D&D General Ray Winninger on 5e’s success, product cadence, the OGL, and more.

[mearls]

I'm just going to take this opportunity to note that, IMO, the on-ramp that Mike Mearls and his team built for 5e is tremendously underrated as a factor to 5e's sustained growth and success.

Thanks for that. We very consciously built a cycle that started with the public playtest, fed into the free rules and starter set, then segued into the annual release cycle. We built a machine to juice up D&D's marketing and make it more attractive for licensing. It turns out that when you get people excited about what you're doing, they'll also buy your stuff.

A lot of things contributed to D&D 5e's run, but fundamentally it came down to WotC's ability to get all of you <gestures at D&D fans all over the world> excited about what we were doing. The root of it all was the community. Without motivated, excited DMs, none of it works, and D&D dies.

That's the hidden, crazy superpower of TTRPGs that folks sometimes forget: A DM is the world's best brand advocate, a person motivated to go out and spread their love for the game.

 

[Echohawk]

I think the reason for the slowdown with 5.5 is pretty simple - does anyone have a clear idea of why someone playing 5e, or an earlier version of the game, should drop $150 on the new books?

Thanks for the detailed responses, Mike. They are sincerely appreciated!

I'm curious about the reference to a slowdown with 5.5 though. From this article: "Lanzillo said that the English-language, analog version (ie., physical books) of the 2024 Players Handbook reached the same sales numbers that the 2014 PHB did in three years across all languages." That doesn't sound like a drop, so I'm wondering if you have some additional insights that might mean the marketing blurb is somehow hiding a slowdown.

 

[dave2008]

Thanks for the detailed responses, Mike. They are sincerely appreciated!

I'm curious about the reference to a slowdown with 5.5 though. From this article: "Lanzillo said that the English-language, analog version (ie., physical books) of the 2024 Players Handbook reached the same sales numbers that the 2014 PHB did in three years across all languages." That doesn't sound like a drop, so I'm wondering if you have some additional insights that might mean the marketing blurb is somehow hiding a slowdown.

I was wondering the same thing. Where is the idea of the slow down coming from? I guess Mike Should know (until fairly recently at least), but Ray said in the video that each year continued to grow in sales. So when do the drop off happen?

 

[dave2008]

A D&D product needs to punch through a lot of static to stand out. When's the last time a D&D product did that?

Well I can kind of say that of any 5e based product at this point. I have mostly lost interest in 5e content, I have more than enough. I am more interested in doing my own thing than buying more stuff.

However, I do feel the whole 2024 core books have been punching through that static. I don't need any of the books, but purchased them all and I am actually excited to get the 2024 MM (mostly for the art).

 

[MerricB]

• 3.5 lacked a clear vision for improving the game. It became the default, mainly because the D&D audience was shrinking as players who jumped back in with 3e bounced back out.

It is worth considering how much of the 3E product line-up came out for 3.5E onwards. The early years of 3E were very light on material - the firehose came after 3.5E was released. It wasn't as light as 5E, of course, but still...

 

[Reynard]

It is worth considering how much of the 3E product line-up came out for 3.5E onwards. The early years of 3E were very light on material - the firehose came after 3.5E was released. It wasn't as light as 5E, of course, but still...

Part of that is probably due to.3.5 absolutely decimating that 3rd party market.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Part of that is probably due to.3.5 absolutely decimating that 3rd party market.

Heh... I would say it's more accurate to say that the 3rd party market decimated themselves, LOL. Once every single Tom, Dick, and Harry thought they could become a D&D designer and publisher off the 3E SRD and OGL... they flooded the market with so much material (90% of which was crap) that they cannibalized themselves moreso than anything WotC did.

One thinks that finding quality products on DMs Guild is hard? Try flipping through the walls and walls of bookshelf space with 100-page tomes back in 2000 dedicated to nothing but 3E SRD products. People learned pretty quickly just how much a hit-or-miss proposition the whole endeavor was.

At the very least nowadays you can buy DMs Guild products for a couple bucks and if it sucks you're only out a few dollars. As opposed to dropping $30 a pop on all kind of 3E books, most of which gave you little in return.

 

[eyeheartawk]

It remains to be seen how 5.5 will go, but the early signs point to something like 3.5, with the audience shrinking from a sharp rise of interest that the game failed to hold. It's also not clear that changes to the IP are winning more fans than they're alienating.

This is kind of where I'm seeing things too.

5.5 simultaneously changed too little to remedy edition fatigue after 10 years and changed too much for alot of people on the other end.

 

[TiQuinn]

I think the reason for the slowdown with 5.5 is pretty simple - does anyone have a clear idea of why someone playing 5e, or an earlier version of the game, should drop $150 on the new books?

So have we seen a verifiable slowdown with 5.5 that we can point and say “it’s the new edition’s fault?” Or are we assuming a slowdown because there’s a perception that there’s not as much overall excitement? At least some portion of the game buying public has shifted to D&D Beyond, and we just don’t have great numbers overall.

This may all turn out to be true but from what I’m seeing, we don’t know it until at least a few years later.

 

[AlViking]

Thanks for the detailed responses, Mike. They are sincerely appreciated!

I'm curious about the reference to a slowdown with 5.5 though. From this article: "Lanzillo said that the English-language, analog version (ie., physical books) of the 2024 Players Handbook reached the same sales numbers that the 2014 PHB did in three years across all languages." That doesn't sound like a drop, so I'm wondering if you have some additional insights that might mean the marketing blurb is somehow hiding a slowdown.

I appreciate all the work done for 5e and what the team pulled off.

But I think it's far too early to make any conclusions on what's happening with the 24 release. We likely have many people holding off until their current campaign is finished and the monster manual is released. In other cases people may not even be aware there is a revision if they don't follow online gaming news or subscribe to dndbeyond. We aren't going to know what the trajectory is like for a couple of years and it will depend more on people new to the game not people who were already playing. We may be in a period of minimal growth because nothing can grow forever but I think it is far too early to come to any conclusions about how the game is doing overall.