D&D 5E What I want: 17 books or book series (and two boxes) for a Third Golden Age

[SoulsFury]

Wow, you have some great ideas for awesome books. No other D&D fan has ever thought of any of these....


If you need all of these to make you happy... well... gosh, I kinda just feel sad for you. 5th edition is about a great set of rules and rules evolution, I don't think it was intended to be the one ring and bind all the other rings, it was intended to be the one ring that didn't need all the other rings.

 

[The Shadow]

I have to say, the 'pony' expression came to my mind as well. (And no, I'm not a fanboy either... until ordering the 5e PHB, I last purchased a WotC product when the 3.0 core books came out.)

It seems apropos because, whether or not your list would bring about a Golden Age (the matter is debatable), you are simply not going to get it. And if you did get it, you might not like the consequences.

Because publishing all of that would likely mean WotC going out of business, just like TSR did.

Publishing books is expensive. Publishing hardcover books is very expensive. And you're asking WotC to publish some very large hardcover books for very niche markets. One doesn't have to be a corporate tool to want WotC to make a profit, because without a profit they stop publishing completely.

I also find it odd, to say the least, that you feel it reasonable to ask that WotC fork over their property for free. This does not seem to be a good business model? Can you name any other company that has done this and stayed in business? It's that unreal demand that particularly struck me as 'pony-ish'.

That said, I would have no objection at all to some of the more obscure ideas of yours being Kickstarted or otherwise crowdfunded. Hell, I'd back a few of them myself - I'm an absolute sucker for artificial languages.

 

[Umbran]

Also, these straightforward reference works could stay in print for over a decade. It'd have an agelessness to it.

Whether it stays in (physical) print is largely determined by the rate of sales. If sales of a book don't cover the costs of keeping it in inventory, then the book goes out of print.

I think your estimation of how many people will want such books, and how long it would take for the market to reach its saturation point, are highly optimistic.

Hey I love D&D. I like much of what I've seen of 5e so far. Yet I'm not going to invest my limited bread in a system if it's there to further box the consumer's mind into a corporate-shaped box.

Every time you say something like this, you alienate a segment of your audience - you are telling them that their minds are in a corporate-shaped box, insulting them.

You are, in effect, engaging in a negative marketing campaign. Your basic way of saying that your thing is great is to present their thing as bad. If you witnessed the 3e/4e transition,you should note that negative marketing has some nasty repercussions. Keep beating the drum this way, you are apt to start feeling some of those repercussions.

The trick is to tell people how great the thing you want is, *without* implying (or outright stating) that the thing they currently love is somehow bad, or that they are somehow bad or limited for buying them.

 

[Haffrung]

I am frankly expressing what wise, unorthodox stewardship of the D&D culture would look like.

No. You're expressing the remarkably specific and esoteric want list of one hardcore D&D player. Everyone on this site could post their own such wish list, and they would all be different. Most of the books you list would sell no more than 100 copies, and those to well-heeled completionists. A publication schedule that would almost certainly bankrupt a company is hardly 'wise.'

 

[Remathilis]

Nah, that's a misreading. I say I'm refraining from buying into the system until it's certain if and how Open it will be.

As I said, I like 5e. I started a 5e Basic Rules game this weekend. I like the rules set. Quick and streamlined. Worked fine with a Pathfinder Beginnner adventure, without having to restat anything.

Without rehashing the other closed thread: I wouldn't hold my breath.

True: races, classes, and spells are splat. The difference is that this proposed series of 5E books would be systematically firming up and completing all the piles and piles of existing splat. Instead of piling more and more "new" splat (e.g. the elemental evil Adventurers Handbook) on top of the years and years of backlogged splat. All those pages and pages of 4e digital splat and 3e splat (incarnum magic, and all that) would become digestable and integrated. 5E is as good a time and vehicle as any for integrating all past editions. I thought that was one of the goals of 5E. What better way to integrate the past editions than to systematically gather it up and update it to 5E?

Also, these straightforward reference works could stay in print for over a decade. It'd have an agelessness to it. Especially if WotC released all of the crunch (and even some of the Product Identity) as Open Content, so that self-publishers and third-party publishers would fuel sales by tying their work into Hasbro's key reference books. I'd be glad for a slower iteration cycle.

See, I'm having a hard time seeing why "Races of D&D" is Goodsplat but an Elemental Book is Badsplat. Its early in the edition: a lot of the book is going to be tied to updating some elemental things anyway (wild guess: genasi, elementalist wizards, elemental domains). I certainly can get as much use out of that as I can a book of the 400 races D&D has sought to print. (and don't get me wrong: I love settings and I love races and I love genre books, but aside from an inherent "old stuff is better than new stuff" vibe, I don't see much difference between the objects you say are "good" and the ones you say are "bad").

My perception is that you're just saying that because TSR or WotC have never published a language book or set of coins, then it's too esoteric. You might have said the same thing in 2004, if I'd suggesting making a tavern game which is supposed to represent an in-game game. actually a new idea for D&D. I thought of it. (Others have thought of fantasy coins and fictional languages, but it's never been done with D&D.)

Some of this must've come into the game, since it already exists in the game: the drow phrasebook, some DRAGON magazine articles on the various languages, the effort put into having Daniel Reeve (the calligrapher and mapmaker for the LotR films) design the elven and dwarven scripts for 4e (that's something I liked about 4e), and the detailed descriptions of the coinage of various nations of Faerun.

They're fine for a Dragon magazine (which you say you don't want). And I'm a Humanities junkie: I actually DO take some interest in things like fantasy culture and language. However, with most D&D players I've met (and I've met a lot of them) their interest in fantasy languages begins and ends with "I speak Elvish to him" and even moreso "25 ducats? That's gold, right? Ok, 25 gp."

I could imagine a series of Dragon articles on things like games, coins, or phrasebooks. I can't imagine a hardback tome.

Hey I love D&D. I like much of what I've seen of 5e so far. Yet I'm not going to invest my limited bread in a system if it's there to further box the consumer's mind into a corporate-shaped box. If 5E is Opened wide for self-publishing, then it would be worth it for me to invest in it. Otherwise, I'll hold out for whoever makes an Open 5.5e. Or I'll make my own.

But you won't have to invest then; its wide open. You can download it for free and (unless you want the pretty art and binding, the former you didn't want in your RC so I'll wager not) Mearls doesn't see a dime for his work.

I'll tell you what. Devote the next two years to writing a completely open RPG. Design all the rules, playtest them, get feedback and revise, proofread it, add art, and release it to the Public Domain. I promise I'll download them.

 

[tsadkiel]

WotC could certainly publish all those books, yes. Or, they could get pretty much the same positive results by coming up with a robust set of conversion guidelines for all the previous editions, along with a reasonably generous license for third party publishers.

Because yeah, I love wallara and xephs and those fungal ghost guys from that one issue of Dragon (no, not actual fungal ghosts - this was a PC race!) as much as the next guy, but I've got them! There's no need to republish their stats when most people don't care and I can use them in my 5E game with a minimum of effort. And if someone hears about the wallara and decides that their campaign really needs a race of Australian-inspired chameleonic dragon-blooded guys with a racial talent for teleportation and only one gender, WotC can just make the Orc's Head Peninsula book available on rpgnow, and they too can enjoy wallara awesomeness.

Plus, honestly, my days of buying an entire book just for one or two bits of crunch are long gone.

 

[Mercurius]

Wow, what a list. A lot of good ideas there, [MENTION=6688049]DnDPhilmont[/MENTION], although I agree that some of it is rather specific for wider publication. I also see a "quantity over quality" approach, and is largely doing exactly what you say you don't want to see happen - reinvent the wheel.

I'd rather see WotC:

1. Create a "Classic Worlds of D&D" product like you mentioned a few weeks ago, and then update a few of the more popular classic settings to their own standalone books (e.g. Realms, Greyhawk, Dark Sun, Sigil in the 5E MotP).
2. License out the settings that they don't want to do anything with to other publishers (e.g. Dragonlance, Mystara, Ravenloft, Birthright, etc).
3. Re-issue and update the classic adventures in hardcover omnibuses.
4. Take a "less is more" approach to splats ala Paizo and create fewer, but better, supplement books.
5. Focus on new world(s) and adventures.

My problem with your approach is that it is largely focused on stuff that's already out there, in print or PDF. I totally understand the need for updates of classic settings etc, but I'd rather see WotC spend their setting development time and energy on something new, rather than yet another cycle of FR books. The same with adventures. Yes, re-issue old classics, but let's see something new. Get the creative juices flowing!

 

[prosfilaes]

Coins have done fairly well on Kickstarter, but they've all been pretty generic or offering a variety of patterns. I suspect they would be expensive enough, and marketing them as D&D may push away the boardgamers who I suspect have been a large market for coins on Kickstarter. (Who doesn't want to pimp their copy of Seven Wonders with metal coins?)

Unlike coins, outside Tolkien and Klingon, I don't know of a single commercially noticeable book publishing a language for a fictional people. The Tsolyáni Language has reached copper status of DriveThruRPGs, I guess. Someone needs to make some money before WotC is going to invest a pretty penny on it. Fantasy languages don't really need Wizards of the Coast to get involved. If you really believe that what the world needs is new invented Dwarvish, Elvish, Orc and Halfling languages, then write them up and sell them on Amazon or DriveThruRPG.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Wow, you have some great ideas for awesome books.

Why thank you!

I don't think it was intended to be the one ring and bind all the other rings,

It wasn't? Tell that to Mike Mearls.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

I have to say, the 'pony' expression came to my mind as well.

What's wrong with ponies?

Okay, I'll throw in a request for the 5E D&D World of My Little Pony Campaign Setting (MLPCS) too, as an update of WotC's vaporware 2006 3.5E version: https://web.archive.org/web/20060409192849/http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20060401a

There's already a coterie of hardcore My Little Pony D&D gamers:

http://roleponygame.tumblr.com/
http://www.chippewavalleygeek.com/2013/07/assault-on-equestria.html
http://mlpforums.com/topic/41840-the-mane-six-as-dd-characters/

whether or not your list would bring about a Golden Age (the matter is debatable), you are simply not going to get it. And if you did get it, you might not like the consequences. Because publishing all of that would likely mean WotC going out of business, just like TSR did.Publishing books is expensive.

Most of the books you list would sell no more than 100 copies, and those to well-heeled completionists. A publication schedule that would almost certainly bankrupt a company is hardly 'wise.'

Whether it stays in (physical) print is largely determined by the rate of sales. If sales of a book don't cover the costs of keeping it in inventory, then the book goes out of print.

I think your estimation of how many people will want such books, and how long it would take for the market to reach its saturation point, are highly optimistic.

You guys are the D&D business managers? I've noticed in this and other threads how many D&D gamers proudly speak as if they're a Hasbro business manager. They've taken some bits and pieces of Dancey's analysis of TSR's failures in the 1990s, and turned them into some sort of tired dogma. So what? As Whizbang D. suggests, these products could just as well be done through a kickstarter. Problem solved! Or as subcontracted side-items, like those pocket-size versions of the AD&D rulebooks which came out awhile back. Where there's an interest, there's a way.

Whether I'm a customer of the D&D business or whether I'm a co-creator of the D&D culture, it's not my role to pre-censor my desire for what I personally would like see for D&D. I'm not the D&D business manager. I'm not supposed to feel all sheepish and stay quiet because some or all what I'd prefer to see may or may not fit into the business plan. One thing's certain: If I don't voice what I'd like to see, my voice will not be considered. Mike Mearls and Hasbro aren't mindreaders.

Publishing hardcover books is very expensive.

I never asked for these to be hardcover. The 2E Spell Compendiums were softcover. I prefer softcover.

Though I understand Mearls' team putting a lot of love into making three heirloom-quality core rulebooks, for the straightforward reference books (such as the Spell Compendium) hardly any art is necessary. The Monstrous Compendium series would be illustration heavy, but it'd all be clip art from previous editions.

I'm fine with all black & white interiors too.

I also find it odd, to say the least, that you feel it reasonable to ask that WotC fork over their property for free. This does not seem to be a good business model? Can you name any other company that has done this and stayed in business? It's that unreal demand that particularly struck me as 'pony-ish'.

Tesla Motors: "All Our Patent Are Belong to You".

Post-TSR, pre-Hasbro WotC: Their game system property was forked over for free. The worldsetting property was not.

I'm suggesting opening the out-of-print worldsetting IP so as to fuel sales of the 5e worldbooks and novels, in the same way that sales of the 3.0 corebooks were fueled by opening the game system IP.

If Dancey or anyone had suggested to TSR in 1994 that they open the AD&D game system intellectual property "for free", they would've be laughed at, and shouted down by the D&D aficionados: "How dare you express how you would like to see the AD&D game culture evolve. You won't like the consequences. Be afraid. Be very afraid. TSR will go out of business if they open their IP. The tighter something is held, the more successful it will be."

That said, I would have no objection at all to some of the more obscure ideas of yours being Kickstarted or otherwise crowdfunded. Hell, I'd back a few of them myself - I'm an absolute sucker for artificial languages.

That is something I'd like to join in with you.