D&D 5E Reasons Why My Interest in 5e is Waning

[SilverfireSage]

I don't see how telling WotC "Shut up and take my money!" is entitled. It's just pointing out that their lack of communication as to their future products has negative knockoff effects as to the attitude of some of their customer base. Just as publishing a schedule of a book every month would have negative knockoff effects, just to a different constituency.

At this same point for 4e, (not quite apples to apples, I know, since the core books weren't staggered for 4e) we already had the 3 core books, Martial Power was on the way, and we knew that the FR Campaign Setting and Player's Book were coming, and that the Player's Book would have a new class. We also knew that at least 3 new hard covers would be coming out in 2009. For 3e, Sword and Fist was on the way, as well as the FRCS, a Forgotten Realms splat book (Magic of Faerun?), and the understanding that every class would be getting its own splat book. Plus the third party publishing was just beginning to gear up. There's nothing remotely similar to anticipate for 5e.

It's not the "shut up and take my money" attitude, it's "make more things faster and make them the things that I want" that's entitled. Specifically, "what if I don't want to play Elemental Evil? What if I don't want to play Hoard of the Dragon Queen?" that irks me. We have adventures, we have books coming out, and it's fine to want a little more clarity on things coming out in the future. But complaining about not having exactly what you want is entitled, plain and simple.

 

[SilverfireSage]

You know how WoTc would win? By actually listening to it's customers. They could release a perfectly healthy dose of books without going overboard at a gross level.

Which edition did splat kill again?

Trying to acquiesce to all of their customers demands would cause WoTC to split into about 7000 pieces with the amount of inconsistency.

 

[SilverfireSage]

I do find it funny that the one thing I am seeing over and over again is a fear of Rules Bloat. Meanwhile, I am asking for Campaign Setting material, which does not necessarily have any rules in them. I get the Rules Bloat position, but why couldn't there have been a book detailing Greenist and the surrounding area for the Hoarde of the Dragon Queen adventure. Not a single new rule needs to be in there. But it can help fire someone's imagination for making a character. Or it can inspire the GM if the player's wander off the tracks of the adventure. What's wrong with that?

I'm confused as to why you can't use the dozen or so campaign books already out there. Reading through, say, the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide that I have here next to me, only the last dozen or so pages have anything to do with 4th edition. All of the rest of it could be interchanged with any ruleset out there.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

A huge part of the dndclassics.com library is setting material. Now, if you want new Forgotten Realms subclasses and backgrounds, we're talking about rules again.

 

[TwoSix]

It's not the "shut up and take my money" attitude, it's "make more things faster and make them the things that I want" that's entitled. Specifically, "what if I don't want to play Elemental Evil? What if I don't want to play Hoard of the Dragon Queen?" that irks me. We have adventures, we have books coming out, and it's fine to want a little more clarity on things coming out in the future. But complaining about not having exactly what you want is entitled, plain and simple.

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree here. Saying "I like X. Company A used to sell X, but doesn't anymore, so I don't think Company A will retain me as a customer." is just common sense to me, not any sort of entitlement.

Quite simply, I have no moral requirement to care that WotC is operating in its own best interests, or even in a fashion that appeals to their broadest customer base. if WotC doesn't sell the products I desire, I will lose interest in their products, and probably D&D as a whole, although not the broader TTRPG hobby. Again, that's not entitlement, that's just common sense.

It would be a fair complaint against me if I purported to say that WotC has some requirement to market to me and my needs specifically. It does not, and I don't believe myself or anyone with a similar opinion has made that statement. WotC has every right to publish 2 adventures a year, and that's it. My own personal opinion is that will ultimately prove to be a poor marketing decision, but I freely admit to making nothing but conjecture, and biased by my own desires to boot.

 

[TreChriron]

What's both funny and terrible about this post;

It's by a publisher about a publisher. That doesn't happen often expect in our hobby/industry. Note this publisher is a FAN of the other publisher's work.

It demonstrates the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" principle to outstanding extremes. Some people want more 5e books. Some PF people are tired of the release-cannon barrage of Paizo. If you wanted to go into publishing, which crowd can you cater to?

Note that this publisher (the OP) offers 183 PDF products online at DTRPG. That's an impressive catalog. So at least the OP puts his money where his mouth is! :-D But what is the total page count of this 183 products? How does it compare to WOTC's page count for 5e thus far?

I have seen several attempts to create new flagships/conglomerates, but they seem to sputter more often than light.

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On the subject of flagships/conglomerates...

To create a "conglomerate" of publishers supporting one system, you need one of those publishers to lead the pack. This requires other publishers to willingly "play 2nd fiddle" to the flagship product. In my mind the big publisher flagships are Pinnacle with Savage Worlds, Evil Hat with Fate, Paizo with Pathfinder, Green Ronin with MM3e/Age, and WOTC with D&D (kind of considering OGL). BRP/Runequest have member publishers that sort of cooperate and sort of don't; it's a big family, but one could argue Chaosium is the flagship in a strange "everyone is admiral" fleet. Open Quest and Renaissance have created an OGL outlet for BRP stuff if you like those games. As far as publisher support, WOTC has been the hardest fleet to participate in since 4e. If you're a proven publisher you could license with them, but licenses don't foster the same cottage industry paradigm as OGL. One could argue that the Savage World license keeps a pretty tight control on the "crap splat bloat" that plagued the early OGL years. You have several options with several approaches depending on your desires.

So that's a lot of competition for this many fleets in this small of a sea...

What do you do? I'm sure bitching at the admirals is going to have little effect. In my experience RPG publishers work at the pace they want to on the stuff they want to and you can either be a fan or find another fleet. It is something that appeals to those who publish me thinks.

Basically, if you want to be part of a fleet, and you don't like your options, you have to start your own fleet. Which means you have to create a flagship. It's the only way you're going to get control of the situation. You just need to model the current flagships, learn from their victories and defeats, and make your offering desirable to other potential captains.

I preach this a lot in threads like this. If you don't like this, do you're own thing! Or maybe explore one of the other big fleets and see if they don't suit you. Either way, this thread demonstrates one obvious truth about our hobby. People gravitate towards the games/approaches they like. There are this many games/approaches because we have that kind of variety among our ranks. If you feel you want to create a new fleet and see if others might join you, then you should. It's likely more productive than joining a new ship every month and trying to foster a mutiny (and less trying I imagine).

Just my two cents...

 

[Nilbog]

Actually yep i would like a new MM- with a focus on every monster having a little quirky, cool ability. That would be awesome.

Totally agree, we have a good variety of classic monsters, I'd really like to see the designers push the system, and shows some monsters with really unusual mechanical traits and quirks, would be the icing on the 5e cake for me

 

[Jester David]

"independently managed" is not how the ex-employee stories read IMHO. There seems to be a lot of influence there especially from the legal department regarding the OGL (as per GSL 4e stories...).

Legal matters likely require more approval. The OGL/GSL - possibly affecting the brand as a whole - likely requires some extra approval (apparently Hasbro was a pretty easy sell on the OGL).

Other than that, Hasbro has it's own company to run. They're a big company with lots of name brands. They have their own product to worry about and aren't going to waste time on an affiliate. If they wanted that much control, they'd merge the companies.

But it's worth remembering Hasbro doesn't need to oversee WotC. The CEO of WotC is an ex-Hasbro suit and is likely well suited to considering their position. Going outside the company isn't necessary.

 

[Trickster Spirit]

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree here. Saying "I like X. Company A used to sell X, but doesn't anymore, so I don't think Company A will retain me as a customer." is just common sense to me, not any sort of entitlement.

Quite simply, I have no moral requirement to care that WotC is operating in its own best interests, or even in a fashion that appeals to their broadest customer base. if WotC doesn't sell the products I desire, I will lose interest in their products, and probably D&D as a whole, although not the broader TTRPG hobby. Again, that's not entitlement, that's just common sense.

It would be a fair complaint against me if I purported to say that WotC has some requirement to market to me and my needs specifically. It does not, and I don't believe myself or anyone with a similar opinion has made that statement. WotC has every right to publish 2 adventures a year, and that's it. My own personal opinion is that will ultimately prove to be a poor marketing decision, but I freely admit to making nothing but conjecture, and biased by my own desires to boot.

Honestly, I think the only real disagreement is that last point, and really we won't know for at least a year or two who's right. It comes down to whether you think the brand-centric tie-in strategy (keep a lightly-supported RPG alive to build the fan-base for the D&D movies / video games / board games / action figures, etc. where the REAL money is to be made) is a smarter strategy than catering to table-top gamers and investing in putting out products for them to buy in the hopes that they'll buy enough to justify the expense.

Clearly Wizards is pursuing the former strategy, and that means they're probably not going to put out enough product fast enough to keep you interested in 5E. I don't think anyone would begrudge you for leaving an edition behind because the lack of support left you cold. But frankly a large and healthy fan-base can be maintained on just the core books and the back catalog alone, anything else is just gravy. We'll get player's options stuff at least twice a year (themed splatbook accompanying the adventure paths, or free PDF in the case of Princes of the Apocalypse), and they'll come out with campaign setting stuff and more monster books eventually.

Some folks might abandon ship because they're not happy with the amount of content, but that's not the audience WotC is targeting, the casual players are. It's unfortunate that you find yourself out in the cold re: support, but I'm not convinced that the collective RPG market has enough spending power to compete year after year with casual players who never spend anything on RPG books but would go collectively throw millions of dollars at a D&D movie or video game.

 

[BryonD]

It may if it is just a power booster for dwarfs, followed by a power booster book for elves, etc. I'm just not into the typical power creep when they are constantly putting out more options books. It depends, but I'm really not wanting Paizo 2 though I understand some want that. I'm fine with the core three, plus supporting materials that just uses the core three, adventures that just use the core three, a setting book that just uses the core three, etc. But if you have all these other books don't you want to reference them in other materials to get players to buy a new 40 dollar book to maximize their value? I guess I don't look at 5e and think "this game is needs a lot more stuff to it". Its pretty complete as it is.

To summarize my views on this whole thread I get why people want more stuff, more options, more books to read, to collect. I"m fine with a smaller set and less bloat. I think the game will be better for it at the table. I could be wrong and WOTC may go all nuts and in 2017 PHB4 is coming out. I kind of hope not though.

Yeah, understood.

I still think that maintaining an active community in which to find players requires some support and constant input of energy.
Clearly existing 1E groups prove that my claim is not a fundamental truth. But if you moved to a new city and started looking for a new group, I bet your brother would find a Pathfinder group a lot more quickly than you would find a 1E group and would have more variety of groups to choose from. (at least 19 times out of 20)

If you have a fixed group and none of that matters, then cool. But fi you have this solid group of like-minded gamers, then power-creep shouldn't be a problem. Everyone agrees not to use crap. Again, I readily admit that the D20 glut included a ton of bad, overpowered crap. (include plenty by WotC) So I hear you. But it is easy to avoid power creep in a group that is averse to power creep. Don't use the power creep stuff.

So I'm REALLY not trying to be the least bit critical of what works for you. It makes sense. I just don't see how them publishing things you don't have to buy is something you should, be opposed to. Publishing more stuff helps you indirectly through supporting the community. Not publishing obviously doesn't hurt you, but it denies others what they want for no gain. So why take the position?