A road not taken: What if there had been no 4E

[Minicol]

Before painting themselves in a corner like you describe, they could have avoided some of it by putting out less books, and by increasing their quality and usefulness, as in more playtesting and balancing.

A lot of what was written inside the late books was filler. They have good authors, but at some point, it seems like the books lost a lot of their originality. Maybe it was a too tight editing schedule, or maybe writer burnout ?

Also, it is all nice and good to have 20 + player supplements. but when do we game ? Where were the adventures ? They were few and far between, and the quality was not always stellar. Like having a great car engine and no fuel.

They chose the fast road by focusing on the player segment, and possibly there was no long-term way out at that point.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Hmm...I think their ridiculous publishing pace shortened 3E's lifespan for sure. As to what else they could have published?

New books of monsters never hurt. Until the PC spellcasters turn into them.
A book dedicated to each major plane perhaps. Certainly could have done the good aligned planes like there were Fiendish Codexes, at least.
New campaign setting(s), more adventure paths for the multitude of existing campaign settings they had.
Some Fluff books. Not too many mechanical rules, but a nice decriptive book to give you all the ins and outs of a race or a major city (like the city of brass, or Elirhondas, or Sigil...guess that's been done). I liked what little examples of Gol-Kaa were offered in Races of Stone and how the most common phrases so well reflected the Goliaths' outlook, it'd be cool if they gave enough entries to actually form some basic sentences in the language.
Tome of Battle was almost begging for a book filled with new maneuver choices and prestige classes. Similarly, a new subsystem for the "scoundrels" would be cool. Complete Scoundrel added skill tricks to sort of help with it, but the fact of the matter was...it wasn't only the full BAB classes feeling useless next to the high level casters. Rogues needed some flashy toys, too.
How about a 3.5 Epic Level Handbook that actually tried to make high level games EASIER to manage, and LESS broken? *points a finger at Epic Spellcasting rules. Yes, that finger*
Maybe a nice, comprehensive book about running a gestalt game. And yes, I really do think you could fill up at least a small book on that topic alone.
I'm starting to think it's impossible and thus don't fault them for not trying, but a book devoted to running mass combat would be awesome.
A book dedicated to running a "low magic" game in the various ways that could be taken. Basically a book of houserules, like UA.
They could have developed more video/computer games based on D&D 3E. I loved Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, and those were more 2E! I really don't get why they couldn't make more games like that while 3E was out. You have the engine, that's the "hard" part. Beyond that, you just need some unique characters and a plot, like any adventure path.

I seriously doubt some of these ideas would sell. Then again, I'm shocked some of the stuff thy actually published sold. So, meh.

 

[Echohawk]

I have been struck by the sheer number of Wizards of the Coast hardcover books that were published. I mean, there's got to be close to a hundred, if we include campaign settings and uber-adventures, maybe more (does anyone know off hand?).

Extremely close to a hundred, actually. Exactly one hundred and one WotC hardcovers span 3.X D&D:
[sblock]
1. Player's Handbook
2. Monster Manual
3. Psionics Handbook
4. Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting
5. Manual of the Planes
6. Oriental Adventures
7. Deities and Demigods
8. Faiths and Pantheons
9. Epic Level Handbook
10. Monster Manual II
11. Book of Vile Darkness
12. Savage Species
13. Arms and Equipment Guide
14. Races of Faerûn
15. Fiend Folio
16. Unapproachable East
17. Ghostwalk
18. Dungeon Master's Guide v.3.5
19. Monster Manual v.3.5
20. Player's Handbook v.3.5
21. Dragonlance Campaign Setting
22. Miniatures Handbook
23. Book of Exalted Deeds
24. Underdark
25. Draconomicon: The Book of Dragons
26. Complete Warrior
27. Unearthed Arcana
28. Player's Guide to Faerûn
29. Expanded Psionics Handbook
30. Complete Divine
31. Eberron Campaign Setting
32. Planar Handbook
33. Serpent Kingdoms
34. Races of Stone
35. Frostburn: Mastering the Perils of Ice and Snow
36. Monster Manual III
37. Libris Mortis: The Book of Undead
38. Shining South
39. Complete Arcane
40. Sharn: City of Towers
41. Races of Destiny
42. Complete Adventurer
43. Lost Empires of Faerûn
44. Races of the Wild
45. Sandstorm: Mastering the Perils of Fire and Sand
46. Lords of Madness: The Book of Aberrations
47. Races of Eberron
48. Champions of Ruin
49. Heroes of Battle
50. City of Splendors: Waterdeep
51. Dungeon Master's Guide II
52. Five Nations
53. Weapons of Legacy
54. Explorer's Handbook
55. Stormwrack: Mastering the Perils of Wind and Wave
56. Magic of Incarnum
57. Heroes of Horror
58. Magic of Eberron
59. Champions of Valor
60. Spell Compendium
61. Player's Guide to Eberron
62. Races of the Dragon
63. Power of Faerûn
64. Tome of Magic
65. Complete Psionic
66. Player's Handbook II
67. Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss
68. Mysteries of the Moonsea
69. Secrets of Xen'drik
70. Monster Manual IV
71. Dragons of Faerûn
72. Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords
73. Dragon Magic
74. Faiths of Eberron
75. Complete Mage
76. Expedition to Castle Ravenloft
77. Cityscape: An Essential Guide to Urban Adventuring
78. Dragonmarked
79. Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells
80. Complete Scoundrel
81. Dungeonscape
82. Secrets of Sarlona
83. Magic Item Compendium
84. Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave
85. Expedition to the Demonweb Pits
86. Complete Champion
87. Drow of the Underdark
88. Forge of War
89. Expedition to Undermountain
90. Shadowdale: The Scouring of the Land
91. Monster Manual V
92. Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk
93. Exemplars of Evil: Deadly Foes to Vex Your Heroes
94. Grand History of the Realms
95. Dragons of Eberron
96. Rules Compendium
97. Dungeon Survival Guide
98. Anauroch: The Empire of the Shade
99. Elder Evils
100. City of Stormreach
101. An Adventurer's Guide to Eberron
[/sblock]

 

[Maggan]

Extremely close to a hundred, actually. Exactly one hundred and one WotC hardcovers span 3.X D&D:

I counted mine and got to 102. Checking, it seems you missed the 3.0 DMG.

/M

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Before painting themselves in a corner like you describe, they could have avoided some of it by putting out less books, and by increasing their quality and usefulness, as in more playtesting and balancing.

You can't put out less books and survive. It simply doesn't work. Higher quality would not have sold more copies. Or at least, not enough more copies to even show up as a statistic.

It just doesn't work mathematically. Say you have 20 employees in R&D, plus managers, artists, IT people, HR, office space, power, internet, and all the other things that come with running a decent size business. You need X dollars a month in order to keep paying all of those people. And they aren't cheap.

Before I begin this, I want to say all these numbers are made up. I don't have any inside knowledge and no real numbers have been released. I'm going off of estimates I've seen tossed around on the internet(In some of which there were WOTC people throwing around some estimated numbers).

I'm going to guess that it is on the magnitude of requiring a good 25,000 books a month to be sold to keep going. D&D is a rather niche market. If estimates are to be believed, near the end of 3e, the number of people playing D&D was down to 200,000 worldwide. If you do the math on that one, it requires an eighth of the entire D&D population to buy a book from you every month in order to survive. From some other estimates I've heard thrown around, 50,000 books sold in the opening month of a product is fairly good sales for a book. Lesser books sell only 20k-30k copies. Core books sell closer to 100k-150k.

Now, a large number of people aren't going to have enough money or desire to buy a book every month. Certainly a eighth of the entire population of players aren't going to buy old books every month. Which means you need at least one NEW product that a significant amount of people want to buy every month in order to keep going.

Also, it is all nice and good to have 20 + player supplements. but when do we game ? Where were the adventures ? They were few and far between, and the quality was not always stellar. Like having a great car engine and no fuel.

Of course, once again my numbers are pure guesses. But If they are anywhere close to correct, this is why adventures were not the primary focus of WOTC. Keep in mind that the average group has 5 players and a DM. If there are 200,000 people worldwide playing D&D, 33,333 of them are DMs. If we assume the same ratio of total population to sales, then good selling adventure sells 8333 copies. We can even round up to 10k. Significantly below what even a poor selling supplement book sells. And well below what the company needs to sell each month to survive.

The only real way to continue to run the company by focusing on adventures would be to fire almost everyone in R&D until there is maybe 1 or 2 people working there. Then to accept that D&D as a product line will be reduced to 1 adventure every 2 months or something, that it'll make 1/15 of the sales and profit that it makes when they release a core book and leave it at that. But, any publicly traded company who says "We plan on making 1/15th of the profits we did last year" will be bankrupt in no time.

It's just not feasible.

Realistically, they could have kept 3e going maybe 2 or 3 more years. They'd have to dig deep to find books on topics that people would still buy. Since, you are exactly right. Everyone owned 20+ player supplements. No one wanted any more. I'm guessing the sales were slipping on each and every 3e book to come out. By the end of the 3rd year, the combination of the weight of all the released books and the small number of people the books even appealed to would have driven sales below the point that they could sustain the company.

 

[Mircoles]

I'd be playing Gurps or Savage Worlds. Cuz 3.xe has some serious problems,some of which have been there since the 1e days.

The d20 darkage inspired by the OGL nearly pushed me out of the hobby for good. So, I'm quite happy to see it go.

4e did for D&D whats been needed since 1e, a complete redesign from the ground up.

 

[Derulbaskul]

They could have done the DDI and Character Builder for 3ed. With all the options that were published for it just by Wizards it would have been useful and I imagine successful.

I think this is the key.

If WotC had built something as robust and easy/fun to use as the character builder and monster builder that we now have for 4E I doubt that there would have been much of a clamour for a new edition.

 

[Echohawk]

I counted mine and got to 102. Checking, it seems you missed the 3.0 DMG.

You are quite right

As a penance, here's a graph I whipped up showing the total number of D&D products per year since 1974, broken down into hardcovers, softcover (included stapled adventures), boxed sets and other (character sheets, screens, tiles, maps, etc.).

 

[Vigilance]

In my recent search to fill in my RPG collection from the last five years of 3.5 products that I missed, I have been struck by the sheer number of Wizards of the Coast hardcover books that were published. I mean, there's got to be close to a hundred, if we include campaign settings and uber-adventures, maybe more (does anyone know off hand?). It got me thinking: Let's say Wizards didn't "reboot" Dungeons & Dragons with 4E...what could they have done? Or to be more specific, what could they have possibly published and continued making money? Profitability is key as I'm sure we can all come up with books we would have liked to see, but most of our ideas are probably rather particular and wouldn't have made WotC enough to even bother in the first place.

This is something I've thought about a lot, especially given people's reaction to 4e, which I will characterize as divisive.

My answer is almost nothing.

Wizards had aggressively supported 3e, even to the point of a "mid-edition course correction" with 3.5e. Of all the changes 3.5 wrought, one of them was a serious change in how the game was supported. Soft covers almost completely went away and the rest of their production values were also raised.

Near the end of 3.5's life cycle, Wizards did a lot of creative things to try and lengthen the lifespan of 3e, including scoring some hits such as PHB II, which worked so well for them they incorporated it into their strategy for 4e from the outset.

But really, given the length of time the edition was out (I count 3e and 3.5 as one edition- which makes a fairly lengthy cycle) and how aggressively they put out books for the game, I think they were kind of stuck.

Certainly, the people who were surprised, (and some were downright shocked) at the appearance of a new edition always puzzled me.

 

[Maggan]

You are quite right

As a penance, here's a graph I whipped up showing the total number of D&D products per year since 1974, broken down into hardcovers, softcover (included stapled adventures), boxed sets and other (character sheets, screens, tiles, maps, etc.).

Cool chart! It really puts the relase rates into perspective, when comparing today to the AD&D2e era.

/M