[MENTION=37579]Jester Canuck[/MENTION], sorry for the delayed reply. Let's get back to it.
No, you're not asking for a hardcover a month, just four or five with enough written content to fill another two or three. So just two hardcovers every three months.
Let's not nitpick too much. Here's a question for you: What is
your preferred release schedule? Are you happy with only two story arc books per year? (I'm going to guess that we're going to see two story arcs plus one other book, either a campaign setting or Monster Manual or splat/theme book like Psionics, but who knows).
Pathfinder is NOT D&D and Paizo is NOT Wizards of the Coast.
Clearly.
First, Pathfinder expects far, far fewer sales than WotC. The Pathfinder Core rulebook is the biggest hit of the company and it's sold half as many copies as the 3.0 PHB in twice as long. Heck, the 3e PHB sold more copies in its first month. And Pathfinder keeps growing. The first print run of the Core Rulebook was the largest print-run Paizo had every done, which is likely a number of copies WotC wouldn't even bother with. The scale is completely off.
WotC belongs to a publicly traded company. They're expected to turn a profit for Hasbro shareholders (and it's actually illegal for them not to act in the shareholder's interests). Paizo is privately owned by a woman who never has to work another day in her life after a Hasbro payout and started a game company so she wouldn't be bored. She's worked for free, laying herself off to save the job of another employee.
Paizo can make almost no money and be happy. They can turn the profits from books into other books and barely have money to invest in new ideas and the company will go along swimmingly. But WotC can't do that and D&D can't do that. They're a business out to make as much money as possible, and making D&D accessories was not profitable enough and not worth the expense.
Plus, WotC has shrunk the D&D department to being closer to many small publishers. It's closer to a Green Ronin or Margaret Weis Productions or Monte Cook Press. And those companies aren't releasing a half-dozen sizable hardcover books each year.
All of which I agree with, although feel that it is lamentable in that I wish D&D was owned by a company that saw it as a labor of love, rather than another line of potential profit. I know, wishful thinking.
There is a finite number of books people will buy. Per month, per year, per edition. People buy certain books and then slow down purchases. (Except for the collectors or uber-fans which are a small percentage of the fanbase). And there is a finite number of books before quality drops and material becomes stretched thin.
The faster you release that content and hit that wall, the faster the edition burns out. Slowing down releases doesn't fix the problem, it just delays it. Hence the delaying obesity metaphor: the base game was all the calories we needed and anything else is just snacking.
Yes, again, all of which I agree with - and also agree that glut is a bad thing for the game. But what you and I are disagreeing on, presumably, is what is the right amount of "calories," or rather what amount of product is the right amount of calories (the equivalent of, say, 2-3,000 calories).
By tonnes do you mean 250,000? Because that's what it'd take.
And, as has been said dozens of times before, it takes almost zero effort to take the storyline and strip out chunks of it to make a small adventure or two or thirteen. And producing a competing line of small modules would cost sales of the storyline volumes reducing overall profit. D&D doesn't have the fanbase for WotC to compete with itself over adventures.
But if you really need adventures, why not look at Necromancer Games' small adventures? Or En5ider? Or the dozen other 5e compatible adventures on DriveThruRPG? Your adventures don't need some WotC employee rubber stamping them.
Yes, I agree.
At my table? No. In the world at large, totally. If the game goes under and no one can buy it, it will die.
I'm not against the periodic accessory or a campaign setting. But mandating X per year whether they're ready or not, whether people need that content or not is problematic.
Again, I wasn't "mandating" anything. I was suggesting a product line-up that I personally would like to see, recognizing that it is unlikely to happen.
Because it's bad for the game. It kills the edition and saturates the market necessitating a new edition that can fragment the audience and is super costly to produce.
The higher ups at WotC are clearly not impressed with D&D's sales or the brand's performance, as seen by the constant shrinking and outsourcing of the brand. We're right off the heels of an under-performing edition. If 5e dies quickly - which it WILL if the market is flooded - then WotC will likely just shelf the RPG, like they've done with dozens of other brands and products. D&D the RPG goes bye-bye.
And I don't want that. That's bad.
Yes, but you are still equating what I'm talking about with glut. Why the black and white thinking? Isn't there a middle ground?
I kinda object to the limiter on the question, "answer that without rallying against glut". That's like saying "argue against a 4000 calorie diet without mentioning obesity." You can, but preventing obesity is the whole damn point!
Yes, I agree, but the reason I asked that is that we disagree on what "glut" is. Sure, a 4,000 calorie diet will eventually lead to obesity, but in my mind 8-10 total products a year is not a 4,000 calorie diet. Maybe it is a 3,000 calorie diet and we want to slim down a bit from that. What about 6-8 products? Is that glut in your mind? Why do you insist on a 1,000 calorie diet?
I actually wrote a whole blog on the issue of lite release schedules a while back, expanding on a lengthy forum post. Then forgot to publish. Here it is now:
http://www.5mwd.com/archives/2819
I will try to check it out.
Let's go with the minimum you're suggesting: two AP books each year, the one accessory, and the one campaign setting. And not including a monster book, something special, or other book.
And this is year five, mid-2019:
View attachment 69043
Looks about right to me for five years into the cycle! Consider that in 2005 you'd have many more books, or that entire three and half year run of 4E was quite a bit more than that.
At this point, 5e is *really* close to publishing the same number of pages of adventures as all of 1st Edition. If you include Adventurer's League and the Sundering adventures it's well past 1e (which you should as many of the classic 1e adventures were RPGA or Judge's League adventurers re-purposed).
Well again, one thing to consider is that some of the products I advocated for are one-shot adventures, which could be 32 or 64 pages. So when I said 8-10 products, or whatever amount, I'm including ALL products - not just 200 page hardcovers. Maybe 3-4 are big hardcovers and the rest are smaller paperbacks or folios.
Just five years in and D&D already has a wall of books. Getting into the hobby looks like a thousand dollar investment. Where to even begin is confusing.
It doesn't have to be. One mistake I feel like a lot of folks, and WotC, make is that "If it didn't work in the past, it won't work in the future" - without asking, "But WHY didn't it work?" The evergreen product is a great idea, a starter set that can be found everywhere. Maybe ever product has an "Introduction to Dungeons & Dragons" first page, with clear instructions on where to start, how to proceed. It isn't that hard.
And because an accessory every year is mandated, things are likely getting a little sketchy in the content department. The first couple accessories are easy (generic book of new subclasses and backgrounds and psionics) but after that things get fuzzy and more niche, and it becomes hard to make content that is more appealing than what came before without introducing power creep. To say nothing of the difficulty of trying to playtest a new splatbook every year when a single subclass should be the focus of a month's play.
Well again, I'm not suggesting that anything is "mandated"! I just want to see more product than two story arcs a year. How much more is really flexible. It really is that simple, Jester Canuck. I don't "need" more, and "more" can mean a lot of things. I just WANT more than two story arcs per year that I may or may not use. I like D&D books, part of the hobby is buy and reading, not only playing. I think that's true for a lot of folks.
In the end, though, it remains a mystery what the actual plans for D&D are. Some say they've already stated that what we see is what we're going to get - it is going to be two story arcs per year and not much else. But what about the Psionics tease? Are we going to see regular GenCon releases? Any kind of setting books? I can't imagine that come three years from now all we've seen are more story arcs.
One route I could see them taking is doing one big release every year and tying at least one of the story arcs to it. I don't think we're getting a GenCon release, but imagine if we were - maybe a big theme book, like Psionics or the Planes. Then the fall story arc can be based on that, while the spring story arc can be more general, or more "Realmsian." The formula just makes too much sense NOT to do. Of course that would mean only 3 products, but at least it is something beyond story arcs. Add in a couple one-shot adventures and a surprise product and all of sudden the calorie count is much more pleasing, but still not gluttonous.
