When asked what he was working on, WotC's Chris Perkins revealed a couple of juicy tidbits. They're not much, but they're certainly tantalizing. Initially, he said that "Our marketing team has a big reveal in the works", and followed that up separately with "Right now I'm working on the next seven years of D&D stories". What all that might mean is anybody's guess, but it sounds like there are plans for D&D stretching into the foreseeable future! Thanks to Barantor for the scoop!
7 Years of D&D Stories? And a "Big Reveal" Coming?
When asked what he was working on, WotC's Chris Perkins revealed a couple of juicy tidbits. They're not much, but they're certainly tantalizing. Initially, he said that "Our marketing team has a big reveal in the works", and followed that up separately with "Right now I'm working on the next seven years of D&D stories". What all that might mean is anybody's guess, but it sounds like there are plans for D&D stretching into the foreseeable future! Thanks to Barantor for the scoop!
Kramodlog
Naked and living in a barrel
Wanna try Fursona? http://paizo.com/products/btpy8j2r?...-Guide-to-Creating-Anthropomorphic-Characters
*wink wink*
In my view the question contains a category error. WotC doesn't have fans. It has customers.
D&D has fans. Part of the marketing trick a company like WotC has to pull off is to persuade those fans that their fandom shoud express itself by purchasing things from WotC. (A bit like sports teams persuade fans to buy merchandising.)
Did WotC fail in its attempt to turn some fans into customers? Maybe, although that cartoon may have been intended to turn some other fans into customers, and in that respect it may have worked.
Does the concept of "arrogance" have work to do here? Not really, in my view. Companies trying to sell goods aren't "arrogant" or "humble". They can be clever or make mistakes, they can succeed or fail. But to frame them as arrogant is to buy into a mindset - of the emotionally manipulated customer - which is an obstacle to clear analysis.
For clarification: it might make sense to think that a company that markets a poison as a food, believing that it can bribe or intimidate the regulator, has acted arrogantly, because it has a duty to do otherwise. But when it comes to the writing, printing and selling of D&D, no comparable duties are in play.
Kramodlog
Naked and living in a barrel
I was joking. Using the word intransigence makes very little sense in the current context.
Tony Vargas
Legend
And, I suppose Paizo /does/ have fans?
I'm focusing on sales and profits because that was what the posts I initially replied to were talking about, and that was what I wanted to talk about.
I have opinions on why many people who have, in the past, bought D&D books from WotC did not buy 4e ones; and why people whom WotC might have reasonably expected to have an interest in playing 4e turned out not to care for it. And I've expressed those views on multiple occasions in the past, including in threads that you have started or posted in.
Given [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION]'s caution upthread, I'm hesitant to go too far down this path, but I can give some simple examples:
* 4e does not emphasise world exploration in the way that classic D&D, and much of 2nd ed AD&D, does;
* 4e relies fairly heavily on metagame mechanics, which make the relationship between mechanics and fiction looser than is the case in 3E, and generalises the Gygaxian looseness around hp and saving throw (which many players of AD&D seem to have ignored) across more parts of the game - you can see this issue coming up in the discussion about bounded accuracy upthread, because while 4e's maths is pretty similar to 5e's, it's different relationship to the fiction produces very strongly worded assertions that the two are very different;
* 4e's default orientation is towards a certain type of player-driven gaming and against "illusionist" GMing - but it's player-driven default is quite different from the player-driven default of Gygaxian D&D, so it doesn't necessarily resonate with players of either Gygaxian D&D or later, 90s-style AD&D;
* 4e drops or downplays certain mechanical tropes traditional to D&D (eg spell slots for most casters) and even where it retains elements of them does not emphasise them (eg 4e wizards still memorise many spells, but this is subordinated rather than emphasised in presentation);
* I could go on but I think you get the general gist.
* 4e relies fairly heavily on metagame mechanics, which make the relationship between mechanics and fiction looser than is the case in 3E, and generalises the Gygaxian looseness around hp and saving throw (which many players of AD&D seem to have ignored) across more parts of the game - you can see this issue coming up in the discussion about bounded accuracy upthread, because while 4e's maths is pretty similar to 5e's, it's different relationship to the fiction produces very strongly worded assertions that the two are very different;
* 4e's default orientation is towards a certain type of player-driven gaming and against "illusionist" GMing - but it's player-driven default is quite different from the player-driven default of Gygaxian D&D, so it doesn't necessarily resonate with players of either Gygaxian D&D or later, 90s-style AD&D;
* 4e drops or downplays certain mechanical tropes traditional to D&D (eg spell slots for most casters) and even where it retains elements of them does not emphasise them (eg 4e wizards still memorise many spells, but this is subordinated rather than emphasised in presentation);
* I could go on but I think you get the general gist.
These mechanical features of 4e tell us little to nothing about edition wars, however. After all, there are any number of other games which have mechanical features that can be usefully compared and contrasted to those of classic D&D, 2nd ed AD&D and/or 3E (including those systems in relation to one another!) And some of those systems were published by companies who might reasonably have hoped for more uptake from people seemingly interested in buying D&D products than they actually got. (Eg my sense is that this might have been true of Trailblazer during the "edition-war period", and in the 90s might have been true of Rolemaster.) But those other systems aren't associated with edition warring.
Like the Coca-Cola company (and presumably like WotC) it has customers who see themselves as fans. It's a good trick if you can pull it off!
Maybe the relevant category should be "admirer", in the sense of people who admire the deftness displayed by a firm. In that sense, I admire Paizo - they have done a very good job at holding and extending a customer base for a product that it's inventor - WotC - apparently saw no future for.
But in that sense I also admire WotC - the production, marketing and roll-out of 5e seems to be a triumph!
But in expressing this admiration I'm not saying anything about whether or not I purchase their products. Identifying a commercial product with the commercial entity that produces it is something that marketers want us to do, but as I said upthread I think internalising the marketing is an obstacle to analysis.
Hussar
Legend
Because WOTC this time around has spent a HUGE effort getting everyone on board with 5e before doing anything. Two year playtest, constant feedback loops with questionnaires and the like, and MUCH MUCH better writing in the PHB and introducing mechanics.
Yes. But [MENTION=957]BryonD[/MENTION] is trying to draw the contrast by comparing different-level characters to the same challenge.
The ability to auto-kill an enemy is a mechanical difference, but a fairly minor one. (Eg the house rule to permit auto-killing of minions in 4e - either across the board, or if they're at least a tier below the attacker - is pretty easy.)
"Same target" is a story notion, not a mechanical/mathematical one. I've quoted [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] saying that "the similarity is when comparing same-level characters and challenges".
In 4e, if the L10 wizard re-encounters the "same target" as s/he met when L1, then the target will have been-restatted. If the re-statting is from standard to minion, then the chance to hit with a sword won't have increased - it will have decreased because of stat, feat and item gaps - it will have dropped from around 30% to around 15%.
The chance to kill will nevertheless have increased because a minion has 1 hp - so instead of an expected combat length of around 20 rounds (in which the wizard would almost certainly be killed) it will be an expected combat length of around 6 or so rounds (in which the wizard the wizard might be bloodied but would be unlikely to be killed).
That change in story outcome doesn't depend upon bounded accuracy, though - it depends upon the way hit points are assigned to monsters. The "minion" category is deliberately and overtly adopted to support a certain sort of story outcome.
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him)
What is the difference between a fan and a customer who sees himself as a fan? Why would you presume to gainsay their own self-identification?
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