Ryan Dancey - D&D in a Death Spiral

[Sorrowdusk]

....I don't think the Essentials line won't change things in the direction WotC was expecting (I think they'll loose more paying customers then they'll gain), so I think it's only a matter of time before Hasbro puts D&D in the freezer.

I expect we'll see (in 2011) either more freaky/desperate directions for the D&D brand, a significant reduction on D&D releases or seeing D&D put into a cryogenic freezer for revival in a decade or two. Maybe Hasbro will do licenses from time to time (as they did with GI JOE en Transformers).

A decade-or TWO? I hope it doesnt come to that.
===============
I suppose thats one way to look at it, but me myself-I dont think most people took advantage of the OGL. I'll tell you one thing though, in 3.x WoTC basically gave their ruleset away for FREE. I think that was significant to a lot of people, now the SRD for 4e actually does what it was meant to do in the first place.

I'm no expert on the d20 boom, although I purchased my fair share of products, both WotC and 3rd Party. But, really, how many publishers took advantage of other companies OGC? I know some did, of course . . . but outside of compilations of other peoples work, I never saw much of it.

And as a consumer, how much of a product is/was OGC is meaningless. I don't need "open" content to use in my games, the legality and licensing of it doesn't matter. It only matters if I wish to make the leap to publisher, which the vast majority of us had no desire to do.

Huh? Not sure if we're talking about the same thing (we might be). I'm not saying that 3rd Party publishers didn't use the OGL license, but how many of them used significant OGC content from other companies works? Granted, I didn't scour the section 15's of all the books I own, but I really doubt it's significant . . . . or am I way off base here as you seem to imply?

I'm certainly too lazy to head out to the garage, unbox some of that stuff, and start looking . . . .

You know, this came up for me first because I ended up allowing options into my home game. And then, to make things easier for my players, I began to consider how I could make those options available to them. Could I, for example, make a campaign web page with optional rules posted? Could I share them with others? Could I use an online database to allow players in other parts of the world to partake in my game?

If they were OGC, I could do that without having any shadow of a problem. If not, well, not.

I found myself in a quandry between using the best rules I could, OGC or not, and limiting the scope of how I used them, or using the best OGC rules I could, allowing me to throw the scope wide open.

And, suddenly, it became obvious to me just how inclusive the OGL could be, and publishers who provided plenty of OGC were. They were helping me make my game my own, and helping me share it with others. OGC says "This game is yours" while closed content says "But this is ours". I discovered that I value the former.

And now I am working on a free ruleset that I can share, which will be well over 90% OGC, which can be used by other GMs to tinker with other rulesets, or run as-is, or whatever they like.

Because I value that, and I want the scope, and I want to contribute.



RC


EDIT: Oh, and Dire Bare, the Section 15 will show you where OGC was taken from. Many publishers have built on, and modified, each other's work. That is a good thing, and has led to some great products!

 

[Hammerhead]

IFRS = International Financial Reporting Standards. IAS 14 = What you report line by line, how much data you disclose from your business segments. It's financial/accounting stuff.

 

[Herschel]

As such I think that the change to the Essentials line was promted by Hasbro management that D&D wasn't hitting the expected sales quotas and needed profit margins, ......

And whnere do you get this? A group of us sat down and chatted about Essentials and the like over the years and came to a strong conclusion: 3E/Pathfinder and 4E in their "normal" forms are pretty bad for new players. Neither game is just "roll it up and play" for a newbie, especially without more experienced gamers around. Most first charcters blow. The Red Box/Essentials was a direct response to that and Paizo is designing their own starter set, so obviously there's something to it.

The games/industry needs new blood, and they can't just count on parents/older siblings to spread teh word, brand new groups are also a great base to have.

 

[Mark Hope]

If the MMO is indeed based on oWoD, that would make me very happy, but I haven't seen an official statement from CCP.

They made the announcement at the Grand Masquerade convention a couple of weeks ago. There are the usual multipage threads over at rpg.net and the WW forums if you fancy wading through them for details. I'd love to play but my PC is seriously bottom-of-the-line, lol.

 

[Cergorach]

And whnere do you get this? A group of us sat down and chatted about Essentials and the like over the years and came to a strong conclusion: 3E/Pathfinder and 4E in their "normal" forms are pretty bad for new players. Neither game is just "roll it up and play" for a newbie, especially without more experienced gamers around. Most first charcters blow. The Red Box/Essentials was a direct response to that and Paizo is designing their own starter set, so obviously there's something to it.

The games/industry needs new blood, and they can't just count on parents/older siblings to spread teh word, brand new groups are also a great base to have.

That particular situation was relevant when 4E was being developed as well. A bussiness doesn't change it's line of products in such a significant way unless it's forced to do. Why take new risks if your current formula is working well enough? If they thought that the essentials line would open new revenue streams they could run both lines beside each other, they're not doing that as far as I know. They are significantly changing the DnD line, imho you only do that when you have no other choice (as a profit orientated corporation). So either the current line is not doing as well as they thought or they have already produced so much for the current line that they can't resonably expect to sell much more product to the same customers, with a reboot they can. Both situations indicate to me that DnD is not doing well enough for a corporation such as Hasbro.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

I was unaware that adding new options to a game without significantly changing the original meant changing it's line of products in a significant way.

Oh god, Pathfinder released the APG, didn't they? The entire tabletop gaming industry is mutating before our very eyes!

 

[Herschel]

A bussiness doesn't change it's line of products in such a significant way unless it's forced to do. Why take new risks if your current formula is working well enough?

You obviously don't work in a progressive, successful business then. Good businesses are always changing, always developing, always working to expand. The "current formula" regardless of success is never good enough. The goal is always to grow and expand your market.

4E does well on a lot of fronts, but is pretty daunting to a new player especially with all the material out now. Pathfinder was never good for new players because it was a rework of an already large, complex system.

Only counting on current gamers to grow your market would be downright stupid. I remember hearing about it as a kid and asking my grandmother for the original red box as a Christmas gift. I made a game for my sister, cousin and I which lasted about a weekend, but I was trying. Because of this I sought out players when I got to college and got in to my first "real" game there (good old 1E). 1E and 2E were pretty new player friendly: simple stats, basic weapons/armor and token/tolkein baddies were great for hooking new players' imagination.

Stat/feat/power blocks are much more daunting. Essentials is great because it builds a viable character for you so you can just play much easier. Many potential new players don't want to read a dozen sourcebooks before starting to play. WotC and Paizo recognize this and are taking steps to grab that portion of the market.

To do otherwise would be to fail.

 

[Cergorach]

I was unaware that adding new options to a game without significantly changing the original meant changing it's line of products in a significant way.

Oh god, Pathfinder released the APG, didn't they? The entire tabletop gaming industry is mutating before our very eyes!

The move to boxed sets and small rulebooks isn't a significant change? The adventures seem to keep their size, but are thin booklets in the box (not bad imho). As far as I can tell there is possibly another hardcover somewhere in march 2011. This all makes it for me a significant change of direction for the D&D RPG line. I'm not saying it's a bad change, but it is a big change only two years into the 4E cycle. The first big change for 3E was 3.5E and that was three years in to the 3E cycle and wasn't that big a change, although we did get more hardcovers then before. I have a strong suspicion that when the current printing of the PHB/DMG/MM runs out we won't see a reprint...

Might be a good direction because it now looks more like a game (box) and might get some shelf space in toy stores. I was absolutely not happy with the Red Box, it went in a direction I do not like, but that is a personal matter (but an opinion that others share). On the other hand I just watched the unboxing of the Dungeon Master's Kit: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHlIAPtdirY]YouTube - Dungeon Master's Kit Unboxing[/ame] And that was actually inspiring (but not worth that much if I don't have a decent starting point for players.

 

[Cergorach]

You obviously don't work in a progressive, successful business then. Good businesses are always changing, always developing, always working to expand. The "current formula" regardless of success is never good enough. The goal is always to grow and expand your market.

4E does well on a lot of fronts, but is pretty daunting to a new player especially with all the material out now. Pathfinder was never good for new players because it was a rework of an already large, complex system.

Only counting on current gamers to grow your market would be downright stupid. I remember hearing about it as a kid and asking my grandmother for the original red box as a Christmas gift. I made a game for my sister, cousin and I which lasted about a weekend, but I was trying. Because of this I sought out players when I got to college and got in to my first "real" game there (good old 1E). 1E and 2E were pretty new player friendly: simple stats, basic weapons/armor and token/tolkein baddies were great for hooking new players' imagination.

Stat/feat/power blocks are much more daunting. Essentials is great because it builds a viable character for you so you can just play much easier. Many potential new players don't want to read a dozen sourcebooks before starting to play. WotC and Paizo recognize this and are taking steps to grab that portion of the market.

To do otherwise would be to fail.

Well it was a bank and those are notoriously... slow... ;-)
Also, the only way a bank can grow is acquire customers from the competition, nor does a bank want every customer out there (when they lend money they only want those customers that can actually pay them back). Expanding outside of your home country is a very risky business, the easiest way to enter new banking markets is buying a local bank.

Developing is good, changing for it's own sake isn't good, it's a money pit. The current formula might not be perfect and it never will be, but there is a difference between tweaking and complete overhauls. Complete overhauls are edition changes, tweaks are errata or maybe a different balance in releases. The Essentials line is definitely a lot more then a tweak and pretty early in the 4E life cycle. What Essentials is I would have expected at the beginning of 4E alongside of the core rulebooks. Instead it seems to me that it is replacing the current line of books. A 4.5E wouldn't be so strange (but it is a tad early), but it is also a whole different way of presentation (boxed sets and small softcover rule books with a lot of single column text).

You might want to attract new customers but you also want to keep your old customers, I don't know if they'll keep a lot of old customers with this change. And if the IvC2 is any indication then something like PF is doing extremely well and if the trend of the last two years is any indication, PF will grow further and DnD will shrink further. Of course these DnD boxed sets are aimed at growing the customer pool, I am just curious that with WotC now grabbing for trout in the stream, the ones already in the bucket aren't escaping at a faster rate then they can catch.

Personally I'm missing extended support for settings, two books and an adventure is slim pickings. There's an aweful lot of crunch books out there. Miniatures support seems decent (and probably doing well due to folks from other D&D type games using them as well).

I agree that 4E PHB and the PF core book even more so are bloody bricks, my problem with the 4E PHB is that it's unappealing, I do not have that problem with the PF core book. But that's mostly due to presentation. But the issue stands that those are bricks that scare new players away due to the amount of perceived reading. While the Red Box uses a proven way of teaching someone something, it still is far to wordy for my tastes. I was hoping for something along the lines of the original Red Box. The current RB might be good for a completely new group (including DM), but if as a veteran DM I have issues with this approach and that is not something I would use for introducing new players (although I might revise that view when I get my hands on the rules compendium, dm kit, monster kit and heroes of the fallen lands).

 

[Herschel]

Well it was a bank and those are notoriously... slow... ;-)
Also, the only way a bank can grow is acquire customers from the competition, nor does a bank want every customer out there (when they lend money they only want those customers that can actually pay them back).

This is simply untrue. There are always new customers so long as people have babies grow up and get jobs. (And also getting them from the competition.) Depending on the nature of the financial institution, you also DO want every person out there for a customer. The key is to come up with viable products to bring them in and leverage their assets. Some times it's just a savings account or a checking account, other times it's loans, etc. I work in compliance/finance for one of the world's largest companies and there are always new programs hitting the market. Same for my local credit union.

The current RB might be good for a completely new group (including DM), but if as a veteran DM I have issues with this approach and that is not something I would use for introducing new players (although I might revise that view when I get my hands on the rules compendium, dm kit, monster kit and heroes of the fallen lands).

It's not for you though, it is targeted at those completely new groups (although many current gamers will buy it also). Not every product is produced for "your" game. If it were, the market would suck and die quickly.