D&D 5E I think the era of 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons had it right. (not talking about the rules).

[hawkeyefan]

LOL!!!!!

Of course we get a few of the extreme ones here to try and make it seem they are the majority.

Oh sweet irony!!!!

I'm glad you are playing the game but you aren't describing anything that is 5th edition specific. Every edition of D&D has been for beginners. You aren't required to know each and every option in order to play the game so I don't buy your argument. You may feel that way but I can assure you you could come into any edition with ease. It's limiting yourself to what you feel you can handle until you become experienced enough to handle more options.

You missed her point entirely. It is not about the options or how complicated the game is. It'S how accessible and present it is, how commonplace.

Yes, this is anecdotal evidence...as anecdotal as anything you'ce presented...but it also hints at something perhaps a bit more intangible about WotC's 5E approach. Something that I don't think you would understand as being a benefit, but to many others is very clear.

 

[Shasarak]

You missed her point entirely. It is not about the options or how complicated the game is. It'S how accessible and present it is, how commonplace.

So glad that I dont have to search for a group and that I have no idea what the single DnD market is like.

 

[hawkeyefan]

So glad that I dont have to search for a group and that I have no idea what the single DnD market is like.

I agree...I'm lucky enough to be playing with the same group of folks since I was a kid, with a few additions and departures over the years. I don't know if I would have remained with the hobby if I hadn't had a group of friends who were equally into it. I can imagine how tough that may be for folks to join a game full of strangers, often in a public setting. I know I would struggle with that in the beginning, at least.

It's good to hear people are comfortable about that these days. Gotta be good for the hobby, that.

 

[Shasarak]

I agree...I'm lucky enough to be playing with the same group of folks since I was a kid, with a few additions and departures over the years. I don't know if I would have remained with the hobby if I hadn't had a group of friends who were equally into it. I can imagine how tough that may be for folks to join a game full of strangers, often in a public setting. I know I would struggle with that in the beginning, at least.

It's good to hear people are comfortable about that these days. Gotta be good for the hobby, that.

Agreed. I am glad of those Guys and Gals in the AL doing the good work.

 

[Parmandur]

And I'm not a fan of In-N-Out burger.

Which is why I think In-N-Out burger is a really good analogy for an approach to an RPG: their burgers are critically acclaimed, as well as having such fan devotion as to have people take a quick turn-around flight or an all-day road trip just to snag some In-N-Out for a special occasion, and their approach to the business just plain works - but that doesn't mean everyone likes their burgers, nor that they are even aiming for everyone to like their burgers.

It does mean they've identified their actual goal and enacted a plan that has achieved that goal to a satisfactory degree, regardless of whatever I might say I'd rather have where burgers are concerned.

Precisely; and they have three menu items, much like the old John Belushi skit: hamburger, cheeseburger, double cheeseburger. If you dig, there are some further options, but they don't clutter the menu: simplicity.

They couldn't please everyone with a bloated menu: McDonalds proves that. They focus on their one product, and the people that like it...are very, very satisfied.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

If you dig, there are some further options, but they don't clutter the menu: simplicity.

Their "secret" menu is a fantastic analogy for house-rules, in my opinion - variations on a theme, all the parts are already there, you just mix them in differing amounts based on what you like.

 

[PMárk]

So you're actually suggesting that a lack of diversity is a good thing? Well, I guess the whole commercialist/for the masses mindset is just alien to me. I'm still on the side that commercial success is not the be-all-end-all. Because when you're wanting to appeal to the biggest possible market, all the time, mostly you're ending up with the most boring, most bland product.

But hey, I never listened what the majority happened to listen, I didn't see the majority of big blockbusters, I didn't read Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey. I'm eating at McD only occasionally. So what do i know? Probably that's the price of being big.

I'm just happy there are companies out there who want to do other things, not just 3 kinds of burger and occasionally a thematic burger that's nonetheless tastes like their every other burger.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

So you're actually suggesting that a lack of diversity is a good thing?

I don't think anyone has suggested that.

What I've seen is a suggestion that diversity within a single brand is not an inherently good thing, and is sometimes actually a bad thing because there is only so much effort to spread around and that means there is a threshold at which aiming for more "diversity" necessitates less of an aim for "quality".

 

[Felicitas27]

So you're actually suggesting that a lack of diversity is a good thing? Well, I guess the whole commercialist/for the masses mindset is just alien to me. I'm still on the side that commercial success is not the be-all-end-all. Because when you're wanting to appeal to the biggest possible market, all the time, mostly you're ending up with the most boring, most bland product.

But hey, I never listened what the majority happened to listen, I didn't see the majority of big blockbusters, I didn't read Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey. I'm eating at McD only occasionally. So what do i know? Probably that's the price of being big.

The following post will hopefully clear up a few things about my own position.

What you guys have been seeing is a radical change from past release schedules so that this game can bring in more people. This is so that the game can flourish in a digital world. Now, this necessitates one kind of focus, one that enables the kind of old, slow, noobtastic player like myself to be able to play the game.

However, to go too far and dumb your game down and focus on that market more than you focus on your dedicated base is a dangerous path. It is a fine line to walk, and you risk losing people (and sales) if you fall either way.

I simply believe that from a marketing standpoint, bombarding your base with a constant stream of little updates and website content vs. a slower schedule of published books with website content is a matter of brand management and quality control -- which is what the original post was mostly about. He just liked that he was getting small bits of content on a faster schedule. It felt meatier to him.

In the end, this all seems to be about perception rather than the actual content being delivered, which is one of the things I found so interesting (and kind of depressing, if I am perfectly honest) when I worked in marketing myself.

 

[Creamsteak]

So you're actually suggesting that a lack of diversity is a good thing?

I think a more accurate way to phrase it is that there is always a trade off. You don't want to dial it down to 0, but it seems like most people have a threshold - albeit often very different ones. Certainly, nobody is truly hurting you to add a supplement, even a bad one you ignore. Yet, eventually when looking at the picture as a whole and how your market fragments down different lines you're eventually doing yourself a disservice. I'm not sure how anyone doesn't see that.

Quality and cost are not the only metrics either, there's also certain extrinsic things when you start thinking about stuff outside of individual games. Instead of the isolated groups we generally had in the early 90's (sorry wasn't born early enough to be around before that) there's a whole lot more shared experience and discussion. Just the existence of fairly extensive char-op threads on third edition on the old wizards boards was an order of magnitude more attention to that subject than I'd seen publicly before it.