D&D General Is DnD being mothballed?

[doctorbadwolf]

Well you see because I...

I hear ya. I just generally prefer doing hobbies in a chill environment, so I don’t play magic at game store lol

Maybe there’s a better word I could have used, but clearly you understood my meaning.

Well, kind of. I had a guess what you meant but…I’m still not totally clear on it.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

For me I think 1 book like Tasha's and Xanathar's a year to year and a half is good. The rest can be adventures, monster books, settings and whatnot. Hell, they don't even have to increase the total release rate if you guys think it's currently good. Just turn 1 adventure or setting into a Xanathar's each year or so.

After thinking that I disagreed with your complaint about not enough books, your further explanations of your reasoning has me on board.

They could (and perhaps should) produce more crunch books - but only by a little. I also think that they should produce less adventures, but only by a little. Two crunch books every three years, replacing an adventure in that time without increasing overall production (of 9 books every two years) would probably hit about the closest to a sweet spot that they could manage.

One caveat: Crunch is often what "ruins" an edition - with bloat. Bloat, in my mind, is broken options on both ends (OP and trap options). Stuff that you have to look at when you build your character, but you would never take, and stuff that someone will show up at the table with and disrupt the game for other players.

SO... If you're gonna produce more crunch, you have to be VERY VERY careful to make crunch that balances - not in a boring samey-samey way - but in a dynamic, good-for-the-game fun way. That's hard, but I don't think impossible to achieve.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Here's an idea. They could just call it what it is and label it 5.5e.

Bleeeeahh.

 

[see]

One caveat: Crunch is often what "ruins" an edition - with bloat. Bloat, in my mind, is broken options on both ends (OP and trap options). Stuff that you have to look at when you build your character, but you would never take, and stuff that someone will show up at the table with and disrupt the game for other players.

I don't agree. Simple volume-of-options is enough to hurt new player recruitment, even if they're all perfectly balanced. If we had six to nine "of Everything" books at this point instead of two, I expect that overall D&D player numbers would be much lower now than they are. (Not that I can prove it, of course.)

 

[Dire Bare]

Never underestimate how dense people can be.

People understand movie sequels, If I look at any kind of manual or software? My first take would be "Version 2" that replaces version 1, unless it explicitly and clearly stated volume 2 for a book.

It's not about customers being dense, it's about casual fans not being dialed into the conventions of the game.

Although, yes, people can be dense. The burger issue raised shows that. When dense folks tank a marketing campaign, it isn't that most of the targeted customers are dense, just a meaningful percentage of them.

Anyone who's worked in a customer-facing position should be painfully aware of that.

 

[darjr]

I don't agree. Simple volume-of-options is enough to hurt new player recruitment, even if they're all perfectly balanced. If we had six to nine "of Everything" books at this point instead of two, I expect that overall D&D player numbers would be much lower now than they are. (Not that I can prove it, of course.)

I agree with you that it would have hurt the game. But I’m not sure it would have significantly impacted it’s growth. Churn would probably be higher? Maybe. I wouldn’t have liked it that’s for sure.

They have tried to wall off character options. The Strixhaven book being the most obvious example. Tried to add more options while sectioning them off to stave off bloat and analysis paralysis. But I think DNDBeyond has worked against them on that.

 

[Alzrius]

How very elitist of you.

Aren't you the guy who once dubbed yourself "as close to an expert on this exact topic as there is in the world"?

 

[Parmandur]

Oopsy. I nearly stopped reading after your profit paragraph. No, it really serves two purposes: keeping the company and the game healthy.

Actually, they always have been willing to scrap projects that seem bad for the game and for the company. After Sword Coast Adventurervs guide was a dud, they scrapped the Elemental Evil adventurer's guide and rather put the material out for free.

Other way around: SCAG used the leftovers of the Elemental Evil book and, apparently, an intended Out of the Abyss tie-in: their initial product strateg, which was scrapped bwfore itnreally saw acruob, was to have a big Adventure book and thena crunch filled tie-in to go with it. And SCAG is hugely successful: it's been in print for 8 years (longer than 3.X combined!) and is still selling.

 

[Maxperson]

Bleeeeahh.

I know your feelings on that one!

 

[Micah Sweet]

Here's an alternate perspective: one of the advantages of a rapid release schedule is that it provides options for us consumers. Maybe some like adventures, while others prefer to roll their own. Some might like lore-filled deep dives into various aspects of settings, while others have no use for that stuff. There are definitely those who would enjoy a book filled with cool magic items, but for others the DMG is enough. From our perspective as customers, this would be good.

But from a business perspective, you're better off maximizing profits with a sparse schedule, and leave people hungry for more. And clearly, a schedule along the lines of 2e is way too fast. But I think that long-term, there may be benefits to a faster and more varied release schedule, because it keeps more different kinds of people interested in the game, and there are likely "tentpole" releases that would sell more in that case.

And I'm not sure the 3e and 4e release schedules were unsustainable. Did they maximize profit? Probably not. But I haven't heard anyone claim they were losing money on them – only that they weren't making enough money for their corporate overlords.

This! There is a spectrum of release people, and of profit.