D&D 5E D&D Team Productivity?

[Urriak Uruk]

And the last annual adventure, Rime of the Frostmaiden, is 320 pages. That's pretty dang long, and it's also FANTASTIC quality. It's hard to find any product like that in previous editions IMO.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Almost every edition has struggled under their late-stage weight of products. Keeping 5e pretty trim is fine by me.

I like the releases as they are so I can actually evaluate them and be informed about the options. Bloat is not my friend.

It took me two days to edit a six-page technical document for work. Releasing a quality product takes time.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

Honestly, I'm fine with a consistent one per quarter release schedule. That period when they released a product, had a half a year gap, and then released two products back to back didn't seem very well thought out.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Not only is the 5e release cycle slow it is written from the perspective that there is a very specific narrow range of acceptable for d&d beyond which is not to be tolerated rather than including titles for people with interest outside that narrow range.

Heh... yeah, that very specific narrow range of "stuff that will be most useful by the most amount of the hundreds of thousands of people playing D&D across the globe."

Methinks that perhaps it is you that has the "very specific narrow range" of stuff that you ultimately find useful. So it is no big surprise that WotC isn't going to use their few books out of the year catering to your esoteric needs. But hey... if you're still playing D&D even without buying their couple books a year (and just making up adventures and mechanics for yourself and your table) then I'm pretty sure they're still quite happy about that! You're spreading the "play Dungeons & Dragons" gospel, even if you aren't dropping $50 a year on it. They're probably happy to take it.

 

[Mallus]

Not just Atari... Didn't TSR have to buy back and pulp a large amount of overproduced late-2e product?

They did! It's what I was initially referencing. Then I remembered the earlier ET debacle.

 

[ccs]

That's not the middle ground I'm speaking about. 1e had a slow release rate, as did BECMI.

What product are you counting (or ignoring?)? 1e ran 1977 - 1989.
There's A LOT of 1e material out there. Far more than 5e has produced.

*This is not taking into account Dragon & Dungeon magazines & RPGA material for 1e, nor AL & DMs Guild for 5e.

 

[Parmandur]

What product are you counting (or ignoring?)? 1e ran 1977 - 1989.
There's A LOT of 1e material out there. Far more than 5e has produced.

*This is not taking into account Dragon & Dungeon magazines & RPGA material for 1e, nor AL & DMs Guild for 5e.

Not including Adventures, the first six years of 5E have seen 13 large hardcovers.

The first six years of 1E saw 6 large hardcover rulebooks, not including Adventures: three core rulebooks, Deities & Demigods, Monster Manual 2 and the Fiend Folio. There were only ever 14 hardcover 1E rulebooks, including the cross-edition products at the end.

So, 5E is producing non-Adventure books at twice the rate as 1E at the same point in it's lifespan, and will probably pass the entire 1E rulebook collection by the end of this year.

Adventures, it gets more interesting, as the product format is pretty different...but 5E has a lot of Adventure products.

 

[ccs]

Not including Adventures, the first six years of 5E have seen 13 large hardcovers.

The first six years of 1E saw 6 large hardcover rulebooks, not including Adventures: three core rulebooks, Deities & Demigods, Monster Manual 2 and the Fiend Folio. There were only ever 14 hardcover 1E rulebooks, including the cross-edition products at the end.

So, 5E is producing non-Adventure books at twice the rate as 1E at the same point in it's lifespan, and will probably pass the goal 1E book collection by the end of this year.

Adventures, it gets more interesting, as the product format is pretty different...but 5E has a lot of Adventure products.

Ah, the magical shifting goal posts.
"In the 1st 6 years of" And then retro-actively picking & choosing the releases to be counted.

14 1e hardbacks.... I count 13 from memory. {PHB, DMG, MM, D&D, MM2, FF, UA, Oa, DSG, WSG, MoP, Greyhawk & Dragonlance} 14 if you count the 1st printing of Deities & Demigods.
What are you counting?
Or am I forgetting something & should go stare at my bookshelf when I get home?

 

[embee]

So by my calculations in the roughly six and half years since 5e's launch WotC have published 24 D&D books and 2 boxes. 3 of the books have been updates of old material (Saltmarsh etc), 5 of them have been partially outsourced to other companys like Sasquatch, Green Ronin etc and 2 have been almost entirely written outside the design studio (Acquisitions and Wildemount).

Now surely that is a pretty low productivity rate?? I mention this now because it seems like a very very long time that this Candlekeep book has been in production.

All of the above comes from a position of love. I own every 5e product in at least two formats and a lot of them in 3 (standard, special edition and Beyond).

I disagree.

They've produced plenty of revenue. And that is the ultimate metric.

 

[tetrasodium]

Heh... yeah, that very specific narrow range of "stuff that will be most useful by the most amount of the hundreds of thousands of people playing D&D across the globe."

Methinks that perhaps it is you that has the "very specific narrow range" of stuff that you ultimately find useful. So it is no big surprise that WotC isn't going to use their few books out of the year catering to your esoteric needs. But hey... if you're still playing D&D even without buying their couple books a year (and just making up adventures and mechanics for yourself and your table) then I'm pretty sure they're still quite happy about that! You're spreading the "play Dungeons & Dragons" gospel, even if you aren't dropping $50 a year on it. They're probably happy to take it.

Actually I'm not GM'ing anything right now & don't expect I'll run o5e again. If it weren't for covid I'm pretty sure I would have switched systems by now because I was starting to consider options when I came down with covid in feb. Once covid is wrapping up or soon after I expect that I'll jump toa5e or something else depending on how timelines for stuff play out. As to your attempt at dismissal & suggestion of badwrongfun, appeal to popularity is a logical fallacy for a reason