D&D General Why grognards still matter

Chaosmancer said:

If someone is complaining that a vegan taco joint doesn't sell beef tacos... it isn't the fault of the restaurant, or a sign that their tacos are bad. And if you sit down and harass the wait staff every week... you are no longer just expressing your mild opinion on your taste.

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It's worse really than that. They are not even harassing the wait staff. They don't even contact the restaurant or wait staff beyond maybe a yearly survey or something.

Instead they choose to harass the customers every day about liking what the restaurant sells, and loudly declaring that they shouldn't really like vegan tacos, shouldn't be vegans, and wishes the restaurant that these customers actively like sold beef tacos exclusively instead. How there used to be a beef taco place around there years ago and wish it were back. And then if anyone says hey, knock it off, I'm trying to eat my vegan taco here which I like, they whine about how it's their right to declare they don't like vegan tacos and it's toxic positivity to say how you do like them.

Every. Single. Day.

For years.

Mournblade94 said:

If we mattered to WOTC the art direction for 2024 5e would have been much different,

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The thing is, I can't think of a single edition where the art direction was really good. I think this art direction is better than most, and it's still not good. But it's at least better than the halflings we got in the last version.

Stormonu said:

The reverse is also true. WotC, Marvel & Disney can pump as much money into marketing, books and whatnot as they want, but they aren't important to me. There is no reason to support them if they don't produce what I want. And I'm not falling for the "if you don't buy what they're peddling, they'll go under and you'll get nothing." I have all that I need, and don't need to buy inferior product to keep THEM afloat.

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I've never once seen someone say or imply that you are obligated to buy RPG products you dislike in order to prop up Hasbro. There is little we all agree on here, but I think it's pretty universal that people encourage you to buy and play whatever brings you joy.

Chaosmancer said:

How are you defining want? Yeah, I have generally not seen self-identified Grognards advocate for WoTC to make new ideas. Maybe some have said "they should make something new" but that's vague and unhelpful really. And, I specify WoTC making it, because many of them HAVE created their own settings which they have run for decades.

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I think grognards would support new things but at ever level they like the idea of things being droppable into any setting. So if you make a book of taverns you could offer something for a variety of settings. Its like the old 1e modules were droppable almost anywhere. They had multiple possible places even when Greyhawk was all there was.

So I think grognards like each thing to be as flexible as possible even if for a specific setting. I know you can't make Waterdeep a Greyhawk city but most smaller towns could go in a variety of settings.

And we'd like some support for older settings as well as newer settings. What would even be better would be if they offered pdf versions of all adventures for all prior systems. Then they cater to everyone. Major support for the current edition obviously but minor support for the older editions.

kayakingpoodle said:

It is more complicated than that.
If all group B buys is the PHB and XGtE, and group A buys everything you sell then group A becomes a lot more valuable. Unless all you want to sell is a small part of your catalog.

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No, that's not how it works at all. You are acting like it doesn't cost Wotc anything to produce and market the books at all.
To produce a book they need to pay authors, artist, editors, etc. It still cost them the same to produce a book no matter how many copies you sell. Selling 1 million copies of a book is a lot more profitable then selling ten thousand copies of 100 different books. The vast majority of the cost of selling a book is the up front production costs. Once the book is created it basically costs them nothing to print more copies.

Thomas Shey said:

I'll give you there's some complication there, but that's more a case of managing your product line than really changing my position. I'd be really surprised if WOTC produces as many DMGs as they do PHBs. Because in the end, its cost output to earnings input, so if you're trying to sell a bunch of books that aren't going to be bought, even if they support the overall line, you produce less of those down to the amount you feel needed to do that support, you don't just fish around for people to buy books that the majority of the market is probably not going to buy.

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It is the nature of the game that the few will be the biggest buyers, and the masses will be the small purchasers that rely on the few that buy the most. In a game that doesn't require a single purchase from the IP holder to play.

Paul Farquhar said:

Why? You don’t need to pay to play D&D. This is WotCs big problem really. You only need a set of core rules at most, and you can play as much as you like. Added to that, experienced players will have learned to make whatever they need themselves.

I’ve been playing for 43 years. I only buy the odd thing occasionally, despite playing regularly.

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It is always helpful to have good support material though

codo said:

No, that's not how it works at all. You are acting like it doesn't cost Wotc anything to produce and market the books at all.
To produce a book they need to pay authors, artist, editors, etc. It still cost them the same to produce a book no matter how many copies you sell. Selling 1 million copies of a book is a lot more profitable then selling ten thousand copies of 100 different books. The vast majority of the cost of selling a book is the up front production costs. Once the book is created it basically costs them nothing to print more copies.

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I am not sure how this ties into my post. Could you help me understand how it does?

kayakingpoodle said:

I am not sure how this ties into my post. Could you help me understand how it does?

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You claim that that group A(people who buy every book) are more valuable then group B(those who only buy a couple of books). This only makes sense if you are only looking at revenue and ignoring production costs and expensive.

After all, producing to many books with to few sales is how TSR basically ran themselves into bankruptcy.

codo said:

You claim that that group A(people who buy every book) are more valuable then group B(those who only buy a couple of books). This only makes sense if you are only looking at revenue and ignoring production costs and expensive.

After all, producing to many books with to few sales is how TSR basically ran themselves into bankruptcy.

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I see the disconnect now thank you. if you reread my post you'll see i made no such claim. I did say that group A becomes more valuable if you consider they buy most/all of the catalog , but I did not say they became more valuable than group B.