D&D 5E Legends & Lore - A Retrospective

[Rune]

The flailing was due to the unexpected competition, and someone suggested taking 4e in the direction of PF (pleasing no one) hence Essentials.

This statement is not universally true.

Essentials was a breath of fresh air for me. And I say that as someone who wouldn't return to running 3.5 for money and stayed away from Pathfinder because it fixed none of 3.5's problems. 4e fixed a lot of those problems and Essentials fixed a lot of the problems that 4e created. While being entirely backwards-compatable with 4e (obsoleted feats notwithstanding).

I only wish I lived in an alternate universe, where Essentials was released first and 4e was released later as an advanced version.

 

[billd91]

It is worth noting that Traveller's editions were likewise major shifts...
Except between CT 1E (≤1980 printings) and CT 2E (≥1981 printings), each edition was almost entirely new mechanics; T5 is no exception.

<snip>

In all three (D&D, MW, and Traveller) the shifts were tolerated because of the popularity of the brand, and the setting continuities.

I might argue that some of the shifts in Traveller haven't been tolerated that well. GDW going bankrupt due to other issues may make it hard to compare since TNE got abbreviated and support had to go elsewhere, but a lot of developments with Traveller have been echoed by changes in D&D. The move to TNE lost GDW their best and most prolific 3rd party supporter, Digest Group Publications. The setting and rules were both given a major shift, sparking substantial edition wars. The next successful version of Traveller - the GURPS version - used a completely different rules set but rebooted the setting to Classic times - already taking us in the direction of a "Back to Basics" approach like the one taken by WotC for 5e D&D. And then Mongoose Traveller brought us rules that felt a lot more like Classic Traveller than any edition since MegaTraveller.

 

[I'm A Banana]

This why I'm skeptical of 5E's "Themed books" model. The Essentials themed books were high quality (broadly speaking) but no-one seemed to want to buy them, where the broader, less-focused PHB and power-source stuff had been bought.

It's a bit apples and oranges, isn't it? Essentials books didn't even have a strong theme, and the reasons they didn't sell well seem from here to have had more to do with their attempt to be brand new core books and their half-measures in trying to appease some of the people who lost in the 3e-4e transition than their "themed"-ness.

I think the team was starting to think in terms of "uniting" even before Essentials dropped (which is probably where some of the half-measures in Essentials came from), and these early articles seem to continue with the idea that whoever was playing the game in 2008-2010, they were feeling the loss of folks from earlier e's. I imagine a lot of convos in WotC's offices during this time showing the strength of the D&D brand on the one hand, and the sales of the D&D RPG (4e at the time) on the other, and trying to figure out how to get more people who know the D&D brand to spend money on things that WotC gets paid for. And it was clear that it was going to take more than Essentials to do that, even then.

PHB 2 did sell well, though (you can see this by checking other dates in the links) sales fall off pretty fast. DDI/CB is a suspect here.

I think the key here is well...in comparison to what?

In comparison to other RPG books at the time? Sure, that's nothing to sniff at.

But in comparison to what 3e was doing 2 years after release? In comparison to the number of people who are aware of the brand? In comparison to the number of people who played a D&D videogame at some point in that span?

The PHB2 wasn't getting pulped into cage liner en masse, but I'm not so convinced that it was meeting WotC's bigger goals just because it wasn't a commercial failure. It's possible what we're hearing here in some of these early articles is Mearls re-thinking the entire idea of selling splats in an edition death spiral over and over again to an ever-shrinking audience, forcing re-boots and re-brandings and such. If your goal isn't to just reach "everyone who plays 4e," but is to reach "everyone who might play D&D," your metrics for success and failure change pretty dramatically.

 

[TerraDave]

Slight correction. James Wyatt. But he was more a worldbuilder/storyteller (and is now working on Magic: the Gathering as part of their creative/story team) Crawford was, I think brought in after 4e was launched (his first credit was the PHB2).

My take is that 4e was doing well (it was making $6 million/year as late as November 2013, over a year after the final book) but not up to the $50 million/year target Dancey said they needed to become a core brand. Then Pathfinder came out and started selling well. The flailing was due to the unexpected competition, and someone suggested taking 4e in the direction of PF (pleasing no one) hence Essentials. Essentials failed. Slavisek took the lead so he took the fall, leaving Mearls.

Thats why I was carefull to mention RPG design. Wyatt, Heinso, and Collins where given a lot of the credit for 4E. Dave Noonan and Bruce Cordel (who actually resigned) were also heavily involved. Wyatt was always less involved with the mechanics. Actually Chris Perkins is still there, but he was never a conspicuous member of the design team.

It could be the unrealistic expectations. Again, we won't really ever be sure.

 

[TerraDave]

...
I think the team was starting to think in terms of "uniting" even before Essentials dropped (which is probably where some of the half-measures in Essentials came from), and these early articles seem to continue ...but I'm not so convinced that it was meeting WotC's bigger goals just because it wasn't a commercial failure. It's possible what we're hearing here in some of these early articles is Mearls re-thinking the entire idea of selling splats in an edition death spiral over and over again to an ever-shrinking audience, forcing re-boots and re-brandings and such. If your goal isn't to just reach "everyone who plays 4e," but is to reach "everyone who might play D&D," your metrics for success and failure change pretty dramatically.

Are you replying to me?

The PHB II seems to have done well compared to other RPG supplements. Thats about it. Again, as noted multiple times above, and in other threads, and at the time (check out the links in my last post) something was obviously perceived as wrong for them to fire who they did or launch essentials.

But, on the one hand, on the other hand...My guess is that it took some time to come to the conclusions that you guess they came to. One thing we know Mearls has actually said is how surprised he was that people--through playtest feedback--did not want as much mechanical crunchiness as was assumed by conventional wisdom in the industry. We also actually know that around this time, with the online CB, that they realized that people where playing a lot of "classic" races and classes, inspite of the all the new options rapidly introduced in 4E. It was probably evidence like this, and on new player acquisition, which again Mearls has often mentioned, that led to the shift in thinking, but over time, not all at once.

But then again, the splat-o-rama model came from somewhere. Both 3E offshoots followed it quite zealously, and one is still considered to be pretty successful. Its part of the issue with 4E and the transition to 5E, but not the only thing. There are more columns to re-read.

 

[Imaro]

What do we know? The 4e PHB2 sold extremely well, hitting the top 15 on the WSJ bestsellers list (and spending multiple weeks on the list), and the PHB3 didn't sell remotely so well but was somewhere round #50. (Not bad at all, all things considered given it was a pretty awful book IMO - out of six classes I hard ban three, soft ban two, and ban Hybrids, leaving just the Monk).

Yes but by only examining PHB 2 you're disregarding the performance of the splatbooks that came before it. I also think much of PHB2's positive sales was due to the fact that it contained what many considered basic classes (Druid, Bard, etc.) and races (H-Orc)...

So. Prior to Essentials, 4e was selling pretty well. And the only quarter Pathfinder caught it on the ICv2 lists was the one where the released book was Psionic Power - the splatbook for the three PHB3 classes I hard ban. On the other hand the business model was coming to the end of the road. What else was there to release after the three PHBs, and a splatbook each (plus the excellent Martial Power 2) and two Adventurers' Vaults? (Other, of course, than some actually good adventures).

I think a more interesting question would be how did the first round of "power" books sell? These were the initial splat-books and were not propped up by the holding back of certain races/classes as PHB 2 was...

I honestly don't know how they sold then but when looking at amazon now for a relative comparison... Martial Power (Nov 2008) is ranked #253,556 in Books,
Arcane Power (April 2009) is ranked #446,416 in Books
Divine Power (July 2009) is ranked #462,491 in Books
Martial Power 2 (Feb 2010) is ranked #563,751 in Books

while PHB 2 (Mar.17 2009) is ranked #94,907 in Books...

This, admittedly limited, evidence seems to indicate PHB 2 is a bt of an anomaly when looking at the entire run of 4e books... in that it sold considerably better then all the splatbooks... so I think it's a little misleading to use PHB 2 as evidence to your claim that classic 4e was selling well...

Enter Essentials. 4e's lovely internal edition war of a product. I'm not aware that despite being cheap either of HoF* made the NYT or WSJ bestseller lists. The shift in character builders to the online-only Silverlight thing which was both a bandwidth hog and had reduced functionality caused subscriptions to be cancelled. The design principles of HoF* (Heroes of the Fallen Lands/Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms) were not those of the PHB - they were ones that didn't attract non-fans, and quite seriously pissed off a lot of 4e fans (most notably bringing back Wizard Supremacy and dumb fighters). Several of the classes in HoF* were badly made; they didn't scale properly and were unable to do their job. (Slayer without external feats, Sentinel Druid, the Knight had a weakness vs forced movement, Hunter, Hexblade had issues).

On amazon, as of this post the essentials books are ranked as follows...

HotFL #454,694 in Books
HotFK #300,834 in Books
RC #185,027 in Books
DM Kit #439,076 in Books

This seems to indicate that the essentials line sold on par with the splat books for classic 4e... I think the biggest issue essentials had was in the confusion over whether they were splatbooks for classic 4e or new corebooks.... WotC was looking for the revenue of corebooks but confused their message by trying to placate 4e fans... IMO, they should have called it a revision, labeled it 4.5 and said it was fully compatible with 4.0.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Essentials really underperformed.

I think the question is... under-performed compared to what? The core and PHB 2... sure... but then these weren't marketed as a new core... well actually they kind of suffered from confused marketing. That said compared to the actual splat books, they did pretty well, in line with and even exceeding some of the previous splats for classic 4e... The problem was that WotC wanted corebook sales without having to label them as such... it just doesn't work like that.

 

[dracomilan]

Just a little info on a foreign market: Essentials was the product line that terminated the 15-years long relationship between WotC and 25th Edition, the Italian translator of D&D.
They stopped publishing D&D products without even bothering to complete the Essentials product line (they never translated the Monster's boxed set). At the time they stated 'product line mismanagement' as the main problem.

PS: Essentials was the product that moved me back into D&D after I had left it because DMing high-level 3.x was too complicated

 

[I'm A Banana]

Are you replying to me?

The PHB II seems to have done well compared to other RPG supplements. Thats about it. Again, as noted multiple times above, and in other threads, and at the time (check out the links in my last post) something was obviously perceived as wrong for them to fire who they did or launch essentials.

Just using your post as a launching point for rampant speculations.

 

[TerraDave]

This statement is not universally true.

...

I only wish I lived in an alternate universe, where Essentials was released first and 4e was released later as an advanced version.

If they had taken that approach with the 4E PHB? And had a monster book like monster vault? Yes, things may have been very different.

But it took them years to get to that point. This is almost certainly another lesson taken on board with the way 5E was approached.

 

[TerraDave]

... I also think much of PHB2's positive sales was due to the fact that it contained what many considered basic classes (Druid, Bard, etc.) and races (H-Orc)...

...

I honestly don't know how they sold then but when looking at amazon now for a relative comparison... Martial Power (Nov 2008) is ranked #253,556 in Books,
Arcane Power (April 2009) is ranked #446,416 in Books
Divine Power (July 2009) is ranked #462,491 in Books
Martial Power 2 (Feb 2010) is ranked #563,751 in Books

...

I agree on your first point, but those numbers don't mean much.

We have this for example:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?243902-Amazon-Sales-Rankings-amazing-data!

#1,085: Adventurer's Vault
#1,449: D&D 4E Gift Set
#2,734: 4E Player's Handbook
#2,863: Forgotten Realms Player's Guide
#4,949: 4E DM's Screen
#5,507: 3.5E Player's Handbook
#6,954: Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide
#9,337: 3.5E Dungeon Master's Guide
#12,849: 4E Dungeon Master's Guide
#15,558: H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth
#17,234: H3 Pyramid of Shadows
#19,494: 4E Monster Manual
#23,004: Scepter Tower of Spellgard
#24,656: 3.5E Monster Manual
#25,771: H1 Keep on the Shadowfell
#30,914: 4E D&D Starter Set
#445,483: The Sunless Citadel (3e adventure)
#448,647: Pathfinder #1: Burnt Offerings
#561,780: Pathfinder #14: Children of the Void
#747,380: Pathfinder #13: Shadow in the Sky
#948,303: DL1 Dragons of Despair (1e adventure from 1984)
#1,025,107: WG7 Castle Greyhawk (terrible 1e adventure from 1988)
#1,652,435: Pathfinder #15: The Armageddon Echo

This is about 4 months after 4E came out, and those are some pretty mediocre numbers. (BW of comparison, the controversial Hoard of the Dragon Queen is at about 2200 right now, and you can see how that compares to, well, anything up there). There may have actually been something of a rebound in 2009.

For example, Arcane Power actually started pretty strongly, almost getting into the top 100, which is huge for a supplement:

https://web.archive.org/web/2009042...m/Arcane-Power-4th-D-Supplement/dp/0786949570

This again is 2009, so there could have been a rebound as the game was picked up by more tables. Some people did like it. Just not all of them.