"Are the Authors of the Dungeon & Dragons Hardcover Adventures Blind to the Plight of DMs?"

[guachi]

5e is selling well enough that I'd like a premium AP like others have mentioned. A $100 boxed set. Multiple soft cover books instead of one hardback. Separate map booklet. Maybe some specialized miniatures or tokens.

An RPG version of a premium boardgame.

 

[Hussar]

5e is selling well enough that I'd like a premium AP like others have mentioned. A $100 boxed set. Multiple soft cover books instead of one hardback. Separate map booklet. Maybe some specialized miniatures or tokens.

An RPG version of a premium boardgame.

Would that not, perhaps, be better handled by a 3pp? WotC apparently doesn't want to deal with the small, niche products, like this one. It seems like their target is 100k copies or more of anything that goes out their doors. Surely a name 3pp with a kickstarter would better be able to do this kind of thing.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Thank you, Elfcrusher, for clarifying for me what it is that I think and what my reasoning is - I thought I knew since, well, it is mine after all, but it certainly is nice of you to come and tell me what I think.

You can go ahead and keep having both sides of the discussion all to yourself, since you clearly would rather tell me what I am saying than listen to it.

How dramatic.

"According to your logic..." is not telling you what you think. It's positing an implication or extension of an argument you used.

But, just in case you actually did want someone besides you involved in the discussion:
I didn't realize 5th edition's product strategy was WotC's "first hit." Looked to me like they did things differently and settled on the current methodology after things were not going the way they wanted them to.

Companies should expand their product line when either doing so is a risk that the company can likely absorb and market information suggests could prove profitable (read: when the risk appears worth the reward).

What you are talking about though isn't quite just expanding product line - that's what having an adventure and a rules-y supplement every year is for D&D, as is licensing out the D&D property in various ways (apparel, video games, digital tools, and so on) and using the D&D brand on things like board games (Betrayal at Baldur's Gate is awesome, for example). You are also mixing in a change in strategy - which should really only be a thing a business does when either the new strategy appears by all indications that it will improve profitability, or when the current strategy is no longer working.

D&D comes as it does now not because this is WotC's "first hit", but because they already did the thing you wish they would do and it wasn't working for them - and they already went through all the changes to embrace the new strategy, so going back isn't easy. Like if Toyota had discovered their current strategy of releasing a variety of models weren't working out, downsized the company to focus on a smaller selection of models, and then you were asking them to build you a model they deemed to not be profitable enough to keep making and no longer have the factory capacity or manpower to actually produce for you.

Ok, mea culpa. First, this is a gaming discussion not business school. Second, you holding onto naive ideas about business strategy has zero impact on my life. Third, I'll never persuade you.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Double post.

 

[Ovinomancer]

How dramatic.

"According to your logic..." is not telling you what you think. It's positing an implication or extension of an argument you used.



Ok, mea culpa. First, this is a gaming discussion not business school. Second, you holding onto naive ideas about business strategy has zero impact on my life. Third, I'll never persuade you.

FWIW, I think he's got the better grip, here. Any given product line is constrained by producer resources, demand, and profit margin. You've ignored the first and the last and made some pretty big assumptions about demand.

 

[Guest 6801328]

FWIW, I think he's got the better grip, here. Any given product line is constrained by producer resources, demand, and profit margin. You've ignored the first and the last and made some pretty big assumptions about demand.

Sure. And what you do with profits is explore new ideas. If some of those ideas seem to pan out, you invest more, including hiring more resources.

Look, I'm not certain it would work. I'm not making any assumptions about demand at all: I'm suggesting it's worth exploring whether the demand is there. You and he are making the assumption, i.e. that there's insufficient demand.

Certainty that it wouldn't work is an example of the kind of thinking that limits people and organizations. And to wrap that certainty in a mantle of feigned expertise, and then use that to dismiss others' ideas, is just...just...hmm. I guess pretty typical of Internet forums, huh?

 

[hawkeyefan]

Given the amount of staff they have, I think their current approach seems to be the only one that makes sense. They want to make products that appeal to as broad a swath of their audience as possible. That’s why the adventures each have a different focus or theme, and why they’ve also started to combine setting material heavily into them. It’s why their sourcebooks have become a mix of player and DM material.

Given time, they can likely branch out. They just had their most successful year so that’s great. But they need to see if that success can be maintained before they try to branch out in new directions.

I personally find most of the books they’ve released can be used in ways other than intended, so I think that they actually are diversifying their product, but just not in an obvious way. Take Tomb of Annihilation....it’s just as much a Chult Campaign guide as it is an adventure book. And each of the adventures can be broken down and used in parts for those who want shorter adventures.

I thibk a few more overt bits of advice about these things would be good, but the actual content is solid and I think it’s too soon to start changing a model that seems to be working.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

How dramatic.

"According to your logic..." is not telling you what you think. It's positing an implication or extension of an argument you used.

It's not the "according to your logic..." bit I was being "dramatic" about - it's the other part. The part where you misrepresent or misapply what my logic was for the second time, which made it look deliberate.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Certainty that it didn't work

Fixed that for you.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Given the amount of staff they have, I think their current approach seems to be the only one that makes sense. They want to make products that appeal to as broad a swath of their audience as possible. That’s why the adventures each have a different focus or theme, and why they’ve also started to combine setting material heavily into them. It’s why their sourcebooks have become a mix of player and DM material.

Given time, they can likely branch out. They just had their most successful year so that’s great. But they need to see if that success can be maintained before they try to branch out in new directions.

I personally find most of the books they’ve released can be used in ways other than intended, so I think that they actually are diversifying their product, but just not in an obvious way. Take Tomb of Annihilation....it’s just as much a Chult Campaign guide as it is an adventure book. And each of the adventures can be broken down and used in parts for those who want shorter adventures.

I thibk a few more overt bits of advice about these things would be good, but the actual content is solid and I think it’s too soon to start changing a model that seems to be working.

Honestly I suspect this is probably true, but my data set is pretty limited. It seems like an awful lot of people buy the APs even though they then complain about them. So, at least for now, tweaking the formula might not serve any purpose.

On the other hand, I know a group of teenagers who play D&D who are not buying the APs. They are homebrewing all their adventures. They have disposable income so that's not the problem. They just don't find the APs appealing.

Could they be convinced to buy APs if they followed a different formula? I don't know. And if WotC adheres to a policy of "don't fiddle with something that doesn't seem to be broken" we never will know.

EDIT

Oh, wait, I just realized: the one adventure supplement that interested them is Yawning Portal. This is both evidence of WotC's willingness to try a different formula and that doing so was successful in appealing to a previously untapped market segment.

If you don't think that's evidence of exactly what I'm talking about then we are not arguing about the same thing.