No 5e threads for now, please

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Are you serious? How long has this been the case?

Lan-"I paid real money for that adventure"-efan

Ahahaha!

Oh wait, so did I.

 

[Starfox]

It's probably a valid topic of conversation. Unfortunately, it's also a valid topic of conversation that really annoys us. So let's avoid any 5e threads for the time being.

Thanks!

Just an impertinent question: Who are "us"?

 

[Maxboy]

i assume "Us" means the Mods

 

[Maggan]

Are you serious? How long has this been the case?

Since 04/28/2009, according to the news item at the D&D website. A smart move by WotC, IMO. And I paid for the module as well.

/M

 

[Peraion Graufalke]

Are you serious? How long has this been the case?

Lan-"I paid real money for that adventure"-efan

Since the end of April; I got mine on the 29th. (I also paid money for it, btw.)

EDIT: Ninja'd by Maggan. I should've refreshed the page before replying. *blush*

 

[I'm A Banana]

And the Character Builder, which allows the creation of PCs up to level 3. With that given away for free, it sure feels as if WotC is lowering the threshold to entry for D&D4e.

Heck yeah! This is pretty smart for WotC, I think: the first taste is free. If someone had to pay for these products, even a smaller price, they'd be less useful as that first toe in the water.

But giving it away certainly means that the only thing limiting you from trying out D&D 4e are all those other barriers to entry (Biggest One: Arranging six people's schedules to meet once a week on a regular basis, and keeping it that way).

And if the competing product is produced in-house, that means that you're not only taking some potential sales away from your lead product (including some would-be new gamers), you're diverting production resources away from that lead product to produce the other one. IOW, cannibalism.

Part of my scheme was that WotC wouldn't be producing much in-house: crowdsourcing could probably work fairly well for D&D design and development. Half the staff for twice the demand sounds pretty good to me.

The competition from older editions already exists (OSRIC and Pathfinder are what I mentioned). The market is already fragmented (and each edition only increases the fragmenting). The only difference now is that WotC isn't getting money from people following those out-of-print lines. It's possible to support an edition of D&D without an extensive and expensive in-house development staff, because there's not a huge gap between the paid designer and the hobbyist in this industry, at least in terms of game design quality.

[sblock]
So the flow of information kind of looks like this, theoretically:

1. 1e D&D Fan makes a really keen 1e D&D adventure!
2. 1e D&D Fan posts his really keen adventure to the Official D&D Website
3. Other users see his stuff online, for free (or maybe for a monthly fee; or maybe that 1e D&D fan had a monthly fee as a "supporter," and most people get it for free, or whatever). Possibly they use it in their own games. So far, WotC hasn't paid out anything (and, in fact, may have already made money), but development and design work is already completed.
4. A bunch of other 1e fans see the adventure, and comment on it, and rank it. Seems like they think it is pretty awesome! It gets 4/5 +1 Maces! The comments left say things like "Gygaxian brilliance!" and "OMG Flumphs have never been so cool!" One of D&D's own designers was all "I want to have your babies!"
5. Some 1e DM sees the adventure. She thinks it is keen, and wants to use it! Woo! But she also doesn't like using a laptop at the table (she is Old School, after all), so she gives WotC $30 to print it out and send it to her.
6. WotC now has $30 for basically just sitting there. Some of this goes to pay the costs of PoD. Some of this goes to pay the costs of setting this thing up in the first place. Some of it goes to that 1e D&D Fan who made the adventure in the first place. Maybe some of it goes to the current D&D design team, which consists of 4 people who know various points of all editions, and who basically get paid to boink around in the slush pile and critique peoples' work (and, of course, are free to submit their own). Maybe they make a "traditional" book for one of the editions once every three months or so. Making the material better ultimately makes WotC more wealthy, since high quality yields higher demand.

[/sblock]

WotC would not be competing with themselves if they brought the other editions home to roost, because they would not be developing much in the way of new material themselves -- they'd get the new material for brand spankin' free, and they'd get paid whenever anyone printed out ANYTHING from their website, no matter the edition.

Here, the each version of D&D is a complete game that would cost about the same to produce and purchase, but with differing design criteria...all with essentially the same name.

Except it wouldn't cost nearly the same to produce, because WotC doesn't need to produce much of anything (aside from infrastructure). New content would, in fact, be cheaper to produce, since 95% of the work would be done by fans, for free.

Again, look at how Flat Earth Publishing supports multiple different kinds of classes and multiple professors. Or, heck, how Wikipedia gets stuff with a higher quality and relevancy than any set of Encyclopedia Brittanica, without paying anyone one red cent (aside, of course, from the infrastructure). WotC and the gaming industry couldn't follow any of those models verbatim, but it could certainly exploit the similarities where they exist (in the case of the latter, people who do good work for no pay; in the case of the former, supporting essentially one unique publishing opportunity per customer).

If there truly was a large demand for old-school gaming, supply and demand dictates that another company will produce old-school style games and become successful because they tapped into such a demand.

OSRIC. Pathfinder. Castles & Crusades. Hell, in a certain light, GURPS and RIFTS and the Storyteller System, and Buffy!

There's plenty of demand out there for stuff that WotC isn't making. Some of it even makes a tidy profit! WotC can certainly plug into a large portion of that, though they'd need to explore nontraditional options.

 

[Hussar]

But giving it away certainly means that the only thing limiting you from trying out D&D 4e are all those other barriers to entry (Biggest One: Arranging six people's schedules to meet once a week on a regular basis, and keeping it that way).

And this is one place where I cannot fathom WOTC's business plan. The only way around the physical restraints of gaming is a virtual tabletop. I cannot understand why they aren't pushing this model as a way for people to game when they want, from the comfort of their own house. It continues to baffle me.

But, that's my own personal drum to bang and is pretty off topic.

 

[I'm A Banana]

And this is one place where I cannot fathom WOTC's business plan. The only way around the physical restraints of gaming is a virtual tabletop. I cannot understand why they aren't pushing this model as a way for people to game when they want, from the comfort of their own house. It continues to baffle me.

Well, they are, but it's a lower priority right now, given what the fans have said they want from the DDI. They'll almost certainly get to it by 5e, which brings up the potential of 5e being primarily an online edition. Even if they don't do anything revolutionary, 5e could, because of simple technology changes, end up being played more by people on VTTs than with good ol' fashioned groups, so their money might be more in subscriptions and less in book sales.

Which would certainly be a subject bound to attract a lot of vitriol: a thread entitled: "5e is going to be a videogame!!!" probably wouldn't get a lot of constructive conversation.

But, heck, even VTT's aren't flawless. I have constant trouble getting a playable group in my MapTools games. Coordinating 6 people's schedules is hard -- unless you're in high school/college and are just "hanging out" anyway since everyone has very similar schedules. It probably remains D&D's biggest barrier to entry, and it isn't a small one. It limits the market to a very small group of people who can actually pull that off once in a whlie.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The biggest advantage of VTTs is that you don't need to be physically in the same place, which allows you to play with people that have long since moved away, or entirely new people.

But nothing can fix the scheduling until we get VTTARDISes.

 

[Hussar]

I find that a large enough player base fixes the scheduling issues, so long as you are willing to play with new people. If you insist on playing with friends, then scheduling is going to be exactly the same issue as FtF gaming.

But, with a large enough online population, odds are you are going to be able to find a stable group at a particular time that also share your play tastes. It can be a real trial though, as I can personally attest. I went through dozens of players before my current group finally solidified.