D&D General Does D&D (and RPGs in general) Need Edition Resets?

[mamba]

So selling the same stuff to the same people?

updated stuff to the same people and new customers

Actual hard setting books?

would not rule it out, but adventures are more likely

WOTC sucks at those and they don't sell well even when you do them good.

not sure they do much worse than adventures. SCAG is ranked right above Strahd, Eberron right below in sales, and Strahd is the best selling adventure

5e style setting books sell but you can only sell a brief summary, a few feats, a subclass or variant rule, and an adventure ONCE.

see above, they sell about as well as adventures, but I can also see something like SJ / PS for DL or another setting

So adventure books not setting books

can go either way, although I would be surprised if they released a setting book without a second adventure, so a boxed set or adventure is probably more likely

 

[Minigiant]

updated stuff to the same people and new customers

Mostly the same customers.

It'll only been 10 years.

This is why I think WOTC is going hard for the VTT to sell similar or updated versions of the same product.

5e isn't math complex enough that DMs can't convert the 2024 stuff quickly. Same with 1e and 2e.

And there adventures aren't good enough to warrant buying once you get to veterancy.

 

[mamba]

Mostly the same customers.

there are new customers every day, they will by default get the new books. For the existing ones it will be some split

This is why I think WOTC is going hard for the VTT to sell similar or updated versions of the same product.

they already sell a digital version on DDB and some VTTs. I guess they will be happy to sell it on their VTT another time, yes

5e isn't math complex enough that DMs can't convert the 2024 stuff quickly. Same with 1e and 2e.

the 5e stuff is compatible, nothing to convert

And there adventures aren't good enough to warrant buying once you get to veterancy.

I don’t know, they are not really worse than the 1e/2e ones for me. There were a lot of duds back then too, they just managed to also have some great ones because it is easier to get 32 to 48 pages right than 192 to 256

While 5e might not have reached the heights of 1e/2e, they also avoided the depths of it. I agree that there are some things that need fixing / changing however, and at least to me the most recent adventures are getting worse. Will see how things develop from here

 

[gban007]

Mostly the same customers.

It'll only been 10 years.

This is why I think WOTC is going hard for the VTT to sell similar or updated versions of the same product.

5e isn't math complex enough that DMs can't convert the 2024 stuff quickly. Same with 1e and 2e.

And there adventures aren't good enough to warrant buying once you get to veterancy.

I don't think all the PHB sales occurring now / last couple of years are to the existing customers, otherwise I would ask why they are churning through PHBs so quickly. But if they were, then the updated book should sell just as well to these customers churning through their books?
Otherwise, if as I suspect most sales of PHBs are to new customers, then what happens is that the new customers will now be buying the updated handbook.

 

[Thomas Shey]

then you have not been paying attention over the last, say, five years

I very much have. Don't confuse my interpretation of the available data as being different than yours with my not having it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

no one said they are, what is a loser is having too many of them

Except the definition of "too many" seems, shall we say, hyper-conservative in some cases.

 

[Thomas Shey]

we are 10 years in by now, where do you draw the line between the initial phase and the tail end? Sounds like you want to claim all 10 years for the initial phase

No, I want to claim the first five. The last five looks very much like a slow tail-off, and people are confusing otherwise because they're taking certain statements at face value you should never take at face value when provided by any company.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That tends to line up with my experiences too. Players tend to buy accessories like dice, dice trays, miniatures. I think the DDB and VTT will be able to hit this market digitally.

This is interesting, because the only player I've ever known to not get at least the corebook was one who was, to be really blunt, pretty much constantly broke. These days they might only bother with a PDF version, but they still want to be able to reference the main book without borrowing it from someone.

 

[Micah Sweet]

yes they are, compatible or not, this is a replacement for the PHB from 2014


they haven’t really done many settings books, FR has plenty of room to explore, Dragonlance had one adventure with a bit of setting tacked on.

They can certainly publish many more adventures in the FR, or really any other setting


oh, I am counting on them hitting the settings again, no reason to only have one adventure in Dragonlance, Eberron, or Ravenloft, etc

They seem to have an aversion to publishing anything that you would want or need any material beyond the core three to use properly. This wasn't the case pre-5e, so it seems to be a relatively new phenomenon.

 

[Minigiant]

there are new customers every day, they will by default get the new books. For the existing ones it will be some split

Let's say someone buys Planescape, Tashas, and Fizbans now.

What's going to make them buy those three books again in 2027 if the rules barely change

Especially since most of the updates are PC side. Crawford said the monster stats and CRs are staying the same. They are just adding the skills/saves/modifiers and redoing the layouts.

The new books would have to come out with new content. Such as being high level and in the broken stages of 5e. Or reveal new subclasses or races that WOTC already struggles with. Or create new classes that WOTC is hesitant to do. Or pump out new monsters with new tactical or narrative aspects.

and that's "bloat".

There is no way you are going to use the same rules skeleton for 20 or 30 or 40 years without bloat. New classes. New Subclasses. Now Monsters. New Traps. New Races. New Obstacles. New variants. New settings. Every year.

the "I'mma make corebooks, slow support to a crawl, and live off that" is one feasible for a small company with few employees that doesn't need much to keep going