D&D 5E Is 5e's Success Actually Bad for Other Games?

[Neonchameleon]

D&D was temporarily unseated by PF as market leader during 4e, but I disagree that it was a result of incompetence. 4e was more than just competently designed. I would argue that, while it certainly wasn't perfect, it was a well designed game.

I'd argue that 4e might have been a more than competently designed game - but they put the whole thing together including publication in 14 months - and they spent the first year and a half or so fixing where they'd rushed things in everything from classes to the monster math and solo design and never fixed some of the presentation issues. What was released was an early beta and you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

DW is a really well designed game, but it has a fraction of the market that 5e has. Why? I would say because DW focuses on doing its specific playstyle well, but doesn't really work outside of it. Whereas 5e isn't the best at any one style, but is capable of supporting a fairly broad range of playstyles.

I would genuinely argue that Dungeon World is not a very well designed game. I do however agree with you about 5e giving a little support to a broad range of playstyles.

 

[darjr]

Idk about clear direct evidence, but the success of funding campaigns for dozens of games suggests to me that the “only buy/play indie” crowd is pretty sizable, and the “play indie and D&D” crowd is probably even bigger. Not to mention the “buy indie to mine it for ideas” crowd.

I think that would count. My own myopia leaves me knowing about D&D adjacent Kickstarters. What are some of the notable non D&D adjacent games that have had huge Kickstarters?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Let’s see, you’ve essentially called the folks at WotC dummies as far as marketing, anyway.

Marketing research. Its a non-trivial distinction, and one I stand by. They're quite good marketing itself.

you seem to have this notion that 5e fans are, what, unthinking?

Many of them? Of course they are. Why wouldn't they be? If you have an experience that's acceptable to you, why would you spend a lot of time finding a theoretical one that's better. What percentage of people do you think do that for anything?

And then you build a bunch of straw men.

Point at one.

For what?

All I did was point out that 5e was already a huge freak of a success at launch. Before CR even existed. And that seems to be such an issue for you you’ve done this? OK.

and it’s not like folks didn’t know what 5e was before launch. The playtest alone gave folks a really good idea.

5e came when 4e had been seriously tanking for some time. There were clearly a large number of people who had found what it offered undesirable, and that's not even counting the people who'd found even 3e undesirable (and the 5e lead up made a very deliberate attempt to court as many of those back into the fold as it could). The game had a number of advantages over and above any systemic benefits (there were only three books, which is an attractive choice to anyone getting into it anew, it was available in places you wouldn't see any other RPG, and its only real direct competitor (Pathfinder) was also getting pretty long in the tooth (and PF's success was also an artifact in part of timing, since it took advantage of the people who found 4e a bridge too far).

So a new, and manageable edition of the most well known game in the market arrived when a fair number of its prior fans had been turned off by the prior edition(s), was sold aggressively and very visible, and also landed when the popularity of geek culture was cresting.

So it sold really well? Shocker.

Now I'm guessing you want to claim its sales were because it was such a great game. But there's a problem with that. Outside the D&D sphere (and the more intensely active parts at that), in the first few months most people aren't going to know that. They aren't going to have seen playtests, or had much opportunity to play it. Like opening weekends of a new movie, they're mostly buying blind (and this is even more true of new entrants to the hobby). At that point its going to be for a large part of those sales are going to be flying mostly off two things: Marketing, and knowing you can probably find other people to play it with.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I think that would count. My own myopia leaves me knowing about D&D adjacent Kickstarters. What are some of the notable non D&D adjacent games that have had huge Kickstarters?

Numenera
Invisible Sun

But there have been lots of non-D&D games that have had very successful Kickstarters without being outright huge.

 

[Steampunkette]

They aren't any sort of pike square on either side. There aren't any pikes and there isn't a meaningful square, a key feature of which is that it was square. And civilians would not by the nature of things be using a weapon that required training and discipline to maneuver and not get in everyone's way. The "pikes" are no higher than the musket and bayonet combination on the other side meaning they certainly aren't pikes, and that's not a square.

No, not everyone had muskets. But even fewer people had pikes. And what Gustavus Adolphus mostly shortened was the depth of his formations, making them more maneuverable and because he realised the muskets were winning the fights.

It was only useful because they forgot the pikes. And ignored the squares. Narrow streets are the very last place you want to be carrying pikes. Meanwhile a mix of agricultural implements and spears that aren't at least twice your height and anything up to five times your height are much easier to move. (The normal length expected for a pike was between 3m and 7.5m). And while pike squares are close formations not all close formations are squares. Close formations on the other hand have been used by ... just about everyone.

Hang on a tick, here... heh.

GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS AND HIS ARMY I - Weapons and Warfare

“Lion of Midnight” (that is, of the North). Also known as Gustav II and Gustav Adolph. King of Sweden, military reformer, statesman, and greatest general of

weaponsandwarfare.com

"He adopted wheel lock muskets that were smaller and lighter than the Spanish matchlock and did not require a forked rest, which made his musketeers more mobile. He shortened the pike to just 11 feet, making his pikemen just as light and maneuverable as the musketeers they protected and drilled with."

And then you note that the length of a pike dropped down to 3m, or just 9 feet.

Unless the people in that painting are all under 4ft tall, those pikes are around 9ft in length. 'Cause, y'see, when you're holding a Musket in formation, you're not holding it by the middle of the barrel. You've got it by the stock and grip. The bottom of the weapon. See how that guy in the front of the right-center of the image has his musket stock on the ground and it's about his height?

But when you grab a pike or a spear (or a pitchfork, or a rake) to carry it around, you're not holding it by the "Stock" or "End" you're holding it right around the middle of the haft, or wherever your hand rests when the pole's butt is resting on the ground. So either those marching soldiers with their bayonets at the same height as the spears have 9ft long guns to be holding them in the same way... or they're not holding onto them by the barrel.

Nice, though.

Anyway. I'm gonna go no further on this pedantry with you.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think that would count. My own myopia leaves me knowing about D&D adjacent Kickstarters. What are some of the notable non D&D adjacent games that have had huge Kickstarters?

What counts as huge in your book? Because in backer count I'd go with The One Ring (16,000), Coyote & Crow (16,000), 7th Sea 2e (11,000), Fate Core (10,000), Deadlands (5000), Exalted 3e (5000), Numenera (5000 but D&D adjacent), Apocalypse World 4e (4000), Modiphus' Conan (4000).

 

[darjr]

Point at one.

But to ignore the other factors--including, as I noted, the fact that D&D is virtually the only RPG many people have ever played--is to be hearing what you want to hear.

 

[billd91]

D&D was temporarily unseated by PF as market leader during 4e, but I disagree that it was a result of incompetence. 4e was more than just competently designed. I would argue that, while it certainly wasn't perfect, it was a well designed game.

4e's track record is definitely not a question of design incompetence. The incompetence involved here would be in marketing - both in understanding the market and its needs/desires at the time they embarked on the D&D redesign that became 4e, and in presenting it to the public/managing the transition from one edition to the next. In many cases, it doesn't matter if the actual design is really good if it's not what your market wants and you can't figure out how to effectively make them want it.

It's a bit like New Coke. Taste tests showed that New Coke had legs against Pepsi. It was, however, not something the Coke market wanted nor something Coke could convince them they wanted. The product existed to meet an internally perceived need - competitive dominance over Pepsi - something Coke drinkers didn't really care about. They just wanted their Coke.

 

[Aldarc]

I think that would count. My own myopia leaves me knowing about D&D adjacent Kickstarters. What are some of the notable non D&D adjacent games that have had huge Kickstarters?

Several things: (1) What counts as "Non-D&D Adjacent games"? Does that include OSR or not? Or what about d20 games? (2) What is the metric for "huge Kickstarters"?

 

[Thomas Shey]

D&D was temporarily unseated by PF as market leader during 4e, but I disagree that it was a result of incompetence. 4e was more than just competently designed. I would argue that, while it certainly wasn't perfect, it was a well designed game.

It wasn't badly designed; in fact its one of the few incarnations of D&D I have any respect for the design of. But what I think it was was, if you get the distinction badly aimed. It wasn't the game most of the D&D market place wanted.

What I believe 4e lacked was flexibility and broad appeal (with respect to previous editions of D&D). PF, which was by no means perfect either, nonetheless was more able to encompass a range of playstyles than 4e. I say this as someone who would much prefer 4e over PF1, because I think it's a fair criticism of 4e. Inertia certainly hasn't hurt the popularity of D&D, but I think 4e demonstrated that basic competence doesn't cut it.

Well, lets face it, what PF1e was doing was a modestly modified 3e. It carried all the virtues and most of the flaws of 3e, and the latter did very well in its day.

The problem of 4e was that in terms of competence, it was too competent. That probably sounds like I'm slamming 5e and 3e and I'm not. The problem 4e had was it was really good at aiming at only part of its intended market. But you could be far less capable and if you aimed at the broader part of that, you'd do better. One of the things I don't like about 5e is that I think it compromised a lot of areas to do what it did, but the great truth is those compromises don't matter to a lot of people (at least enough), so it doesn't matter much to its success either. This is one the issues that comes up with discussion of heavily focused games; if you do a really great job of aiming at 10% of the experience another game aims at, you might get (all other things being equal, which they almost never are) 20% of their market. It doesn't matter how good you are if you just aren't aiming at the experience they're there for.

DW is a really well designed game, but it has a fraction of the market that 5e has. Why? I would say because DW focuses on doing its specific playstyle well, but doesn't really work outside of it. Whereas 5e isn't the best at any one style, but is capable of supporting a fairly broad range of playstyles.

As you can see, I don't disagree with you about this.