The roots of 4e exposed?

Tony Vargas said:

Oops, that last one'll kill you in the RPG industry, every time.

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Understood. But that's the governing commandment of all business. The product can not suffer. Everything and everyone else can and will suffer (to varying degrees) to achieve that goal.

Maxperson said:

Think of all the different aspects that there are to world building. Then all the different ways you could share that world building. There's a staggering amount of variety that you could come up with.

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My group does this a lot actually. I find letting my players set their own anchors into my world motivates them in a way that treasure and adventure simply do not. I've been with them for a long time, so we have fewer stumbling points than a newer group might—but either way, I have a campaign setting that's the result of collaborative effort over like 10+ years at this point, and their contributions (especially to things I'm not very interested in, like geography and engineering) have been invaluable.

I think this paragraph here explains a lot from those articles.

"But few players kept up. “If you got a 3.5 Player’s Handbook and that’s the only D&D book you have and the only one you read, and then you got the fourth edition Player’s Handbook there was a gap,” Mearls said."

You can follow the evolution of 4E through the late 3.5 splats but there is a major problem with that. I threw thousands at 3.x and the minis line and 4E kind of felt like advanced D&D miniatures the RPG and it was also designed by the same people checking the credits in the minis rules books. I had 80 odd 3.x books but I missed a few and I suspect I bought more than most people. I did not get the Book of 9 Swords, Races of the Dragon, Tome of Magic or the Incarnum, Weapons of Legacy book mostly getting things like the PHB2, the FR material, most of the complete series, the mature books, Dragon+Dungeon things like that

I have around 400 D&D items on my bookcase, half of that is from the 3E era (80 odd books+ Dragon and Dungeon). Basically couldn't keep up with everything.

Zardnaar said:

I think this paragraph here explaions a lot from those articles.

"But few players kept up. “If you got a 3.5 Player’s Handbook and that’s the only D&D book you have and the only one you read, and then you got the fourth edition Player’s Handbook there was a gap,” Mearls said."

You can follow the evolution of 4E through the late 3.5 splats but there is a major problem with that. I threw thousands at 3.x and the minis line and 4E kind of felt like advanced D&D miniatures the RPG and it was also designed by the same people checking the credits in the minis rules books. I had 80 odd 3.x books but I missed a few and I suspect I bought more than most people. I did not get the Book of 9 Swords, Races of the Dragon, Tome of Magic or the Incarnum, Weapons of Legacy book mostly getting things like the PHB2, the FR material, most of the complete series, the mature books, Dragon+Dungeon things like that

I have around 400 D&D items on my bookcase, half of that is from the 3E era (80 odd books+ Dragon and Dungeon). Basically couldn't keep up with everything.

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I think the line speaks more to the reality that regardless of whether or not you spend resources on publishing, the return on effort declines. If anything I think that's the reason for 5e's slow pub schedule. It's just good sense.

Kobold Boots said:

I think the line speaks more to the reality that regardless of whether or not you spend resources on publishing, the return on effort declines. If anything I think that's the reason for 5e's slow pub schedule. It's just good sense.

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It is just maximization of ROI. If every book is snapped up because its the only one coming out this year, then you will get maximum sales vs content generation investment made. Plus the books will sell at the highest price points, since people are more eager to have that one book. Furthermore, excluding 5e from anything like DDI, which could genuinely replace most of the books for a lot of people, has an obvious purpose too. 5e, like any product when you get down to brass tacks, is making the most money it can from the least investment. They simply learned that they weren't capable of executing the true 'digital strategy' they had envisaged for 4e, so they've fallen back on "sell paper books". My fear is that in the end this will become an obsolete strategy and they won't have matured their ability in the fully digital platform realm enough to compete. At least that would be my fear if I really cared what happens to WotC D&D. OGL lives. D&D will live too.

AbdulAlhazred said:

It is just maximization of ROI. If every book is snapped up because its the only one coming out this year, then you will get maximum sales vs content generation investment made. Plus the books will sell at the highest price points, since people are more eager to have that one book. Furthermore, excluding 5e from anything like DDI, which could genuinely replace most of the books for a lot of people, has an obvious purpose too. 5e, like any product when you get down to brass tacks, is making the most money it can from the least investment. They simply learned that they weren't capable of executing the true 'digital strategy' they had envisaged for 4e, so they've fallen back on "sell paper books". My fear is that in the end this will become an obsolete strategy and they won't have matured their ability in the fully digital platform realm enough to compete. At least that would be my fear if I really cared what happens to WotC D&D. OGL lives. D&D will live too.

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Isn't DnD Beyond 5e's "DDI"?

I know I use the compendium as opposed to the books when prepping. I think the biggest difference is the subscription vs. content model but otherwise you could forego purchasing the books and be wholly reliant on DnD Beyond.

Imaro said:

Isn't DnD Beyond 5e's "DDI"?

I know I use the compendium as opposed to the books when prepping. I think the biggest difference is the subscription vs. content model but otherwise you could forego purchasing the books and be wholly reliant on DnD Beyond.

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Maybe I don't understand how it works? What I saw back when 5e debuted was not even close to Compendium, but I guess things change? I'm not sure what the 'content model' is? I mean, you pay, you get access to stuff? Presumably there's some sort of ongoing revenue stream there for WotC....

D&D Beyond is more expensive than DDI though? I think the problem was DDI monthly subscription thing was a reaction to WoW I suppose but these days the monthly subscription thing is dead for the most part its micro transactions and loot boxes or DLC.

DLC is a bit tough and go, loot boxes are cancer, micro transactions depends on what they're doing with them.

It takes 3 years to design a D&D edition, 1-2 if you're tweaking an existing one (3.5, 2E). 4E was rushed even with the PHB you could tell. Missing 5/11 classes from the 3.5 PHB did not help either so you get that DLC effect where you feel the devs hold something back that should be in the base game to sell it to you later.

4E main problem was they designed a game no one wanted to play, it was not badly designed as such. Even had DDI and the VTT worked or been available if people don't wanna play the pen and paper version they are not gonna play online either.

Kobold Boots said:

1. Industry small - market share is important.
2. Talent is important - Their best talent is likely much better than my middle performers and not making a ton more than they are.
3. Step on throat and offer best talent sugar.
4. Get rid of middle talent. They will either get better and be my new competition (that I have tons of backstory on) or they do something else with their lives.

Either way, everyone loves winning. All you need to do as a firm in any vertical is put out one product everyone loves and all is forgiven. Doing this sort of thing when your product sucks is what you need to avoid. Prior to 4e launch it would have been very wise to take down the competition and assume their top talent while getting rid of chaff. But there's no way I'd have let Monte go. Stupid move on their part. When you have iconic employees that are worth their weight in marketing and PR, you do what you have to to keep them.

Overtly, even in a situation like this one, I'd not have gotten personal or directly offended anyone due to the size of the industry. Can't control how other people take it but if I keep someone like Monte, go after someone like Mearls or Buhlmann hard and let Bill, Tess, Derek and Mary go, in favor of folks that will playtest the hell out of something for 15 an hour. I'm better off for the next product cycle at least.

Informed in business, uninformed in the RPG industry, but assuming that one product cycle can kill a brand so I'm not looking at the long game much. Keep quality employees, put a muzzle on the social media without making sure that there's a unified message behind everything and put out the best product.

KB

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I think something like half the PF players have tickled back to 5E, if WoTC had killed Paizo via a lawsuit they would piss off their players even more. They would not magically go and play 4E they would either stick with 3.5 or just stop playing.

They would not have been their to playtest 5E, neither would the good will.

So odds are they would have no D&D, 4E would have still tanked, Paizo might not exist, and I suspect a good chunk of the 200k+ playtesters would not have been active.

They did the best thing they could- make something better than 4E and Pathfinder, seems to have paid off. I'm not a Paizo die hard, dont even use their stuff anymore but I went with them up to a point because of the good will and quality of Dungeon over the stupid things WoTC were doing. My group and 2 of my players other groups all bailed so they lost around a dozen players there and that seemed to be replicated across the nation and the USA. Playing 4E was not much of an option there were virtually no DMs for it after 2009.I'm sure they existed somewhere but locally and at the university RPG club they were gone.

If Paizo was not there I would have continued my house rule of 3.5 to make it play more like AD&D, the OSR stuff would still exist so if I burned out on 3.x still I would play 2E or OSR stuff now. My D&D would be ACKs, 2E and C&C. If they got rid of the OSR 3.5 and TSR D&D would still exist.

For mass market penetration 4E was not it, you need a simpler game for the casuals who are not going to put up with hour long battles and the complexity of 4E PC's (some wargamers might casuals no). 5E may not be it either but its doing better than any of the other D&Ds since the early 80's at least.

Ted Serious said:

Pathfinder 2 is still taking shape. It seems truer to the direction D&D was going than 4e was.

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I have friends that say 4e is an interesting and fun game. But it's NOT D&D.

Thanks for posting the article. I have to agree that 4th killed too many "scared cows" for me.