D&D General Is DnD being mothballed?

[Cadence]

Deleted for being unhelpful.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Matt's original statements are interesting but I do think they're flawed.

I think it's very reasonable to assume WOTC upper management has its eyes focused on digital. They spent $130 million dollars on D&D Beyond. I doubt the core RPG dev team has spent that kind of money over many years. No doubt they want to recoup that money through digital sales and we're seeing their experiments in that area with the Beyond-only sale of the Monstrous Compendium 4.

So that's to be expected.

I don't think the slower book release cycle is a problem. I think its intended. WOTC talked about how putting out too many big campaign adventures ensured that no one could play them all. They had multi-year adventures coming out every six months for a little while there. Now it's one big adventure a year (or so). This year has both Planescape and Phandelver and Below so those are two big ones within like a month of one another.

But I don't think that hurts D&D one way or the other.

One thing I've been thinking about a lot is what D&D does for the hobby and what we want it to do for the hobby. Branding is a big one. D&D branding brings people to D&D and people really into D&D try other things too. It grows the whole pie – rises all boats – and all your other favorite metaphors. Having a good on-ramp to the RPG hobby is important too. I think there is no more important product than the D&D Starter Set. Luckily, they've all been pretty solid. They at least don't seem to be getting in the way.

Solid core books is important after that to keep people in the hobby but after that, the determined DMs, they're out there googling things, watching the youtubes, and learning about other systems and other products and picking the ones they and their friends want to enjoy the hobby.

At least that's how I hope it's going.

I think we probably overweight the importance of WOTC's publishing schedule and published books other than the starter sets and the core books. Some people pay a lot of attention to them but others (I'd say about half) just start homebrewing their own worlds and many find other games they want to play instead.

So we'll see!

 

[Older Beholder]

It feels like Colville is trying to grow his audience by pandering to the anti-WotC crowd. Probably not even consciously, it’s only natural that if something works that you’d keep doing it.

The problem with that is you end up with a community of entitled trolls that only really have hate in common as your fan base. It only takes a small percentage of people like that to really sour things. The minute he says or does something they don’t like, they’ll turn on him too.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think we probably overweight the importance of WOTC's publishing schedule and published books other than the starter sets and the core books. Some people pay a lot of attention to them but others (I'd say about half) just start homebrewing their own worlds and many find other games they want to play instead.

This is definitely me. I've got a backlog of a few 5E WotC campaign books I would eventually like to run (Witchlight, Strixhaven, Radiant Citadel), but I mostly am focused on playing Shadowdark and Pirate Borg and eventually Eat the Reich and Deathmatch Island. I have not stopped playing 5E, but I am not hanging on WotC's every publication and don't need them to feed my gameplay any further.

 

[darjr]

It just occurred to me that WotC just did an unplanned A/B test. Phandelver a single less expensive large new adventure, right next to Planescape, a slipcase expensive nostalgia adventure.

It’ll be interesting seeing how it plays out.

 

[mamba]

A more interesting discussion, in my mind, is what can those 4-5 things BE?

I'd say two adventure books, one setting book, one 'extra', could either by a Xanathar / Tasha or a monster book (Fizban / Bigby / Mordenkainen) or something weird like Book of Many Things

 

[John Lloyd1]

It just occurred to me that WotC just did an unplanned A/B test. Phandelver a single less expensive large new adventure, right next to Planescape, a slipcase expensive nostalgia adventure.

It’ll be interesting seeing how it plays out.

Isn't phandelver a nostalgia adventure as well. Ten year anniversary and all.

 

[John Lloyd1]

I'd say two adventure books, one setting book, one 'extra', could either by a Xanathar / Tasha or a monster book (Fizban / Bigby / Mordenkainen) or something weird like Book of Many Things

One of the adventures should be a campaign and the other a collection.

 

[Charlaquin]

I would just not like everyone to be shackled to the marketing ideas pursued by a company that assumes the lowest common denominator amongst those who might buy their products.

Again, it’s not an assumption. They made a thing, it didn’t sell very well, they did some research, and they found out the problem was that the title was confusing to a significant portion of people who might otherwise have bought it.

 

[Nightfly]

We still can presume a little more awareness on the part of RPG customers.

Micah, I grudgingly admire your dedication to keep tilting at this windmill after so many pages. I respectfully think you're wrong, but nobly so. Please don't allow us to sully your optimistic view of the general public's intelligence.

I'd just like to point out that the number of people who are confused by the name "Player's Handbook 2" might indeed be very low, but that doesn't mean it isn't a problem. If only one person in 20 is unclear on what that title means, that's potentially a 5% sales loss based on something that's incredibly easy to fix. No company is going to look at that data and not change the way they name their product when that costs literally nothing. (Well, no company except Twitt... excuse me, X.)

There's also another factor: naming your splatbook "Whoever's Guide to Whatever" makes it seem less daunting to enter the hobby, since that doesn't sound like a book that you have to buy before your first game, whereas "Player's Handbook 2" might. WotC are certainly experts at shooting themselves in the foot, but in this one respect I think they're being smart.