D&D 5E Crystal Ball: A year in, how do you think 5E will unfold going forward?

[Staffan]

I wonder if the concept of players who don't GM and still buy player-option books are an artifact of organized play a la Adventurer's League. It seems a very strange concept for home games.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, that matches my experience, the DM is the one who usually invests in player splat, if anybody does.

 

[Jester David]

I wonder if the concept of players who don't GM and still buy player-option books are an artifact of organized play a la Adventurer's League. It seems a very strange concept for home games.

I don't think it's an artifact so much as an anomaly. Organized Play is a very different beast with very different players, and one of the ways it differs is having more people at the table who own the books.
Most homegames might have one or two dedicated players who buy the product, and very likely the dedicated player becomes the DM.

 

[Jester David]

In 1999, Wizards did a survey about the habits of gamers and shared some of the results publically, and one of the things they found was that someone who wasn't willing to DM would spend on average $187, in total, on D&D, or $7 per month. For those willing to DM, the amount skyrocketed - $21 monthly, or a whooping $1,444 in total.

Mind you, that survey is 15 years old, so it's probably not 100% accurate anymore. But even if there are five times as many players as DMs, the DMs represent maybe 8 times as much willingness to spend.

In my experience, over the course of many years of gaming, pretty much everything for a game is bought by the group's GM. The other players might buy a PHB and possibly assorted paraphernalia (e.g. dice), but almost never books. If they want to spend more money on RPGs, they are more likely to invest in a different game that they can GM.

Cool, I hadn't heard that. I've seen a lot of very different groups and played with a lot of different people. And in my experience, it's usually the DM with the library, so I always somewhat rejected the "5x as many players means 5x as many sales" argument. But I always wondered how anecdotal it was. Nice to hear that some evidence backed up my observations. I wouldn't be surprised to hear the numbers were similar now.

 

[cmad1977]

My experience in all RPG's work this way. As DM I've purchased the most books. My friend runs edge of the empire. He bought all the books.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

That also explains why WotC wants DMing to be an easy thing that anyone can invest in. Simple rules and always having a new epic campaign easily available in stores probably help with that.

 

[Jester David]

That also explains why WotC wants DMing to be an easy thing that anyone can invest in. Simple rules and always having a new epic campaign easily available in stores probably help with that.

Which adds an extra layer to the "limited books" argument. If DMs are the primary purchasers of product, you don't want to produce content that will unbalance their game or make their life harder.

 

[Shasarak]

In 1999, Wizards did a survey about the habits of gamers and shared some of the results publically, and one of the things they found was that someone who wasn't willing to DM would spend on average $187, in total, on D&D, or $7 per month. For those willing to DM, the amount skyrocketed - $21 monthly, or a whooping $1,444 in total.

Mind you, that survey is 15 years old, so it's probably not 100% accurate anymore. But even if there are five times as many players as DMs, the DMs represent maybe 8 times as much willingness to spend.

Which makes the current production even more head scratching because in 1999 they decided that they were not going to focus on adventures when they did not make any money.

 

[Corpsetaker]

Which adds an extra layer to the "limited books" argument. If DMs are the primary purchasers of product, you don't want to produce content that will unbalance their game or make their life harder.

How do extra books unbalance the game if you don't purchase them?

Also, I just want to say that some of you are taking this a little to the extreme. Four extra books during the year is not going to throw the game out of whack. If that is the case then the rules are not very stable.

 

[Greg K]

If DMs are the primary purchasers of product, you don't want to produce content that will unbalance their game or make their life harder.

I and my friends that DM never find the books to unbalance our games. We find it makes life easier as we have to come up with less stuff on our own. As for unbalancing the game, we are selective about what option we let in. What would have made life easier for us (not necessarily our pocketbooks) in 3e is smaller and more focused supplements. There was too much filler in the form of PrCs and, mostly, unnecessary spells (in our opinion). Five to ten pages of worthwhile material in most WOTC player supplements meant that most of them were not worth purchasing for our needs.