What is good for D&D as a game vs. what is good for the company that makes it

[Man in the Funny Hat]

That may be true, but perhaps we should re-think what is good for D&D as a game, and is this different from what is good business practice for whatever produces the company?

Yes the two are indeed different things. However, it is difficult to determine objectively what IS best for the game and what IS the best business practice for the company if it wants to actually not just profit but facilitate the game being the best it can be.

People want different things out of D&D - different enough that no one set of rules seems feasible to please everybody. My best theorizing on it suggests that creating a ruleset that is modular enough to allow everyone to buy the same core books while letting those who want a simple system play a simple system, and those who want options and complexities for the players coming out their ears can add on as much as they want, is the only way to come close to the ideal ruleset. However, one thing that MUST be embraced is the attitude that the DM/players at the table will still always know what's best for the game THEY play - never the designers sitting in an office across the country. D&D rules should always be written such that the DM - NOT the rules themselves - run the game.

As for a viable business model... If you're in the business of RPG game publishing then you write stuff and then YOU PUBLISH. Enough of this comparison of how much this edition released and in what form versus that edition. That is very much beside the point. What you need to know is how much to publish so as not to drown the market and WHAT to publish to be able to profit from your products. I'd suggest that one of the things they could do that would not hurt would be to put some older editions back into print but that's just me - I don't see the business information that THEY see - and neither do any of you.

Promotes a stable rule base. Even if the rules change over time, with inevitable new editions, changing them every few years means players have to buy new rulebooks, and re-learn the rules, constantly.

Only if you insist that there can be only one. CLEARLY that is wrong. One size does NOT fit all. 4E, Pathfinder/3E, 1E/2E, C&C, yada yada yada. People play the version of D&D rules that they want to play. The pertinent question is then; "Who's selling it to them?" Wotc only sells ONE version - 4E. Not everybody wants what they're selling as "the one, true vision" of D&D rules. It is therefore possible to assert that changing the rules every few years does not HAVE to mean that everyone has to buy new books and learn new rules. Not everyone is playing the same game in the first place. They buy new books and learn new rules when they are convinced that trying a different edition (whether that be new OR OLD editions) is something they want to do.

And the rules change over time. Always have. Despite any desires by a company to be able to provide just one, stable ruleset to forever base their future publications on the game will be changed by those who play it and they will change what THEY want out of it over time. You can't pick a point to start from anymore and have just one set of rules for everybody. You can't pick any given set of rules and expect them not to change. Your only choice is to try and exert some measure of guidance over where that set of rules goes by what you choose to publish to support those rules. And you can't just toss them out wholesale from time to time to start over. You do, however, have to accept that you'll need to IMPROVE them over time in ways that fans of that ruleset will most appreciate.

If a player doesn't have the money to upgrade, or is just fatigued with the constant new rules/editions, they stop buying.

If a player has plenty of money to upgrade but has all the rules and materials he wants/needs to support the game as HE chooses to play it - he stops buying. I bought 4E core just to see if it was something I might want to run as a DM. It wasn't. I bought Pathfinder core to glean some ideas for the games I DO want to run (and it isn't Pathfinder). Other than those I haven't purchased D&D books since the disappearance of 3.5. Right now I'm running a highly intermittent game of 3.5 (simply because I had more of those books for the newbie players to use) and planning for the commencement of a houseruled but 1E-based game at some point in the future. WotC sells nothing I want or need. If they published any old 1E or even 2E material (even just as PDF) or compatible material, I'd highly likely be buying that.

A steady stream of new editions fractures the player base as every new edition includes the decision to stay or go.

New editions have simply shown that not even one older edition is the be-all/end-all of D&D. Publishing new editions didn't FORCE people to make that choice - it just made it EASY and CONVENIENT to make the choice that they WANTED to be able to make in the first place but didn't have a selection of different rulesets to choose between. Now they do. Back when the entire hobby was still being invented the reality was that you played the current version of D&D or you were irrelevant fringe. That is not the new reality. The new reality is that people are choosing something other than the current "official" version of D&D because they CAN choose from more than just one mans vision of the game - and because THEY all have different visions of the game that they want to play.

Creates a balanced and flexible rule system adaptable to a wide variety of campaigns, from low-magic pseudo-historic games to high magic/high fantasy. D&D campaigns run from quasi-historic games set anywhere from the ancient world to the golden age of piracy, to utterly fantastic worlds of pure imagination. A good edition of D&D should be flexible enough to play out an adventure in any part of human history before industrialization, play out most popular fantasy novels and movies (especially ones that deeply influenced the genre and D&D legacy like the works of Howard, Tolkien, Lieber, and Vance).

I agree with all this but unfortunately is tends to suggest a Generic/universal RPG system - somthing that tries to accomodate everything under the sun in one fell swoop. That's a mistake. I personally have come to beleive that the ruleset you're using and the campaign setting you're using those rules in will intimately affect each other. You change the game rules you change the game setting - and vice versa, different game settings want and need different game rules. Most game settings these days include as part of the game setting itself the changes that need to be made to the ruleset that the setting is based on. I'm just saying that if you try to apply a generic ruleset to a vast variety of genres and settings then all you're really doing is making that variety seem less varied because it's all run the exact same way.

It's one thing to take what you may see as a good, enjoyable set of rules and apply them to a new genre or new setting. It's another to take a set of rules designed to be vanilla enough to adapt to anything and everything and try to make it less vanilla to do the genre or setting justice. What I'm saying is make D&D rules the best rules you can for D&D. What I personally want from D&D is middle-of-the-road fantasy, not low-magic, gritty and grim nor epic, "superhero" fantasy. I'd suggest that a middle-road set of rules can be more readily and satisfactorily adapted to low or epic fantasy (as the desired SETTING would dictate) and is a better choice than designing for low fantasy and thus being a poor choice for doing epic, or designing for epic and thus making the rules a poor choice for doing low fantasy. And one does NOT design for, say, the anticipated future adaptation to steampunk or modern genres when designing fantasy rules. You design fantasy rules and THEN decide if they'll make a good adaptation to steampunk or modern.

 

[tomBitonti]

Concerning the other statement ("good for D&D as a game"), this quality is a matter of subjective perception. The ultra-grognards want plotless dungeons with the text run through a Gygaxifying program, while the ultra-progressivists are busy waiting for a D&D version designed to fully run on a MS Surface device.

Haha, but no.

Ultra-grognard here, and plotless dungeons suck.

Compare "When A Star Falls" or "Death on the Reik" with most of the recent modules.

Compare the amount of flavor mixed throughout many of the Pathfinder modules to the 4E modules.

Compare the fine quality papar of the Pathfinder Adventure path, and the high quality art with the often very thin 4E paper (for modules).

Or, not sure what to compare with, but say the 4E main books, or the Pathfinder main books, or generally the Fantasy Flight latest edition Warhammer FRP or several 40K RP systems with anything.

Quality, in many cases, can be objective.

TomB

 

[Big Mac]

Am I proposing some kind of solution somehow? No, not really. I can't think of a practical one. In a perfect world, like if I won the Powerball, I would buy the rights to D&D from WotC and set up a non-profit organization to administer it as an open-source game, but that's not exactly likely to ever happen. Right now I would just like to open up the discussion of how the needs of a company to produce a profitable product differ from what makes for the best possible game and fosters a strong and vibrant gaming community.

Ironically, you can do this. The OGL and SRD gives you full access to the core of the 3rd Edition D&D rules and, while you can't call it Dungeons & Dragons, there is nothing to stop you (or anyone else) picking up 3e D&D and making what they want from it.

Paizo did just this, when they made the Pathfinder RPG. There is nothing to stop you making your own house-ruled 3e and selling it.

The fact that the companies copying Paizo and making their own D&D offshoots is not high probably indicates that this is not a financially viable route for most people. But I would urge any fan who thinks they can make better stuff than WotC to give it a bash. A lot of you will probably fail, but the occasional person who invents something similar to Pathfinder RPG will make up for all the failures.

It's not just WotC - the fans would be screaming at the tops of their lungs about the "lack of support".

WotC (and TSR before them) may turn out a number of products that we (as individuals*) do not like, but so long as they "please most of the people most of the time" they are going to out-sell small companies that only have the manpower to put out one or two products a year.

* = One of us may dislike one product, while another may dislike a different product.

And I think that if you make hundreds of products, you are much less likely to go down because of a single product being hailed as a turkey. A tiny RPG company might have a much higher quality threshold, but could be destroyed by a single bad decision.

WotC would appear to be forced to go for the majority market...

...or are they?

As long as D&D is in the hands of a publicly traded company, it will always be more about the brand then the game.

But thanks to the OGL, it no longer matters.

If only some of the disused campaign settings had an SRD, I'd be 100 percent in agreement with you.

Mind you the ESD Conversion Agreement would appear to allow any pre-3e campaign setting to survive as a fan supported non-profit product.

To put it another way, if the company that releases D&D focused solely on what's best for the game, and not on what's best for them, they'd find themselves doing well as a natural consequence of their efforts.

Maybe that's unrealistic, but I like to think that's how things would go.

I am sure that WotC would do "what is best for the game" if they believed that was best for the game. I think they make the best guesses they think they can make. Like anyone, I think they make mistakes. I think there is a tendency among certain people (WotC staff and non-staff) to blame certain past products as being "bad for D&D".

The way I see it, any product that has any sort of level of fanbase is not actually bad for D&D. But economically, a product needs to pull in more cash than it costs to be a "financial success".

I think that if WotC could get past the need for every product to be a "big success" it could perhaps look to some of the smaller RPG companies as models for making low-cost production methods that would make products with a smaller market share more viable (to the accountants) than they are now.

Licensing parts of the IP out (as they did with the Dragonlance and Ravenloft campaign settings during 3e) is one way to get cash in for less risk. Another way would be to allow certain authors to write material on a percentage deal and publish it on a Print on Demand basis. Doing stuff similar to that would be a way to get other people to assume some of the risk of putting out other parts of the product line.

As for a viable business model... If you're in the business of RPG game publishing then you write stuff and then YOU PUBLISH. Enough of this comparison of how much this edition released and in what form versus that edition. That is very much beside the point. What you need to know is how much to publish so as not to drown the market and WHAT to publish to be able to profit from your products. I'd suggest that one of the things they could do that would not hurt would be to put some older editions back into print but that's just me - I don't see the business information that THEY see - and neither do any of you.

Good points (all around). I'm a 3e fan, but I meet plenty of 2e, 1e and Classic D&D fans. I know that they are no crazier than I am to like the rules they like.

One area where I think that WotC (and even fans) go wrong is to view the different editions of D&D rules as things that compete with each other. I get great ideas from talking to fans of other editions. 4e seems to have raided some cool ideas from the distant past.

At the moment WotC either sell you 4e or you choose to go to a rival company or buy second-hand copies of 3e D&D or one of the versions of TSR D&D. If they found a way to sell (or licence) the other versions of D&D, they could use 4e to shoot for the largest slice of the RPG pie and then see how many little slices they could grab with the older editions.

If they could shoot for the most successful system, with 4e, and get the forth, eighth and tenth most successful systems, with three of the old school systems, they would capture the interest of more punters.

But as you say, we don't have the numbers they have.

Only if you insist that there can be only one. CLEARLY that is wrong. One size does NOT fit all. 4E, Pathfinder/3E, 1E/2E, C&C, yada yada yada. People play the version of D&D rules that they want to play. The pertinent question is then; "Who's selling it to them?" Wotc only sells ONE version - 4E. Not everybody wants what they're selling as "the one, true vision" of D&D rules. It is therefore possible to assert that changing the rules every few years does not HAVE to mean that everyone has to buy new books and learn new rules. Not everyone is playing the same game in the first place. They buy new books and learn new rules when they are convinced that trying a different edition (whether that be new OR OLD editions) is something they want to do.

I have always been resistant to learning new rules. But I've always been interested in learning about new gameworlds.

4e came with a promise of "one setting per year", which as a setting fan, is something that should be interesting me, but it is taking so long for 4e to give me the same number of settings as 3e (let alone 2e) that I think that I wouldn't be interested in considering learning it before 5e takes over.

I would love to see more worlds get done. Sadly, I think the "3 books per setting" model is too slow for most worlds to get converted. Perhaps some of the smaller settings, like Jakandor, Chanak or Pelenor could get shunted into a product line that brings each world out as a single setting+monsters+adventure book.

The one new world that 4e has given us is Nentir Vale. I know that (as a 3e customer) I'd be interested in looking at that. But I know that WotC have held back the Nentir Vale Gazetteer. With me being one of the "WotC don't sell anything I want to buy" brigade, I'm extremely frustrated that the one book that I may have bought has been taken away from me.

I think that something like a splatbook is fairly useless to old school players, but (with a Web Enhancement that gives you conversion rules) a 4e campaign setting could be something that could bring in cash from old school fans. It might not be the primary target for WotC, but it could be a secondary target.

 

[GregoryOatmeal]

Another major issue that has been touched on is getting new gamers involved. Gaming needs to be refreshed to be interesting for the next generation of gamers and I believe that this is something lost to Dungeons and Dragons, they are not bringing in enough new gamers with the attraction of their product. Perhaps that means gaming dies or turns into DDO or some video game version of a role playing game. I don't have a good answer there but teh steady stream of bnew people coming in needs to be addressed.

I don't quite follow you. Innovations can be useful, but if you're saying young people need new editions and new rules I just don't buy it. The new kids don't really have a previous game to compare it to I'm not sure why they would be more or less interested if a new edition comes out. The most important factor in integrating new players is probably a brother or friend to introduce the to the game. And if that person isn't in to the new edition then WOTC will have some problems with the new crowd.

Tabletop gaming doesn't absolutely need to change. It is just as unique of a sandbox hobby for imaginative people now as it was in the eighties and it's going to attract basically the same crowd of young people now as it did then. It doesn't need to be refreshed to be interesting - tabletop roleplaying is innately interesting in a timeless way. The hobby isn't going to die. It doesn't need to connect with facebook or text messages or whatever. I just don't believe that's how the kids think. New players will get it or they won't

Factors that might drive young people away could include pushing for an online subscription to play the game and requiring lots of knick-nacks like miniatures and gaming boards.

And turning D&D into a videogame (and only a videogame) would just alienate a lot of the base.

 

[GregoryOatmeal]

In the various threads talking about the "edition treadmill" or "planned obsolescence" or a "monopoly model" and similar terms, I've seen a recurring point come up that as a business model that D&D must produce a new edition on a regular basis.

That may be true, but perhaps we should re-think what is good for D&D as a game, and is this different from what is good business practice for whatever produces the company?
...
steady rulebase unified gaming community etc. etc. etc.
...

THANK YOU! When I started writing about planned obsolescence it was all about obstacles that prevent people from gaming together. It didn't start out as a discussion of the economic viability of moving away from the edition treadmill (but a case can be made for how this hurts the gaming community and loses customers).

Clearly lots of people want the shiny new product and lots of others don't. And their is some merit in developing new rules systems and putting out new editions. Right now I just wish we could have both - a classic D&D line that stays in print and a more experimental and sleek edition that comes out every few years for those that are into sacrificing the sacred cows.

 

[Stormonu]

I don't quite follow you. Innovations can be useful, but if you're saying young people need new editions and new rules I just don't buy it.

For my bit, I don't agree it necessarily needs to be a new edition either. It simply needs to be friendly towards introducing new players. I consider neither Pathfinder nor 4E newbie-friendly in this manner.

Right now the best way to get into this hobby is to hook up with someone who already knows how to play and let them help you puzzle it out. How many people may have turned away from the game because they were faced with reading a 300+ page book just to begin learning the game, with no one who was already experienced with the game? IMO, there needs to be an entry point into RPGs that's light enough you don't have to start out with an experienced group - something you can sit down and read in about 15-20 minutes to get started playing, and then graduate to the thicker books.

There's been a couple stabs at making it friendly; back in 3E/3.5E there were a couple starters sets, then there is the 4E Red Box and the upcoming Pathfinder Beginner Set. The 3E sets weren't very good (no character choices - pregen only, not playable beyond the included adventure). Looking over the Red Box, I didn't think it was successful either (the player's book was too wordy, can't design characters outside of the choose-your-own-adventure book). The previews for the PF set seem to be a little better (these things seem to keep evolving), but I don't think the right product has been made just yet.

 

[AeroDm]

Right now the best way to get into this hobby is to hook up with someone who already knows how to play and let them help you puzzle it out. ... IMO, there needs to be an entry point into RPGs that's light enough you don't have to start out with an experienced group - something you can sit down and read in about 15-20 minutes to get started playing, and then graduate to the thicker books.

I have always heartily agreed with this notion but I just had a realization: I probably played Monopoly for 10 years before reading the instructions. Same for Sorry, Clue, Uno, I've never seen rules for most card games, chess, checkers, etc. The vast majority of games have rule books, but the natural method of introduction is through peers roping you in and walking you through the steps. Now, RPGs are weird because reading the rulebook is sort of "part" of the hobby in a way that the instruction in Monopoly are not, but I'm not sure that nullifies the point.

At the other extreme, the Red Box and its equivalent are sort of like the tutorial at the start of a video game--but most people hate tutorials. Even worse, it is like selling the tutorial separate from the main game. Most people are going to avoid it if possible. Again, I'm not sure what the answer is, but I think it might be more complex than most folks give it credit.

 

[Lanefan]

What's ideal for the game: a full rule-set*+~ on initial release with only occasional official changes and additions later. See D&D 1e, though even it had a few too many add-ons near the end. After that, support by way of settings and adventures designed, written and published by anyone who feels like it. Full-ride access to everything be it on paper or online - no subscription walls. An overarching attitude of anything goes as long as it's fun.

* - playtested into the ground, in the spirit that errata are evil and their very existence is a badge of shame.

+ - generic enough and flexible enough to accommodate all sorts of playstyles and preferences.

~ - designed and written with the specific intent of being "the" game; an end-point, rather than a way-point.

What's ideal for the company: lots of splats and errata within an edition leading ultimately to the need for another edition to clean up the mess; then lather rinse repeat. Subscription-based access to the current edition and no access at all to previous editions^. An attitude that says if you're not playing by our rules you're not doing it right. Realized expectation of ongoing and increasing profit.

^ - note these are ideals, we haven't quite got to this point in reality yet.

You might notice a few glaring differences between the company ideals and game ideals above. I see the two as being largely in opposition to each other over the past ten years or so, with the game ideals losing badly.

It makes me sad.

Lanefan

 

[Hussar]

See, to me, the idea of "stable plateform" means "stagnant and constant mired in concepts of yore".

Heck, look at RIFTS. There's a stable platform. A game that has seen virtually no change for decades. If gamers actually wanted a stable platform, why would we be talking about D&D?

D&D has never, ever had a stable platform. And that's a good thing. We do learn over time. We learn things that work and things that are perhaps not a good idea. We learn from our mistakes.

If you have a "stable" game, then you can never learn from your mistakes. You are stuck with them. Which means you have the situation that D&D has always operated under - constantly bleeding players off to other systems. Sure the D20 OGL is great. But, it also opened the door to games like Mutants and Masterminds who managed to leverage the popularity of D20 D&D into building their gaming population.

We had 10 years of 1e and then 10 years of 2e. In that time, we saw the rise of all sorts of RPG's that incorporated ideas that worked from D&D and brought in new ideas as well. Then 3e came along and it incorporated huge amounts of Rolemaster because the Rolemaster system is a good system and is pretty easily portable into D&D. 4e borrows heavily on more narativist games out there and incorporates new ideas. 5e when it comes will borrow new ideas from games as well.

As we continually develop new games and new ways of playing, those things should be incorporated into D&D or we'll see D&D fade off into the sunset as someone comes along with a system that does things better.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

I do not think that DDI and other digital distribution systems are the godsend you think they are. They are good, they are effective, but they are simply an alternate distribution system to physical books. They will not stop designers from needing to create a new edition every so often because they do not remove the root cause of designers putting out new editions, lack of unused design space. Lack of design space is what creates "Complete Book of Domestic Dogs" style product.

This is where I beg to differ. Take, as an example, the Essentials line of products. The classes, arguably one of the core elements of D&D, are completely re-done using the unchanged 4e rules. The basic system is open and flexible enough to provide this design space.

I see DDI or any comparable model likely to be implemented by other publishers in the future not only as an alternate distribution model but as a different contract model. We are used to buy our stuff in discrete blocks called books or PDFs. For each single item we decide whether we needed/wanted it. For this privilege we pay a comparatively high price (based on a two books per month ratio) and get certain amount of material that we won't use - either parts of a single book or books which aren't so useful as we thought they might be. If we think the new books don't bring enough to our game, we stop buying them. Our dollars are lost to the company. If enough customers have reached this point, it's about time for the cycle to be repeated: new edition, please.

In the era of subscription we don't decide to buy or not buy single items but pay for the privilege of picking our stuff from a host of smaller items. The decision to buy a subscription is based on the expectations we have of the service bought. The providing company has to take care to give each and every subscription customer enough useful stuff to make the sub worthwhile, but isn't forced to fill complete books with material fitting for the title.