D&D 5E Why I Think D&DN is In Trouble

[Zardnaar]

The following are the main reasons I think D&DN is going to be in trouble.

1. Lack of online excitement/hype 6 months out from release. Ok some people are looking forward to it of course but I am comparing it to the launch of 3rd and 4th ed here. Apathy or hatred also seems to be a common online opinion expressed across numerous forums.

2. A fragmented player base. 4E sold well on launch at least and that was based on the strength of the D&D brand and the good will 3rd ed had built up I suppose along with the desire for something new. Conditions are very different heading into 2014 compared to 2008. Ten years ago if you asked someone what D&D they were playing 90%+ it was 3rd ed and in effect the player base was unified. Now you have to ask what edition they play and it could be 3.5, 4E, Pathfinder, D&DN or one of 20+ clones.

3. Paizo. Lisa, Eric and an alumni of ex WoTC/TSR era staffers have done well with Pathfinder. We know PF outsold 4E by 2011 at the latest (2010 by some reports) and that they were getting 12.4 million a year in 2012 with 30% growth rate. If they keep that up they will be coming close to 20 million a year in 2014 and in an average year D&D is worth about 25-30 million according to Ryan Dancey. DDI still make around 6 million a year so most of the gaming dollars from 3.5 era D&D is accounted for between PF and DDI. Paizo is producing a similar amount of content as the old TSR.

4. Attack of the Clones. Since 2008 there has been an OSR revival. There is no OSR Pathfinder as people are playing around 20+ clones and retro games but the major ones seem to be Dungeon Crawl Classics and Castles and Crusades. Gygax magazine under a new TSR has been launched as well and it out sold Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle on rpgnow.com. The big selling PDFs on D&Dclassics.com are all TSR era adventures. It is hard to say how big the OSR community is but they are producing more content than Paizo and someone is buying the adventures.

5. Lack of big name designers. A popular designers name will sell copies of an RPG. Gygax back in the day, Monte Cook and Numenera these days. D&DN lacks a big name like Gygax, Mentzer, Cook (either one) who have designed a popular edition of D&D. Mearls seems a nice guy but 4E was not his baby and his 4E work by most accounts was lack lustre. Keep on the Shadowfell seems to be infamous for being bad.

6. D&DN lacks a clear focus and target audience. D&D for everyone seems to be a dubious design goal. Ditching the goals of 4E seems to be a good way to annoy your current audience (see 2008 for how that goes down) and it retains to many 4Eisms to appeal to a vast majority IMHO of the OSR and 3.x crowds. Damage on a miss, reskinned 4E daily powers as spells, all classes having the same attack proficiency probably will not appeal to those who like OSR or 3.x. One could argue about real vancian magic etc but if you are playing OSR or 3.x obviously it is not a deal breaker for you.

7. A new generation of neo grognards are born. The original grognards are starting to play new clones like DCC, Castles and Crusades, ACKs etc even though they use modern mechanics and the neo grognards who rejected 4E have Pathfinder and the OGL to keep them happy. An unknown amount of 4E players will reject D&DN out right and while it helps having new product come out the original grognards went without official support for almost 2 decades. More than a few 4E posters have been vocal in their dislike for D&DN so if D&DN doesn't appeal to 3rd or 4th ed players in large numbers it is doomed.

8. Forum numbers on wizards.com forums are way down it seems. The 4E forums are very quiet, the FR forums are almost a ghost town. Kind of related to a lack of internet buzz I suppose but forum activity does over lap with how well a D&D edition is received. See the online hatred directed it 4E and how it over flowed into real life. You do not need a majority of gamers on your forums but it probably helps to have an active and vocal community dedicated to your game. In 3rd ed we used to have FR authors posting on the WoTC forums which had a dedicated novels section.

9. Loaded and leading survey questions. A lot of the survey questions were not really designed to get genuine feedback and they avoided some important questions all together IMHO. Several things were presented as fiat accomplice. The 2nd packet (the one with the Sorcerer and Warlock) seemed to be the most popular one on the WoTC forums and they are making some rather large assumptions about bounded accuracy for example and D&DN monsters suck due to BA. The warlord class is supposed to be a fighter subclass now, perhaps they should have asked should the class exist as a full class. Even New Coke tested well and that turned out to be a disaster for coke, although the reintroduction of classic coke was a PR win.

10. Lack of focus in the play test packets. Put bluntly the play test was all over the place. Leaves the impression it was really a PR stunt. Compared to the Pathfinder playtest you had a good idea what you were getting. Monster math was borked, I have doubts about some of the other concepts such as saves as well. With the numbers being wonky in both 3.0 and 4E and everything WoTC has done when they have started from scratch I have severe doubts about D&DN before it is even released. Might just wait for the inevitable .5 or essentials math fix to make the game semi playable.

 

[Halivar]

Lack of focus in the play test packets. Put bluntly the play test was all over the place. Leaves the impression it was really a PR stunt. Compared to the Pathfinder playtest you had a good idea what you were getting.

I don't even know what this means. What does this mean? What, specifically, was more "focused" about the PF playtest? What does "focus" even mean in this context?

 

[Zardnaar]

I don't even know what this means. What does this mean? What, specifically, was more "focused" about the PF playtest? What does "focus" even mean in this context?

Each play test packet was often very different from the previous one. Makes it hard to guess what the fina version of D&DN is actually going to look like and it it is worth looking at or not.

 

[Halivar]

Each play test packet was often very different from the previous one. Makes it hard to guess what the fina version of D&DN is actually going to look like and it it is worth looking at or not.

Isn't an open playtest exactly the time to be trying different things and seeing how people like them? The playtest is not meant to be informational, or to help 3PP design adventures. The playtest, in this case, wasn't even a beta; it was part of the design process. Whereas the PF design process started with a ruleset that was already complete. I don't think you can really compare the two, or draw inferences on the state of the game that will be published from it.

 

[Celebrim]

D&DN has been in trouble for a lot longer than this.

I said in like March of last year that the product might not even see the light of day, and if it does, it probably will only be in a close out sell for the brand. It's vaporware. It's the 'Duke Nuke'em' of PnP RPGs. Even if it ever does come out, by the time it does no one will care.

D&D as a brand is dead. They killed it. They designed 4E around the twin goals of appealing to people who didn't like D&D (sacred cows must be slain!) and in not being compatible with their prior work (to kill the OGL). I have no idea what they are designing 5E around, but the point is it's too late for that. It's like trying to cast brand necromancy at this point. They fragmented their base, and lost the talent from their company. They created competitors for themselves that were better at creating content than they were. They simply lost their market - alienating it, offending it, and dismissing it. It's like they told their customers to "get lost", and well, they did. They acted like we needed them instead of the other way around.

Fortunately, the OGL was designed exactly for this situation by people who actually liked the game.

Now all the Wizard's horses and all the Wizard's men aren't going to be able to put the brand back together again no matter what they say or do. What's done is done. Nobody _needs_ what they've got to sell. They'll sell a few copies to people who _want_ it, but no one is going to open up a 5E book and say, "Yeah, I _need_ this. This is what my table is missing." The potential demand just isn't out there. The game will go on without them, but it's not likely to be called 'D&D'. At this point, I'm not even sure the brand name has a lot of value. How many kids these days are going to have nostalgia for something called 'Dungeons and Dragons'. When is the last really great D&D branded video game? Does anyone even remember the cartoon? For that matter, what's the last really great WotC adventure, of the sort that 25 or 30 years from now we'll say, "That's a classic. Let's do that again!"

 

[DEFCON 1]

D&D as a brand is dead. They killed it. They designed 4E around the twin goals of appealing to people who didn't like D&D (sacred cows must be slain!) and in not being compatible with their prior work (to kill the OGL). I have no idea what they are designing 5E around, but the point is it's too late for that. It's like trying to cast brand necromancy at this point. They fragmented their base, and lost the talent from their company. They created competitors for themselves that were better at creating content than they were. They simply lost their market - alienating it, offending it, and dismissing it. It's like they told their customers to "get lost", and well, they did. They acted like we needed them instead of the other way around.

I think someone needs to go to PAX or GenCon and see just how many people sit down at the dozens of tables running D&D games continuously all weekend to discover just how out of touch they are.

Cause I gotta tell ya... the last three years I've volunteered to DM for WotC at PAX East... it hasn't been any OGL, OSR or Pathfinder game that has filled the two dozen tables of roleplaying for 14 hours a day. It's been D&D.

D&D might be dead in your mind, Celebrim... but reality is quite different.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Isn't an open playtest exactly the time to be trying different things and seeing how people like them? The playtest is not meant to be informational, or to help 3PP design adventures. The playtest, in this case, wasn't even a beta; it was part of the design process. Whereas the PF design process started with a ruleset that was already complete. I don't think you can really compare the two, or draw inferences on the state of the game that will be published from it.

Proper playtesting would have few changes per document. As an example, document N might have saving throws a class is good at have advantage (Fighters get advantage on Constitution saves and wizards get advantage on Wisdom saves) while document N +1 might use a "proficiency" bonus instead, and WotC would then ask which one worked better.

That's the kind of "small" changes a proper playtest would have. Needless to say, that would take a long time, and WotC can't go forever without selling material, so that didn't happen.

The open playtest should have been a beta. It wasn't, because WotC had very little "vision" of what they wanted D&D to be, except to make money by "feeling like D&D".

I think someone needs to go to PAX or GenCon and see just how many people sit down at the dozens of tables running D&D games continuously all weekend to discover just how out of touch they are.

Cause I gotta tell ya... the last three years I've volunteered to DM for WotC at PAX East... it hasn't been any OGL, OSR or Pathfinder game that has filled the two dozen tables of roleplaying for 14 hours a day. It's been D&D.

That's not a good example. People who go to Cons are more passionate than most, and are willing to put money into traveling a long distance, renting motel rooms, dealing with convention hassle, etc. That's not most fans. Most fans won't even buy a Player's Handbook. They'll just use the DM's copy (or offline Character Builder or borrow the DM's DDI account). They'll happily play Fate or Warhammer or [insert game here] that isn't D&D if it appeals to them.

 

[Halivar]

The open playtest should have been a beta. It wasn't, because WotC had very little "vision" of what they wanted D&D to be, except to make money by "feeling like D&D".

Or, alternatively, maybe their vision was "let's see what mechanics people like the best." Like I said, it wasn't a beta play-test, it was a design play-test. In fact, they made quite clear with the first play-test that it was still in the design phase. You propose they only let you see the rules after they've decided, for themselves, what mechanics ought to be used. They took that approach with 4E and decided to take a different road this time.

 

[delericho]

The relative apathy surrounding 5e is of some concern. I think I would prefer a 4e-style Edition War (though YMMV, obviously )

Still, I'm actually prett optimistic about 5e. If nothing else, I'm sure there will be some things we can steal for our games of choice.

Besides, it's really too late for WotC to do anything about it now - especially with a Summer 2014 release date. So, let's see how it goes.

 

[DaveMage]

The relative apathy surrounding 5e is of some concern. I think I would prefer a 4e-style Edition War (though YMMV, obviously )

I really don't think there will be much of an edition war this time. There will certainly be some 4E fans that are disappointed, but I don't think there will be the vitriol that surrounded the last edition change. Fans of 0e-3.x have already moved on (or simply continued to play their edition of choice), so what D&D does might be of passing interest, but I doubt the passion will be there to defend one's edition of choice as there has been in the past.