D&D 5E D&DNext - Frankenstein or Butterfly?

[AbdulAlhazred]

But it's the only move they have. DDI was the problem. 4e was designed around DDI and not the other way around, and when DDI came up short not only in its promised adventure tools but also the online Dragon & Dungeon they were hoisted upon their own petard.

So now they're trying to keep the brand from going the way of the dodo. They're trying to gin up the players with a new edition and an open playtest. If they were to try to keep 4e going on adventures they may get one or two published before the Hasbro Corporate Overlords shelved the whole brand. No books, no adventures, no DDI, nothing for years.

Well, first of all we of course lack the information needed to say this. I don't know that DDI is a failure. The only evidence we have says it has a pretty respectable subscriber base. It is pretty unlikely it doesn't make money. If something makes money and doesn't represent a vast drain on resources, AND fills a strategic function then a business will not normally terminate it. Nor do we know or have ever heard that WotC was told D&D would be 'shelved'. The story if you read it simply says that if they reached a certain threshold they would open up many more resources and be a core brand with corporate level funding. In fact nothing convincingly tells us that 4e has been an especially unsuccessful edition if you simply take it on its own merits and don't try to compare it to some totally unrealistic plan.

The existing DDI adventure tools are STILL by far right now the world leading product in its category. What else is there? However they could go an enormous way forward with them and what would make sense would be to continue incremental development. Turn your design teams towards producing a good line of adventures and your DDI team towards improving the ability of DDI to include and curate user-supplied content, make modest improvements to the tools in increments over time, add a few more simple tools like some things that support mobile devices and etc. It is HIGHLY unlikely the competition will match or exceed these efforts, and again Paizo has proven conclusively that selling PDFs of adventure paths is a lucrative business along with a rules supplement now and then. Eventually they could produce a '4.5' set of core books, add a way to deprecate old moldy content in the tools, and just continue to gradually evolve the game. They already made great strides with much better monsters and items. They can continue that. Some marginal classes could be fixed or retired, etc. The game can only improve with time, and with a re-release of core books they can refresh the presentation of concepts and guidelines, increasing its uptake rate. Heck, they can even make a few incompatible changes if they want to. They can even correct a few design issues like by establishing some pools of power source wide powers so that classes can be simpler and more modular.

Really, it isn't rocket science. I know they've shot this strategy in the left foot over the last year, but duh it was hard to think through! lol.

There's actually a huge reason why D&D will NOT go the way of the Dodo anyway. As with every edition from 2e onwards it is the novels and spin offs that make the money, and nobody is going to kill that goose just because core books are marginally profitable on their own.

 

[TerraDave]

This thread seems to have degenerated into a not so stealthy edition war...

but back to the OP. I think you are seeing some fatigue with 5E among the hard core here, even as it is still being discovered by more normal gamers. (Mearls has noted that play test participation keeps increasing, and I surprised to see the interest of someone I know...and who is very far from hardcore gamer, recently).

As discussed, they do keep throwing stuff out there to see what sticks...which is the point, but it does annoy people.

 

[RACER_X?HAHAHA]

I would much rather see the game under WotC go out with a bang than a whimper. What you describe would make me go to Pathfinder, probably never to return.

5e may be a success, or it may be yet another nail in the coffin. Either way it's a better option than stringing out the Second Banana of the d20 fantasy games.

Don't ditch DDI though, it's a good idea to keep it around.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Its working for Paizo. Guess they have a bridge to sell YOU...

Paizo doesn't make money selling adventures... they make money selling subscriptions, from which people get adventures sent to them.

Same thing WotC does. They sell subscriptions and you get a couple adventures from Dungeon in return (in addition to a lot of other stuff.)

The fact that the number and size of the adventures we got each month dropped over time tells us that they weren't selling enough to warrant putting more money in them. Word count is costly. And if they weren't getting a return on their investment of word count... then the thought of staying the course was not economically feasible.

Look, I love 4E. I think it's a great game. But I don't fool myself in thinking that another set of obscure background books on subjects 4E has yet to cover would make anywhere NEAR the money that a new 3-book core set of a new edition would give them. It made no economic sense for them to stick with 3.5 at the time... and it makes no sense with 4E. And in 2020... I fully expect 6E to get released right on schedule too.

There will always be players to buy new games. There are not always old players to buy supplements to older games. At least not in the same numbers.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Paizo doesn't make money selling adventures... they make money selling subscriptions, from which people get adventures sent to them.

Same thing WotC does. They sell subscriptions and you get a couple adventures from Dungeon in return (in addition to a lot of other stuff.)

The fact that the number and size of the adventures we got each month dropped over time tells us that they weren't selling enough to warrant putting more money in them. Word count is costly. And if they weren't getting a return on their investment of word count... then the thought of staying the course was not economically feasible.

Look, I love 4E. I think it's a great game. But I don't fool myself in thinking that another set of obscure background books on subjects 4E has yet to cover would make anywhere NEAR the money that a new 3-book core set of a new edition would give them. It made no economic sense for them to stick with 3.5 at the time... and it makes no sense with 4E. And in 2020... I fully expect 6E to get released right on schedule too.

There will always be players to buy new games. There are not always old players to buy supplements to older games. At least not in the same numbers.

Ehhhhh, here's the thing. First of all, ironically, WotC FINALLY HAS seemed to both learn the lesson of the value of adventures and accumulated a stable of writers who can pull them off more often than not. However, comparing the output of Dungeon over the past 3 years with that of Paizo since the release of PF will quickly show you that WotC has done a terrible job overall.

Paizo releases deep, original, and quite well-written adventure paths with all sorts of RP potential, lots of background, integrated well with their own setting, and available for direct one-time purchase if you so desire, or you can subscribe TO ADVENTURES, you don't have to subscribe to an entire service. Finding them and purchasing them is relatively straightforward and it is quite easy to find what you want in general.

WotC meanwhile releases little mini-adventures (they've done 2 APs basically plus some adventures that could optionally be linked) which have minimal depth generally speaking. Most of them were marginally interesting IMHO, often indifferently written, and they don't generally tie closely into any established campaign structure. You have to subscribe to the entire DDI service to get them and there is no way to purchase adventures. Perhaps even WORSE they are poorly indexed and it is VERY difficult to dig them out of the back catalog on DDI.

I think the argument is less about "4e has adventures just like PF does" and more about "WotC doesn't seem to be very good at this" and they don't seem to understand that it is both the cardinal reason they've had problems with 4e and something that if they don't address it will make 5e irrelevant.

The problem is, and go read Ryan's various discussions of this, adding more and more new editions to the stewpot will not make the business more viable. It is simply a sure way to achieve a totally non-viable market where the game does go down the tubes. Better to have said to the fans "look, we're not in the edition rolling business anymore, PERIOD. You want to work on helping us add to and tweak 4e to please more people, lovely. We're simply not publishing our own competition anymore, we'll keep incrementally improving the game and publishing support material for it forever, and even new compatible core book editions, but we're just simply never going to rewrite the whole game again, ever, period, live with it." and then go on and do that. I think in the long run that would be best. Heck, just putting the OGL on 4e would have some interesting effects.

 

[RACER_X?HAHAHA]

Ehhhhh, here's the thing. First of all, ironically, WotC FINALLY HAS seemed to both learn the lesson of the value of adventures and accumulated a stable of writers who can pull them off more often than not. However, comparing the output of Dungeon over the past 3 years with that of Paizo since the release of PF will quickly show you that WotC has done a terrible job overall.

Paizo releases deep, original, and quite well-written adventure paths with all sorts of RP potential, lots of background, integrated well with their own setting, and available for direct one-time purchase if you so desire, or you can subscribe TO ADVENTURES, you don't have to subscribe to an entire service. Finding them and purchasing them is relatively straightforward and it is quite easy to find what you want in general.

WotC meanwhile releases little mini-adventures (they've done 2 APs basically plus some adventures that could optionally be linked) which have minimal depth generally speaking. Most of them were marginally interesting IMHO, often indifferently written, and they don't generally tie closely into any established campaign structure. You have to subscribe to the entire DDI service to get them and there is no way to purchase adventures. Perhaps even WORSE they are poorly indexed and it is VERY difficult to dig them out of the back catalog on DDI.

I think the argument is less about "4e has adventures just like PF does" and more about "WotC doesn't seem to be very good at this" and they don't seem to understand that it is both the cardinal reason they've had problems with 4e and something that if they don't address it will make 5e irrelevant.

The problem is, and go read Ryan's various discussions of this, adding more and more new editions to the stewpot will not make the business more viable. It is simply a sure way to achieve a totally non-viable market where the game does go down the tubes. Better to have said to the fans "look, we're not in the edition rolling business anymore, PERIOD. You want to work on helping us add to and tweak 4e to please more people, lovely. We're simply not publishing our own competition anymore, we'll keep incrementally improving the game and publishing support material for it forever, and even new compatible core book editions, but we're just simply never going to rewrite the whole game again, ever, period, live with it." and then go on and do that. I think in the long run that would be best. Heck, just putting the OGL on 4e would have some interesting effects.

I fear that dog won't hunt. It'd be great for those that like the current edition, but pretty awful for the business. That plan can't make enough money to sustain itself.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I fear that dog won't hunt. It'd be great for those that like the current edition, but pretty awful for the business. That plan can't make enough money to sustain itself.

Well, maybe you have some back channel of information and a whole lot of hands on experience to go with it that gives you some sort of insight the rest of us cannot possibly match. Otherwise it is one hypothesis against another, but quite frankly ANY time I've seen an organization abandon its goals and retreat in disarray its the beginning (or maybe the end) of the end. That's defeat. It just never ends well. WotC is ceding any chance of regaining market dominance. Watch and see. There's no place to go but down from here. Unless there's some large change in the entire business that totally rewrites the rules in WotC's favor and gives them a leg up the dynamics of the situation as it stands is downhill for them. With any wits at all, and they've shown plenty, Paizo will now eat their lunch so bad that 2012 will look like happy times.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I also believe, as good as 4e is. It is not the edition which could achieve the goal. I baught gardmore abbey, and it is a great adventure... but playing it with 4e rules does not work for me.

While 4e greatly decreased the preparation time, it actually increased the time needed for encounters, which too be honest, was already too high in 3e.

So I expect from 5e that it will be a game that is easy to prepare like 4e but faster to run, as my playing time is even more limited than my preperation time.

And selling adventures works better for a game, where it would otherwise cost a lot of time preparing. 4e is structured in a way, that I just don´t need to buy adventures. It is so easy to take an old one and upgrade it to 4e. It takes a few seconds to make up appropriate stats...
So I do support the opinion, that continuing 4e would be a bad decision.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I also believe, as good as 4e is. It is not the edition which could achieve the goal. I baught gardmore abbey, and it is a great adventure... but playing it with 4e rules does not work for me.

While 4e greatly decreased the preparation time, it actually increased the time needed for encounters, which too be honest, was already too high in 3e.

So I expect from 5e that it will be a game that is easy to prepare like 4e but faster to run, as my playing time is even more limited than my preperation time.

And selling adventures works better for a game, where it would otherwise cost a lot of time preparing. 4e is structured in a way, that I just don´t need to buy adventures. It is so easy to take an old one and upgrade it to 4e. It takes a few seconds to make up appropriate stats...
So I do support the opinion, that continuing 4e would be a bad decision.

4e, that is 5e that is truly built on the lesson and foundation of 4e, can easily do all of that. Rehashed 2e can only take us back to where we were 20 years ago, which is IMHO exactly where DDN is going. It just isn't interesting. I already HAVE 2e.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I already thought 4e would bring back some 2e flavour... which it sadly did only partial.

I also see so much of 4e in DnDnext, that it makes me happy. Even expertise dice are a 4e invention... (seeker)

If everything works well in the end, 5e is a perfect mix of 4th and 2nd edition, making a game 3e should have been (and was in parts)

If it does not work out well, I still have myth and magic to play with, which seems to have tried to create 2nd edition flair with solid mechanics.