The fragmentation of the D&D community... was it inevitable?

[Dannyalcatraz]

Even without the Thief powers he still very much has the feel of a PC who uses stealth to kill - the +2 to hit from CA is noticeable, and I think he might also be looking at a feat that gives him a bonus to damage with CA (Sorcerous Assassin, I think).

A hybrid Sorcerer|Thief might do it...I'll have to give that some thought.

 

[carmachu]

In fact, if Wizards wants to be more successful they need to adopt Games Workshop's model of driving older customers away on a cyclical basis.


People flock to GW like they're giving away blocks of ice in the Sahara.

This is what WotC must do to survive. Period.

Its obvious you have never been reading GW finacial reports for the last decade when they come out. GW isnt THAT successful. IN fact as you read them, you see the ONLY reason for the most part they stay in black is raising prices every year. In fact, looking at their sales data, with the exception of 2004, from the time they stopped selling online in a cart in 2001 to 2008 for sure, sales have been dropping. They are selling less and less units eachyear, and off setting that by raising prices every year.

At a certain stage, which might be now, you reach a point your customers balk at shelling out money- like $65 for a landraider? Not happening like it would at $50.

SO please, keep telling WOT's RPG division to emulate a company, who has driven away part of its customer base, who has made less money today then it did a decade ago, who after a time, is universal despised by its older customer base, which does NOT get wit the time with a new fangled thing called the internet, which hides its newest releases until its actually out....and many other bad business decesions.

People are NOT flocking to GW games. One could argue, looking at their publically traded data, people have been going away from them in droves. Only rising prices and a LOTR bubble masked it.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

[/FONT]

Its obvious you have never been reading GW finacial reports for the last decade when they come out. GW isnt THAT successful. IN fact as you read them, you see the ONLY reason for the most part they stay in black is raising prices every year. In fact, looking at their sales data, with the exception of 2004, from the time they stopped selling online in a cart in 2001 to 2008 for sure, sales have been dropping. They are selling less and less units eachyear, and off setting that by raising prices every year.

At a certain stage, which might be now, you reach a point your customers balk at shelling out money- like $65 for a landraider? Not happening like it would at $50.

SO please, keep telling WOT's RPG division to emulate a company, who has driven away part of its customer base, who has made less money today then it did a decade ago, who after a time, is universal despised by its older customer base, which does NOT get wit the time with a new fangled thing called the internet, which hides its newest releases until its actually out....and many other bad business decesions.

People are NOT flocking to GW games. One could argue, looking at their publically traded data, people have been going away from them in droves. Only rising prices and a LOTR bubble masked it.

Ya know, you may be right as I have never looked at GW finiancials and have little interest in them but I was under the impression that the churn was driven by tournment play and that they regularly changed what was allowed in tournment play. Am I correct in this, I have not really looked at GW since they made White Dwarf an inhouse GW only product catalog.

The thing is, if I am right then that model is no use to WOTC, players only play what a Dm allows and twinked characters for those who spend the most bucks would not be alllowed by most DM's.

In fact the only way I could see it work is a micro-transaction free to play MMO like DDO.

 

[Dausuul]

Part of the question is - who is the player base? I switched my GMing from Rolemaster to D&D precisely because 4e was a radical break from earlier editions, which I had no interest in GMing.

The problem for WotC with a strategy of releasing a 5E that drops "narrative-driven metagame mechanics" and heads back into the direction of 3E/PF is that it will cost them GMs like me. How representative am I - I have no idea, but I don't feel that unique!

As regards narrative-driven metagame mechanics, I don't think it needs to be a big deal. A few powers like "Come and Get It" would need to be rewritten or deleted. We'd see more Essentials-style classes and fewer Vancian casters in drag. Healing surges and full daily healing might be replaced with something else, or they might just get a facelift to make them more palatable to the simulationist.

And I'm certainly not proposing taking 4E back to 3E/PF! That's the last thing I'd want to see. I myself am a 4E DM, and 3E is the single edition I never want to run again. I could be talked into running either edition of AD&D, I rather like the idea of giving BECMI another go sometime, I might even be willing to take a stab at OD&D, and I wouldn't mind playing 3E, but DMing a 3E game... hell no.

However, I think there are a lot fewer irreconcilable differences between the 4E and 3E/PF fanbases than people think. Probably the biggest complaint I've heard about 4E as a system* is that it's "video-gamey," by which the complainers seem to mean that it doesn't pay enough attention to crafting a believable and coherent world. I don't think many 4E fans would object to the system doing a better job crafting a believable world, so long as it didn't undermine 4E's strengths of clear rules and ease of play.

[size=-2]*The other complaint I hear a lot about 4E is, "I've already got hundreds of dollars' worth of 3E books." There's not a lot WotC can do about that one; they really would have to go back to 3E to tackle that concern, and then you'd hear the exact same complaint from 4E gamers. This is why I suggest waiting until boredom starts driving people away from 3E, Pathfinder, and 4E alike.[/size]

Isn't this an upshot of the OGL in combination with the SRD - if not forseeable at the time (presumably Ryan Dancey didn't foresee it) then not so surprising in retrospect.

I've been thinking this very thought. It's ironic; the OGL/SRD was created as "one system to rule them all," with the explicit intent of killing off competing rules systems. WotC wrought too well.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

One thing I found amusing in the 3.5 era was how many people wre shouting 'RAW' from the rooftops, and saying RAW was the only way to do 3.5.

But in Renton, the designers of the 3.5 ere houseruling the hell out of games they were playing at lunch in WOTC.

This is because they were saying one thing and doing another. These were largely all long-time gamers who obviously had learned to play under 2E, 1E and older editions. They understood and personally embraced the principles espoused by Gygax in the 1E DMG and had no hesitation about making the game what THEY wanted and the "rules" be hanged. But the version of D&D which they had produced for WotC had little to say about such ideas if anything at all. The official line of response was ALWAYS, "If you have a question or an issue about a rule then ask us and we'll give you the official answer," rather than suggest that anyone should ever just make something up on their own. By rights even 1E should have had that written at the top of every page of the DMG.

This was WotC's approach. It may even have been a formal policy. They had books and magazines to sell and it probably seemed wrong to them as businessmen to suggest that you might EVER actually not need them to tell you how to play. But that approach was a key factor in making D&D as successful as it had been prior to 3E - ENCOURAGEMENT of active creativity right down to the level of the basic rules. WotC felt it was in their own interests to always leave people with the impression that WOTC was the source of rules - not individual gamers. And to exacerbate that they built the concept of "rules mastery" into the rules themselves.

The result is a generation of RPG gamers trained as rules lawyers because they've been effectively taught that the fun of the game is to be found in manipulation of the official rules - and official rules come first from WotC. But the personnel at WotC knew better for their own games and routinely told the rules to go stuff it.

 

[BryonD]

One thing I found amusing in the 3.5 era was how many people wre shouting 'RAW' from the rooftops, and saying RAW was the only way to do 3.5.

But in Renton, the designers of the 3.5 ere houseruling the hell out of games they were playing at lunch in WOTC.

I always found the difference amusing.

I think you are either misrepresenting that, or misunderstood it.

I clearly recall a great deal of importance put on RAW in various rules debates, etc... It absolutely happened. But the focus was on discussing the issues from a clear common baseline.

I don't recall anyone ever suggesting, "and you must play by RAW at your table". It was purely a matter of having a menaingful discussion.

I'm certain the houseruling designers went back to being even more focused on RAW as soon as they went back to their desks from lunch.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I think you are either misrepresenting that, or misunderstood it.

I clearly recall a great deal of importance put on RAW in various rules debates, etc... It absolutely happened. But the focus was on discussing the issues from a clear common baseline.

I don't recall anyone ever suggesting, "and you must play by RAW at your table". It was purely a matter of having a menaingful discussion.

I'm certain the houseruling designers went back to being even more focused on RAW as soon as they went back to their desks from lunch.

I would like to qualify your statement, because I did see people claim that Rule 0 was cheating by the DM. That only the RAW was permitted or previously agreed houserules.

I do believe that they were a minority.

 

[Mallus]

I haven't been following this thread closely, but here's my answer to the original question: was fragmentation inevitable?

Yes. Absolutely.

First off, the player base is effectively fragmented within a single edition. Not every group plays the same way. House rules differ. Individual campaigns vary so greatly in tone and content they might as well be different games. This has been true since the days of OD&D and remain just as true today. Changes to the rule set only exacerbate frictions already present within the hobby, and, frankly, offer a flash point for arguments. We'd still be arguing over fundamental differences in play style even if we were all using the AD&D framework ie, some of us would be running sandboxes and others, Tolkien or Dragonlance-esque epic quests.

Then there's the fragmentation produced by groups who decline to "upgrade" to the current edition. Some people are happy with the rules they already own and the special, personal way their group(s) implement them. There's no need to "upgrade", and for them the term is both loaded and erroneous.

Fragmentation we will always have with us. I think it's a mistake to get bogged down in editions specifics/minutiae when discussing this topic. When you pull back, I think it's fairly clear to see the fragmentation of the player base to be an unavoidable quality to RPG play. They're meant to be customized, and customization == fragmentation.

 

[carmachu]

Ya know, you may be right as I have never looked at GW finiancials and have little interest in them but I was under the impression that the churn was driven by tournment play and that they regularly changed what was allowed in tournment play. Am I correct in this, I have not really looked at GW since they made White Dwarf an inhouse GW only product catalog.

The thing is, if I am right then that model is no use to WOTC, players only play what a Dm allows and twinked characters for those who spend the most bucks would not be alllowed by most DM's.

In fact the only way I could see it work is a micro-transaction free to play MMO like DDO.

You would assume it would, but GW doesnt do a hard core, or even soft core tournment seen. They hardly did, they dont even do their own games day any more much.

SInce you havent looked at WD anymore, you dont know that GW has changed alot. Not for the better(not that it great since it went public trading).

They have started the hardboyz tournment, but they also arent consistant in that either. Its GW they havent been consistant in ages.

 

[Dungeoneer]

WOW, this will teach me to step away from a thread I created for a weekend. Da-yum.

Lot of interesting responses here. Lot of food for thought. On balance, it seems that the majority or posters think that at this point it's going to be really hard for WotC to release a '5e' that keeps most people happy.

So here's a follow-up question, for the people who have gotten this far. It seems to be implied in a lot of responses.

Should WotC support more than one edition at the same time? Or will this just make the problem worse?

That could mean supporting 4e and 3.x (or your old edition of choice) simultaneously. Or it could mean that Fifth Edition actually has a 5a and a 5b. Maybe one that caters to complex tactical combat rules, and one that favors a stripped-down approach.

Anyway, just curious. Because it seems like 'have more than one set of rules' is the logical outcome of the line of thought that 'one edition can't statisfy everybody'.