D&D 5E Is long-term support of the game important?

[MerricB]

The DMG states that they can be found in D3.

Just a note on the timing:

The Monster Manual was released in 1977
D3 Vault of the Drow was released in 1978
The Dungeon Masters Guide was released in 1979

Cheers!

 

[Jester David]

Er...have you not been reading the many and sundry "Will you buy 5e?" threads? Many people, for various reasons, buy new editions just because they're new. It's not something I can personally relate to as an experienced gamer, and it might not be representative of a majority of gamers, but improvement clearly isn't necessary for everyone to switch..

You'll never have a 100% conversion rate but hopefully the number of people you lose can be balanced with new people you gain. The more people that convert the stronger the edition.


While there will always be people who only play the latest edition, or stick with the game out of brand loyalty, that's not everyone. 2e and 4e were less popular than 1e and 3e because fewer people switched. This happens to many other game systems where one update is simply less popular than another. Compare popularity of the Old World of Darkness to the New.

It's certainly easier to encourage conversion when old editions went OOP and vanished. But with the
OGL, PDFs, and increasing Print-on-Demand that will only get harder.

Let's not go down the 'Why 4e got canned' rabbit hole of edition warfare, 'kay? It's been gone over and over and over, and there's no definitive evidence that it didn't happen just because of corporate bureaucracy and/or some equally hair-brained reason.

That's a terrifying possibility.

The upper management has not changed, the CEO is the same. If they canned 4e without a reason it's unlikely D&D5 will do better, especially after digging into three-years of debt. If Next fails it's very unlikely they will try again and then D&D goes away.
And that is a depressing thought. That's not a world I want to live in.

 

[billd91]

Let's not go down the 'Why 4e got canned' rabbit hole of edition warfare, 'kay? It's been gone over and over and over, and there's no definitive evidence that it didn't happen just because of corporate bureaucracy and/or some equally hair-brained reason.

Just because we don't have definitive evidence that doesn't mean the his point is wrong. WotC ditched out on 4e before anyone had reason to expect them to do so. It's only reasonable to assume there are non-harebrained reasons for it. It's also reasonable to assume those reasons will color WotC's further designs and product support plans. There's no point in calling it edition-warring.

 

[Hussar]

Just because we don't have definitive evidence that doesn't mean the his point is wrong. WotC ditched out on 4e before anyone had reason to expect them to do so. It's only reasonable to assume there are non-harebrained reasons for it. It's also reasonable to assume those reasons will color WotC's further designs and product support plans. There's no point in calling it edition-warring.

Really? There are about fifty hardcover books in the 4e library. How much more would you really expect to see for an edition.

That's something that gets lost in these discussions. People ignore just how much material is/was available for a given edition.

 

[Zardnaar]

You'll never have a 100% conversion rate but hopefully the number of people you lose can be balanced with new people you gain. The more people that convert the stronger the edition.


While there will always be people who only play the latest edition, or stick with the game out of brand loyalty, that's not everyone. 2e and 4e were less popular than 1e and 3e because fewer people switched. This happens to many other game systems where one update is simply less popular than another. Compare popularity of the Old World of Darkness to the New.

It's certainly easier to encourage conversion when old editions went OOP and vanished. But with the
OGL, PDFs, and increasing Print-on-Demand that will only get harder.


That's a terrifying possibility.

The upper management has not changed, the CEO is the same. If they canned 4e without a reason it's unlikely D&D5 will do better, especially after digging into three-years of debt. If Next fails it's very unlikely they will try again and then D&D goes away.
And that is a depressing thought. That's not a world I want to live in.

They're not in debt for D&DN. DDI is enough to cover the R&D costs of D&DN.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

2e and 4e were less popular than 1e and 3e because fewer people switched. This happens to many other game systems where one update is simply less popular than another.

No doubt some editions are more popular than others, but let's not pretend that we know which is which, 'kay? The topic under discussion is long-term game support, so these little speculations about 4e (and 2e) are looking more and more like edition warrior garbage. Which is a shame, because I was just starting to think that ENworld was cooling off enough to come back to.

That's a terrifying possibility.

The upper management has not changed, the CEO is the same. If they canned 4e without a reason it's unlikely D&D5 will do better, especially after digging into three-years of debt. If Next fails it's very unlikely they will try again and then D&D goes away.
And that is a depressing thought. That's not a world I want to live in.

I'm truly sorry that this is a scary thought for you, and for what it's worth, I don't think D&D is going to disappear anytime in our lifetimes. Doom and gloom speculation is a popular pastime, but don't let it get to your head.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Just because we don't have definitive evidence that doesn't mean the his point is wrong.

That's exactly what it means. If his speculations...

Really, they didn’t decide to end 4e early for gits and shiggles. If they could have continued to release the edition and make money, they would have. You don’t decide to tank profits for 2 years and gamble your jobs and the future of the game if not absolutely necessary.

...are wrong. Which they easily could be.

WotC ditched out on 4e before anyone had reason to expect them to do so. It's only reasonable to assume there are non-harebrained reasons for it. It's also reasonable to assume those reasons will color WotC's further designs and product support plans. There's no point in calling it edition-warring.

There's no reason to be an edition-war apologist, or to assume reasons for things that we don't have inside info on. Jester had no need to specifically bring up his speculations about 4e, and yet he did.

 

[Zardnaar]

No doubt some editions are more popular than others, but let's not pretend that we know which is which, 'kay? The topic under discussion is long-term game support, so these little speculations about 4e (and 2e) are looking more and more like edition warrior garbage. Which is a shame, because I was just starting to think that ENworld was cooling off enough to come back to.I'm truly sorry that this is a scary thought for you, and for what it's worth, I don't think D&D is going to disappear anytime in our lifetimes. Doom and gloom speculation is a popular pastime, but don't let it get to your head.

Actually we do have evidence for that. The golden age of D&D usually refers to 81-83 and the silver age of D&D was 2000-2002 according to Joseph Goodman, Sharon Appelcine (author of D&D history books and D&D PDF historian on RPGnow. Early 80's BECMI was also outselling 1st ed, Keep on the Borderlands sold 1-1.5 million copies. Dragon subscriptions peaked at 1200000 in 1992 as well so we do have information available. TSR era (BECMI/1st ed) and 3rd ed are the most popular editions.

 

[Erik Mona]

Actually we do have evidence for that. The golden age of D&D usually refers to 81-83 and the silver age of D&D was 2000-2002 according to Joseph Goodman, Sharon Appelcine (author of D&D history books and D&D PDF historian on RPGnow. Early 80's BECMI was also outselling 1st ed, Keep on the Borderlands sold 1-1.5 million copies. Dragon subscriptions peaked at 1200000 in 1992 as well so we do have information available. TSR era (BECMI/1st ed) and 3rd ed are the most popular editions.

I would not put _any_ stock in that 1992 number. Is it from a circulation statement in the magazine itself? My memory is that the highpoint was a little lower,and occurred around 1983-1985 or so.

There is no way in Hell TSR was distributing that many copies of Dragon in 1992. NO. WAY.

There are _lots_ of ways, on the other hand, that you could justify inflating circulation numbers like that, the most common being the standard magazine industry lie of "pass-along readership," counting each issue some mythical number of times based on how many people after the purchaser "probably" read it.

Also, even if you do blindly accept a number from a relatively lame period in the game's history to be significantly higher than in the game's "Cabbage Patch" CBS cartoon era, there is equally NO CHANCE that they had 120,000 _subscribers_, as you state. No chance in the world. MAYBE that many copies were printed. Slightly less likely that number of copies were distributed to newsstands. There is no way that number of copies made it into the hands of subscribers in 1992.

And all of that is assuming you actually meant 120,000, and not the 1,200,000 number you actually cited. I mean, that's like crack-smokingly wrong by an order of magnitude.

 

[Zardnaar]

I would not put _any_ stock in that 1992 number. Is it from a circulation statement in the magazine itself? My memory is that the highpoint was a little lower,and occurred around 1983-1985 or so.

There is no way in Hell TSR was distributing that many copies of Dragon in 1992. NO. WAY.

There are _lots_ of ways, on the other hand, that you could justify inflating circulation numbers like that, the most common being the standard magazine industry lie of "pass-along readership," counting each issue some mythical number of times based on how many people after the purchaser "probably" read it.

Also, even if you do blindly accept a number from a relatively lame period in the game's history to be significantly higher than in the game's "Cabbage Patch" CBS cartoon era, there is equally NO CHANCE that they had 120,000 _subscribers_, as you state. No chance in the world. MAYBE that many copies were printed. Slightly less likely that number of copies were distributed to newsstands. There is no way that number of copies made it into the hands of subscribers in 1992.

And all of that is assuming you actually meant 120,000, and not the 1,200,000 number you actually cited. I mean, that's like crack-smokingly wrong by an order of magnitude.

I meant 120k and the source was the aceaum website. I have seen figures of 27 million dollars for 82 and 83 was 20 million. Apparently 2nd ed was still bringing in good numbers (40 million) but TSR was run appallingly bad. Shannon Appelcline figures seem to match up with what Gygax, WoTC TSR history page and others have claimed. Early 80's and 00's were the golden and silver ages of D&D AFAIK.