Not Reading Ryan Dancy

JVisgaitis said:

I'll take you up on that. You mentioned in your overview that WotC would stop production a lot of key products and that they don't have anything in the hopper. In regards to a 4th Edition, do you think that is something coming soon or far off in the distant future?

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I am of two minds about "4th Edition".

First, I think that WotC may, at some point, create a product called "4th Edition", but that product will look just like 3rd Edition with a series of clear rules improvements & tweaks; essentially, a 3.5 on steroids. To me, that's a "marketing release".

Second, I think WotC may actually try to make "Dungeons & Dragons" mean "a miniatures game with roleplaying", and I could see them creating a whole new way of presenting D&D in a miniatures-centric way that would be worth calling the line "4th Edition". To me, that's a "new design release".

I think there's a good chance, probably 50/50, that we'll see a 3.75 kind of release in 2007 or 2008. A new set of core books, revised, but basically the same game we already have. I think that product will not be called "4th Edition", nor will it be marketed as 4th Edition. There are powerful forces inside WotC that believe (not without quite a bit of market research and product experience to back them up) that gamers will buy a "revision" to a games' core rules every 3-4 years and that not inducing those purchases is just leaving money on the table.

What I'd like to see is a "4th Edition" which hybridizes MMORPG play and tabletop play, with an RPGA moderation facility, that uses on-line tools to create characters and scenarios, and focuses on bringing the best elements of the tabletop and the digital environments together under the most powerful brand in fantasy adventure gaming. If you ever see a notice that WotC has hired me back to run RPGs, that's the direction I'll be looking to move.

Ryan

Heathansson said:

Dp you see Mattel picking up an existant rpg, making a new one, or going the trading card route?

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Mattel has been making hobby games for about 5 years. They have made collectible miniatures games, and collectible card games. So far, none of them have been sold through traditional game store channels.

I do not think they'll ever dabble with an RPG. "Role playing" is a defined category in the mass market toy world - it means fake swords, Hulk muscle suits, and other gear kids use to dress up and play "lets pretend". They know that RPGs in the sense we mean them are marginal busineses that require a large number of people, and are currently in the process of transitioning to the digital realm and leaving the tabletop behind (in terms of new players likely to be acquired).

I could see them buying or investing in a trading card game company. They have looked at several, and they likely looked at WizKids before Topps bought it. I think that if a small company has a big hit, they'll be in an instant bidding war with Hasbro & Mattel.

Ryan

RyanD said:

I predicted that we would repeat the trend seen in 1988/1989 when TSR went from 1st to 2nd Edition, and had a five-fold increase in year-over-year sales of PHBs. I'll call that prediction successful, even though the actual increase was more like 10-fold.

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Hmm - that's very interesting. I've seen Gary Gygax (and others) post that sales of 2e (PHBs?) were half that of 1e, but I'm very unsure of what time periods were being compared.

So, in the medium term (after the initial flurry of buying), did the 2e PHB actually do better than the 1e PHB was doing at the end of the 1e run?

Cheers!

JVisgaitis said:

Do you think that 4e whenever it is released will still support the OGL? Not that it matters as if they make 4e incompatible with the current OGL it would probably be so far from D&D that it wouldn't matter anyway.

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I think it will be licensed with the OGL using a System Reference Document just like 3.0 and 3.5 were.

I'd also be interested to hear your thoughts on a full featured and well supported gateway for playing games over the internet via voip. Do you think that would help to grow the D&D base by bringing old players back or would its effectiveness be negligible?

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D&D doesn't have a problem with players. More than 1 million people play it every month. D&D has a problem with acquiring new players. New players want the kind of imersive, yet community-connected experience delivered by MMORPGs. Adding virtual tabletops, internet chat, or other features to D&D as we know it isn't the answer, and likely won't work.

Lastly, just curious if you think the next big thing in gaming will be of the collectable variety or not. Thanks Ryan!

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I think the next $100 million+ business will be a collectible business, yes. But I also think there's a chance we'll see a sub $5 million new category emerge by the end of 2007, which may spawn a business segment as large as the RPG segment (roughly $50 million), and that new category may not be, and probably won't be, one where "collectibility" is a key component.

Ryan

RyanD said:

There have been a number of one-shots, like the Serendipity game, which have done well in the short term, but so far, none have created evergreen businesses in the way that Vampire or Shadowrun did.

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Are you referring to the Serenity RPG? Or is there a game called "Serendipity" that I've never heard of?

RyanD said:

I also predicted that few people would care much for the RPGA's attempt at a "new" kind of Living Campaign experience (i.e. the Green Regent) and I think I was correct, but don't have the data to be sure.

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On the various RPGA lists and boards I frequent, Ian Richards (head of RPGA) has stated, more than once, that play of the "D&D Campaigns" (first Legacy of the Green Regent, then Mark of Heroes, and now Xen'drik Expeditions) has been quite strong; while I haven't seen him quote actual play numbers in a couple of years now, when Green Regent was running, he said it was second only to Living Greyhawk in active players.

Those quotes from him always lead to some raucous debate; a fair number of RPGA vets will always be quoted as saying, "you've got to be kidding me; I don't see any LotGR/MoH/XE play in my area." I'm not sure what to believe fully in those discussions; I never like to put a lot of empirical weight behind "nobody I know does X" kinds of statements, but I see a lot of them.

I have a suspicion that Stephen Radney-MacFarland was one of the key believers in the D&D Campaigns; with his departure from RPGA last summer, we already see some things changing (they're allowing online play of the D&D Campaigns, which would have never happened with SRM in charge; they're partially going away from the online chararacter tracker, which is still buggy after 4 years of use, etc.)

I sense some excitement among RPGA players that Xen'drik is doing things differently (4 different factions, each being run by a veteran RPGA staffer, a la LG). OTOH, RPGA continues to transition away from giving any support to any campaigns not directly owned by WotC.

MerricB said:

Hmm - that's very interesting. I've seen Gary Gygax (and others) post that sales of 2e (PHBs?) were half that of 1e, but I'm very unsure of what time periods were being compared.

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Over its lifetime, the 1E PHB outsold the 2E PHB by a good margin. I don't have sales figures to back this up, but I'm pretty confident that the 3E PHB has sold more units than the 1E PHB did, although it's a close race.

So, in the medium term (after the initial flurry of buying), did the 2e PHB actually do better than the 1e PHB was doing at the end of the 1e run?

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I think I've posted elsewhere that at the end of 1E, the 1E PHB was selling about 50K units a year, and the first year of sales of the 2e PHB generated about 250K units of sales.

Early in its lifecycle, the 1E PHB generated several years (I want to say 5 to 7) of sales well above 200K, and the slowdown in 1E PHBs was much more gradual than the slowdown of 2E PHBs, which was pretty dramatic.

One thing that many people don't know is that the RPG category, as a whole, had dropped by nearly 50% in terms of unit & revenue between 1990 and 1993. In fact, had Magic and the CCG category not developed, the gaming industry as we know it was almost certainly doomed. RPGs would have been moved to the book chains (which had their own near death experiences as they shifted from mall-based stores to Big Box retail stores). Many of the factors that brought down TSR were affecting every RPG publisher in the market at that time. TSR's woes just continued for a long time masked by CCG sales, and some financial manipulation of their book trade accounts.

RyanD said:

D&D doesn't have a problem with players. More than 1 million people play it every month. D&D has a problem with acquiring new players. New players want the kind of imersive, yet community-connected experience delivered by MMORPGs. Adding virtual tabletops, internet chat, or other features to D&D as we know it isn't the answer, and likely won't work.

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I'm not disagreeing with you, but I've seen a lot of people leave the hobby for online video games because its easier to play over XBOX Live from the couch when the kids go to sleep or in the den in front of a computer with Team Speak. Personally I still do tabletop gaming, but I would play more if I had an easy vehicle over the net to do so. Granted it may not acquire new players, but do you think it could bring old players back to the fold?

Also, I'm sure when you were at Wizards you had tons of meetings on bringing more players to the game. If you were back in charge how would you try and increase the player base?

RyanD said:

Over its lifetime, the 1E PHB outsold the 2E PHB by a good margin. I don't have sales figures to back this up, but I'm pretty confident that the 3E PHB has sold more units than the 1E PHB did, although it's a close race.

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Thank you very much, Ryan. That's very good to know.

Did you lump D&D Miniatures in your predictions along with the D&D RPG, or was DDM something you saw failing in the next year?

Cheers!

MerricB said:

Did you lump D&D Miniatures in your predictions along with the D&D RPG, or was DDM something you saw failing in the next year?

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I think it's safe to define "D&D" as "D&D RPGs, miniatures and novels" in the context of my blog predictions.

Ryan

RyanD said:

I've got no horse in this race. The only hobby gaming product I'm actively working on, if brought to market, will be evolutionary, not revolutionary, and it won't have a digital component. Its not even an RPG.

I'd like to have to time to build out all the RPG support services I envison for OrganizedPlay, but at the moment, there is little chance of that happening.

Ryan

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Thanks for the response.