D&D 5E I feel like the surveys gaslit WotC about """"Backwards Compatibility""""

[ECMO3]

You really think so? How? The point of retro-compatibility is minimizing how much of your old books and notes you have to change to use old materiels with the new rules, right? 2E was designed to highly prioritize that.

Yes I converted a lot of modules from 1E to 2E and it was difficult due to the changes to the monsters. I've also converted 5E to 2024 and that is a cake walk in comparison.

How do you define a success?

I am not the one who made the statement, but it was a "successful business tactic"

Make that any metric you want - increased profitability, increased market share, increased market capitalization .... no matter what metric you use it is not consistently a success as claimed.

I think your prior statements that it was a failure and that backwards-compatible editions (you cited 3.5) are generally successful are also contradictory

I think you need to go back and reread my posts for context.

I do believe and did say that 2E and 4E were failures, perhaps they weren't, but that is not really the argument here. There is not any metrics that they were successes either and that would need to be true for the statement to be true.

3.0 to 3.5 was not marketed as a new edition, 2E was marketed as a new edition. I did not play 3E enough to know whether or not it was more or less backwards compatible as 1E/2E. I said it was successful and I contrasted this one example with the mixed bag from wholesale new editions.

I don't agree with the premise that new editions are mostly unsuccessful, but maybe your definition of success is different from mine.

Ok, maybe they aren't, but they certainly do not have a history of being successful business decisions.

Generally new editions are the most reliable source of broad new sales for D&D and other games which do them.

4E did very bad and I don't think 3E when it was released as an entirely new edition sold nearly as well as the current books are selling as a revised edition

2E in volume 9not sure) may have the current core books beat, but they way overprinted 2E content.

We're really focusing on sales and business success right now, right?

We are focusing on the idea that releasing a new edition is a successful business practice and specifically that it is more successful than releasing updated material.

Although there are other elements we could consider. I consider B/X and BECMI very successful in part because they also simplified the game and explained it better than AD&D did, and made it easier to learn. They also sold very well, of course. 2E was after the big fad period but also succeeded in clarifying and simplifying AD&D to a large extent. Gods know it needed that initiative overhaul, for example.

Not really the same because they were not in the lineage of the current product and were a different game that was discontinued.

Moreover if you do consider them a success, there was never a complete new edition released of BECMI. White Box, Red Box etc were all updates or revisions to previous rules over a 20 year run, so if you want to count these, and you consider them a success, then it is one more example for the revisions being successful.

 

[mamba]

It would have stayed afloat for far longer if no 2E content at all was published.

no, it would have caved much sooner because 1e sales were close to nonexistent

It was all the content that was printed and not sold that bankrupt them.

it was having several hundred people on the payroll when stuff was not selling that did. That would still have been true without 2e.

Had they downsized to a handful of people fast enough, then maybe TSR could have survived on 1e sales, on life support, as a shadow of its former self

Bottom Line: There is no evidence to support the claim that releasing a new edition is consistently or even normally a "successful business practice" as compared with releasing an update and beating around the bush, saying this edition or that edition was not really a failure does not itself support that claim.

I never made that claim, neither new editions nor ‘refreshes’ were reliably successful

 

[ECMO3]

no, it would have caved much sooner because 1e sales were close to nonexistent

But it is not low volume that killed TSR it was overprinting.

1E low volume sales would have been enough to sustain the company and were enough to sustain the company until they way overprinted material associated with 2E. Buying back the printed prducts and gauranteed print runs with the publisher are what killed TSR.

it was having several hundred people on the payroll when stuff was not selling that did. That would still have been true without 2e.

Sure and they could have cut staff and stayed afloat as a company without the deluge of printed 2E material that did not sell.

Had they downsized to a handful of people fast enough, then maybe TSR could have survived on 1e sales,

Exactly they could have IF they had not released 2E. This was not an option though because of the gaurantees they made on 2E material.

 

[mamba]

But it is not low volume that killed TSR it was overprinting.

as I said, what killed them is having 400 staff and sales for 10 of them. The only way to survive with 1e sales is to fire 95% and eeke out a meager living. Maybe that way they could have gone on longer than they actually did, but I am far from certain on that

Exactly they could have IF they had not released 2E. This was not an option though because of the gaurantees they made on 2E material.

eh, they could have done that during 2e as well, that they overestimated demand has nothing inherently to do with 1e or 2e

 

[Zardnaar]

But it is not low volume that killed TSR it was overprinting.

1E low volume sales would have been enough to sustain the company and were enough to sustain the company until they way overprinted material associated with 2E. Buying back the printed prducts and gauranteed print runs with the publisher are what killed TSR.




Sure and they could have cut staff and stayed afloat as a company without the deluge of printed 2E material that did not sell.



Exactly they could have IF they had not released 2E. This was not an option though because of the gaurantees they made on 2E material.

An alternative what if is 2E still gets released and they don't over print the stuff that killed them.

2E outsold 1E from previous year by a lot (not over all).

Revisions tend to sell less than earlier product we have 3 samples of that.

Juries still out on 5.5.

 

[ECMO3]

The only way to survive with 1e sales is to fire 95% and eeke out a meager living.

Yes exactly ... THEY SURVIVE. This was not an option though and it was specifically not an option because of the 2E material they printed.

eh, they could have done that during 2e as well, that they overestimated demand has nothing inherently to do with 1e or 2e

That was part of the move to a new edition. That is the whole reason they did it - more sales.

 

[ECMO3]

An alternative what if is 2E still gets released and they don't over print the stuff that killed them.

That is a fine "what if" but those claiming success are basing that claim on what did happen every time WOTC released an entirely new edition, not what could have happened.

In addition to overprinting, there were serious quality problems with 2E as well. The most famous example is the Jungles of Chult, which didn't even ship with the map of Chult referenced in the book! We could "what if" the owners didn't make decisions on internal playtesting that killed product quality.

You could also "what if" the decisions to change the game to please the religious zealots - "what if" 2E still had gods, demons, devils, half-orcs and assassins?

At the end of the day though, when you are asking "what if" you are basically admitting that what actually happened with the new release was not a success, for whatever reason.

Juries still out on 5.5.

Sure, that is why I said WOTC is 1 for 1 on revisions (3.0 to 3.5) and not 2 for 2.

 

[mamba]

Yes exactly ... THEY SURVIVE. This was not an option though and it was specifically not an option because of the 2E material they printed.

conveniently ignoring the 'but I am far from certain on that' part. It was specifically not an option because they printed too much and did not price stuff properly, selling things at a loss. That would have happened with 1e just as well as with 2e, this is not something that is due to the edition.

That was part of the move to a new edition. That is the whole reason they did it - more sales.

and it had more sales, initially, which is how they managed to survive a little longer, just not indefinitely

Given the level of competence displayed by Gary and the Blumes I'd say they would have gone bankrupt sooner rather than later, sticking with 1e and not releasing a 2e would have accelerated the process, not saved the company.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You really think so? How? The point of retro-compatibility is minimizing how much of your old books and notes you have to change to use old materiels with the new rules, right? 2E was designed to highly prioritize that.


How do you define a success? I want to know where your goal posts are.

I think your prior statements that it was a failure and that backwards-compatible editions (you cited 3.5) are generally successful are also contradictory. I don't agree with the premise that new editions are mostly unsuccessful, but maybe your definition of success is different from mine. Generally new editions are the most reliable source of broad new sales for D&D and other games which do them. The exceptions seem to be when it's been a pop culture fad, like (A)D&D was in the late '79-~'83 period, and like it's been again in 5E. The nature of the beast with RPGs is that once you have a rules set you're happy with you never NEED to buy another product again. But a lot of folks do get tired of old rules or feel problems with them more over time, and enjoy the refresh and new energy and ideas that a new edition brings.

We're really focusing on sales and business success right now, right? Although there are other elements we could consider. I consider B/X and BECMI very successful in part because they also simplified the game and explained it better than AD&D did, and made it easier to learn. They also sold very well, of course. 2E was after the big fad period but also succeeded in clarifying and simplifying AD&D to a large extent. Gods know it needed that initiative overhaul, for example.

2E sold well on release, and later products and campaign settings seem to have sold worse in large part because they were competing against one another- cannibalizing each other's sales, as a group saw themselves as "primarily Forgotten Realms" players, or "primarily Dark Sun", or Ravenloft, or what have you, so each setting-focused product was functionally selling to a smaller sub-set of the fan base. This combined with management failures in cost containment (especially selling elaborate boxed sets they actually lost money on), in investing huge capital in unsuccessful products (Buck Rogers, for example, or the late 80s board games, like Dragonlance, Mage Stones, and Gammarauders) or the "comic book modules" effort with TSR West which stupidly alienated DC Comics while producing no profitable competing products), and an inability to capitalize on successes thanks to the factoring agreement, meant the balance of sales vs liabilities was bad on a much broader basis. TSR under the Williams regime didn't go down under eight years after 2E released in 1989. 2E sold, and it made AD&D much more accessible to new players than 1E had been.

2e was a success for me and my group. So much more creative content for our 1e game and my reading pleasure.

 

[the Jester]

Yes I converted a lot of modules from 1E to 2E and it was difficult due to the changes to the monsters.

Most monsters were literally the same in 2e, just with a stat block with more information.

There were a few broad exceptions- the various fiends, dragons, and (IIRC) giants- but overall, the monsters were mostly just expanded, not actually changed (much).