Could Wizards ACTUALLY make MOST people happy with a new edition?

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm not advocating any of this, by the way, so your vehemence is misplaced. If you aren't interested in it, great. I don't know that I give a crap about it, either. I'm just saying that, contrary to people saying it's UNPOSSIBLE to do, it actually seems pretty easy, for the most part -- you can squint and see the core ruleset inside True20 or C&C or several of the retroclones, for instance -- with the hardest part bolting on a 4E ruleset to a more stripped down core, if I understood where Mearls is going with his columns.

Not so much vehemence as extreme skepticism.

Personally, I already play and prefer a game in which melding 1Ed/2Ed, 3.X and 4Ed mechanics is perfectly possible: HERO*. So I know that it can be done.

My skepticism lies in the question of whether a Unified Edition- OK, I'll just call it UED&D- would actually be acceptable to all. Or most.

Because while I know for a fact that HERO can handle this without a hitch, it's very nature as a toolbox system turns a lot of people off...having all the inner workings of the game on full display simply isnt to everyone's liking. And a UED&D might look a lot like HERO in the sense of that kind of system transparency.

And if you can't get the majority of D&D players to accept UED&D, what purpose does it serve?






* I suspect M&M- esp. with its W&W supplement- could go a long ways in that direction as well, and GURPS, too, to a lesser extent.

 

[Gundark]

Really? Why? [...]

AFAICT, Paizo is doing what WotC either can't or won't do: They're investing in a business plan that won't burn itself out by focusing on adventure products instead of splatbooks.

See, splatbooks invariably reach a point of saturation: Your customers reach the point where they have all the mechanical options they could ever want and it becomes more and more difficult to convince them that they really need Monster Manual 7 or Book o' Feats 18.

Adventures, OTOH, are consumables. (And even moreso in a culture which reads the adventures for solo entertainment value.) Once you've played through the last set, you'll need a new set. There is no saturation point. Your customers will simply continue buying on a perpetual subscription basis.

While I will concede that they have chosen the path of less saturation, saying that there is NO saturation and that Paizo could keep this up forever is wrong as well. Going by your example Paizo WILL get to the point of adventure path saturation where ideas began to get stale and they recycle ideas (adventure path # 53 RETURN of the Rune Lords and inbred Ogres!!!!!). Maybe your group is different, but they can put them out WAY faster than I can play them. I collect board games as well, I've got a closet FULL of them (packed), there came a point where it began to be silly to keep up ( I mean how many games with wooden cubes and resource management can a guy own?). Paizo will get there too.

 

[thedungeondelver]

Why this need for reconciliation?

Because if they managed to pull in, say 75% of the number of people who have played D&D regularly over the years and then gone away they'll be literally swimming in cash. Nowhere near WORLD OF WARCRAFT levels of money, mind you, but bucketloads.

I mean, think about it. S1 TOMB OF HORRORS sold 250,000 copies, according to Gary (at, I think, $5.00 a copy that would be $1.25m just for that module) UNEARTHED ARCANA brought in $16,000,000 net - enough to pay off debtors and save TSR (again, per Gary Gygax).

Imagine tapping in to the public that bought those, but had moved on, or not advanced ahead with later editions. Imagine if you could hit a sweet spot of 50-60% of those people. "Wouldn't you have to do that?"

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I suspect Paizo is already seeing diminishing returns on their adventure paths. Although I am certain there are people who blast through each chapter when they come out, many more, I suspect, are getting further and further behind and don't have the incentive to keep buying more paths at this time, to say nothing of all the standalone adventures. The question is how bad the drop-off is and how fast it accelerates. (Obviously, there are a lot of people who buy them just to read them or as simple collectors, and that helps cushion the blow.)

At some point, they will want to change their model.

 

[Mouseferatu]

The step that's missing from this discussion so far is that any new edition can't just be focused on recovering lapsed players (even if it could recover huge numbers of them). It's still a limited and diminishing market. A new edition has to bring in brand new players, and it has to do so in numbers that we haven't seen in quite some time.

Now, I realize that this wasn't the point of the topic, but it's something that still has to be taken into account. Even if WotC could produce a game to make most D&D players happy (for whatever value of "most" you care to use), it still might not be a successful or sustainable edition.

My gut feeling--and I'll be the first to admit that my gut probably qualifies as more anecdote than data --is that, in the current market (and faced with competing forms of entertainment), an edition that could successfully bring in a sufficient* number of brand-new players would have to be, at its core, simpler than either PF or 4E, with optional add-ons for those who prefer more complexity.

("Sufficient" being defined as enough new gamers to make tabletop RPGs a viable and profitable hobby for another few generations.)

In order to create such a game, WotC (or whoever) would need to boil down every edition--with a focus on 3E/PF and 4E, but at least some attention paid to earlier editions--and try to isolate the most fundamental core aspects that make the game "true D&D" in the minds of the players. You're never going to find a consensus on that, not by a long shot. But it might--might--be possible to isolate a collection of core aspects that appeal to a majority of the fans of each/every edition.

If you take these core aspects--the "essence" of D&D--and you create a game that's simple and has a low barrier to entry based on those core aspects, it won't be an evolution of 1E, 2E, 3E, or 4E, but rather a new game with some themes and elements in common with all of them. If it's done really well, and if the company's been very careful about determining what those core elements actually are, the result might be a game that entices more lapsed players to come back than it loses and attracts new players to the hobby as well.

Is that what Mike's doing? Trying to tease out the common elements of all editions in hopes of creating an uber-edition? I have no idea. I don't know if that's his intent, and I have no idea if it's even remotely possible.

But I think that's the only way to go in the long term. You're never going to make 4E appeal to people who still prefer 3E/PF, and you're never going to make 3E/PF appeal to people who prefer 4E. If you want to bring them back together, the only remaining option is a new game that appeals to both (or at least to a majority of both), that feels like D&D to both, and that's a solid enough game to entice them away from the edition they're currently playing.

It's a tall ask, and I have no idea if it's feasible, but I think even the attempt (whether by WotC, Paizo, or whoever) would produce a fascinating result.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Or, to summarize:

There are few questions as divisive in the market as "What makes D&D, D&D?" and "What should D&D be trying to accomplish, as a game?" But answering those two questions for at least a majority of the market, and then building a simple/easy game focused heavily on those answers, is the only way to both potentially unite the audience and also appeal to new gamers. No evolution of any existing edition on its own is going to cut it.

 

[Eric Tolle]

I don't think WOTC should even try to go for the 3.x or retro gamers. Fighting over a shrinking pool of grognard gamers is not the way to grow the hobby. Instead they should go more toward capturing the near-rpg gamer market segments, such as mmorpg and crpg players. DDI already goes a long way toward making D&D accessible to casual and computer-based gamers, but if the virtual tabletop and other virtual services are expanded, I think there's a potentially profitable area between tabletop and other games that can be exploited.

 

[WheresMyD20]

>>Could Wizards ACTUALLY make MOST people happy with a new edition?

If the new edition is based on what Mearls has been suggesting in his blog, then I think there's a decent chance. Not a great chance, but a decent one.

If you change the question from "MOST" to "MORE", then I would say absolutely. I think the version of D&D Mearls is suggesting would certainly make more people happy than 4e does.

 

[DumbPaladin]

... they should go more toward capturing the near-rpg gamer market segments, such as mmorpg and crpg players.

WotC did. That's what 4th Edition is about.

The jury is clearly out on whether it worked or not. My bet is on "didn't work", but we may not know for years.

 

[Argyle King]

I think something to consider is that D&D is no longer synonymous with RPG. Yes, D&D is by far still the biggest brand name in the hobby. However, I think more people are now aware that the WoTC way isn't the only game in town.

While the fracturing D&D fanbase may have hurt WoTC, many other companies have continued to produce products which not only satisfied the fans those companies already had, but also looked really good to people who were disenfranchised with the current D&D direction and were more open to trying different things than they were before. I would never suggest the WoTC is floundering. I believe they are still doing well, but I also believe that the gap between D&D and other products such as Pathfinder, Savage Worlds, and GURPS (just to name a few examples) is much smaller than it has been previously.

I don't think Mearls is only looking at D&D. It may be just coincidence, but it seems as though he has an awareness of how other systems handle things. The idea of a simple core with modular add-ons is something which is currently being done elsewhere.