D&D 5E Speculating about the future of the D&D industry/community in a post-5E world

[Tony Vargas]

No - for two reasons.

#1 - D&D PnP RPG staff has diminished significantly; and
#2 - Mearls said so.

Can't argue with the second. But Hasbro is giving them less staff to work with than Paizo can scrape together? That's just sad. I thought the 'not a core brand/get no resources' thing was supposed to be over?

All the more reason to go OGL, IMHO, and let 3pps produce some complementary goods to help increase demand for whatever you can push out the door.

 

[Nebulous]

All the more reason to go OGL, IMHO, and let 3pps produce some complementary goods to help increase demand for whatever you can push out the door.

Limited i hope: "You 3 companies, X Y and Z, you can make official D&D product."

 

[billd91]

I'm fairly sure Lisa has a choice whether to sell her company. You can't just buy something against the owner's will!

And at this point, all indications are that Lisa and Vic aren't selling. Of course, nobody's offered them enough original Star Wars memorabilia to choke a sarlacc yet so it's not like all contingencies have been tested.

 

[Eirikrautha]

If 5E is a major success, I think it will be because they bring new people into the hobby - either completely new or lapsed players. The whole simplicity deal gears it up for that. This will directly benefit WotC and in the long run benefit the whole RPG community.

5E stealing Pathfinders customer base? Not to any large extent. And even if they did, I'm not sure that would qualify as a major success by Hasbro standards.

I have to disagree with that. I just got back into gaming about 6-8 months ago after a 10+ year hiatus, so you might consider me one of the "lapsed" players, but I have been playing PFS and a home game weekly for 7+ months now. Coming back to gaming, Pathfinder was really the only choice for the D&D player (I know that there are many other games out there, but when you walk into your local gaming store and ask about groups looking for players, you either get PFS or WH40K, with the occasional Star Trek/Wars minis game thrown in... in my experience). In talking with others, I also know that a lot of people left D&D during the "Great Split" not because they wanted to play 3.75, but because they didn't want to play 4e. I think that anyone who harkens back to the 1e/2e days and looks for that kind of flavor will find it more readily in 5e than PFS.

No other game out there could leverage what Paizo has done with PFS except WotC, and WotC wasn't selling what those gamers wanted. If WotC can provide a solid community of games/gamers, you may very well see them cannibalize some PF players...

 

[Mirtek]

Although conversely, the era of a single, dominant name in the mainstream media is still the same as it's ever been. In the roleplaying gamer world... all manner of games have a place and a piece of the pie. But when it comes to the "face" of the industry to those outside of it... it begins and ends with Dungeons & Dragons. And that isn't going to change any time soon.

When even the most "nerd-expansive" mainstream television show out there, The Big Bang Theory, still defaults to D&D when needing to reference the RPG industry... that tells us just how little they feel a "deep cut" of a nerd reference is necessary. D&D *is* the "deep cut" reference for the mainstream. Always has been, probably always will be.

Yet that doesn't neccesarily translate to D&D doing well financially. Sure, people might say Kleenex by default when they mean tissue, but if the "Kleenex" they use is a actually no-name brand tissue in 90% of the cases, that's not really helping Kleenex

 

[Gadget]

Can't argue with the second. But Hasbro is giving them less staff to work with than Paizo can scrape together? That's just sad. I thought the 'not a core brand/get no resources' thing was supposed to be over?

All the more reason to go OGL, IMHO, and let 3pps produce some complementary goods to help increase demand for whatever you can push out the door.

You obviously have not been keeping up on the interviews MM has done about the future of D&D. The whole point he made was that it was a mistake to rely on the PNP RPG releases to drive revenue when they could leverage the brand through board games, video games, toys, comics, movies, tee-shirts, etc. He has spoken several times about doing fewer, but 'big tent pole' type releases. This would theoretically allow them to use less people to produce more through other outlets. It has been established that pazio has more people working on Pathfinder, than WOTC does on D&D. Whether they will stick to this strategy as time unfolds is, of course arguable, but I think the general direction is sound. It also implies that Pathfinder & D&D may not be in as much competition as many people seem to think, as it seems WOTC will depend much more on the D&D brand as a whole to drive revenue this time around, and much less on P&P RPG products. Personally, I see WOTC doing a lot more with licensing this time around, getting third parties to do much of the 'heavy lifting' while they produce. If they don't have a full scale OGL, they may have a tiered process where they have something like the d20 STL, then individual licenses for specific products. I could be that the license situation is such that Pazio may do some 5e work down the road.

 

[arjomanes]

I really, really hope that 5e truly embraces some of their awesome campaign settings.

Pathfinder Golarion and D&D Forgotten Realms seem somewhat interchangeable to me (though I'm sure fans of either will certainly point out the differences).

I'd love to see new Planescape, Dark Sun, and Ravenloft settings (and Spelljammer too, but that may be too out there), with supporting modules and miniatures. Of course WotC will need to be careful and not overdo it like TSR did in 2e with all their setting-specific splat-books. But I think D&D had some of the best game settings out there, and in my opinion at least Pathfinder's setting doesn't quite do it for me.

I also think there's room for some good mega campaigns that aren't 1-20 adventure paths. Hopefully D&D will hire great writers or work with freelancers who can write content as good as Paizo, but give us an option for adventures that are more open-ended. Modern 5e modules in the tone of the old 1e modules would be really great to me.

 

[arjomanes]

Personally, I see WOTC doing a lot more with licensing this time around, getting third parties to do much of the 'heavy lifting' while they produce. If they don't have a full scale OGL, they may have a tiered process where they have something like the d20 STL, then individual licenses for specific products. I could be that the license situation is such that Pazio may do some 5e work down the road.

I hope to see this happen. Necromancer Games is currently looking at creating modules in rules light (S&W), rules medium (5E) and rules heavy (PFRPG) versions. It would be cool to see more publishers doing this so people can play in the system of their choice. I know Kobold Press did 4e and PF versions for their projects as well. It will be interesting to see what the license looks like when it comes out. I hope it's more inclusive than the GSL was; I have a feeling it will be since WotC published D&D Basic for free.

 

[77IM]

It's pretty obvious that Pathfinder isn't going away; the only question is whether they can maintain their growth.

In the early '90s, TSR was a juggernaut; their novel lines alone were huge, and store shelves were full of myriad campaign settings. Then, White Wolf came along and ate their lunch. WoD was enormously popular and brought in massive numbers of new gamers, many of whom were (gasp!) female. ...But where is White Wolf today? People still play Vampire and such, but it's not such a big deal any more.

As TSR waned, other games became popular. GURPS was the new hotness at one point. It's still a thing but it hasn't taken over the RPG community despite being a "generic, universal, roleplaying system." Later, Savage Worlds (which I dearly love)/also flourished in the post-3.5 world (by which I mean, it seems that as players left 3e/3.5, many went to Savage Worlds). It's still going strong, but I don't see it unseating D&D any time soon. Rules-wise, I find 5e very similar to Savage Worlds in some ways, and that's probably no accident.

Ultimately I think there are some Pathfinder players who will drift to 5e, but I don't envision the reverse happening too often. It feels like 5e's "be all things to all people" approach will make it easier to sustain a player network and attract new blood. Pathfinder will always have diehard fans, but like GURPS and Champions before it, I think it will prove too crunch-heavy for lasting broad appeal.

 

[Tony Vargas]

You obviously have not been keeping up on the interviews MM has done about the future of D&D.

I /tried/ to listen to him throughout the playtest. I must have failed an endurance check at some point.