryDM said:
But, I think it is perfectly valid to call the lack of a true Entry Level Product right now a major failure. See, right now, at release, D&D is getting press. New York Times and Forbes have written about it, it's making news on Amazon by selling out, and so on. Right now, the eyes of the outside world are on D&D. Right now. And those are eyes no one had to pay for.

I think the playtests were 5E's beta phase. The current lineup is what would be considered a "soft launch". Once all three core books are out, I expect the marketing to ramp up. This launch is for the fans, the hard launch come January will be for everyone else. That is when we are most likely to see a "Intro to D&D" product, not now.