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

[michaeljpastor]

The podcast does make one reconsider the myth of Lorraine Williams, Enemy of Dungeons & Dragons, as @Snarf Zagyg has explained in an epic thread here.

Yeah, epic is a very good word for it. I really enjoyed the discussion. I sent a note to the podcasters to please continue the series.

 

[Azzy]

Oh boy, yeah. Reading about Ray's experiences just confirms that moving over to Magic back in 2020 was one of the best career decisions I've ever made.

Well, as the say, hindsight is 2020.

 

[Alphastream]

Of course, things didn't unfold that way. The C-Suite insisted we revise all the core books together and very much wanted to position this effort as a "new edition," not to boost sales but to help solve an orthogonal business problem that later became moot.

I assume this is D&D Beyond? (And perhaps other partners, but the OGL changed that plan.)

 

[darjr]

I assume this is D&D Beyond? (And perhaps other partners, but the OGL changed that plan.)

Well DnDBeyond is not moot, the OGL is.

 

[occam]

I can't speak for him but on the interview Mike did with Stan!, he talked about how Magic has like seven ways to play and Warhammer has even more but there's really only one way to play D&D and yet there could be many more. It's a pretty interesting thought. I think there has been some attempts with things like miniature wargaming products, the board games from a while back, and others – but those don't quite feel the same.

But there's a fundamental difference between Magic and Warhammer on one side, and D&D on the other. Magic and Warhammer have multiple competitive formats, and those formats are stricter than what a TTRPG uses because they're competitive. If you want to play Magic or Warhammer in different ways, you (as a designer) are compelled to specify different formats to keep competitive play fair.

D&D and other TTRPGs, relying on cooperation and imagination, can work with a single, more flexible format to accommodate a bunch of different playstyles. You can play grim n' gritty, no-magic/high-magic, sandbox/linear, by-the-book/houseruled-to-death, etc., etc. games with the same published ruleset, and without a need to pre-define specific formats to keep things fair.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Well DnDBeyond is not moot, the OGL is.

Its acquisition might have been.

 

[darjr]

Its acquisition might have been.

I get what your saying. The idea that the revised books were to solve a "dndbeyond" problem wotc thought they had. But right around when they announced the books they bought dndbeyond.

It doesn't seem to line up. They'd been trying to buy DNDBeyond for a while, isn't that been stated already? The only thing that came "later" and mooted things was the end of the OGL scandal.

The two pronged stance (not a new edition but the books are being released as IF they were) was still going on.

 

[Smackpixi]

I think the WotC’s lack of development of a competitive blitz chess style of DnD would be what mearls means about lack of different styles of play. Maybe? There are a myriad of ways to play DnD, but all are cooperative parties wandering around. Parties going head to head would be different.

 

[Hussar]

I think the WotC’s lack of development of a competitive blitz chess style of DnD would be what mearls means about lack of different styles of play. Maybe? There are a myriad of ways to play DnD, but all are cooperative parties wandering around. Parties going head to head would be different.

Well they did just announce the VR game that sounds more competitive play.

But reading all this, I’m reminded that I’ve been told over and over for the past ten years that DnD is dying and if only they would do X they would be wildly successful.

I’m not seeing a lot of evidence supporting a slow down. And certainly none that suggests that DnD is actually shrinking.

It looks like an awful lot of reading tea leaves.

 

[mamba]

I’m not seeing a lot of evidence supporting a slow down. And certainly none that suggests that DnD is actually shrinking.

to be fair, WotC would not exactly be shouting this from the rooftops if it were happening, and their quarterly / annual reports are a lot less transparent about D&D’s performance than they could be too. It would take a while / pretty strong decrease for it to become noticeable from things we have access to if we are not actively trying to figure this out