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There were roughly 4 years between 3.0 and 3.5. Say what you want about 3.5 (and god knows, a lot has been said) it was very successful commercially. How much of the 3.0 player network upgraded to 3.5? My guess is 60% or more initially, and probably as much as 80% in the present. A ".5"...

Don't know what you mean - no locking on my blog. Please feel free to post! I resigned from Wizards of the Coast, I was not fired. They wanted me to stay, but I was not happy there and it was time for me to move on. I call those 6 companies "one eye'd kings" because they are all tragically...

Last year, which was one of the best years ever for GW, they did just over $30 million in sales in the US. In the time frame we're talking about, US sales were about $10 million (or less). They were not contributing enough revenue to the overall hobby game retail tier to keep stores open if...

Vampire: The Masquerade came out in 1991 too. It should have been a golden age for RPGs. The scary thing was how fast sales dropped for all the publishers across the board from 1990 onward. While White Wolf was rising, a lot of other companies were getting kicked in the nuts. Major games...

That would have been a high-probability. The followup is that all RPG products in the US would have been GW products, because they would have consolidated all their sales into their retail stores and without D&D (in your alternate reality) all the independent retailers would have been driven...

I think it's safe to define "D&D" as "D&D RPGs, miniatures and novels" in the context of my blog predictions. Ryan

Over its lifetime, the 1E PHB outsold the 2E PHB by a good margin. I don't have sales figures to back this up, but I'm pretty confident that the 3E PHB has sold more units than the 1E PHB did, although it's a close race. I think I've posted elsewhere that at the end of 1E, the 1E PHB was...

I think it will be licensed with the OGL using a System Reference Document just like 3.0 and 3.5 were. D&D doesn't have a problem with players. More than 1 million people play it every month. D&D has a problem with acquiring new players. New players want the kind of imersive, yet...

Mattel has been making hobby games for about 5 years. They have made collectible miniatures games, and collectible card games. So far, none of them have been sold through traditional game store channels. I do not think they'll ever dabble with an RPG. "Role playing" is a defined category in...

I am of two minds about "4th Edition". First, I think that WotC may, at some point, create a product called "4th Edition", but that product will look just like 3rd Edition with a series of clear rules improvements & tweaks; essentially, a 3.5 on steroids. To me, that's a "marketing release"...

I wish I had a list. :) It would be interesting to look back and track a hit rate. I envy people like Robert Cringely for having the foresight to track predictions. I can try to make a list of the things I remember. The quality of my predictions got better after WotC bought FRPG, and I got...

I've got no horse in this race. The only hobby gaming product I'm actively working on, if brought to market, will be evolutionary, not revolutionary, and it won't have a digital component. Its not even an RPG. I'd like to have to time to build out all the RPG support services I envison for...

I'll be happy to respond here to anyone who wants to ask questions or make comments -- don't let some oddball web problem hold you back! Ryan

1) Character creation software that has a simple, intuitive interface, and updates automatically whenever WotC releases new content in any forum. Ideally, 3rd party publishers could link into that service as well. 2) The Dungeon Builders Guidebook, a comprehensive resource for creating...

Things I like about D&D It is designed to provide as much content for those who create content for game sessions as it is for those people who play in those sessions. In fact, one could argue there's actually more support for creating content then there is for using that content. This is one...

Demonstrably factual in all respects.

I think one of the most important changes that has happened is that publishers now have to tell their customers why they are being asked to buy and learn a new game system. The explosion of indy games via the forge shows a wide range of special-purpose game engines, most of which exist because...

Me too! :) Ryan

First, as someone who knows me, I'll ask you not to make generalizations about my interests in gaming - especially not pejorative ones. I am and have been a "hobby gamer" long before I was a businessperson. My interest in RPGs is based on a foundation laid when I was 12 years old and played...

In retrospect, I do not think that WotC's plans for the D&D MMORPG would have worked. They were quite avant-garde. There were too many people with too many "theories" about how to compete with EverQuest with the ability to direct the project - and proving a "theory" appeared to be way more...