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!

 

[Zaukrie]

Y'all have amazing stamina. .....

 

[Kramodlog]

Y'all have amazing stamina. .....

That is what she said.

 

[BryonD]

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.

Ok, if you think so.

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.

I'm not surprised that you can't see the modern evolutions in gaming.

So be it.

You have on multiple occasions personally called me a h4ter and to this day you are controlled by that closed-minded preconception.
So I'm not going to get anything interesting from you are you are not going to be capable of overcoming your intense bias.

I don't mind pointing out when your comments don't add up. But there is no point in me actively engaging with anyone coming from your point of bitterness.

I hope you greatly enjoy your games.

 

[Shasarak]

I think its always a mistake to make blanket statements about what, or who, will, at some point in the future, threaten the current status quo. While I could cite many examples, I will stick with the subject at hand and mention that I recall those who said, with absolute certainty, Pathfinder will never threaten Dungeons and Dragons.

Humans are, as a rule, pretty crap at predicting the future.

You would be better off with either a dart board or a trained monkey (untrained monkeys tend to bite too much!).

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm not surprised that you can't see the modern evolutions in gaming.

Feel free to elucidate.

I mean, there are always some niche games innovating something somewhere. FATE and 13th Age and many an indie game come up with cool ideas. They're not 'industry leaders' though, especially not in sales. You could fill a warehouse with copies of out-of-print games that did something cooler or more innovative or just plain better than D&D. But, D&D is still the only TTRPG game the mainstream outside the hobby has any awareness of, and D&D and it's clones take the lion's share of the market and have done, every year, for 40 years - however small that market may be, notwithstanding.

 

[Mark CMG]

Humans are, as a rule, pretty crap at predicting the future.

You would be better off with either a dart board or a trained monkey (untrained monkeys tend to bite too much!).

Can we triple our prescience with unchained monkeys flinging darts?

 

[BryonD]

Feel free to elucidate..

Your powers of obfuscation are too much for me.

 

[bmfrosty]

It also goes against what WotC emloyees/ex-employees have said about 4e's success. Here Mearls says: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/issues/issue_271/8109-Red-Box-Renaissance

It is implied that they lost a lot of fans. And that means lost sells.


Here he says that people are playing other games: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/features/9294-The-State-of-Dungeons-Dragons-Future

At what point can we move away from denial and just accept what has happened?

I'm unsure as to what point you're trying to make.

I think we can say that in 2007/8 4e launched and burned brightly until it fizzled out in 2011/12, and during the time between then and when 5e launched Pathfinder carried the torch and made more money than D&D for that time.

I also don't think anyone would argue that the release of 4e didn't cause a schism between editions and that some significant percentage of people stayed with 3e in the form of Pathfinder instead of going to 4e.

I also don't think that you'd find anyone arguing that the transition from OGL to GSL didn't cause a lot of 3rd party publishers to stick with what they knew and move on to supporting Pathfinder.

There are a lot of things that we know, and a lot of things that we don't. Including how D&D will do over the next 9 months. Including how Pathfinder will do over the next 9 months.

We don't know if Pathfinder 1.1 or 2.0 or whatever will be forthcoming in the next couple of years.

We don't know what's coming at Gen Con this year.

Lots of unknowns out there.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I also don't think anyone would argue that the release of 4e caused a schism between editions and some significant percentage of people stayed with 3e in the form of Pathfinder instead of going to 4e.

I think you left out a negative in there (there was certainly a schism). I mentally added it in the first time I read it...

 

[bmfrosty]

I think you left out a negative in there (there was certainly a schism). I mentally added it in the first time I read it...

Thanks. Should be corrected now. Need to read over it again and make sure I didn't goof up somewhere else.