What would WotC need to do to win back the disenchanted?

[Orius]

Seriously, nothing is worth how some of you are treating them. I am often ashamed. Sure the mods do some to protect them, but not enough by far, IMO.

Perhaps. Personal attacks usually do get addressed by the mods. But OTOH, this isn't a WotC forum, and people have the right to say what they wish provided they do so cordially. There's no reason for ENWorld to suppress posts that disargee with WotC's positions.

I will say that I don't think it's realistic to expect WotC to maintain any sort of ongoing support for older editions.

I have to agree. They may make the .pdfs available, but I don't expect them to go any further than that. Reprints on demand aren't unreasonable, but if WotC doesn't think it's profitable, I don't see it happening. And I suspect a lot of the big boxed sets from the 2e days would likely not be cost effective to reproduce. Having officially supported tools for players and DMs might be nice, but I doubt they'll put any effort into it. I think a decent alternative is to let someone in the fan community produce a set of tools kind of like how there are official websites for the unsupported campaign settings.

They're not going to print stuff for 1e/2e/Basic/3e or whatever. It's just not going to happen. I doubt the audience for this stuff is really large enough for them to bother with the costs involved in making anything new. Maybe 3.x is an exception, but they at least have stuff like Pathfinder, C&C or whatever else to satisfy their needs.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Reprints on demand aren't unreasonable, but if WotC doesn't think it's profitable, I don't see it happening.

Most of the costs on the old stuff should be sunk costs- I'm pretty sure pdfs/downloads of that IP should be fairly profitable per unit.

 

[HeinorNY]

First, if anyone dares to suggest that 4E is geared to "new" and/or "casual" gamers, they immediately get flamed for being insulting.

But it is. I remember Mearls saying (or some other designer back then) that they put some kids that never played RPGs in a room with 3.5 books so they could play D&D. They took like 4 hours learning the rules in order to play it, IIRC. So one of the design goals for DD4 was to make it easier for newbie players to start playing the game as fast as possible.

Did it hurt the game as a whole for the more seasoned player?
IMO yes.

What would WotC need to do to win me back?
Hardly anything since I'm obvious out of their demographics, but releasing old school material as PDFs would be a nice start.
Think of a Vintage D&D product line. "There is no need for one system to rule them all, we got D&D for all tastes!"

 

[Beginning of the End]

2. PDFs? Really? They're kind of nice I suppose but between the books and DDI they really aren't necessary for their current product line.

At the end of the day, WotC wants as many customers as they can get in a profitable way. Your wants aren't really profitable.

First, the exchange you've engaged in here is absurd:

Q: What would WotC need to do to win you back?
Innerdude: Make stuff I want to buy.
Herschel: Well, WotC doesn't want you to buy their stuff.

Second, as far as PDFs are concerned your claim that they "aren't really profitable" is, frankly, absurd. The production costs for pre-4E PDFs have already been completely paid. The distribution deals WotC had in place literally didn't cost WotC a penny. They could almost certainly have those distribution deals back any time they were willing to give them.

It's literally free money. WotC does absolutely nothing and a check gets deposited in their bank account every single month. It took them more effort to stop selling those PDFs than it would have taken them to continue selling them for the next decade (at least).

So if we're looking at the question, "Why are people disenchanted with WotC?" This is perhaps the purest distillation of it. Because there are only two explanations for this behavior:

(1) WotC is stupid.
(2) WotC is deliberately turning down free money in order to spit in the eye of their (now former) customers.

That's what causes disenchantment.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In all fairness to WotC, there may be issues we don't know about- say, indeterminate values of royalty fees or wages for certain products- connected to the sale of old IP in digital form.

For example, there could be fees that would be owed to the estates of Gygax and Arneson and others if AD&D material were placed in DDI. Worse still for WotC, they may have found that they may not have negotiated for all of the digital rights in the original game's material.

Stranger things happen, after all.

The possibility of such unknowns is why I said that the costs in making the digital versions of old IP were "most(ly)" sunk costs.

 

[ST]

So, in theory, all they need to do is

- convince management that selling PDFs is a good idea
- make a case for having both 3.x and 4e products available on their site isn't causing confusion with their IP
- show that the money 3.x fans would bring in would cover the costs of setting up the system

stuff like that, right? Compared to the risk and difficulty involved in questions like those (and more), the cost of scanning the material is pocket change whether it's already done or not.

The biggest issue, and one Hasbro would have a very strong opinion about, is Wizards having confusion about their intellectual property.

"Customer support may I help you?"
"My son bought this D&D module online for his D&D game, but the rules are all different."
"Sir, that's Third Edition material, it's not compatible with the Fourth Edition game sold in stores."
"Then why are you selling it on your website next to the new stuff?"


As a gamer, this seems silly and easily explainable. As an executive making decisions about moving product, this seems like a situation you do not want to be in.

 

[pemerton]

Stop making books so expensive.

My 3 core AD&D hardbacks, bought towards the end of 1984, cost almost AUS$60 in total ($16.95 for the MM, $19.95 for the PHB and $22.95 for the DMG). 4e hardbacks, 25 years later, cost $36 or $40. That's almost a doubling in price in a time when median incomes (in Australia at least) would have also doubled, I think, or maybe more than doubled.

To me, it looks like they made a deliberate point to move away from D&D's roots and classic elements in order to redefine the game for a new generation.

These sorts of claims are very hard to take seriously in the absence of statistical date about purchasing patterns of a range of RPGers over time. To just take one example - namely, me - I've purchased 20 4e hardbacks over the past two years, which is more than the entire number of 3E hardbacks I purchased over the 8 or so years of that edition. And by GMing a 4e game I've given rise to multiple DDI subscribers who otherwise wouldn't have been playing D&D (because if I was still GMing Rolemaster they'd be playing that game).

In short - I have no doubt that 4e lost customers. But it also attracted customers. What the balance is between the two only WotC knows.

If you pick up a 1e book and then a 4e book, there will be no similarities. Whatsoever. Don't be fooled!

Well, I've run Night's Dark Terror in 4e without much trouble - maps, storyline, monsters can all be carried over reasonably straightforwardly. Now I'm used to converting adventures between systems, and I wouldn't necessarily recommned it to a newcomer to RPGs, but presumably a newcomer won't be picking up AD&D books!

I think a better winner for WotC might be a few heavy fluff books, that are fairly edition neutral.

In my view The Plane Above, The Plane Below, The Manual of the Planes and The Underdark would all fit this description. Even where they have mechanics, they should be pretty easy to convert to other systems (eg a plane with the Fire trait gives a boost to fire attacks and impedes cold attacks), with the possible exceptions of monster and trap/hazard statblocks. But those are not a huge part of any of these books.

 

[pemerton]

You mean besides ICE

In ICE's case I think it is hurting the company. The number-one topic on the ICE boards always seems to be about the damage done to the company's games by the split between RMSS, RMC, RMexpress and HARP. None of the games is getting adequate support. I find it hard to believe that any is growing at a great rate, or even standing still. I don't think there's been a new book for HARP since the Codex in 2006.

 

[pemerton]

4e is unabashedly gamist first... yet you believe the mechanics don't come before the "story"?

You miss what 4e is. It's Gamist/Dramatist.

I think the whole "4th edition has narrative control mechanics" is, with rare exception, a bit of a misnomer.

Narrative control mechanics are dissociated mechanics. 4th Edition has dissociated mechanics. This doesn't mean that 4th Edition's dissociated mechanics are, by and large, narrative control mechanics. (Although it's true that a few of them could probably be classified as such.)

CAGI, for example, gives the player control over an NPC's actions in a way that would traditionally be reserved for the GM. But it's not really narrative control that's being taken. It's, for lack of a better term, gamist control.

A lot of RPGs have mechanics leading the story. This is the whole point of a lot of "indie" design - apply the mechanics and an awesome adventure story will follow! It's a deliberate contrast with "traditional" design like AD&D (especially 2nd ed) and (perhaps) 3E, which encourages the GM to disregard or override the mechanics in the interests of story. But the mere fact that mechanics lead story doesn't produce "gamism" or undermine roleplaying.

I think Beginning of the End has (implicitly) identified the real issue here, which is - who bears the narrative onus? If it is the GM - that is, if a player is allowed to use Come and Get It without regard to the story, and it is the GM's job to explain what is going on in the gameworld - then the story might be undermined. But if it the player - that is, if the player who want to use Come and Get It has to explain how it is working in the story - then (in principle, it seems to me) the upshot should be engaged players engaged in high quality roleplaying. (There is a resemblance here to augments in HeroQuest - in principle, any augment of any ability by any other abiliy is possible, but on any particular occasion the onus is on the player to explain how a particular augment is taking place, in a manner that is engaging for everyone else at the table.)

The 4e rulebooks don't really address this issue. In theory, at my table the onus is on the player. In practice, the player whose PC has Come and Get It isn't the most roleplaying-engaged of my players and I tend to let it slide a bit. It hasn't killed the game yet.

 

[pemerton]

Nah, I'm saying they should change all the people into ships. HMS Gutboy Barrelhouse versus USS Aggro the Axe.

Hey, at least it would be verisimilitudinous!

Wins the thread!