D&D General D&D's Utter Dominance Is Good or Bad Because...

[MNblockhead]

Here's the thing: it's not that different rules/class/spell/etc. concepts wouldn't make money. They certainly would. It's just that they wouldn't make enough money to make it worth WotC's while. There's a huge difference here between class options like a Warlord and a vanity project like Buck Rodgers was for TSR. The Buck Rodgers books and game and book returns were the core reason for TSR's woes.

I think a multiversal book with class/spells/rules/character options/rules would sell quite well, but the assumption is that it wouldn't hit the critical mass to make it worthwhile. That's not exactly charity.

They could make it more profitable with digital-only (PDFs on DMs Guild, or new options sold on DDB) products. But it looks like they've decided to support vetted third-party publishers for that, which I think is a good thing for players, smaller publishers, and WotC.

 

[Wolfpack48]

Here's the thing: it's not that different rules/class/spell/etc. concepts wouldn't make money. They certainly would. It's just that they wouldn't make enough money to make it worth WotC's while. There's a huge difference here between class options like a Warlord and a vanity project like Buck Rodgers was for TSR. The Buck Rodgers books and game and book returns were the core reason for TSR's woes.

I think a multiversal book with class/spells/rules/character options/rules would sell quite well, but the assumption is that it wouldn't hit the critical mass to make it worthwhile. That's not exactly charity.

It was a lot more than just Buck Rogers. Read Slaying The Dragon. Random House shipped back truckloads of unsold product.

 

[MNblockhead]

How many options are enough? How little profit would be "acceptable"? They flooded the market with books in previous editions, all it lead to was new editions being released to keep the IP afloat. We're lucky we have continued development of 5E. The people working on 5E thought it was the end of the line. TSR went bankrupt in part because they kept cranking out options.

Seriously, they cannot just keep cranking out product because random people on the internet think they should.

They could (and are) better support TPP products in their platforms (DDB, DMs Guild, and the upcoming 3D VTT). Quality control and keeping all prep-for-digital work in-house greatly limits this support. I would like it to be possible for DDB to make it possible for publishers and fans to do the markup themselves and to have a marketplace that anyone can sell on (like DMs Guild but in DDB and the upcoming 3D VTT). They should make it easy to filter on officially-support and unofficial content and there should be a rating and objectionable-content reporting features. I can see why they wouldn't prioritize that now, but I hope that this is the direction they are moving towards.

 

[SteveC]

They could make it more profitable with digital-only (PDFs on DMs Guild, or new options sold on DDB) products. But it looks like they've decided to support vetted third-party publishers for that, which I think is a good thing for players, smaller publishers, and WotC.

That does make sense. The problem is that no one I game with or even know about directly uses third party stuff. Now I know about a ton of it (and own some of it) but I know there are a lot of people who have DMs who just say no to the third party stuff. And of course I know that many people in this very thread are strong proponents of third party stuff and I'm not yucking on any of you. I'm just reporting the games that I play in and the greater gaming community I talk to.

 

[SteveC]

It was a lot more than just Buck Rogers. Read Slaying The Dragon. Random House shipped back truckloads of unsold product.

Right, Random House shipped back a ton of books, but I'm citing Buck Rodgers as an example of stuff they were producing that was going nowhere. That's stuff that didn't sell and could be returned. I think the notion that a book of new classes/spells/subclasses would be in the same notion is just silly. I was here for the fall of TSR so, yeah, I know about what happened.

 

[Oofta]

They could (and are) better support TPP products in their platforms (DDB, DMs Guild, and the upcoming 3D VTT). Quality control and keeping all prep-for-digital work in-house greatly limits this support. I would like it to be possible for DDB to make it possible for publishers and fans to do the markup themselves and to have a marketplace that anyone can sell on (like DMs Guild but in DDB and the upcoming 3D VTT). They should make it easy to filter on officially-support and unofficial content and there should be a rating and objectionable-content reporting features. I can see why they wouldn't prioritize that now, but I hope that this is the direction they are moving towards.

IIRC they mentioned DDB adding more support for 3PP recently. They've added a few, it would make sense that they're taking a go slow approach until everything gets worked out.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Buddy you are missing the forest.
The Fandom wants Free Updates.

That's WOTC's D&D division's problem. A lot of the consumer base begs for a lot but wants product for nothing or next to nothing.

Look at Paizo and their free wiki.
Or how almost every RPG gives the basic rules for free.

WOTC's size means they can afford to print a little bit of free desired content with the stuff that they can dangle for real money.

Some of the consumer base wants free updates. But I don't think it's nearly in the numbers you think it is.

 

[MNblockhead]

IIRC they mentioned DDB adding more support for 3PP recently. They've added a few, it would make sense that they're taking a go slow approach until everything gets worked out.

Right, it is great to see the recent steps they've taken in this direction. What I would like to see is more support to add and share content in DDB that doesn't require any internal coding and formatting. Give creators the tools to do it themselves. It feels like they added a lot of support for more basic third-party content early on, but that they haven't done much more development in this area in the past few years.

But I agree that their priority needs to be to provide the best support for official content, even if that means restrictions and limits on what you can do with homebrew content. Still hoping, however, to see even more support for TPPs and homebrewers added to DDB.

 

[Oofta]

Right, it is great to see the recent steps they've taken in this direction. What I would like to see is more support to add and share content in DDB that doesn't require any internal coding and formatting. Give creators the tools to do it themselves. It feels like they added a lot of support for more basic third-party content early on, but that they haven't done much more development in this area in the past few years.

But I agree that their priority needs to be to provide the best support for official content, even if that means restrictions and limits on what you can do with homebrew content. Still hoping, however, to see even more support for TPPs and homebrewers added to DDB.

Yeah, I'd love to see the ability to add custom classes for example. Heck, even a simple formatter for the stat blocks would be an improvement. Unfortunately from what I've heard it's likely that the initial development was kind of a hack to get it to market and not built with flexibility in mind.

I like the tool, but it sure would be nice if the encounter builder was improved so it got out of beta.

 

[Reynard]

So, if WotC just won't do "certain kinds of books" (whatever that means since no one has outright said what would be not-profitable-enough) AND they are making 5E everygreen AND they refuse to make and substantive changes to 5E -- what does that leave for them to publish over the next 10 years of 5E and into perpetuity? If the last 10 years are anything to go by, it looks like a lot of adventures, very few rules expansions and a few pretty controversial settings and setting/adventure hybrids. Will 5E fandom be happy with that?