7 Years of D&D Stories? And a "Big Reveal" Coming?

When asked what he was working on, WotC's Chris Perkins revealed a couple of juicy tidbits. They're not much, but they're certainly tantalizing. Initially, he said that "Our marketing team has a big reveal in the works", and followed that up separately with "Right now I'm working on the next seven years of D&D stories". What all that might mean is anybody's guess, but it sounds like there are plans for D&D stretching into the foreseeable future! Thanks to Barantor for the scoop!

 

[Wicht]

If you don't go strictly by Icv2 numbers, you can't make the case that Pathfinder /ever/ pulled ahead of D&D.

Except for the CEO of Paizo saying that it was so, and the evidence of multiple book-stores, including national chains selling more of one than the other, and the Amazon rankings, and the evidence of notable Game Stores like Black Diamond selling more of one than the other, and the evidence of multiple online Polls telling us who on the forums was playing what, and the convention evidence of who was playing what and talking with people who switched from one to the other you are absolutely right that there is no way to ever make that case.

 

[bmfrosty]

Well, that too, yes.

Maybe Paizo can secretly sponsor a Bothered About Pathfinder organization to whip up some hysteria?

As long as it has hysterical parents groups and PTA meetings devoted to it, I think it could work. Maybe an episode of 60 minutes about it as well?

Possibly someone claiming that their son summoned demons by playing Pathfinder and that the demons made him gay.

That would get the game some real attention.

https://archive.org/details/60_minutes_on_dungeons_and_dragons

 

[Tony Vargas]

That only goes so far.

It's gone for 40 years

As I said, I see evidence in my children of the shift in perceptions towards how the game is defined.

How the game is defined among folks who are playing it (and their kids - congratulations on that, BTW, you do more to grow the hobby by teaching it to your kids than WotC or Piazo can ever do) doesn't matter to the mainstream - and growing the franchise outside of the miniscule TTRPG market depends on mainstream perception, and that doesn't shift easily.

Like [MENTION=6788547]bmfrosty[/MENTION] said, it'd take a few years of associating Pathfinder with Satanism and teen suicide to get it noticed by the mainstream...

 

[BryonD]

Well, that does bring up an interesting question or two:

If we consider "the industry" to be WotC and Paizo, we could debate that - I think there's a significant argument that Paizo isn't a clear leader, but that the two tend to leapfrog each other - the basic *idea* for an AP was WotC's - actually, TSR's. While Paizo did public playtests, I think it was WotC who first did out-of-house wide playtesting. While Paizo does good business with its model, WotC does more *experimentation* with models (DDI subscriptions, for example). And surely, WotC has been in the forefront of experimenting with rules design and structure. So, who is leading, and who is adapting what has been shown to by the other to work? I don't think it is clear.

If we consider the various publishers who aren't WotC and Paizo (not that they compete in sales, but they do exist), then.... well, most others just don't have the resources to do these things, and are not following suit - can you be an industry leader when nobody's following you?

But there is a distinction between industry and market.

Within reasonable conversation, Paizo and WotC are providing the overwhelming majority of needs of the market. Thus they are "the industry".
But if market demands are not adequately met then new options will emerge in the industry side to service the needs.
This is a bit different, but at the same time quite similar to thew whole Paizo PF launch. To many ti was *obviously true* that D&D was "the name" in RPGs, end of conversation. Paizo could not possibly compete with the 800 hundred pound gorilla because, duh, that is why they call it the 800 pound gorilla. But it is up to the gorilla to give the market what it wants. Because the gorilla failed to adequately do that, the "impossible" happened and we now talk about Paizo and WotC as being comparable.

And yet we now presume that the collective of Pazio/WotC is the new 800 pound gorilla and just as impossible to replace. As long as they satisfy the market, that is pretty much true. But the MARKET controls the industry. And it could change again. If there is a demand not being met, resources not available now will be made available.

This isn't the only way it can play out. For example, someone could come up with a vastly more appealing game tomorrow and, in effect, redefine "satisfy the market" such that WotC and Paizo are no longer up to par.

Whatever. The point is, you can't talk about industry leaders and their resources without keeping the current and the EVOLVING market in mind.

Yes, they are in the driver's seat. So long as they remain forward thinking, savvy and smart, they can control their destiny.

But it is on them to achieve that. (and it is a what have you done for me lately issue)

 

[BryonD]

4e - with the fanatical campaign of vitriol, lies, hatred and misinformation that was the edition war in full swing

Clearly a rational and open minded conversation will follow.....

The reality is that a whole lot of people strongly disliked 4E, for a variety of reasons.

The failure to deal with as an honest issue and instead live in the whole "it is just h4te" mentality hurt the ability for the game to grow and adapt to differing ideas.

Maintaining that debilitating bias now prevents understanding, learning and applying the lessons of the past.

 

[Mark CMG]

Ultimately, though, even if Paizo permanently takes the Icv2 in-store sales lead in the $15million TTRPG market, it's still doing it with a version of D&D, just one that can't technically have D&D on the cover. Really, when thinking about which game is the biggest in the TTRPG hobby, D&D (all eds), Pathfinder, and OSR games should all be added together. They're all D&D in some very real sense - certainly they all are to the indifferent perceptions of the mainstream, for whom /all/ RPGs are D&D.

You're not wrong. That being the case, does the ongoing debate seems to become more about who is doing D&D best?

 

[BryonD]

depends on mainstream perception, and that doesn't shift easily.

That simply isn't true.

It is a simple and common misconception.

But maintaining brand identity is quite difficult and it can vanish remarkably fast.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The reality is that a whole lot of people strongly disliked 4E, for a variety of reasons.

As evidenced by the lengths they were willing to go in the edition war, yes.

The failure to deal with as an honest issue and instead live in the whole "it is just h4te" mentality hurt the ability for the game to grow and adapt to differing ideas.

It'd be more accurate to say that it was caving to one side of the edition war that hurt the ability of the game to grow and adapt to differing ideas. That contributed to D&D failing to achieve the breakout growth it was aiming for (though WotC's inability to roll out any of its vaporware also had a lot to do with it), and why it lost to Pathfinder in one quarter by suddenly changing direction and muddling presentation with Essentials, and why it tapered off production & went out of print years early - and, most conclusively, that's why it's back to so closely resembling what it was 15 years ago.

But that's not the point. The point was that /even with the edition war raging/, D&D still beat out Pathfinder until it suddenly changed direction, and even then, recovered until it started winding down the pace of releases. And, even when Pathfinder won in the miniscule in-store-sales of TTRPGs Icv2 measure of the market, and D&D went on hiatus for two years, ceding the whole thing to Pathfinder, it was D&D that remained the brand with mainstream name recognition. No one ever played Pathfinder on Parks & Recreation or the Big Bang Theory.

Whatever. The point is, you can't talk about industry leaders and their resources without keeping the current and the EVOLVING market in mind.

That's just it, the market /isn't/ evolving. It's dominated by a 40 year old game and it's 15 year old clone. The most energized segment of the market is a revival of the play styles typical of that 40yo game's earliest iterations. If anything, the TTRPG market is atavistic.

But maintaining brand identity is quite difficult and it can vanish remarkably fast.

D&D has done little to maintain a mainstream identity since the fad (and controversies) of the 80s, but it's held on all this time. Really, though, the mainstream name recognition D&D has isn't really a brand identity, it's the identity of the whole TTRPG hobby in the minds of the mainstream. WotC might be trying to leverage it into a more profitable franchise with a movie deal, or some faster-growing segment of the hobby games market (half a billion compared to the 15 million for TTRPGs, though WotC's CCGs already have a big slice of that), or an MMO ($11 billion market) or whatever. Doing that isn't dependent on D&D winning the TTRPG market though, just on it remaining recognized by the mainstream, which it is, and that shows no sign of changing.

Unless the BAP website goes viral and people start picketing Piazo...

 

[Kramodlog]

If you don't go strictly by Icv2 numbers, you can't make the case that Pathfinder /ever/ pulled ahead of D&D.

How do you explain D&D going dormant for two years?

 

[bmfrosty]

How do you explain D&D going dormant for two years?

That's a bit of a non-sequitur. The only numbers we have are the Icv2 numbers right?

Unless you can convince walmart and amazon to give up their numbers (the video game industry struggled for years with this) you're kind of SOL. Really, the only people who know how much product is selling are Paizo and WotC, they don't know how much sold through until much later, and they're not going to share their numbers with the world. Best you're going to get is a revenue mention in a quarterly stockholders meeting from Hasbro, and they're more likely than not going to just lump it in with all of WotC.