DI and freedom from the revision cycle

1Mac said:

I think most reasonable people will agree that Wizards of the Coast (and their corporate masters Hasbro) are a business, and that businesses need to make money. A smaller outfit could conceivably operate on charity and goodwill, but for the scale that WotC is operating on, such a model would be inconceivable.

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True. But Wizards doesn't need to make all their money off of D&D. They never have, & I predict they never will.

I just thought about the exact same thing, and I really hope you are right.

The DI seems to be a buisness model similar to the MMORPG one, and that should work for a game like D&D to, I think. Wizards can even sell much more stuff besides rules than blizard. While they could offer their rules in Digital Format (thus keeping it updateable) they can still release Compilations once a year, for those people prefering books. These Compilations would not need to include any fluff, they could be full of rules stuff. No need for fillers. And they could release updated core rules books every 3 years or so... (Updated does not mean new editions, actually they could do that when ever a print run is sold out, just include the errata and fixes available online anyway.)

So, if you want to get into the hobby, all you have to do is, buy a PHB and a DnD Insider Account. If you want to DM, you will need the 3 core books and an account.

But you will have access to the whole current game, that is, you will have access to all the feats and classes and monsters.

Besides books, wizards still has the (if I remeber correctly very profitable) Miniatures Market. Generating even more money.

And I think fluff. like setting books, the Draconomicon and Lords of Madness will be better served as books.

Big Adventures, I think, need to be released as books to, it makes the reading part a lot more comfortable.

1Mac said:

I think most reasonable people will agree that Wizards of the Coast (and their corporate masters Hasbro) are a business, and that businesses need to make money. A smaller outfit could conceivably operate on charity and goodwill, but for the scale that WotC is operating on, such a model would be inconceivable.

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But they don't have to make all their money off of D&D. They never have, & I predict they never will.

I wish it were true that this new model will prevent a new edition so quickly, or if ever. But the truth of the matter is how can we trust WotC anymore? They said it was a long ways off. 15-17 months is not a LONG ways off. 15-17 years is a LONG ways off. Especially when it was being worked on for 2 years straight.

That means in just 3 years after 3.5E was released, 4E was in the works! How long do you think 5E will be in the works once 4E comes out? Think about it, people. Are you really going to jump another edition in 5 years again?

They had tons of ideas for new supplements. We were giving it to them. But from what I keep hearing about 4E's new stuff is all MMORPG style now. It's going to turn into a huge video game with its rules and content and will no longer be the RPG that it's supposed to be. It will turn into a pure "Hack&Slash" game, like any MMORPG such as DDO and WoW. On top of that, you have to "subscribe" monthly to gain access to the other half of the material you're going to need to play your D&D games?

This is a sad day for D&D. All the D&D fans that can't see past this due to their fan-deluded high with D&D are going to find out all too late about all of this.

And I really hope it fails. They'll realize they had a good thing going with 3.5E once that happens.

Razz said:

I wish it were true that this new model will prevent a new edition so quickly, or if ever. But the truth of the matter is how can we trust WotC anymore? They said it was a long ways off. 15-17 months is not a LONG ways off. 15-17 years is a LONG ways off. Especially when it was being worked on for 2 years straight.

That means in just 3 years after 3.5E was released, 4E was in the works! How long do you think 5E will be in the works once 4E comes out? Think about it, people. Are you really going to jump another edition in 5 years again?

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I expect 5e will be started on within a couple of years. The timing and execution of its release will be based upon marketing and business concerns. Since I expect that, I don't need to "trust" WotC, I will make my decisions about 4e and any future releases based upon my own judgment of value right now, not trust that what I buy now will still be the current mode in six years.

They had tons of ideas for new supplements. We were giving it to them. But from what I keep hearing about 4E's new stuff is all MMORPG style now. It's going to turn into a huge video game with its rules and content and will no longer be the RPG that it's supposed to be. It will turn into a pure "Hack&Slash" game, like any MMORPG such as DDO and WoW.

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I don't see how they are turning the game into a MMORPG from what I've seen. I'm not going to have to play the game on a computer, using their designed world, meeting only their designed NPC, interacting with them in their designed manner. What I will get is something I've often wished for, and I know other have as well since there have been threads about it - a way to have digital maps displayed, use digital minis and improve the ability to play remotely. Other than that it will still be my game, with my designed encounters challenging my players' designed characters. Non-combat interactions won't be any different, players will still ask NPCs questions I will respond for the NPCs (sometimes using a bad accent) the way I think they should answer, not from a menu of choices.

On top of that, you have to "subscribe" monthly to gain access to the other half of the material you're going to need to play your D&D games?

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Umm, I don't think you are going to need anything from the subscription service to play the game. Buy the core rules, never subscribe to anything and you can still play with your friends around the table. You might not have every option available to you, but you can play.

This is a sad day for D&D. All the D&D fans that can't see past this due to their fan-deluded high with D&D are going to find out all too late about all of this.

And I really hope it fails. They'll realize they had a good thing going with 3.5E once that happens.

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Please don't try and tell me that I cannot see beyond some fanboy attitude. I've been selective about my D&D purchases for years and always will be. I see promise and opportunity to do things I want in my game with 4e and the DI. I'm optimistic that it will turn out good. If you really have this much hate for WotC, please feel free to stop playing and don't crap on those who aren't as bitter as you seem to be.

So I goofed and double-posted. Let's put the rest of the comments on this thread. I'll copy the comments from this thread to the uber-thread.

Sorry about the confusion.

Shark, you are right. I went and did the double-post thing. My apologies.

Here is what people said on the other thread , for what it is worth.

Baron Opal said

An interesting point.

There have been many supplements that I have not purchased because I have only been interested in ~10-20% of the contents of the book. If that material was made available to me over the course of a year I might not mind that I paid $10 / month for a steady stream of material that I find useful rather than 3 books at $40 that I find marginally useful.

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Lord Tirian said

Surely interesting. And if they make it workable, it may really free WotC of much pressure, allowing less filler, more quality books.

For Blizzard, this idea works out pretty well - Blizzard is funded for decades with WoW.

Additionally, it gives WotC an easy way to get player statistics: With hosted games and their many feedback things, they could really make muuuch betteer stuff.

However, even if it works out, they WILL do a 5th edition - because they'll need to dump all the feedback somewhere!

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Friadoc said

Well said, 1Mac, excellent points, too.

Personally I think the idea of using the MMO/WoW model of funding development is an awesome idea.

It enhances the tabletop play with extra utilities and tools, but doesn't replaced one of the better aspects of tabletop RPGs, that can be lost to a degree in MMOs, which is socialization.

So now, WotC can fund books via a steady incoming, thusly answering to the Hasbro stockholders, but also have steady funds to poor right into development and keep those steady dollars.

I mean, seriously, if WotC can show the Hasbro BoD and Stockholders that they can sell the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of actions figures ever month, month after month, without the materials or shipping, then I couldn't see them disrupting the company in any way, shape, or form.

It's just an awesome idea that I hope they follow through on, because if they do it'll be an interesting time to be a dice/tabletop gamer.

It's not an MMO, it's a digital tabletop, pure and simple. An extension of our books, our tables, our dice, and our friends.

One of my hopeful thoughts is about the digital edition of the book(s) I just purchased, be it PDF (my dearest hope) or a similar facsimile, it'll cut down on the wear and tear of my back.

*chuckles*

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RFisher said

True. But Wizards doesn't need to make all their money off of D&D. They never have, & I predict they never will.

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Razz said:

This is a sad day for D&D. All the D&D fans that can't see past this due to their fan-deluded high with D&D are going to find out all too late about all of this.

And I really hope it fails. They'll realize they had a good thing going with 3.5E once that happens.

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I don't really understand this attitude. Whatever the various reasons are behind the timing of the new edition, it seems perfectly reasonable to accept that it will be a better game than 3.5. The "if it ain't broke" mindset just doesn't have much traction, here, because there are a lot of things about 3.5 that most people agree could be improved. Sure, it's a great edition (and, I would assert, better than any previous one), but nothing on earth is perfect. Everything can be improved upon. Game mechanics are a technology like any other, and I fully expect--in fact, I demand--that they evolve over time as new and better methods become possible.

If the new edition doesn't fit your personal tastes, and turns out to be a step backward rather than forward--or, hell, just isn't a big enough step forward to justify the expense--for your group, then go ahead and stick with the current edition. There's nothing WotC can do to take that away from you.

To be slightly less utopian for a bit:

There are plenty of ways that Wizards could still screw this up. Geron Raveneye and Kaodi both make excellent points that indicate how. My hope would be that the popularity of DI would be such that filler-ish supplements would simply be unprofitable. They may still try it, because old habits die hard, but if they look at slumping sales and compare it to the DI, they will axe such books for the long-term. From a business perspective, DI is the better choice because the content is easier to produce and because there are very low variable costs. With books, for each unit you sell, you have to do printing, quality control, warehousing, and distribution. With DI, there is not much additional cost for each additional user. I think yearly printed supplements like what Obergnom posits are likely, but that would be a boon.

Also, despite my fevered ramblings, I do think that 5th edition is inevitable. But consider, for a long time at the beginning of the hobby there were no printed supplements available. Everything was done piecemeal through magazines. This provided gamers with all the material they needed for a long time, and a revision was a very long time coming (I am using this article by Ron Edwards to reinforce this perspective. I was not even alive at the time, so I defer to those with greater knowledge and experience.)

DI uses this same basic model. The major advantage is that all the expanded material will be in one easy-to-search, easy-to-find place. So my hope is that 5e is nearly a decade off, if not longer, because the DI model will make it unnecessary and unwise.

1Mac said:

It is rather a cunning and effective replacement for supplement glut.

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I am not so sure. It would mean that most of the supplemental material will be available online-only. But even here, in an online forum, we see significant resistance to using computers for the game.

Simply put, requiring a computer to get supplemental materials seems... suboptimal to me.

(edit: oh, and duplicate threads have been merged)