WotC WotC reported 50% growth over 2020!

[overgeeked]

Didn't Pathfinder only actually overtake 4e at the end of 2012, when development had basically stopped?

There’s a thread by Morrus with sales figures going back a ways. Track that down and see. I don’t have a link handy.

 

[overgeeked]

Didn't Pathfinder only actually overtake 4e at the end of 2012, when development had basically stopped?

I thought that too. Actual development may have stopped by then but new 4e things were coming out when it took over. I think. Someone broke it down earlier in another thread

This post.

Pathfinder tied D&D Q3 2010. Pathfinder was #1 from Q2 2011 through Summer 2014.

D&D Next was announced January 2012. So Pathfinder beat D&D for nearly a year before WotC announced D&D Next. It took one quarter of D&D 5E being out before D&D was #1 again. And hasn't budged since.

 

[gss000]

That's mostly true now, but there is a tiny bit more in WotC's portfolio—and there used to be a little bit more still, through the first half or so of 2020.

WotC was still producing the Transformers TCG until summer 2020; the final expansion set was released in May 2020. And the Avalon Hill board game brand was still a WotC subsidiary until September 2020. (I can't tell whether the earnings report you mention excludes Avalon Hill from the WotC figures for the whole year.)

On top of that, WotC does actually still produce some tiny non–Avalon Hill, D&D-branded board games. Because D&D-branded games are currently also published by licensees like Gale Force Nine (Tyrants of th Underdark) and WizKids (Rock, Paper, Wizard) as well as by Hasbro's general board games division (The Adventure Begins), it's often overlooked that WotC publishes a few such games themselves, most recently Dungeon Mayhem (2019) and The Great Dalmuti (2020). Maybe it's fine to just lump these in with "D&D" anyway, though in the case of for example The Great Dalmuti, the D&D connection is so thin and pasted-on that I wonder whether it was applied only because someone at WotC wanted to reprint the game but had to abide by some new corporate policy that WotC could only publish D&D- or MTG-branded products.

All of these would presumably eat up some small fraction of that $234.8 million. D&D would still account for the vast majority of that, to be sure, even if not quite 100%—making this whole post, I suppose, a very unnecessary Comic Book Guy clarification. Thanks for listening.

True but I'll add clarifications too. You mentioned the Avalon Hill and other games items. Consumer Products segment was announed in Feb 2021. I need to confirm this, but I believe that means that even while the management might have been under WotC for much od the year, those items still are accounted for and separate from the Magic and D&D revenue I listed. Consumer products also covers licensing, which are some of your other listed items. Management is different from budget line item in this case (although I could be wrong).

 

[Jaeger]

I agree. But probably 5th or 6th as the cap. Let the players get neat things like fireball and lightning bolt.

You're probably right to want to keep the D&D flavor.

Something like this:

5e Heroic | Friendly Neighborhood Lizard Man

Why mod D&D 5e, isn't is perfect already? A lot of people get frustrated with high level D&D and tend to avoid it altogether. Typically there's 3 reasons for this: 1. Combat is too s

purplelizardman.com

An E6 mod for 5e fills the ticket I think. I'd dial it back a touch to a 5th level cap. And I'd rule you only get new HD every 3 levels after 5th. (I would roll what inspiration does into HD - Make the PC's have to make a choice to roll well now vs. ability to heal later...)

It would make for a bit more 'heroic' game, but I think not into the full blown superheroic level.

I'd still take a pair of scissors and a sharpie pen to the spell list...

D&D 5E is doing well. There’s not much spillover to the rest of the hobby. Other games and other companies are doing about the same as ever or slightly better. Unless they feed into the 5E ecosystem.

I largely agree with this. I think it is the ultimate legacy of the OGL.

In my opinion: The spillover is not what it was in the mid 90's when Vampire/WoD was the solid number 2 RPG. The hobby really benefitted from that; because people noticed the top alternative not only had a different system to D&D, but an entirely different play premise as well. There were also popular standbys like Shadowrun, CP2020, Deadlands, L5R, and the evergreen CoC, with Palladium games still being in the conversation - not to mention GURPS which was a Big mainstay until the early 2000's.

Whereas now the top two RPGs are D&D, and D&D's clone...

With the flavor of the quarter making up the number 3-5 spots.

IMHO, The RPG industry was more varied and interesting pre-OGL.

The OGL was just a brilliant move by Dancy.

Once WotC learned their lesson with 4e: It has turned D&D from the 800lb gorilla in the hobby, into the 80,000lb King Kong of the hobby. The professional corporate marketing did its part as well.

Also D&D got a bit of help by all virtually the other popular RPG IPs of the 90's mismanaging themselves into a perennial has-been status.

Which was Not D&D or WotC's fault.

Only CoC has really stood the test of time - largely due to being the first mover in it's market niche.

I dont know if it true but ive read they did a bit of polling during 4th ed and 5th ed beta about what players wanted and D&D easy mode was the result. People may say they are fine with a PC dying for good but it has to be an extraordinary circumstance.. like a ton of HP and 3 saves to avoid it. I mean jeeze it takes 3 failed saves to turn to stone.

I believe it.

Many of the D&D Next survey's asked the question : "Is it/this fun?" in many different ways...

I've been doing this 37 years and since I started running 5E...damn. Players seem to be more risk adverse than ever (zero risks is best, apparently), they want as much power as possible as quickly as possible (20th level to start please), and seem to think that anything less that absolute perfection completely sucks.

This effect is well known in the videogame industry:

How games protect the players from themselves

The art of showing people the ’right’ way to play

www.polygon.com

"Players will often try to find the most efficient or even safest way to play a game, making sure they methodically crunch through an area or level so that no mistakes are made or no items are left behind."

The video: "How Game Designers Protect Players From Themselves"


And this: "Given the Opportunity, Players Will Optimize Fun Out of a Game."

Not all of it is directly applicable to RPGs, but most of the general ideas hold true in my opinion.

I think that a lot of the ways new players approach RPG's has been affected more by CRPG's more than we all might be willing to admit. (Fantasy CRPG's are very high power fantasy ...)

This ties in to some of the issues I have with the direction 5e went; in terms of less GM procedural tools than B/X, combined with many Player abilities and spells that function as 'skip" buttons to most of the alleged "pillars of play" WotC says 5e supports.

This has a lot to do with how they culled and used survey information to drive the games design. I do not think that they sufficiently weighed the survey information to account for the GM side, (The people who have to actually run the game) as opposed to how much they leaned into "making it fun" for players.

D&D should absolutely be fun to play. (Or any RPG for that matter. It's kinda the point of the entire RPG hobby...)

But IMHO there is a difference between making a fun game, and making the game "fun" by letting the inmates run the asylum...

 

[Jaeger]

Ask and you shall receive. You just need to do a little research and use some google-fu.

So I wasn't able to parse the latest earnings report, but I can find information for the end of 2020. According to Forbes, Magic made $581.2 million in 2020. ICv2 notes that WotC made $816 million in sales in 2020. D&D would then be $234.8 million. I don't think there is anything else that comprises the WotC unit.

And for completeness, the segment is called WotC and Digital Gaming. Digital Gaming brought in $90.7 million. While this is not for this recent year, you'll soon be able to know how much each segment made in 2021 when they report the growth or loss compared to 2020.

Really cool. Thanks!

What's crazy is that D&D has absolutely blown up and (In RPG sales terms) is doing just silly numbers of sales. Up to 35% sales growth in a year. Totally nuts.

Yet D&D still makes less than Half of what Magic brings in...


Well, that certainly explains why Hasbro seems all hot for WotC to try and get Magic players to give D&D a whirl...

I get the corporate thinking: "Magic is a fantasy game, and D&D is a fantasy game. So why don't we get these two groups united in playing both fantasy games!?"

But IMHO, while there is a little crossover; The player bases are after two fundamentally different things from their "fantasy gaming".

 

[darjr]

Ha, yea WotC did a D&D magic set, maybe to sell more D&D, and it turned out to be a best seller for Magic!

Though I imagine it sold D&D too.

 

[overgeeked]

You're probably right to want to keep the D&D flavor.

An E6 mod for 5e fills the ticket I think. I'd dial it back a touch to a 5th level cap. And I'd rule you only get new HD every 3 levels after 5th. (I would roll what inspiration does into HD - Make the PC's have to make a choice to roll well now vs. ability to heal later...)

It would make for a bit more 'heroic' game, but I think not into the full blown superheroic level.

I'd still take a pair of scissors and a sharpie pen to the spell list...

With E6 you basically wouldn't need to, but I get your point.

Not all of it is directly applicable to RPGs, but most of the general ideas hold true in my opinion.

I think far more of it is applicable than not. It perfectly matches my experience with modern players.

This ties in to some of the issues I have with the direction 5e went; in terms of less GM procedural tools than B/X, combined with many Player abilities and spells that function as 'skip" buttons to most of the alleged "pillars of play" WotC says 5e supports.

My issue isn't so much that D&D is now a superhero fantasy game, more that it's a bad superhero fantasy game. The mechanics just don't allow for that style of play. The spell slots are too restrictive, the spell descriptions too restrictive, class, levels, etc are all too restrictive for that kind of play to be viable. But that's still where the game pushes play to go. Making most things trivial with skip buttons littered throughout the game and monsters drastically undertuned compared to PCs.

This ties in a lot to how they culled and used survey information to drive the games design. I do not think that they sufficiently weighed the survey information to account for the GM side, (The people who have to actually run the game) as opposed to how much as they leaned into "making it fun" for players.

Well, I think they realized that there are at least 10 players for every 1 DM and so catered to their main audience...the players.

D&D should absolutely be fun to play. (Or any RPG for that matter. It's kinda the point of the entire RPG hobby...)

But IMHO there is a difference between making a fun game, and making the game "fun" by letting the inmates run the asylum...

I totally agree. But different people find different things fun. I think it's fun to be challenged in a game. Apparently the vast majority of survey respondents do not. At all. Hence the cakewalk tuning of 5E.

 

[BookTenTiger]

With E6 you basically wouldn't need to, but I get your point.

I think far more of it is applicable than not. It perfectly matches my experience with modern players.

My issue isn't so much that D&D is now a superhero fantasy game, more that it's a bad superhero fantasy game. The mechanics just don't allow for that style of play. The spell slots are too restrictive, the spell descriptions too restrictive, class, levels, etc are all too restrictive for that kind of play to be viable. But that's still where the game pushes play to go. Making most things trivial with skip buttons littered throughout the game and monsters drastically undertuned compared to PCs.

Well, I think they realized that there are at least 10 players for every 1 DM and so catered to their main audience...the players.

I totally agree. But different people find different things fun. I think it's fun to be challenged in a game. Apparently the vast majority of survey respondents do not. At all. Hence the cakewalk tuning of 5E.

I have to say, your DM vs Player view really boggles my mind. I know at my tables, the DM and Players have the same goal: to have fun. If their vision of achieving that fun is different, we work together to compromise and play together.

 

[Jaeger]

Ha, yea WotC did a D&D magic set, maybe to sell more D&D, and it turned out to be a best seller for Magic!

Though I imagine it sold D&D too.

I would bet it will never come close to touching the numbers Hasbro/WotC want.

Totally anecdotal so YMMV:

In my experience it is typically the dedicated D&D gamers who will dip their toes in, or divide their time with the Magic side of things.

Magic players Generally seem to get what they want out of MtG, and have no desire to give D&D a look.

While I understand the desire to merge these two groups, IMHO it is tilting at windmills. The corporate suits who do not play the games, fail to understand the fundamental differences between the two fanbases,

It'll take a while for them to clue in...

 

[overgeeked]

I have to say, your DM vs Player view really boggles my mind.

I'm not sure what you mean.

I know at my tables, the DM and Players have the same goal: to have fun.

I do the same.

If their vision of achieving that fun is different, we work together to compromise and play together.

That's where we differ. If our visions of fun are too different, we find other people to play with who match up better with our expectations. If our visions are similar enough to warrant ironing things out, then we do. There's no group that "has to" play with a given DM and no DM who "has to" run for a given group.