MichaelSomething
Legend
Isn't Mirolite D20 the ideal intro game? It's as simple as possible and its free! What more could you want?
No 5e threads for now, please
- Thread starter Piratecat
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Fifth Element
Legend
For it to be available in book and toy stores?
Mustrum_Ridcully
Legend
I think the appeal is mostly to customers that play a different system than the current one. But I am not sure it will really work as great.
Look at the WotC release schedule for 4E. This month, we get
- Eberron Campaign Guide
- Divine Power
- Seekers of the Ashen Crown
- Minis.
If we had a 3 tiered system, the 3 books would need splitting among 3 game systems.
The ECG might support all 3 game systems. It's mostly fluff, I suppose. But if there is crunch, this will either increase the cost (bigger book) or reduce the content (more crunch, ness fluff), and might not be finished yet, because it requires twice or three times the design work. Or it could still just be a 4E product.
Divine Power could instead be "Skills & Powers for AD&D Revised".
Seekers of the Ashen Crown is a 4E adventure now? Should it also be a three-stat book? Should the AD&D and 3E version come out next month or next month after?
The thing usable across all editions are the Minis. Of course, that's true already.
Where is WotC getting more people to get their books? It seems to me they are just having a more diverse group of people buying their products. But an AD&D might not be interested in an AD&D Eberron at all, and is definitely not interested in a 4E version of it.
And for the customer themselves - you now pay either for a lot of stuff you don't want (three-stat books)), or you do have a lot less to pick from. Unless you are one of the few guys that plays both two or three editions of D&D in parallel.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
*Or* one of those who, like me, wants to steal from one to add to the other; which is why for this to work the systems need to be at least vaguely forward-backward compatible...much more so than 1-2-3-4e are now.
If I'm running Classic and some awesome adventure comes out for Epic Heroes, I'll buy it *if* the conversion to Classic is either dirt simple or is done for me. But if the conversion is going to represent as much work as writing my own adventure, I might as well write my own.
Lanefan
WayneLigon
Adventurer
Ooh. Something along the lines of 'Betrayal At House on the Hill' might be cool. A tower map that changes every time (and since it's a wizard's tower, maybe during play as well). Nice chunky components like treasure chests. A 'quest book' with multiple branching paths to determine what you're looking for and what or who your opponent is. And an expansion of the various characters, modified maybe by personality cards or something.
Yep- that sums it up pretty nicely. The risk of cannibalizing your own profits and confusing the consumer is too great a risk compared to the questionable payoff of having several D&D systems on the market simultaneously.
If they were to do it, though, the only way I could see it working would be in distinctive packaging- like having a fat box containing a set of digest-sized softcover revised & re-edited AD&D rulebooks with modules on CD-ROM, ditto a different box for 2Ed and likewise for 3.5- and for a limited time only. That would minimize confusion, and would eliminate the need to commit to having staff for each line for a long period of time.
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I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
If you supported them through in-house development and book publishing, absolutely.
If you supported them online, with crowdsourced development, and Print on Demand?
There are ways to draw up treaties for the edition wars, they would just require a transformation of the way D&D has been supported. This transformation is probably a pretty smart idea in general, though not without its own risks.
The market is the market: too many editions- regardless of form- and you'll cannibalize your profits in some way.
Mustrum_Ridcully
Legend
"Crowdsourced" development? You mean they don't do anything to support the game, they just put out what they already have, but others can create new supplements?
That might be cutting down their own profits. Essentially, a gamer gets a choice between buying a WotC product for a supported product line or buy a non-WotC product for a "crowsourced" product line. He has a choice he didn't have before. Maybe he would never buy a WotC product since he doesn't like the supported product line. But some would if they had no choice.
The OGL also had the idea that WotC would still sell the core books to everyone, even if they relied on 3PP. The assumption was that this would make them the most money. But is this still true when we are talking old-edition PDFs, that are sold at a lower price point and many people don't even need anymore, at the same time cutting into your sale of the higher value current product line core books sales?
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Assuming everyone who is playing a 1e ruleset would be playing a 5e ruleset if 1e was unavailable, yes.
Assuming everyone who is playing a 1e ruleset would be playing OSRIC instead, no.
The truth probably isn't so binary, but I'm not sure cannibalism is a given, at least any more than OSRIC and Pathfinder and Castles & Crusades and WHFRP and blah blah blah already hurt the market.
You'd still find the vast majority under the newest edition, probably, and letting the kids tinker around with earlier editions in your backyard makes sure you keep them where you can still sell them stuff, rather than going off on their own in some dangerous back alley.
People want WotC to support the game they love. Of course, "the game they love" is always their own home games.
My view was more like a Flat Earth Publishing model. Flat Earth Publishing is in the college textbook industry. They don't make anything they publish in-house. What they do is rely on individual professors to find the stuff the professors like, and then they package it together for that specific course and professor, selling the individualized packets in multiple forms (mp3's, for instance).
In this wild theory of an industry, WotC becomes the publisher, but less the designer. They rely on individual DMs to find the stuff the DMs like, and then package it together for that spcific group and DM, selling the packets as PDF's, as PoD books, as customized campaign websites, whatever.
So the idea is that WotC isn't really creating much in-house content anymore.
Rather, they rely on D&D's extensive network of homebrewers, tinkerers, and hobbyists to do most of the design. These gamers submit stuff to WotC to be published, and whenever someone pays for a publication of that gamer's material, that gamer maybe gets a small cut of the profits.
The submitted material is evaluated based on the users ranking and commenting on them (other hobbyists and creators). The best stuff rises to the surface, and gets published more often. Maybe WotC has a small staff of experts (say, a team of 5 designers) who comb over the best submitted stuff. Maybe they have an in-hosue team of adventure writers and they also sell subscriptions. Maybe. But even that is probably superfluous.
How much more profit do you think WotC would make if they could eliminate 60% of their staff, and only pay for work that was effectively already selling?
I mean, these are basically just wild ideas, but I don't forsee profitability being a problem under this wild idea.
There are probably other problems, not the least of which is that making this wild idea a reality would require a pretty huge change in the habits of the market and the industry -- that's a pretty significant challenge. The OGL was never really embraced by WotC, but I'm under the impression that 3e was wildly successful! The OGL might not've helped that, but it certainly didn't hurt it (only the accountants with the numbers from 3e under OGL and 4e under nothing-then-GSL can say for sure if it had any effect for sure, but it certainly didn't seem to be a negative one).
There's people out there buying 3e stuff (Pathfinder) whether or not WotC wants them to be. If at all possible, they should still be buying 3e stuff from WotC. That hasn't been possible in a world where you need to publish books to have a game system, but that's not the only way to have a game, and if WotC doesn't realize that, perhaps some other company will sooner or later...
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