D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[God]

Yeah, there's a lot more room for nuance than OP allows for with their "grognards bad" take.

As an example, WotC could announce tomorrow that they're reissuing the Dark Sun setting, but with a new take based on Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing. That would be:

• Subjectively bad, according to me
• Objectively bad, due to the dissonance between the material
• Financially sound (maybe), because I'm sure there are a heck of a lot more Stardew Valley fans than there are old Dark Sun fans.

For all it's bungling, I don't fault WotC at all for catering to a much larger market of players rather than the old guard and its interests.

I reserve the right to judge people for their bad taste, of course.

 

[AlViking]

Not entirely, if sales of recent releases are compared to sales of past releases. It's not exactly secret that Spelljammer and Radiant Citadel didn't sell as well as Strahd or Tasha's. It's not even a secret that the 5.5 core books aren't selling as well as Strahd or Tasha's, although there's always folks who will say that we can't know that because book sales don't matter anymore, yadda yadda yadda.

And sure, sales are an oblique measurement of quality, not a direct one, but it certainly is something that can be measured.

We have no idea what the real sales numbers are or what influences them. Even if we did know, and assuming digital sales aren't eating into sales of physical books, something can be well made and still not sell well.

 

[mamba]

something can be well made and still not sell well.

While good products may fail to sell, we are not in a vacuum here. If the previous product in the same line had been selling better than the new version, I'd take that as an indicator of an issue in the new version

 

[AlViking]

While good products may fail to sell, we are not in a vacuum here. If the previous product in the same line had been selling better than the new version, I'd take that as an indicator of an issue in the new version

There's no proof sales have fallen because we don't know what the sales numbers are. There are also innumerable other factors at play that have nothing to do with quality.

 

[Desdichado]

We have no idea what the real sales numbers are or what influences them. Even if we did know, and assuming digital sales aren't eating into sales of physical books, something can be well made and still not sell well.

We don't have NO idea. We don't have an exact idea, but we certainly don't have NO idea at all.

As to your other point, that door swings both ways. If a product is "high quality" but can't sell, then in what way is it "high quality"? What does that even mean?

I mean, I don't disagree with you really, but if you're just saying that high quality is nothing more than some completely subjective assessment, basically amounting to "what I like versus what I don't" then quality isn't really the word to use to describe it.

Certainly in terms of physical attributes the 5e books aren't very high quality. They rather notoriously fall apart easily and are made very cheaply. But I don't think that's what you mean either.

 

[BruceWright]

As far as I'm concerned, "new stuff" means "more stuff," which means "more choices" when it comes to customizing our games.

Thanks for coming in and posting exactly what i wanted to say, so I don’t have to formulate it!

 

[Lanefan]

At the end of the day... if a person has a very specific way they want their roleplaying game to be which cannot be satisfied by someone else's product... making it themselves is the best and most efficient way to do so.

From direct personal experience:

Best way? Yes. Most efficient way? Very much no.

 

[mamba]

There's no proof sales have fallen because we don't know what the sales numbers are. There are also innumerable other factors at play that have nothing to do with quality.

I am not saying they did fall, only that if it had, I would consider the new PHB to not be blameless in this. Whatever other factors there are, the 2014 PHB was dealing with them just fine... so this 'if 2024 is selling badly, this is not 2024's fault, it is still a good product' is a weird take to me

 

[Umbran]

While good products may fail to sell, we are not in a vacuum here. If the previous product in the same line had been selling better than the new version, I'd take that as an indicator of an issue in the new version

... or in the market.
... or in how you've related to the market between releases.

That first is a big one. The gaming worldscape has changed significantly since the release of the 2014 rules. There's been something on the order of 40 individual million dollar RPG crowdfunding campaigns since that time, for example. An explosion of online RPG playing, and all the behavior pattern changes from the pandemic...

The second isn't a small thing, either. They've taken some big self-inflicted PR hits.

The RPG world is different than it was a decade ago. Just saying, "it is the rules" would be a simplistic, possibly even naïve, take on it.

 

[Desdichado]

... or in the market.
... or in how you've related to the market between releases.

That first is a big one. The gaming worldscape has changed significantly since the release of the 2014 rules. There's been something on the order of 40 individual million dollar RPG crowdfunding campaigns since that time, for example. An explosion of online RPG playing, and all the behavior pattern changes from the pandemic...

The second isn't a small thing, either. They've taken some big self-inflicted PR hits.

The RPG world is different than it was a decade ago. Just saying, "it is the rules" would be a simplistic, possibly even naïve, take on it.

And the first of those factors, you'd expect, would vastly more than mitigate the second. At some point, if the sales are lower, and I know that some people don't want to believe that we know that, even though we almost certainly do and we've even had people who oughta know tell us so, then there isn't a reasonable excuse that still holds water other than that people don't like it as much. It's kinda like people who like to say "causation isn't correlation!" all the time so that they can look really smart while refusing to make any conclusions, without acknowledging that correlation certainly correlates (no pun intended) VERY strongly with causation, and correlation is the only sensible place to look for causation.

Of course, I'm being a little cute myself here; I think it's not probably accurate to assume that the gaming worldscape is very similar anymore to what it was in 2020-2021 anymore too. I think the big 5e D&D moment is probably over never to return. But we'll see what happens in the next little bit, especially when Stranger Things comes out one last time. Assuming that they still reference D&D in it at all.