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

[Teflon Billy]

Link to Original

So here are my Top 5 Reasons why my interest in the game is waning and what Wizards can do to fix it.

My interest isn't waning at all. We've been playing since the playtest and 5E is (currently) our favorite edition. But I'll address your points below...

5) Serious Lack of Digital Tools. I

This one is actually pretty fair, but D&D has a such a long, storied tradition of completely and utterly ing up electronic tools I'm sorry to say I almost expected it.

4) No PDFs (except for the basic game).

This one I don't really care about too much. I'm generally fine with harcopy harcovers, but I'd probably get some use out of a PDF that allowed cut-and-paste without Acrobat and was meaningfully searchable. Still, I've loved this edition without them thus far, and am still enjoying the game hugely and the lack of electronic doodads isn't exactly killing anything for me.

3) Nothing Much to Look Forward To/Lack of Product Diversity.

I don't care about this one at all. I remember 3E and I remember what a constant stream of new product from myriad sources was: power-ups for players. Power creep is something I hate and the idea that the current plan is to avoid it is music to my ears.

Like you, I'm largely a setting reader, but I can't think that I'd honestly say that "Without something to fuel my imagination, I am bored and am going to look elsewhere"...I mean, seriously? if you need your imagination "Fueled" from game materials and only those from official sources I don;t think it's much of an imagination.

2) The Waiting.

I'm seeing the pattern now. You are considering giving up on 5E because you want....stuff.

1) No OGL (or some kind of compatible license).

Yep, Stuff.

So that is my reasons why my interest in D&D is waning right now. How is your interest in D&D 5e? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Done.

 

[pemerton]

If geeks spend the next 5 years saying "Pathfinder" then people will start lumping everything under "Pathfinder". That is a long long way off. D&D has deep roots.
But the presumption that this is unwavering is not forward thinking.

But what makes you think WotC thinks this is unwavering?

They have just produced a new edition of D&D. By all accounts it has sold very well.

Mearls's stated goal is to avoid the problem WotC experienced with the 4e Red Box: strong initial take-up but little follow through. Sales of the 5e core books seem, so far, to be behaving the way that Mearls's wanted them to.

why do 5E at all?

Presumably the first and foremost reason is because it generates a desirable return on the capital invested.

A related reason is the one [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] gives: it is a suitable "anchor" for an enduring, low-overheads-to-maintain D&D game. This reason is related because this is part of how the game generates its return.

This reason is related in another way, because this is part of how the game is seen as maintaining its place as the notional foundation of the overall brand.

These reasons may or may not turn out to be good ones, but I think they're reasonable. They're also the answer to the implicit question "What is WotC doing to stop PF eclipsing D&D in 5 years?"

 

[bmfrosty]

These reasons may or may not turn out to be good ones, but I think they're reasonable. They're also the answer to the implicit question "What is WotC doing to stop PF eclipsing D&D in 5 years?"

Here's a question. Do we even know if pathfinder is profitable?

It certainly has revenue and value as a brand, but do we know if it makes a profit for paizo?

 

[collin]

Here's a question. Do we even know if pathfinder is profitable?

It certainly has revenue and value as a brand, but do we know if it makes a profit for paizo?

You think they are producing oodles of @#$%! at a loss? I could see a few months here and there, but if there was a trend of definite loss, I think anyone with a brain would say it's time to cut our losses and move on to miniatures, board games, or something else.

 

[collin]

Mearls's stated goal is to avoid the problem WotC experienced with the 4e Red Box: strong initial take-up but little follow through.

That was all due to how they designed and marketed 4th edition from the get-go. I am not buying this theory of "4th edition failed because of WotC's strategy in launching so much product and their release schedule". That is either pure BS or WotC has too much analysis paralysis. I played 4th edition only once, and I could see what would happen, and it did: big initial uptake, but it peaked quickly followed by a quick burn and then to game limbo with all the other books and toys on the shelf. They tried to create an RPG that they thought would appeal to the computer gaming crowd, so that is how they built their new system. But just like computer games, once all the kids 'mastered it', 'figured it out', or just plain burned out on playing it, they moved onto something else. So all the new players left the game, and meanwhile WotC alienated the previous fan-base they had built with 3rd edition.

 

[chriton227]

You think they are producing oodles of @#$%! at a loss? I could see a few months here and there, but if there was a trend of definite loss, I think anyone with a brain would say it's time to cut our losses and move on to miniatures, board games, or something else.

Yeah, you're right. If that were the case we'd probably start seeing things like a card game, comic books, audio dramas, miniatures, or maybe even an MMO to try to get more direct and licensing based revenue, sort of like what people have been talking about WotC trying to do to maximize the revenue they can get from the D&D brand.

 

[Hussar]

That was all due to how they designed and marketed 4th edition from the get-go. I am not buying this theory of "4th edition failed because of WotC's strategy in launching so much product and their release schedule". That is either pure BS or WotC has too much analysis paralysis. I played 4th edition only once, and I could see what would happen, and it did: big initial uptake, but it peaked quickly followed by a quick burn and then to game limbo with all the other books and toys on the shelf. They tried to create an RPG that they thought would appeal to the computer gaming crowd, so that is how they built their new system. But just like computer games, once all the kids 'mastered it', 'figured it out', or just plain burned out on playing it, they moved onto something else. So all the new players left the game, and meanwhile WotC alienated the previous fan-base they had built with 3rd edition.

That would be true if it only applied to 4e though. The boom and bust cycle of editions is at least as old as 3e and probably longer. The reason we got the 1e Unearthed Arcana is because sales fell out of the bottom of 1e. And that was in the day when it was a HELL of a lot cheaper to print books. People tend to ignore the fact that printing prices have far, far outstripped inflation over the past twenty years or so. The margins on books have been getting slimmer and slimmer all the way along.

Heck, they printed 3e books at a loss. That's common knowledge. The core 3 for 3e were sold at below cost, just to get people to buy the books. And even then, sales tanked so quickly that we got 3.5 edition two years early. The supplements just couldn't make up the difference.

So, if people rejected 4e because they "master it" or "figured it out", what's your explanation for 3e dying in even less time than 4e? Even if you consider Essentials to be a new edition, 4e and 3e last about the same amount of time. So, if 4e died because people "moved on", then what was wrong with 3e? And, really, it's not like 3.5 won any longevity awards either. Sure, it managed to go another two or three years longer than 3.0, but, that's not exactly setting any records here.

If supplements drive editions, why did we get 4e at all? Shouldn't the supplements have kept 3.5 afloat?

 

[pemerton]

Do we even know if pathfinder is profitable?

It certainly has revenue and value as a brand, but do we know if it makes a profit for paizo?

My assumption in these discussions has always been that it does make a profit - with the subscriber base inherited from Dragon/Dungeon days being at the core of that.

You think they are producing oodles of @#$%! at a loss? I could see a few months here and there, but if there was a trend of definite loss, I think anyone with a brain would say it's time to cut our losses and move on to miniatures, board games, or something else.

If that were the case we'd probably start seeing things like a card game, comic books, audio dramas, miniatures, or maybe even an MMO to try to get more direct and licensing based revenue, sort of like what people have been talking about WotC trying to do to maximize the revenue they can get from the D&D brand.

It certainly stands to reason that if WotC have found that there is a fairly hard cap on the returns you can make on a successful RPG, then Paizo might discover the same limit, and devise similar strategies for getting around it.

 

[pemerton]

I am not buying this theory of "4th edition failed because of WotC's strategy in launching so much product and their release schedule".

I'm not sure what, or whose, theory you're talking about.

Mearls has stated that the 4e Red Box had good uptake, but there was limited retention and purchase of further products. Part of the rationale of 5e was to make the "on-ramp" easier. A number of people in this thread have stated that they find the "wall of books" to be a barrier across the on-ramp. That seems plausible to me.

I played 4th edition only once, and I could see what would happen, and it did: big initial uptake, but it peaked quickly followed by a quick burn and then to game limbo with all the other books and toys on the shelf. They tried to create an RPG that they thought would appeal to the computer gaming crowd, so that is how they built their new system. But just like computer games, once all the kids 'mastered it', 'figured it out', or just plain burned out on playing it, they moved onto something else.

I've never played a computer game or MMO, but I've played 4e more than once. 4e seems to me to be built to appeal to game players, including people who care about the game (ie rules and mechanics) elements of RPGs, and the way those elements drive play. 4e isn't built to appeal to those who like the GM to play the predominant and mechanics-independent role in determining how a game unfolds.

Anyone who inclines to the view that mechanics "get in the way of" roleplaying, or who wants mechanics that will "disappear" is probably not going to like 4e. The 4e design approach is heavily influenced by the view that mechanics cannot disappear. Here is one statement of that view:

System is experientially inescapable. One cannot make Character, Setting, Situation, and Color "go" without it. . . . Really to remove System requires that anything and everything that happens during play be mediated solely through the Social Contract, without any formalized method even to do that. I think that such play would be awfully difficult, requiring so much negotiation regarding how to play per unit of play as to be hopeless.​

5e, on the other hand, is designed on a different assumption - that a lot of system can be handballed to social contract (otherwise known as "empowering the DM" - a strong version of this, which has plenty of proponents on these boards, is that if I say "My guy looks out the window" or "My guy draw his sword" then even that isn't true, in the fiction, until the GM has signed off on it). It turns out, following market research, that more D&D players want a game like that than the 4e designers had thought.

(@BryonD responded with disagreement in some recent thread - I think the roles one rather than this one - to a comment from me about certain players preferring to disregard the mechanics. From my perspective the above paragraph is a restatement of the point, and so Bryon may have a response to it.)

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

I've decided to stop worrying about WotC's release schedule. I'll just skip 2015 entirely and come back in 2016 to see if there's anything interesting on the horizon.