You know what would end all of the arguing and fighting?

[billd91]

Yes, manpower and advertising dollars must be split, but it can be done. I once worked in a publishing house where a staff of 18 people supported over 70 academic journals of wildly varying styles, successfully, so with a professional editorial staff it can be done. A lot of 3rd-party RPG companies are basically 1 or 2-person shops supported by freelancers and yet they can release a lot of product, so Wizards needs to be smart about staff usage.

At the risk of sounding cynical, the typical academic journal publisher's business model depends on an extensive network of semi-captive professionals paid by someone else who do most of the heavy lifting of submitting their work and engaging in peer review and scrutiny. Essentially, since many of those professionals are funded by public money (their salary in public universities or grants) and must publish or perish somewhere (thus semi-captive), these publishing houses serve as great engines for turning public money into private profit (for the publishing house).

I don't think an RPG could run on that model very well. At least, I hope not.

 

[Raith5]

I do have doubts that they can create a broad based game that is vaguely consistent with the history and at times agree with the OP that accepting the existing diversity may be the easiest thing to do.

But It is too soon to give in. I am still holding out that WOTC can do what they set out to do in creating a broad based game - or rather I am sitting back and enjoying watching them try. I am glad it is not my job!

It just seems to me that the history of D&D can so easily be a burden and hold back innovation and new ideas.

 

[billd91]

Even though it may sound crazy, I agree with this assessment. I was just talking with someone about Ted Talks, (which if you haven't heard of, are awesome) and they pointed me to this one, about research in food that comes down to "researchers are looking for the perfect pepsi, and that's an incorrect premise. What they should be looking for is the perfect pepsis." The conventional wisdom is that it will split the market, but at least with food, that hasn't been true.

And with food, that makes some sense. With time-intensive hobbies, however, I don't think the analogy with food products is very helpful. The effort to switch from Coke to Cherry Coke or Vanilla Coke or Mr. Pibb is trivial. I can select one or the other interchangeably depending on my tastes right now and still have my sweet tooth and thirst satisfied. Not so RPGs (or many other hobbies) which have extensive rules to learn and master, characters to develop, scenarios and worlds to build.

 

[Evenglare]

2. Correct me if I'm not understanding you, but are you suggesting that Wizards publish submitted fan-created material, and then make money off of that material by charging for DDI, and not pay the actual author a dime? I could be wrong, but wouldn't that generate a ton of ill-will and negative feedback, along the lines of "Wizards doesn't even have professional designers make half their stuff anymore, it's just random people, and they don't even pay those people for their creative work, just like slimy companies who try to get artists or musicians to do valuable work for free just for the exposure."

You are wrong. To my knowledge they already do this, they open submissions every year for free lancers... in fact last i heard they were looking for stuff for Dragonlance articles. I'm pretty sure it isnt paid either.

 

[billd91]

You are wrong. To my knowledge they already do this, they open submissions every year for free lancers... in fact last i heard they were looking for stuff for Dragonlance articles. I'm pretty sure it isnt paid either.

I sure hope they don't actually do this. I'd bet they do pay people if they publish submissions - they certainly used to do so for articles submitted to Dragon magazine, for example.

 

[Evenglare]

It's really surprising that people LIKE switching editions. I guess I am in the minority.

 

[Texicles]

To answer the thread title- Pie. I bet Pie would end all of the arguing cause everyone likes pie.

Ah but there's the rub. While I probably enjoy your preferred edition of D&D (or at a minimum, am happy that you play what you like while I do the same), I can assure you that your taste in pie is badwrongeats and cannot be tolerated.

 

[billd91]

It's really surprising that people LIKE switching editions. I guess I am in the minority.

That's a complicated topic. Some people do like the new shiny, others don't, others do to a certain degree. For me, it depends on the magnitude and nature of the changes. 1e to 2e was very easy. The rules needed some consolidation and the editions were highly compatible. 3e was a little harder because more changed (though, interestingly, this encouraged a friend's wife to jump into the game - she entered on more equal footing with the rest of us old timers), but there was a back to basics (or at least back to the dungeon) focus on what to do with the new mechanics.

In general, I don't mind the game evolving over time. But I would prefer it do so smoothly and not in big skips and jumps.

 

[TrippyHippy]

a) I believe that a well designed D&D5E, that pays attention to all the fans views in a consultation period, can unite the fan base to a large extent (never totally, but enough that the bulk of the fans recognize it and play it).
b) They should release the entire back catalog as online pdfs, regardless.
c) People need to think more positively.

 

[ComradeGnull]

Two contradictory views that I have no problem holding simultaneously:

1) Every business, particularly every publicly held business is about growth. In the RPG market, growth means either a) re-directing dollars that used to be spent on other RPG products to your product or b) making new players. Betting on option a) is a real crap shoot, leaving you with option b). I don't think that supporting 5 different versions of D&D is realistic if you need to grow new players- it becomes too confusing for a new person to figure out what books go with what game, and which order to buy them in, and what 'version' you should buy first- I remember being 10 and wondering if I was doing something wrong by starting with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons without ever having played (Regular) Dungeons & Dragons. Multiply that confusion by 5 and you have a recipe for disaster. WotC needs one flagship brand that it can put front and center for this product and easily steer new players into it. I'm of the opinion that they are changing directions from 4e not so much because 4e alienated too many old players, but because it failed to attract new players in the way that 3e did with its robust ecosystem of 3rd party products and simpler core rules.

2) 3.5e/Pathfinder/OGL is out there now, forever. WotC tried to lock it down with 4e by creating a less open licensing process, and all they did was push developers into supporting Pathfinder or making their own system. Five systems is too many, but embracing two- a highly balanced system with substantial tactical support (4e) and a more open-ended system framework that can support old-school play or 3e/Pathfinder style play (OGL/d20SRD/whatever) seems like it might be reasonable. Plenty of gaming companies in the past have published dual-ruleset expansions and system-neutral materials (look at Menzoberanzan, for instance). By supporting OGL/3.5e/SRD stuff, you effectively support retro-clone stuff, including clones that imitate the flavor of 1/2/whatevercoloredbox.

So while I remain interested and excited about 5e, I've yet to see anything from it that convinces me that it is a substantial improvement over either 4e or 3e. It's early yet, obviously. I would have been totally pleased if WotC had said "you know what? 4e had some great innovations, but we kind of screwed the pooch on the way it was presented to players, and we realize that it isn't every one's cup of tea. With that in mind, we're restoring official support for 3.5e. We'll publish new rules and material for 4e to round out areas of that game we never got around to creating or defining, we'll publish how-to rules for 3.5e to show you how to modularize it into whatever you want, including retro-clones, and we'll publish system-neutral setting documents and dual-system adventures for a while."

I want to ultimately see 5e make me a better offer than that, because otherwise I'm happy right now with Pathfinder and 4e. Too early to tell if that can be done or not.