D&D 5E Xanathar's Guide errata coming

[fearsomepirate]

I have a high suspicion that is a good majority of the sales and 5Es success is from the additional sources.. I think Hasbro wanted a reduced book schedule because for the profit margin RPGs make from print books (most RPGs don't make a lot of money) and they felt resources would be better spent elsewhere.

IIRC the reduced printing schedule idea came from Mearls or somebody else on his team. The reason was that constantly expanding the rule set is an unsustainable business model. Eventually, customers' appetite for more rules is satiated, and the expansions stop selling. The rules also introduce increasingly uncontrollable complexity, so you end up with crazy power builds where people cherry-pick features across many different books.

This path means rebooting the game completely every few years, which is just annoying, especially because the new rules by design must be incompatible with the old ones to get you buying again. You can't just reboot the splats; you have to rewrite the core. So even if the core is perfect, welp, gotta write a new core, because otherwise, people won't buy the new rules. When you're at the point of writing rules just to make people buy rules, you're just annoying your customers.

The sustainable model is working great for 5e. Their adventures sell well (better than any other RPG product on Amazon), and unlike rules, it doesn't gradually strangle your game to death with complication to keep buying them.

 

[fearsomepirate]

I think you don't know how coding, updating, testing, and QA works. AKA Give it time.

Anyone who says, "Adding new text pages, how hard can it be?" has never caused an entire application to crash randomly via a 1-line change after saying, "Surely, surely, surely this will do nothing."

 

[MoonSong]

so does mine. And it signed by the E.G.G. himself

I'm not talking about money. Though the fact that it costs money is a factor. The book I have is now useless without doing things to it, and these things will damage it . That or buy a later print.

I think that the solution is to declare that any game I run will explicitly exclude errata.

 

[Essafah]

IIRC the reduced printing schedule idea came from Mearls or somebody else on his team. The reason was that constantly expanding the rule set is an unsustainable business model. Eventually, customers' appetite for more rules is satiated, and the expansions stop selling. The rules also introduce increasingly uncontrollable complexity, so you end up with crazy power builds where people cherry-pick features across many different books.

This path means rebooting the game completely every few years, which is just annoying, especially because the new rules by design must be incompatible with the old ones to get you buying again. You can't just reboot the splats; you have to rewrite the core. So even if the core is perfect, welp, gotta write a new core, because otherwise, people won't buy the new rules. When you're at the point of writing rules just to make people buy rules, you're just annoying your customers.

The sustainable model is working great for 5e. Their adventures sell well (better than any other RPG product on Amazon), and unlike rules, it doesn't gradually strangle your game to death with complication to keep buying them.

Yes. I am aware of Mearl's explanation. My point was I think Hasbro made that decision before Mearls and Mearls as a representative of the company had to give a reason to support the slow schedule production. Hasbro is in the business of making money and if the books made the profit margins Hasbro wanted to see (most RPG companies would be happy with the profit margins made by splatbooks but most RPG companies are not Hasbro) then I think splatbooks would be produced left and right.

I recall Ryan Dancey or some former WOTC employee stating that market research for RPGs shows that the audience will support a new edition every 5-6 years and consider it money left on the table not to produce a new edition within that time frame. Given that D&D has been behind the curves as far as new editions compared to other companies such as Chaosium which has CoC on 7th edition, Shadowrun has been out less tiime than D&D and is on a 6th ed etc. If RPG saw the levels of profits Hasbro wanted I think they would support this model also but RPG books don't and so Hasbro keeps D&D on a tight budget and focuses on games with generally higher profit margins such as MtG which in all honesty is the bread and butter sales of most game stores these days. I wish it were otherwise but it is what it is I guess.

I am glad the WOTC prepublished adventures sell. I want to see D&D economically vibrant. I love the game. I just wish they had products that I could spend my recreational income on but that is not the new Hasbro/WoTC model so we play D&D and give more support to other games too.

 

[jasper]

I'm not talking about money. Though the fact that it costs money is a factor. The book I have is now useless without doing things to it, and these things will damage it . That or buy a later print.

I think that the solution is to declare that any game I run will explicitly exclude errata.

psst I give you permission to write in your books. This is one time free of charge service. At least WOTC is including errata in books when reprinting. Unlike TSR.

 

[Stilvan]

I think you don't know how coding, updating, testing, and QA works. AKA Give it time.

You're also fired. I spent 20 years as a software engineer in the defense industry. Sit down son.

The spell descriptions are text btw.

 

[Blue]

I'm not talking about money. Though the fact that it costs money is a factor. The book I have is now useless without doing things to it, and these things will damage it . That or buy a later print.

I think that the solution is to declare that any game I run will explicitly exclude errata.

"Damage it". Okay.

If you assume that errata is to fix errors, then you will "damage" all your future games by not using it. And require players to "damage" their books by downgrading from the current rules to an outdated set, requiring changes to their books. More damage, both in that those changes may not be relevant for any other game/DM they play with, and that there are traditionally more players. And, of course, if you are ever a player, you may still need to "damage" them. And now keep two sets - one for the version you are running and one for the version you are playing.

But personally, errata happens in rules, and I think you're really making a mountain out of a molehill pretending that this is some horrible thing that is happening instead of a normal occurrence for any maintained RPG system. No one likes errors, but it's inhuman to expect that there will be none.

 

[jasper]

You're also fired. I spent 20 years as a software engineer in the defense industry. Sit down son.

The spell descriptions are text btw.

And too get a text fix or just 5 minute fix in my shop is 3 days. 1 hour to be told of the problem and fix it. 1/2 day for the official heat ticket number to be given to me. 10 minutes of me doing my to update the heat ticket. One day to move to test, and testing dude to look at the fix and give it a go. And one day to move to live. PS I have 7 years of coding on you.

 

[MoonSong]

psst I give you permission to write in your books. This is one time free of charge service. At least WOTC is including errata in books when reprinting. Unlike TSR.

Ok, maybe it is not a big deal to you, maybe you are one of those maniacs that destroy books for fun. But I like to keep my books untainted and in one piece. It is very traumatic to me having to mess with them. (I likely have issues with this, but that is not the point here, besides I don't have drama queen in the description for no reason)

 

[Blue]

And too get a text fix or just 5 minute fix in my shop is 3 days. 1 hour to be told of the problem and fix it. 1/2 day for the official heat ticket number to be given to me. 10 minutes of me doing my to update the heat ticket. One day to move to test, and testing dude to look at the fix and give it a go. And one day to move to live. PS I have 7 years of coding on you.

Stilvan likes to talk a big game and "fire" you if you don't agree, but he handwaves away anything that doesn't agree with his point. With you he tried to paint himself as an authority, but I am with you in understanding release cycles don't work the way of "let's just change something in production based on this email from some other company" that he espouses. Explains a lot about the defense industry if a 20 year developer doesn't get basics like that.