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

[AaronOfBarbaria]

D&D became a thing of options and has now pulled back which is not a good thing.

When WotC was trying to have D&D be a "thing of options" they were not experiencing enough profit to continue down that road - so, like any business that doesn't want to fail, they changed something that they knew wasn't working how they wanted it to into something that their research into the market suggested might work out better.

That is the definition of a good thing - and especially because, to all appearances other than a minority of people complaining about lack of content (while also insisting WotC-approved content "doesn't count" in some misguided belief that "official" carries any guarantee of "better"), it seems to be working.

Also, isn't it a bit hypocritical to insist that all of the rest of us that already have enough, or even more than enough, content should be happy with discerning what few things we do wish to buy out of a larger selection of materials while you make a blanket refusal to discern what few things you'd actually approve of using from the selection of WotC-approved materials on the DM's Guild?

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Well they have the ability and the finances to hire more people.

Unless they let you look over their operational budget, that's not a think you can know.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Let's say a pizza place that only sells pepperoni pizza has the best pizza in the world. That's fine and all but sometimes I get sick of pepperoni and I want something else.

Bad analogy.

5e is a pizza place that sells only the "classics", and you're mad they won't start carrying chicken, shrimp, and offering different sauces and cheeses. And basically telling everyone that likes the simpler, more traditional menu board that they are irrational and wrong, and generally being a jerk about it for no reason. Repeatedly.

When you could just go down the street to Paizo Pizza Palace, where they'll put just about anything you want on a pizza.

But you you insist on going into The Pizza Wizard! and complaining that they don't have the same options as the other joint.

or, The Pizza Wizard used to have over 100 options, and ten sauces, and 6 cheeses! And it wasn't cost effective, and they streamlined the menu and worked harder on listening to feedback about specific toppings and sauce ingredients and such, and two years later you're still refusing to adjust or eat elsewhere.

 

[Jester David]

Out of curiosity, what is the current staff of Paizo's Pathfinder team? Doesn't WotC have like 10 people working on D&D?

They had 15 people on the D&D team. But that included marketing and brand people. A lot of managers and such. They weren't all working on the books.

Amazing how Paizo can do it and Wizards can't.

Paizo is willing to accept making far, far, far less money each year than WotC. They're not owned by another company that expects profits to increase each year.
After all, they're newly released books are selling well below WotC's numbers. Horror Adventures is currently #28,995 on Amazon while Curse of the Crimson Throne is #29,723 compared to Storm King's Thunder's #578 and Curse of Strahd's [FONT=verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]#4,020. Paizo's sales compared to WotC's is incredibly small. The best selling Paizo product is selling fewer copies than the worst selling 5e D&D product. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Other than the fact they use the same rule set, it's almost apples and oranges. The businesses are so completely different.[/FONT]

 

[PMárk]

I am hardly an experienced voice on this topic, it here is my take. For a while now I have been thinking of getting into the Final Fantasy series of games. Never played one, but I know they are heavily story driven, so air want to do it in order. That amounts to so many options to choose from, and it is incredibly intimidating. The same thing would happen with this, I think.

A fair number would get intimidated by the wall of books that shows up when they Google "D&D 5E". According to their friends, this is the easiest edition to learn yet. So simple, and so "New player" friendly. If there were even 30 books for it before I started, I would probably have been put off by it a bit, knowing how many hours of content can come out of a single book. Considering a portion of the market they were targeting is new players like me, I think that would have put a significant dent in their goal.

Okay, I respect your feelings and reasons, but please let me ask a question! What is exactly the reason of being intimidated by more books?

If you are a new player, or Gm, there's the beginner box and the core books for you. I was a new gamer for a lot of games and there always were products specifically tailored to me, usually the mentioned beginner boxes and core books, or quickstarts. I didn't care Vampire has the green marble wall, I started with the corebook and that was enough at that time.

Why are you intimidated by books on the shelf you don't have to read to start playing? You don't have to know all the class options, all the lore, all the settings for starting. If neither of the core book's options are satisfying for your character concept in mind, maybe talk with your GM, or ask questions on the forums, but I suspect for 98% of the time, the corebook would be enough for a new player.

 

[Lanliss]

Okay, I respect your feelings and reasons, but please let me ask a question! What is exactly the reason of being intimidated by more books?

If you are a new player, or Gm, there's the beginner box and the core books for you. I was a new gamer for a lot of games and there always were products specifically tailored to me, usually the mentioned beginner boxes and core books, or quickstarts. I didn't care Vampire has the green marble wall, I started with the corebook and that was enough at that time.

Why are you intimidated by books on the shelf you don't have to read to start playing? You don't have to know all the class options, all the lore, all the settings for starting. If neither of the core book's options are satisfying for your character concept in mind, maybe talk with your GM, or ask questions on the forums, but I suspect for 98% of the time, the corebook would be enough for a new player.

Personally, I knew I was going to be the DM of our group. I have a personal goal of letting my players have options, as many as I can get for them. If there were a ton of books, I would feel personally responsible for getting them, and knowing what is in them. Currently, knowing how the system works, I could handle an influx of options, I think, but I would not have been able to at the beginning. Until I got some game time with an experienced DM (Thanks for that Iserith. ) I was intimidated by the current load, since this was my first real attempt at a TTRPG. If I had all of what was out at the time, which was just the Core three and the Dragon Ones, IIRC, plus twice that in bonus options, I am not sure I could have gotten into it like I have.

 

[PMárk]

They had 15 people on the D&D team. But that included marketing and brand people. A lot of managers and such. They weren't all working on the books.


Paizo is willing to accept making far, far, far less money each year than WotC. They're not owned by another company that expects profits to increase each year.
After all, they're newly released books are selling well below WotC's numbers. Horror Adventures is currently #28,995 on Amazon while Curse of the Crimson Throne is #29,723 compared to Storm King's Thunder's #578 and Curse of Strahd's #4,020. Paizo's sales compared to WotC's is incredibly small. The best selling Paizo product is selling fewer copies than the worst selling 5e D&D product.
Other than the fact they use the same rule set, it's almost apples and oranges. The businesses are so completely different.

I'm not confuting that Paizo is a smaller company, that makes less money, because that's certainly the case now. However, citing only Amazon numbers is a bit misleading, since D&D books are far cheaper on Amazon and also, WotC doesn't have their own webshop and distributing channel, but Paizo does.

The second part of your post highlights greatly why I'm thinking more and more, as I wrote it earlier, that RPGs in general are better off in the hands of smaller companies, not owned by mega-corporations. They could use different methods of making and distributing books, like Onyx Path. They could do a wide variety of content and more experimental, more mature content, like Paizo. All of this, because they doesn't have to fit insane expectations from above, they could do the RPG product they want.

Looking at the history of RPGs , usually when a big, non-rpg focused company bought an rpg publisher smaller one, it didn't ended well.

 

[Zardnaar]

There are plenty of 5E options out there so unless you only play at OP events there is a metric crap ton ofstuff to find. Hell subscribe to EN5ider for $2 for one month and go nuts downloading their archtypes.

Thats $24 a year for lots of crunchy goodness. Some of it sucks of course but its not to different from SCAG for example.

 

[Jester David]

I'm not confuting that Paizo is a smaller company, that makes less money, because that's certainly the case now. However, citing only Amazon numbers is a bit misleading, since D&D books are far cheaper on Amazon and also, WotC doesn't have their own webshop and distributing channel, but Paizo does.

Most of the Pathfinder books are cheaper on Amazon as well. Even if the cover price is the same, shipping is much cheaper via Amazon, incentivizing purchasing via that site.
And while Paizo does have its own web store, I doubt they're selling so many copies as to move 24,000 spots up the best seller charts.

The second part of your post highlights greatly why I'm thinking more and more, as I wrote it earlier, that RPGs in general are better off in the hands of smaller companies, not owned by mega-corporations. They could use different methods of making and distributing books, like Onyx Path. They could do a wide variety of content and more experimental, more mature content, like Paizo. All of this, because they doesn't have to fit insane expectations from above, they could do the RPG product they want.

Looking at the history of RPGs , usually when a big, non-rpg focused company bought an rpg publisher smaller one, it didn't ended well.

I don't think I want D&D published by a small company that can only afford black and white art, relies on print-on-demand, can't get books into game stores, or requires Kickstarter to produce new content.

Plus, really, apart from the "big" companies like Paizo or Fantasy Flight Games, most RPG companies really only have one or two hardcover RPG books per year. If D&D were owned or licensed by a smaller studio, we'd likely see less product each year...

 

[hawkeyefan]

I'm not saying there aren't niche places around and they don't do good, but what makes them different is they started this way. D&D became a thing of options and has now pulled back which is not a good thing.

Amazing how Paizo can do it and Wizards can't.

And yet I can tell you that I and others left Pathfinder for 5E due to the insane amount of material that Pathfinder produces. My players in PF were using feats, classes, races, archetypes, prestige classes, spells, and gear that I had no idea about. And with the SRD database and programs like HeroLab, they often didn't know where they got the option from either.

If you like Pathfinder's approach to releasing products, and of that's the rule system you enjoy, the then that's the game you should play.

If you actually enjoy 5E D&D more, then I can understand you wanting more material. It's a valid complaint. However, I don't know if you should expect things to change anytime soon...just as many folks seem satisfied with the WotC business model currently in place, and business seems to be doing well.