D&D General Did 5e 2024 Not meet the economic goals set, and if not, why not?

[DrJawaPhD]

No matter what I may personally think of the current edition or the company overall, this still feels like calling the game when the score is 0-0 in the second inning.

(Yay, sports analogies!)

I'd say it's a bit more like not even watching the game but claiming you know the winner based purely on which team you dislike

 

[DEFCON 1]

Lastly, I think there is a dissonance with how the core books’ game design developed (with an almost exclusive focus on more powerful and complex combat options) vs the shift towards a more narrative and story-based game in streams, adventures, etc. WotC spent a lot of time getting feedback on d4 extra damage when more narrative play is supplanting combat-heavy adventures in the core demographic—or at least that’s my impression.

At least in this last point the answer (at least to me) seems rather straight-forward... narrative and story-based gaming do not need rules. It's improv. The more story-based you play, the less you worry or care about the "board game" aspect of RPGs and more about inventing and playing through character and drama. And thus if the new 5E24 books were going to go in that direction, the playtest would have been about removing parts of the game altogether and not "fixing" them. "Rulings, not Rules" would have gone even further forward by taking out all the extraneous rules that a story-based DM could just improv around rather than needing a fair and balanced set of systems to use for the game.

But the thing is... as we all saw during the response to the One D&D playtest... most players couldn't have given a rat's ass about the narrative aspects of the game, it was ALL about the different abilities and features every class was getting and whether they were balanced or not. Heck, you couldn't go a day or two without there being a new thread jumping up 5 pages full of people complaining about the design of the Ranger (and its use of Hunter's Mark) again and again and again. Indicating that while the streaming and adventure books might seem to lean towards narrative... the actual game itself and the players who cared about it was still about the "board game". What are the rules they are using for their character? Do those rules let them do cool stuff (as opposed to just "doing cool stuff" via narrating what kind of cool things they want their character to do)? Is what their character can do balanced and do an equal share of the events of the game (in combat or otherwise) with other players and their characters?

It's D&D. At its heart it is still a tactical miniatures combat game. And that seems to be how most players still see it and play it... despite that part of it being much less interesting to watch in an Actual Play format (where the streamers usually skip over that part when they can and just stick with the performative improv.)

 

[Seramus]

I looked to try to see if this content creator was conservative or a little more to the right than I would normally ascribe to, but couldn't find much on that. They did make one point I may think contributed greatly, but isn't highlighted in their summary.

He's pretty progressive as a person - genuinely seems like a decent guy. He teaches kids how to play roleplaying games, does pro-bono lawyer work, etc. He is primarily a Pathfinder 2E guy and has several videos encouraging D&D players to swap to Pathfinder. He doesn't seem to think highly of D&D in general, so it's no surprise he made another "D&D has failed" video, but he's always entitled to his opinion.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The storytelling is wellcome but the players spend their money for the crunch. A decent storytelling can be done by other publishers, or players only need to read the rich mithologies from fandom wikis (books, videogames, teleseries..).

Hasbro is more interested into videogame industry but they haven't so many experience.

 

[Neonchameleon]

For established players, I don’t see the strong incentive to upgrade unless others do so and you need to as well.

I 100% do for players of fighters, barbarians, monks, rogues, sorcerors, or warlocks. All those classes had substantial (and good) overhauls and they all needed them. And that's half the classes including two or three of the most popular (certainly fighter and rogue, probably warlock).

 

[Neonchameleon]

Adding to anecdotes and vibes … from 4 groups I’m involved with - DM of the first 3.

I'm reading something pretty clear from your four groups.

1. 100% of the groups currently playing 3.5 are not interested in D&D 2024
2. 100% of the groups playing 5e have switched to D&D 2024 - even paying to do so

 

[DragonLancer]

The majority of my group have played Pathfinder 1 for the last 15+ years and asking them to pick up D&D 2024 was surprisingly easy. I had gotten bored of the ridiculous amount of over-optimising and power combos of feats/spells, and wanted something simpler. I had only played 5th once before and that was an online campaign during Covid... and I didn't like it. I accept that it was probably the online element that I disliked and probably less the 5th rules. Now, I'm happier than ever with my D&D experience but I'm sticking to products designed for 2024 as I see too many potential conflicts in balance.

One of my players is in a separate 2014 group and they see no reason to jump to the new edition simply because they are happy with what they have. That might just be the problem here. Groups already happy have no need to jump ship. The same player is really happy with my 2024 group though.

I think if 2024 had been promoted as 6th edition rather than an upgrade to 5th (2014), I doubt it would appear to be less interesting and I figure more people might have picked it up.

 

[mearls]

IIRC @mearls said that he (they? I'm sure it was a few people that made the case) had to make a strong case that there should be a 5th edition of DnD. I forget where he said as such, I'd have liked to have seen the ?presentation? they'd made for it

That's true. We started work in early 2011 on what 5e could be.

At the same time, I had to make the case that:

1. Having an active, healthy TTRPG was good for the D&D brand.
2. We could produce a game that would make customers happy within a very limited budget. I think we had maybe 20% of the headcount and cash budget to make it versus 4e.
3. We could stop the business from hemorrhaging money while building a new edition. That was the big problem. 4e had effectively stopped selling around 2010 or so. Essentials hadn't changed anything. Everything had to tie back to this, since no one likes a business that runs deep into the red.

The alternative was to fire us all and put the TTRPG on ice, or fire us all and license it. Part of the argument was that no one wanted to license 4e, and that no one would license 3e because Paizo had already captured that audience. Hasbro would be selling very low on D&D.

We had the final greenlight to make the game in late 2011. My final hurdle was a presentation to our finance VP. I don't remember when I received word that we had the greenlight, but I do remember that meeting. When it wrapped I knew that we were off to the races.

We still almost licensed out D&D, but that ended up not happening because WotC could see how much momentum we were gathering. It was around Gen Con 2013 when it was confirmed that we'd be publishing and supporting the game in-house.

Another big factor was turning the D&D team into a machine that made hit board games. People forget now, but we won the Origins Award for best board game three years running. Of five games we released in the run up to 5e, three of them had multiple print runs and one, Lords of Waterdeep, was a game of the year contender. Even the misses did well enough. I think that showed we had turned the corner in making products to the point that we were trusted with 5e. It also helped turn our massive losses into profitability.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

That's true. We started work in early 2011 on what 5e could be.

At the same time, I had to make the case that:

1. Having an active, healthy TTRPG was good for the D&D brand.
2. We could produce a game that would make customers happy within a very limited budget. I think we had maybe 20% of the headcount and cash budget to make it versus 4e.
3. We could stop the business from hemorrhaging money while building a new edition. That was the big problem. 4e had effectively stopped selling around 2010 or so. Essentials hadn't changed anything. Everything had to tie back to this, since no one likes a business that runs deep into the red.

The alternative was to fire us all and put the TTRPG on ice, or fire us all and license it. Part of the argument was that no one wanted to license 4e, and that no one would license 3e because Paizo had already captured that audience. Hasbro would be selling very low on D&D.

We had the final greenlight to make the game in late 2011. My final hurdle was a presentation to our finance VP. I don't remember when I received word that we had the greenlight, but I do remember that meeting. When it wrapped I knew that we were off to the races.

We still almost licensed out D&D, but that ended up not happening because WotC could see how much momentum we were gathering. It was around Gen Con 2013 when it was confirmed that we'd be publishing and supporting the game in-house.

Another big factor was turning the D&D team into a machine that made hit board games. People forget now, but we won the Origins Award for best board game three years running. Of five games we released in the run up to 5e, three of them had multiple print runs and one, Lords of Waterdeep, was a game of the year contender. Even the misses did well enough. I think that showed we had turned the corner in making products to the point that we were trusted with 5e. It also helped turn our massive losses into profitability.

Certainly glad folks were able to influence that outcome. No game is perfect, but my friends and I have sure gotten a lot of mileage out of 2014 5e.

Thus far it looks like we will stay with it for the foreseeable future barring some release that we do not anticipate.

 

[Juxtapozbliss]

That's because discussion of 5.5 is an Orwellian hellscape where up is down, bad is good, and more complicated is simplified.

I'll grant that there are improvements, but they all seem pretty much obvious improvements to make based on 10 years of experience. In many cases they are only improvements if you were playing without the Tasha's optional class rules and without common and obvious house rules. I guess if you're the type to get distracted by Malibu Stacy's new hat it all looks pretty impressive, but I would contend all the objective improvements are what a sufficiently experienced 5e player who was a moderately competent rules designer would come up with in a few days of work.

There are lots of changes to improve "balance" if you care a lot about that (I really don't it turns out), and as a result everything (be it a character option, a spell, a monster) is a lot more samey to its peers. Distinctiveness has been smoothed away in favor of endless near identical variations of class features to teleport 30 feet, and even more endless identical conjure spirit in shape of X spells. I prefer asymmetrical balance, meaning that for example at level 1 a Wizard is mostly useless in combat compared to the Fighter, but they can cast Sleep which used to be the auto-win cheat code for certain types of low-level encounters. New 5e doesn't like that sort of balance. New 5e wants to assimilate everything to working the same way so it doesn't have to playtest new things.

The system has been simplified on a theoretical level by using lots of terms-of-art keywords, plugging more features into the feat system, etc. This fundamentally makes things more complicated for people without a high level of rules mastery by requiring immediate comprehension of whole rules subsystems. A new player who has an idea for a background that isn't already covered has to digest the (no longer optional) feat system to roll up their level 1 character.

The "change things but pretend it's all the same and insist it's compatible" ethos of the edition is deeply obnoxious. When my new group I'm DMing for decided they wanted to use 2024 rules I read mostly straight through the new PHB overt the course of 2 days, and in the final stretch I came upon the (already mentioned above) spell Sleep at like 2am. And at that point I just had to pause and take a walk around the house to let off some steam. I mean, they completely mutilated one of my favorite spells with a ground-up rewrite. That I could actually forgive. What is unforgiveable is that in this and a few other instances they completely changed virtually every distinctive aspect of something, then gave it the same damned name as it had always had and buried it among a bunch of unchanged or virtually unchanged content to sow confusion. Like, just call it "Slumber" or something at that point. If you feel the need to kowtow to the people who hated Keen Mind because some player somewhere annoyed some DM, fine, remove it. But D&D does not have to have a feat called "Keen Mind", so don't write a completely different one and call it the same thing. If a Gloomstalker Ranger is going to have a new version of extra damage at level 3 no longer tied to the first round of combat during which they may have ambushed someone, don't put it under "Dread Ambusher", just make it its own damned thing. When the audience is heavily people who know 5e Classic and 90-some% of New 5e is basically the identical, hiding a few radically different things under the same old branding for no good reason is needlessly confusing and just offensive to principles of good rules design.

So no, it's not some broad improvement, except maybe if you were playing with just the 2014 core books and no house rules, and wanted a little more crunch. For people who already have decent rules mastery of orginal recipe 5e and have already supplimented it to their tastes it is pretty much a lateral move, and one that requires buying and digesting a new set of rules too similar to be interesting but too different to just ignore the changes. And it just doesn't have all the panoply of 5e content fully converted to it yet, so why switch to a system which is only half developed? I think for many existing 5e groups the 2024 rules will remain, at most, a suppliment from which they pull ideas they like for quite a while. It's only as there is increasingly content available that doesn't plug securely into 2014 5e that 2024 6e will slowly assimilate them.

Not only is “improvement” subjective, I also personally and subjectively feel they ruined it by turning Inspiration into Heroic Inspiration and awarding it automatically for being a Human and various feats and such. Inspiration was a tool I used every game to reward good roleplaying and clever thinking. The new approach ruined it so I’d have to strip that out entirely if I ever picked up 2024 rules. Which then can have a complicated knock on effect.