D&D 5E I just don't see why they even bothered with the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide.

[SkidAce]

But if you think 5E won't be fading into the sunset six years from now, you are dreaming.

"You may say I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one."

 

[Jester David]

If someone likes two games and one produces new content and the other doesn't, the lack of new content will be a big driver for the majority of people to choose the other game.

Not necessarily.
Playability will be a huge factor. If they game does what you want how you want. If there's a lot of content I don't want or can't manage, that doesn't drive me to the game. If the only thing that determined if people liked a game was the amount of content, Rifts would be king of the world.

If they BOTH produce content then the one that produce BETTER content will be the driver.

The next game system I'll be playing is FATE for a short mini-campaign. There's a lot of FATE content out there, but most of it is mutually exclusive and not compatible with other content. And I'm not using anything beyond the Accelerated PDF because none of it matters. And we're going to have a blast with that campaign. Not because of the rules, but because of the character and the story.

If NEITHER produce content, it doesn't matter because nothing is selling.

Which matters to the game company and absolutely no one else.

Besides, what's the best selling D&D book right now? What's making them money?
It ain't the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. It's the good old PHB. They don't need to make new content if the old content is still moving enough books to keep them in the black. So long as new players and returning old players keep coming and buying, the absence of new content is irrelevant. They don't need my money if they're selling a PHB to someone else and getting their money.

Pathfinder has been going a long time.
I love Pathfinder.
I buy practically nothing new for PF because there is so much already out. The new stuff has become marginalized, and often not very great quality.

I liked Occult Adventures and plan on returning to Pathfinder for a Carrion Crown game in 18 months or more. Maybe with Horror Adventures as well. But I also plan on banning the out of some books and limiting options. But other than that, yeah, I've reached by Pathfinder cap. I could run a murder happy CC game killing three PCs every AP volume and still never have a duplicate character.

Too many books has made a game with already shaky balance nearly unplayable. My group just finished Skull & Shackles. I kept encounters low and didn't award much quest XP and they skipped some fights. So they went into the final dungeon two levels low. They tore through 9 encounters prior to fighting the boss with some environmental hazards, all without a healing and relying on some scavenged potions and wands. Then they fought the boss immediately after two back-to-back encounters and he came out with an ally. Must have been a EL 19 encounter against injured and drained level 12 characters. And my players still slapped him around.

You could say this makes your point. But if you think 5E won't be fading into the sunset six years from now, you are dreaming.
Edition turnover is always going to be a fact of life from a market perspective. So looking at PF at this stage of it's existence is not realistic standard.

Mearl's talked about this. Everyone knows how to launch a successful RPG but no one has figured out how to sustain that success. So far people have tried lots of adventures and campaign settings, lots of player splatbooks, and lots of secondary systems. Paizo is kinda trying adventure flavour books (Mythic Adventures, Horror Adventures), which might work to some extent, but is offset by the myriad other books.

5e is trying something new: limited accessories - which are likely focused and evergreen - and large campaign adventure storylines.

5e will almost certainly give way to a 6th Edition. Or something. Maybe it will be a revised 5th Edition. Eventually. But how long is still in question.
Really, if 5e fades out after *only* six years it will still have lasted longer than any other WotC edition of the game.
Really, the longer, the better. The longer the edition lives the more universal the desire for something new will be. The fewer holdouts there will be. A longer edition means more time for new players to discover the game, more time for the edition war hostilities to fade. And, if there are fewer books when the edition does change over, the easier it will be to switch since people won't feel trapped by content they still want to use.

A book every year that draws attention back to the game is probably more than enough. Not necessarily a player splatbook, but a book of some kind.
People will play the game for a long time with minimal content. People are still playing campaigns of AD&D and Basic. The game can last. People who get really bored of the game and want to try something new are going to get bored regardless. That something new can be a different game or a massively house-ruled version of D&D.
Or take a break for a couple years before coming back and playing with the 2-3 new releases that came out during their absence. It doesn't functionally matter to WotC if they get their money right away or after a delay. Having a quarter of the playerbase constantly rotating in and out of playing D&D is probably very sustainable.

 

[garnuk]

That's not a relevant point. The assertion was that Kickstarter projects aren't retailer-friendly, presumably because they're seen as a competing venue by which to purchase products the same way that online retailers are, and that's patently false. When the book wouldn't exist if not for a Kickstarter project, it's not drawing people away from purchasing a hard copy in stores (unless you move the goalposts to say that that's money that could have gone into purchasing a different book at a retailer, but that broadens the definition of "not retailer-friendly" to include buying anything that doesn't come from a FLGS, such as going to the movies or buying ice cream).

Even if we accept your hypothetical that a Kickstarter raises the money to publish a book but not print enough of it - which sounds like a failure of the project's managers to take that into account - that doesn't rise to the level necessary to say that Kickstarter projects inherently retailer-unfriendly. Heck, you even flat-out admit that you have no idea if the one example you bring up is at an FLGS or not, and then turn right around and somehow assert that you're "fairly sure" that most Kickstarter books don't end up there.

Most KS that I have seen, have not published their material to be bought in stores after the KS is over. The purpose of Ks and how its actually used, are different.

 

[Morrus]

Even if we accept your hypothetical that a Kickstarter raises the money to publish a book but not print enough of it - which sounds like a failure of the project's managers to take that into account.

It's not a failure. It's a more modest goal. Providing rewards for backers. Print runs are an order of magnitude larger goals, and not part of everyone's business model. The word "failure" is entirely inappropriate.

 

[BryonD]

Not necessarily.
Playability will be a huge factor. If they game does what you want how you want. If there's a lot of content I don't want or can't manage, that doesn't drive me to the game. If the only thing that determined if people liked a game was the amount of content, Rifts would be king of the world.

As I said, "if people like it". Note that this is about markets, not BryonD and not Jester Canuck.

The next game system I'll be playing is FATE for a short mini-campaign. There's a lot of FATE content out there, but most of it is mutually exclusive and not compatible with other content. And I'm not using anything beyond the Accelerated PDF because none of it matters. And we're going to have a blast with that campaign. Not because of the rules, but because of the character and the story.


Which matters to the game company and absolutely no one else.

Combining these responses because I think you miss a key point in both: player base.
If other people start gravitating to other games that WILL have an effect on you.
Just ask the people who still love 2E, or 4E.

Besides, what's the best selling D&D book right now? What's making them money?
It ain't the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. It's the good old PHB. They don't need to make new content if the old content is still moving enough books to keep them in the black. So long as new players and returning old players keep coming and buying, the absence of new content is irrelevant. They don't need my money if they're selling a PHB to someone else and getting their money.

Sure, but this is back to making the mistake of judging a long term sustainability based on short term results.

I liked Occult Adventures and plan on returning to Pathfinder for a Carrion Crown game in 18 months or more. Maybe with Horror Adventures as well. But I also plan on banning the out of some books and limiting options. But other than that, yeah, I've reached by Pathfinder cap. I could run a murder happy CC game killing three PCs every AP volume and still never have a duplicate character.

Too many books has made a game with already shaky balance nearly unplayable. My group just finished Skull & Shackles. I kept encounters low and didn't award much quest XP and they skipped some fights. So they went into the final dungeon two levels low. They tore through 9 encounters prior to fighting the boss with some environmental hazards, all without a healing and relying on some scavenged potions and wands. Then they fought the boss immediately after two back-to-back encounters and he came out with an ally. Must have been a EL 19 encounter against injured and drained level 12 characters. And my players still slapped him around.

Shrug. PF has a ton of stuff and more than a fair share of "not great" stuff. But it doesn't hold a candle to the 3E OGL boom days. Using good stuff and culling the issues is no big deal.

Mearl's talked about this. Everyone knows how to launch a successful RPG but no one has figured out how to sustain that success. So far people have tried lots of adventures and campaign settings, lots of player splatbooks, and lots of secondary systems. Paizo is kinda trying adventure flavour books (Mythic Adventures, Horror Adventures), which might work to some extent, but is offset by the myriad other books.

5e is trying something new: limited accessories - which are likely focused and evergreen - and large campaign adventure storylines.

5e will almost certainly give way to a 6th Edition. Or something. Maybe it will be a revised 5th Edition. Eventually. But how long is still in question.
Really, if 5e fades out after *only* six years it will still have lasted longer than any other WotC edition of the game.
Really, the longer, the better. The longer the edition lives the more universal the desire for something new will be. The fewer holdouts there will be. A longer edition means more time for new players to discover the game, more time for the edition war hostilities to fade. And, if there are fewer books when the edition does change over, the easier it will be to switch since people won't feel trapped by content they still want to use.

A book every year that draws attention back to the game is probably more than enough. Not necessarily a player splatbook, but a book of some kind.
People will play the game for a long time with minimal content. People are still playing campaigns of AD&D and Basic. The game can last. People who get really bored of the game and want to try something new are going to get bored regardless. That something new can be a different game or a massively house-ruled version of D&D.
Or take a break for a couple years before coming back and playing with the 2-3 new releases that came out during their absence. It doesn't functionally matter to WotC if they get their money right away or after a delay. Having a quarter of the playerbase constantly rotating in and out of playing D&D is probably very sustainable.

I think you are falling for their spin.
If they were making the margins that they wanted on books, then they would be making more books.
They want to maintain the brand at a minimal investment.

Yes, people are still playing Basic. So why did WotC publish 5E rather than the vastly cheaper option of trumpting the republishing of Basic as the flagship D&D line?
Boredom is obviously an issue. But the constant demand of keeping up with the competition is also there. The competition can be a new game which could appear next month, but it is also just anything else. Whatever tomorrow's equivalent of an MMO is, it will be a competition for the time and dollars when it comes around. There is a lot of room between "bored" and "this is so fresh and exciting that it remains my first choice for how I spend my time".

 

[Alzrius]

Most KS that I have seen, have not published their material to be bought in stores after the KS is over. The purpose of Ks and how its actually used, are different.

Which speaks to my original point: if the product was never intended to be put into a brick-and-mortar store to begin with, then it's not Kickstarter's fault. The same way a book that wouldn't exist otherwise isn't in competition with an FLGS, neither is a book that was never going to be sold in one in the first place. What competes with them are alternative retail outlets for the same products. Even leaving aside that Kickstarter isn't a retail outlet, if the products produced there aren't put into the stores to begin with, then they're not competing for the same dollars.

It's not a failure. It's a more modest goal. Providing rewards for backers. Print runs are an order of magnitude larger goals, and not part of everyone's business model. The word "failure" is entirely inappropriate.

If the goal is to get the book into physical stores, and print run costs aren't accounted for in sizes large enough to make distributors agree to do so, then that is a failure. This means that using that word is not "entirely" inappropriate, unless you're willing to say that such a thing has never, ever happened to any Kickstarter (or other crowd-funded book).

...or maybe we should focus less on semantic quibbles and more on the overall point, which is that KS is not competing with brick-and-mortar stores.

 

[Shasarak]

Mearl's talked about this. Everyone knows how to launch a successful RPG but no one has figured out how to sustain that success. So far people have tried lots of adventures and campaign settings, lots of player splatbooks, and lots of secondary systems. Paizo is kinda trying adventure flavour books (Mythic Adventures, Horror Adventures), which might work to some extent, but is offset by the myriad other books.

5e is trying something new: limited accessories - which are likely focused and evergreen - and large campaign adventure storylines.

5e will almost certainly give way to a 6th Edition. Or something. Maybe it will be a revised 5th Edition. Eventually. But how long is still in question.
Really, if 5e fades out after *only* six years it will still have lasted longer than any other WotC edition of the game.
Really, the longer, the better. The longer the edition lives the more universal the desire for something new will be. The fewer holdouts there will be. A longer edition means more time for new players to discover the game, more time for the edition war hostilities to fade. And, if there are fewer books when the edition does change over, the easier it will be to switch since people won't feel trapped by content they still want to use.

A book every year that draws attention back to the game is probably more than enough. Not necessarily a player splatbook, but a book of some kind.
People will play the game for a long time with minimal content. People are still playing campaigns of AD&D and Basic. The game can last. People who get really bored of the game and want to try something new are going to get bored regardless. That something new can be a different game or a massively house-ruled version of D&D.
Or take a break for a couple years before coming back and playing with the 2-3 new releases that came out during their absence. It doesn't functionally matter to WotC if they get their money right away or after a delay. Having a quarter of the playerbase constantly rotating in and out of playing D&D is probably very sustainable.

Personally I do not buy the idea that limited expansions would increase the life span of the edition because every source that I have seen indicates that the Core books are by far and away the best sellers and, as Mike himself has stated, years 3 to 5 is where those sales start to drop away.

So if your sales of Core books are dropping away and you have to fund your self with two adventure books a year then they had better be great books.

Of course for all we know by then the Movie revenue has arrived and the DnD team has hit the big time.

 

[Shasarak]

If they were making the margins that they wanted on books, then they would be making more books.
They want to maintain the brand at a minimal investment.

I think this is the key point.

 

[BryonD]

I think this is the key point.

Definitely.
Everything else is just talking around that.

 

[garnuk]

Thats assuming that they believe that maintaining those margins are sustainable, but everything Mearls has said points to them believing its not sustainable even if the margins currently exist.