D&D 5E A viable game and the vicious edition cycle

Evenglare · Jul 31, 2014

First off, to the people saying you will never get a game that needs to be rebooted every few years. Monopoly. Been new variations but the classic game has remained the same. Also chess. So that completely destroys that argument.

Why do we not want a game to be rebooted? Because I hate rebuying my crap every few years. Pick an edition and stick with it for the love of god! Yes I know that no one is going to come and take my stuff, but to that I say I want to support an edition that is getting support with new things. Old editions don't get new things, only the current edition. If you like all your old stuff and don't need new stuff, GREAT, but it's not for me. 4e did this crap. I love 4e but okay, so let's take a little trip down memory lane. 3.x was fading away and 4e was announced. It supposedly fixed all the brokenness of 3.x! GREAT! Bring on the edition! We got new stuff, it was all pretty balanced, but then Wizards ADD kicked in. They started saying LOOK LOOK! LOOK AT ESSENTIALS THIS NEW THING! And pretty much completely revamped 4e into 4.5. Don't say it didn't look at all the errata, it completely and utterly changed the PHB just as 3.x did. They started doing subclasses and changing abilities (magic missile anyone?). They promised essentials was going to be the evergreen edition, but then LOOK LOOK LOOK! D&D NEXT and 5e!

That's fine just stick with a damn edition for like... 10-15 years. PLEASE! That's all I ask. 4e started getting good at the end. They were trying new things with the system. I liked essentials and I liked 4e, but it was just LOOK LOOK LOOK at this new thing! They never finished epic level play with a DMG 3. Ugh it's irritating to say the least. I am in love with 5e, I just really hope they stick with it....

Mercurius · Jul 31, 2014

Evenglare said:
First off, to the people saying you will never get a game that needs to be rebooted every few years. Monopoly. Been new variations but the classic game has remained the same. Also chess. So that completely destroys that argument.

No it doesn't. monopoly and chess are completely different animals, mainly in terms of simplicity. D&D is a much more complex game, both in terms of the rules themselves and the game play (story).

I think another key difference is that the game play of monopoly and chess is very much the play of the rules themselves, while for D&D, the rules facillitate the game play. An analogy would be musical instruments (chess, monopoly) vs. music media like LPs, CDs, mp3s etc (D&D). A flute or violin are classics, they are what they are and there isn't a lot of advancment possible except through better craftsmanship and, I suppose, simulation. But music media is always evolving, always changing - becuase the media itself is secondary to the music.

To put it another way, monopoly and chess are the rules - that is pretty much all there is to the game. With D&D, however, the rules are one of two major elements, the other being story, and the story is what is primary - the rules are meant to facilitate the story (e.g. "I attack" is primary to, both coming before and being more central to play, "roll a d20").

The history of editions is, in a way, a history of different attempts at asking the question: What rules best facilitate the D&D story? I imagine this question will be asked as long as D&D is around. We're never going to find the Perfect Rule Set to End All Rule Sets.

ZombieRoboNinja · Jul 31, 2014

One thing to keep in mind is that Hasbro's priorities and strategic brand management are going to differ significantly from a smaller company like Paizo's. They're big enough that they can work to build an IP and capitalize on it. They can lose money on an expensive kid's TV cartoon because they know they'll maki up for it selling action figures and lunchboxes. And yes, they can let their book sales drop off even for years at a time, so long as they have a zealous fanbase willing to watch movies and buy t-shirts and play MMOs and whatever else they can tie to the D&D IP. This is potentially great news, because it means they'd (ideally) rather keep the core product robust and interesting than crank out a splatbook full of unbalanced crap just to stay in the black another quarter. But it can also lead to missteps due to unrealistic expectations and misplaced strategies, so here's hoping for the best!

pickin_grinnin · Jul 31, 2014

I think WotC is going to be surprised at how difficult it is to make significant inroads with marketing this particular brand across multiple genres and products. It's not a bad idea to do so with fictional world brands in general, but past efforts have shown that D&D as a brand (rather than as a specific game) isn't that strong when it comes to sales to non-gamers. Toys, movies, cartoons, books, comics, etc. have all been done in the past, but have never caught on to the degree that they (or TSR before them) expected.

The problem is that there is nothing particularly unique about D&D in this day and age. To be honest, there never was - it has always been a mishmash of Tolkien and other fantasy properties. The uniqueness in the past lay in the type of game it was, rather than specific things within it. If they focused on a particular setting that was different than most of the rest of the stuff the general public sees, that might work better.

I wish them the best of luck, but I really have my doubts about how well it will work in the long run.

77IM · Jul 31, 2014

Savage Worlds in reasonably popular right now, and is on its 5th or 6th edition in like 10 years. How is this possible?

The main points are 1) each edition has been largely backwards-compatible with what came before, making only incremental changes to the core rules and 2) they've always focused on providing value first and making money second, so all the supplements are awesome things people want, rather than filler meant to pad out a schedule. Because backwards compatibility is a priority, players do not fear new editions and don't worry about buying supplements late in the edition "cycle."

I think D&D 5e could easily follow this pattern, if Hasbro will let them.

Branduil · Jul 31, 2014

77IM said:
Savage Worlds in reasonably popular right now, and is on its 5th or 6th edition in like 10 years. How is this possible?

The main points are 1) each edition has been largely backwards-compatible with what came before, making only incremental changes to the core rules and 2) they've always focused on providing value first and making money second, so all the supplements are awesome things people want, rather than filler meant to pad out a schedule. Because backwards compatibility is a priority, players do not fear new editions and don't worry about buying supplements late in the edition "cycle."

I think D&D 5e could easily follow this pattern, if Hasbro will let them.

That would be a good idea, especially since I think the main core of the game is very solid this time around. Just make incremental tweaks to the core rulebooks every five years or so, using what they've learned over years of play and feedback to better balance the game.

tomBitonti · Jul 31, 2014

I think that bloat is a result of poor quality control, perhaps coupled with too much of a push to monetize the brand.

My answer is core content of higher quality and delivered at a slower pace. But also with a steady and growing stable of secondary products.

Consider: Since 4E was release, if there could have been tool updates every six months. A rules encyclopedia; a character builder; a monster and encounter builder; an encounter mapper; a character visualizer; a state tracker; a set of monster images suitable for a tablet; a database of NPCs; tools for players to contribute to a shared database; a sound effects module; a campaign tracker; a skill challenge module; a spell targeting and effects module. Keep each function limited, and build it solidly, then move to the next. Build a pipeline of new function.

As a contrast, look at what happened to Dungeon and Dragon: It should have been used both to deliver a solid pipeline of content, but should have provided a seed for other content delivery, and could have been a test bed for digital offerings.

Look at what Paizo has: Core books; a campaign world; miniatures; play maps; adventure paths; pdfs; organized play; soon, a MMO. They don't have software support, but I wonder if the license prevents that.

What I'm convinced is that the core rules are not the heart of the game: Facilitating play is the heart.

Also: Churn denies value to players. We should be accumulating content and utility, and steadily building on it. Completely discarding a past edition discards a huge amount of value. I guess that might work if players cycle into and out of the hobby in a few year time span, but, there is a subset which stays with the game for a long time, who become soured by the churn.

And: There seems to be a lost value in the product identity. Look at Game of Thrones. Take that, and add just a few elements of D&D. Not D&D'isms (saving throws, hit points, vancian spells), but other content, say, mind flayers. Take just a few elements and build a detailed world and story around them. That could drive a lot of products.

Thx!

TomB

GX.Sigma · Jul 31, 2014

Evenglare said:
First off, to the people saying you will never get a game that needs to be rebooted every few years. Monopoly. Been new variations but the classic game has remained the same.

And it sucks. That's why people made new versions (Settlers of Catan, e.g.) that are better.

Evenglare said:
Also chess. So that completely destroys that argument.

Chess? That game that took nearly a millennium to evolve to its current form?

Hussar · Jul 31, 2014

I'd also point out something. When's the last time any of you bought a Monopoly or Chess board? How many chess or monopoly supplements do you own? Sure, Monopoly is an evergreen product, but, that's because everyone buys a Monopoly set, at some time, for their kids. And the cycle keeps repeating.

That model just doesn't work for RPG games. We're just not big enough to simply wait for the next generation of gamers to get the game bought for them.

And, for every Monopoly on the market, how many failed board games are there? How many thousands of board games go by the wayside every year? People need to realize that D&D is not Monopoly and never, ever will be. When I can buy D&D in every single toy store on the planet, then D&D is on the level of Monopoly. I can go into any Toys R Us in any country in the world and buy Monopoly, translated into the local language. I've lived in Japan for almost 15 years and still have not seen a single D&D book in any hobby store. Lots of MtG though.

The idea that we can just drop an edition of D&D into the market and assume that it will continue to sell is simply not true. And it's easily disproven. As soon as 4e stopped producing new products, it fell out of top spot. Within 2 years, it's almost out of the top 5. Five years from now? It won't even register anywhere for sales, same as 1e or 2e.

Without a constant stream of new material, RPG's die. That's the cold equation of the hobby. How many people play Gangbusters anymore? Top Secret anyone? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG (which had a pop culture penetration that makes D&D look like a tinker toy)?

Like it or not, they have to keep producing books to keep in business. The trick will be, how fast do they have to produce books? What's the tipping point?

Lanefan · Jul 31, 2014

Brother MacLaren said:
I find it hard to express just how strongly I disagree with this idea. I said a lot of my arguments against this mindset when 4e came out.

WotC used to act as if the *business* needed edition churn to be profitable. Splatbook power creep leading to system collapse and reboot.
The *hobby* needs no such thing. Chess, cribbage, gin, softball, bowling, golf, and hundreds of other games and sports are very successful with rulesets that are basically unchanged over at least decades, if not centuries. A hobby suffers from having the ruleset periodically reinvented, as that splinters the base. Games and hobbies are more like music or art than like technology. New is no guarantee or even likelihood of being better, any more than 1978 music was better than 1968 music.

Slower rule churn will help the hobby, by allowing the game to be more casual. So 2014 gamers can pick up the dice in 2020 without being turned off by the need to buy a dozen splatbooks to be competitive, or a new PHB to learn a radically different ruleset. That's a huge factor behind OSR, the 1980s gamers picking it up without a huge time investment to learn a new system. I don't think the hobby needs more splintering.

Preach it, Brother!

There are only two words needed to present a complete and everlasting solution to the issue: backwards compatibility.

Look at 0e-1e-2e. Sure they were different editions, but they were compatible enough with each other that an adventure or setting from one could be used in another with a relatively trivial amount of conversion if any. (caveat: late 2e went a bit adrift but by then TSR were clutching at straws anyway)

The first two WotC edtions have pretty much thrown backward compatibility out the window. To use a 4e adventure in a 1e game requires considerable conversion; ditto 3e; and ditto the other way around (as in, 1e material in a 4e game). It remains to be seen whether 5e will be all that compatible with 0-1-2e (early results suggest not very) but there's still a good chance it'll be able to be made compatible with 3e and-or 4e; which is, I suppose, something.

The other issue is hobby vs. business. Brother MacLaren puts it very well, quoted above, that the two are to some extent mutually incompatible. I'd go a step further and suggest they're becoming even less compatible now due to the ease of access to anything on the internet - somebody could dream up the best system evar and throw it online for free; and if it really took off the industry as we know it would never be the same.

Lanefan