D&D General Is DnD being mothballed?

[Dire Bare]

And the rest of us have to suffer so the lowest common denominator can be served.

First world problems man. The suffering you endure, I don't know how you cope.

WotC doesn't, nor should, cater to a small subset of fans who won't increase their bottom line. Why should they?

Your desires for a faster release schedule is fair, I too miss the days of the TSR firehose . . . so many good products. But that strategy killed TSR.

WotC's decision back in 2014 to keep D&D releases slow and steady was brilliant and a part of the reason for today's unprecedented success for the game. As the game has grown more popular than they expected, they have slowly experimented with changing up the release schedule, both in volume and type of products released.

Would some of us love MORE D&D products coming out at a faster pace? Of course? But WotC not rising to your expectations isn't a foolish business decision on their part, it's not them "leaving money on the table".

You need to learn to be okay with this not being all about you. And maybe start enjoying the many products put out by third party publishers . . . if you look at the D&D community as a whole, there IS a firehose of content being released currently, it's just not all coming from WotC. And a lot of it is GOOD.

 

[dave2008]

didn't they do the exact same thing in 2013 / 2014?


Do you have any numbers on that? I am not really seeing this reflected in the release schedule


Same books, just bundled, how is that ramping up at all?


I'd say it absolutely is. No new development, just selling the PHB, DMG and MM indefinitely is basically the equivalent to what Monopoly does


You have a weird understanding of investing. Same page count, or fewer, slightly different format, sounds very much like the same investment


You have to pay the freelancers too, often not exactly less either. I do not really see this as investing either

I was going to respond, but @darjr pretty much nailed it on the head (post #515). All evidence points to more investment, not less over the past few years.

 

[Parmandur]

I don't think that's true from a freelancer's point of view. Things change but to my knowledge, they weren't the highest.

Last.time @Morrus out a study in the topic, it was true, I believe.

 

[SlyFlourish]

That one is fairly easy: I'm pretty sure they plan to stop printing the 2014 PHB. Now, that won't stop the confusion with the hundreds of thousands of copies of the 2014 PHB that are out there in the wild, but that's not really WotC's "problem" (it's mine). They're not that concerned with that because the 2024 PHB is INTENDED to replace the 2014 one, which wasn't the case before.



I suspect A LOT.

it has to be millions of 2014 PHBs out there, right?

 

[dave2008]

I don't think that's true from a freelancer's point of view. Things change but to my knowledge, they weren't the highest.

The last numbers I have seen (during 5e but a while ago and may have been pre-5e rates); showed WotC paid substantially more than other RPG publishers. However, I would think you would know better than me!

 

[Parmandur]

I don't think that's true from a freelancer's point of view. Things change but to my knowledge, they weren't the highest.

Just in terms of freelancing:

https://www.enworld.org/threads/what-are-the-current-freelance-writing-rates-in-the-ttrpg-industry.699085/

 

[dave2008]

It would be interesting to see just how many projects have been in the works that have either been scrapped, pillaged for an idea to fill out another product, or just shelved because timing wasn't right. I wonder how many projects do they currently have in the works aside from the 2024 rulebook refresh.

Fairly recently (within the past 2-3 years) this was their basic process:

1. Idea Pitch
2. Initial Development of 4 product ideas
3. Review of initial idea development
4. Select 2 of the 4 to move forward to production

So about half of projects that make to initial development don't get developed. However, the said sometimes they might come back to an idea that originally didn't get past initial development.

 

[Parmandur]

it has to be millions of 2014 PHBs out there, right?

At least 2 million, probably. That's why WotC is bending over backwards to ensure that somebody with a 2014 PHB cam still play nice with a 2024 table.

 

[Parmandur]

Fairly recently (within the past 2-3 years) this was their basic process:

1. Idea Pitch
2. Initial Development of 4 product ideas
3. Review of initial idea development
4. Select 2 of the 4 to move forward to production

So about half of projects that make to initial development don't get developed. However, the said sometimes they might come back to an idea that originally didn't get past initial development.

Apparently Perkins had Witchlight on the back-burner since late 4E. That's a big reason why they don't go into this stuff: they did hint that they had plans for Eberron way early in 5E, but that took years to come to fruition. They have years worth of products just percolating.

 

[mamba]

No, they had freelancers make the first adventure.

which they had to pay too, so they still paid for the development of the three core books and adventures

Ugh, I hate this kind of debate. Start here https://www.enworld.org/threads/pos...oyees-at-wotc-working-in-d-d-division.691109/

it doesn't have to be one, either you have numbers or you don't.

They have a whole digital store that direct ships and doesn't go through a distrubutor. That's a whole division they had to ramp up. And from accounts it took them a while to get wright. That wasn't even a possibility in 2014.

yes, they bought DDB

Monopoly isn't a mothballed product. A mothballed product at Hasbro means nothing on the shelves. Monopoly is absolutely on the shelves.

it is a product with no investment, short of creating new copies of it to sell. If you want to call this something else, I am ok with that. If D&D were in that spot I would not exactly consider it thriving however.

So did you miss the Dragonlance board game? Or that you can only get Spelljammer physically in a splipcase and it was sold as a setting?

Forgot about DL, yes. The slipcase is specifically what I was referring to. Same number of pages, or less, than their other books, so same amount of writing and art, hence the same investment.

That it costs maybe $5 more to manufacture and sells for $20 more is not what I see as investing in D&D.

I think you know taking on employees is more of an investment than freelancers.

No, I do not know that. In the business I am working it it is quite the opposite. The advantage is that you more easily can get rid of them if you do not need them any longer.