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

[DaveDash]

Perhaps where you are at. I worked at a small community college until a couple of years ago and still take classes there in the evening. I also work at several elementary schools, two charter schools, two home school/school hybrids (edit: I forgot about one). At the college, in one semester, I found about two dozen kids in three departments (multimedia, culinary and computer science) that played D&D, Warhammer, Dark Heresy, and Vampire. There was little overlap between individuals and groups. They were playing with friends from work or whom attended other schools. None of them learned from parents.
At one of the hybrid home school/elementary school (I forget the term they use), there is a weekly game club where they play D&D one afternoon and another rpg another day. Several of the elementary students with whom I work with at regular schools also play. At some of the schools, the afterschool D&D club is run by one of the competitors for the company with whom I contract.
I also know of schools on the east coast that also have gaming clubs at elementary schools and junior high schools (those are run by some game designers and others working in the gaming industry often at their children's schools).

Here in Australia when I posted for players for 3rd Edition games I'd get flooded with responses. Now? Maybe one response every 3 months.

But that's all anecdotal besides the point. I find it a great stretch of the imagination to think that TTRPG's are growing at the same rate as MMOs/CRPGs.

If D&D is growing at lets say n YoY, and the RPG industry as a whole is growing at n YoY, the total percentage of RPG customers playing D&D is shrinking, because it's a much smaller number to start with. If you're looking at preventing your business from becoming more and more niche, you're going to want to tap into that larger market.

D&D is not competing just in the TTRPG market, it's competing in the entire RPG market, because its players require time to play it. Time they could spend playing other RPG products.

Before Everquest there was Baldurs Gate and such (and going back further, games like Might and Magic), but those games didn't compete for time with D&D, they complimented it. Now, D&D needs to actually compete for time with these MMO's and other CRPGs which spew out DLCs to keep player engagement.

There are much more young kids playing MMOs than there are playing D&D, and if WoTC doesn't focus their efforts in that market, they don't have much of a hope really in the future. Sure, the percentage of D&D players will slowly grow (until perhaps we all start to die out), but so will the overall population, and it'll end up more niche than it is today.

 

[Iosue]

Yeah, that's part of what boggles my mind. First adventures are bad, then they aren't. I think putting all your eggs in one basket is bad, but despite the internet pundits. I'm still not convinced that's actually WotC's plan.

Adventures are bad when they are slim 32 page products that don't have much relation to each other, if any. They are much better when campaign-length hardcovers. The adventures that Dancey repudiated are a far cry from the adventures WotC is making the centerpiece of storylines. You'll notice that those kind of adventures are exactly what WotC are not producing.

As for putting all one's eggs in one basket, focusing on the biggest long term moneymaker in the TRPG while expanding the brand in other mediums such as CRPGs, boardgames, and novels seems to me to be the exact opposite of that.

 

[Parmandur]

Here in Australia when I posted for players for 3rd Edition games I'd get flooded with responses. Now? Maybe one response every 3 months.



But that's all anecdotal besides the point. I find it a great stretch of the imagination to think that TTRPG's are growing at the same rate as MMOs/CRPGs.



If D&D is growing at lets say n YoY, and the RPG industry as a whole is growing at n YoY, the total percentage of RPG customers playing D&D is shrinking, because it's a much smaller number to start with. If you're looking at preventing your business from becoming more and more niche, you're going to want to tap into that larger market.



D&D is not competing just in the TTRPG market, it's competing in the entire RPG market, because its players require time to play it. Time they could spend playing other RPG products.



Before Everquest there was Baldurs Gate and such (and going back further, games like Might and Magic), but those games didn't compete for time with D&D, they complimented it. Now, D&D needs to actually compete for time with these MMO's and other CRPGs which spew out DLCs to keep player engagement.



There are much more young kids playing MMOs than there are playing D&D, and if WoTC doesn't focus their efforts in that market, they don't have much of a hope really in the future. Sure, the percentage of D&D players will slowly grow (until perhaps we all start to die out), but so will the overall population, and it'll end up more niche than it is today.

Actually not what WOTC found about their player base, the are primarily younger. Given that, CRPGs like Neverwinter or Sword Coast Legends make more such players.

 

[Shasarak]

Adventures are bad when they are slim 32 page products that don't have much relation to each other, if any. They are much better when campaign-length hardcovers. The adventures that Dancey repudiated are a far cry from the adventures WotC is making the centerpiece of storylines. You'll notice that those kind of adventures are exactly what WotC are not producing.

The Night Below was a 192 page (3 x 64 page) boxed "adventure path" released in 95, so Dancey would not have been sololy focused on the smaller adventures when WotC was doing their review of sales.

 

[Mistwell]

So, is the reason "Jury Duty" keeps coming up because he's been sequestered

Yes.

 

[Mistwell]

Here is why a faster release schedule is bad for my game and/or me:

1) It puts me in an uncomfortable position when one of my players buys a new book and wants an option from that book that I am not sure I want in my game. I don't know how it will work with our setting, with all the other things that player already has on their character, with the abilities of the other characters in the group, with my adventure, etc.. So now I need to make a decision between telling my player no and disappointing them, or telling them yes and having a problem later. I don't like being put in that position to begin with - and fewer books means it happens less.

2) The faster the release schedule the less playtesting that happens for everything, and the less able everyone who works at the D&D department is able to keep track of how everything works with everything else. The more there is, the lower the quality in general, given their existing staff. This harms my games, because what I do buy and use will not be as good.

3) The faster the release schedule, the more pressure on the company to support those new releases in adventures and other things they publish. Recently Paizo put out an adventure path that directly referenced 13 different splat books in the adventure. And sure, you can access those things online, if you are willing to go dig them up, but you shouldn't have to. You should not be in a position, as a DM, to be familiar with 13 different additional non-core books to run an adventure path. That's evidence that the more you publish, the more pressure on the company to support those publications with everything else you publish. Paizo executives have said that pressure exists - that they feel the need to offer that support for the new publications with their adventures. I imagine WOTC executives feel the same way.

4) I am a collector - and it is hard for me to resist buying everything WOTC puts out. But I have a family now and I cannot really afford it. So the slower release schedule helps me resist buying too much.

Those are some reasons off the top of my head why a faster release schedule is bad for me - even if I don't use any of it.

 

[Celtavian]

True in theory, not always true in practice.

5e is a very DM friendly, put power in the hands of the DM system. Pathfinder is rules lawyer mechanics heavy and crunch heavy. By defacto this puts more power in the hands of players, due to the workload DM's may have to exercise to make it more like '5e'.
From a game point of view, I actually find pathfinders model far more appealing than 5e's 'rulings not rules' philosophy. However, I don't play pathfinder simply because I find the system (mechanics wise) too dated now.

Pathfinder was hard to modify. The amount of material was overwhelming. If you were to write house rules, it would require a large document. I reached a point where I was tired of modifying over-powered combinations and just quit DMing. I don't want to play a game where players can mechanically defeat everything with some combination the designers didn't exercise any balance control over. Things like Come and Get Me and spells like Prediction of Failure were ridiculous. You had to design very specific encounters to defeat those abilities and use a level of metagame knowledge I didn't find enjoyable. If you tried to get rid of or limit any of these abilities, the players would argue with you. Then they would start bringing up other over-powered combinations that they thought should be removed like the invisible, flying wizard that cannot be touched. The amount of time and rules proficiency required of a DM to make the game somewhat challenging at high level burned even me out. I ran one game to level 21, a few to 14 to 17. At the end I couldn't stand it any longer. 5Es ease of running trumped Pathfinder's vast array of options.

I do like the creativity in Pathfinder. I still think their adventures are way better than the ones we've seen from WotC. Kingmaker will always be fondly remembered by our group. Right now we're running classic modules like Keep on the Borderlands and Against the Giants for 5E. These modules like Princes of the Apocalypse are pale in comparison to Pathfinder modules. I read them and find it strange when people claim they are "good" or on par. I used to read Pathfinder modules for entertainment, that's how strong the story material and extra features are in Pathfinder[ APs.

I liked having a god or world entry, a small bestiary, an opening letter from the editor discussing design and inspiration, and a high quality adventure all in one book. That was worth your money. Even if you didn't love the adventure, you usually found something you could add to your campaign in a Pathfinder AP.

If the Pathfinder system hadn't become so unwieldy and imbalanced, our group would still be playing. I'd love to have the simplicity of 5E, with the vast array of options of Pathfinder/3E, with the Pathfinder AP model. I can't put the time in designing adventures for Pathfinder any longer. I can't have players pulling some combination out that shouldn't even exist requiring me to modify it or allow them to run over everything I spent hours designing. Pathfinder was fine with the Core and most of the splats. It became too much after a while. I'm still not feeling 5E adventures. They are boring. I hope Rage of Demons is a much better offering.

 

[Kramodlog]

WOTC is going for a different market

The market of people who want to play fantasy based RPGs and who are interested in APs? Seems like the same market as Pathfinder.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

The market of people who want to play fantasy based RPGs and who are interested in APs? Seems like the same market as Pathfinder.

Probably the market of people who want all that stuff without the need of a scientific calculator to go with it...

 

[Umbran]

Fixed for you...

Please don't do that on these boards. It is considered rude.

..., and not a very good example.

I think MS Word and Photoshop are both fine examples. The latter, especially - Photoshop is so laden with arcane, jargon-ridden features as to have an oppressive learning curve, when most folks can get by with, say, Paint.NET for day-to-day use.

If anything a "classic" example of scope creep are U.S. military projects, like the M2A2 Bradley, etc.

Some military projects, yes, but most are more about poor design and lack of efficiency and graft. My understanding is the Bradley doesn't have *too many* features, but that it has the *wrong* features, which isn't the same thing.

Scope creep is when the stakeholders (usually the customer) adds in new stuff into the project before it's been completed - which is bad for fixed price projects, but not bad at all for other projects such as agile/t&m, which are designed with scope creep in mind.

Eh, yes and no. Agile practices mean that the scope creep doesn't impact the pace of development. The process does not change teh impact of scope creep on the design or usability of the product after the scope creep has occurred.

In a D&D context, scope creep would be piling more and more stuff into Princes of the Apocalypses, delaying the release, pushing the price up, etc.

That's one way of looking at it. I think adding an extra splatbook to the game every quarter also qualifies.

This idea that more books = YOU MUST BUY THEM AND THEY WILL RUIN YOUR GAME is simply not true.

Not literally true, no. But human behavior is what it is. New players don't really know what's required. And rules bloat *is* a problem for some folks, and you don't get to just say, "it ain't so" and make their legitimate issues go away. Please don't try - it is dismissive and rude.

The actual real fact of the matter is more books = diminishing returns for a company.

Just so you know, there is room in the universe for more than one "actual real fact". Yes, more books does lead to diminishing returns for the company. But we should not speak as if this is *the* one and only issue with having too many books.

The statement "Splatbooks are bad" is simply not true.

I am not sure anyone said that. I know I sure didn't. So, kind of a strawman, there.