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]

I mean, with 5e do you really understand when I say I have a Folk Hero Champion with Shield Mastery? Or a Dragonborn Chainlock?

Sure

 

[Iosue]

Since you have yet to buy a PHB, I remain skeptical.

 

[Dire Bare]

Didn't really see any of the aforementioned words ("riotous", "fanboy", "outrage") as particularly insulting, just descriptive - some folks are clearly emotionally invested and upset over what Wizards is doing ("outraged"), and those folks happen to be the hardcore devotees of the game ("fanboys", or to be more gender-inclusive, "fanchildren", a title I'll happily apply to my own self), who are being extremely vocal ("riotous") about Wizards perceived botching of the game line and being neglectful of their customers' desires.

"Fanboy" certainly has a negative connotation, and if you use it, you're namecalling, if inadvertently. "Fanchildren" sounds a little weird to me, "fanpeople" redundant, perhaps "fanspawn"? Nah.

How about just "fans"? We're all fans of D&D, even if we call it Pathfinder (oooh, *zing*)!

Note: serious point with weak attempt at humor.

 

[Wicht]

Since you have yet to buy a PHB, I remain skeptical.

Why?
"folk hero," "champion", and "shield mastery" are all perfectly normal words. Dragonborn is a race. Only "Chainlock" is new and its obviously a class.

In conversation, context and the normal usage of words allows one to keep up very easily with the words you gave. Likewise, most of the words introduced by 3e were fairly intuitive. And things like "MAD" were not actually common words associated with that edition outside of certain small groups (I certainly never used that term). People playing 3e and people playing 2e could have a conversation about their game and aside from THAC0 they were all talking about the same basic things.

But then came 4e and the parlance completely changed. I would lurk in a 4e thread and it felt like the language was completely different. It was just one of the weird things of that edition. And it was partially, imo, the result of the presentation of the game in the rulebooks themselves. I could, as a player coming out of 2e look at the 3e statblocks and basically understand it. 4e statblocks were never so intuitive for me. Obviously ymmv but that was my experience.

 

[Tony Vargas]

was the rate of new players being brought in by 4e enough to not only make up for the players that were lost at launch but also those who grew dissatisfied with the game?

I think the Icv2 data that shows D&D continuing to lead Pathfinder until the release of Essentials is consistent with the idea that new players retained by 4e at least made up for the loss of 3.5 hold-outs and those discouraged from trying D&D at all by the edition war. As for those who 'grew dissatisfied' again, as suggested by the only available (Icv2) data, Essentials /did/ recover the top spot relative to pathfinder after it's initial launch until the pace of publication dwindled away to almost nothing. That suggests that new players made up the loss of any 4e fans who abandoned the game with the Essentials change of direction or otherwise grew dissatisfied in time to push initial Essentials sales below ongoing Pathfinder sales. So, a qualified 'yeah, maybe.'

While 4e hardly seemed to be D&D at all to long-time D&Ders, it was more intuitive and easier to learn for new players coming to the TTRPG hobby 'cold' or cross-pollinating from the orders-of-magnitude-more-popular CCG and MMO hobbies. So, IMX, I did see significantly more new players retained by 4e and go on to become DMs fairly quickly. It was startling, really, because, I looked at 4e and saw a very complex game that had many systems you had to do a double-take and give a second or third chance before they made sense (much like 5e's neo-Vancian, actually, but /more/ of them).

The thing is, that greater retention could never have been enough to make 4e a 'success' - certainly not in the sense of meeting the leaked revenue goals - because there was nothing in WotC's handling of the property to bring in /more/ new players to try it. Indeed, there was the edition war possibly dissuading some new players from trying D&D at all. Retaining more new players doesn't make much difference when the trickle of new players remains relatively slow. In 10 years, 4e might have built up an impressive base of new-to-TTRPG fans, but in only 2? Not a chance, IMHO, even had it retained 100% of new players who tried it.

But why... why was it worth the risk of loosing all these supposed new players that had been gained as well as the hardcore fanbase of 4e... in order to get those lapsed fans back?

What risk? If there ever was a hardcore 4e fanbase as fanatical as the 3.5 and old-school hold-outs who rejected 4e, it would have already been lost by Essentials. Besides, even if the edition war were a strong indicator of loyalty, even the most brutal of 4vengers were still essentially(npi) defending 4e from attack, not holding it up as the only way to play the game. Finally, 4e fans have no 'clone' like Pathfinder or OSR games to flee to. So, WotC couldn't have seen much risk in alienating 4e fans by un-winding all the advancements made by 4e and presenting a 5e that fit more or less between AD&D and 3e in sophistication and quality. And, indeed, former 4vengers like myself are actively playing (well, running, in my case) and promoting 5e.

 

[Sailor Moon]

I think the Icv2 data that shows D&D continuing to lead Pathfinder until the release of Essentials is consistent with the idea that new players retained by 4e at least made up for the loss of 3.5 hold-outs and those discouraged from trying D&D at all by the edition war.While 4e hardly seemed to be D&D at all to long-time D&Ders, it was more intuitive and easier to learn for new players coming to the TTRPG hobby 'cold' or cross-pollinating from the orders-of-magnitude-more-popular CCG and MMO hobbies. So, IMX, I did see significantly more new players retained by 4e and go on to become DMs fairly quickly. It was startling, really, because, I looked at 4e and saw a very complex game that had many systems you had to do a double-take and give a second or third chance before they made sense (much like 5e's neo-Vancian, actually, but /more/ of them). The thing is, that greater retention could never have been enough to make 4e a 'success' - certainly not in the sense of meeting the leaked revenue goals - because there was nothing in WotC's handling of the property to bring in /more/ new players to try it. Indeed, there was the edition war possibly dissuading some new players from trying D&D at all. Retaining more new players doesn't make much difference when the trickle of new players remains relatively slow. In 10 years, 4e might have built up an impressive base of new-to-TTRPG fans, but in only 2? Not a chance, even had it retained 100% of new players who tried it.

But why... why was it worth the risk of loosing all these supposed new players that had been gained as well as the hardcore fanbase of 4e... in order to get those lapsed fans back?

What risk? If there ever was a hardcore 4e fanbase as fanatical as the 3.5 and old-school hold-outs who rejected 4e, it would have already been lost by Essentials. Besides, even if the edition war were a strong indicator of loyalty, even the most brutal of 4vengers were still essentially(npi) defending 4e from attack, not holding it up as the only way to play the game. Finally, 4e fans have no 'clone' like Pathfinder or OSR games to flee to. So, WotC couldn't have seen much risk in alienating 4e fans by un-winding all the advancements made by 4e and presenting a 5e that fit more or less between AD&D and 3e in sophistication and quality. And, indeed, former 4vengers like myself are actively playing (well, running, in my case) and promoting 5e.

I wouldn't turn to IcV2 as a confirmation because it doesn't take into account online sales which is the bulk of Pathfinder's sales.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Our choices are to look at woefully incomplete data, or no data at all.

Sure, Icv2 misses Amazon sales of Pathfinder and D&D. And it missed the revenue WotC got from DDI (which, if the size of the DDI 'group' on the old boards was to be believed, must have been bringing in millions every year). And it's only an indicator of sales, not of people actually playing.

But, it's available. :shrug:

 

[Sailor Moon]

Our choices are to look at woefully incomplete data, or no data at all.

Then all we can really say is we don't know. Lack of information can lead to wrong results.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Then all we can really say is we don't know. Lack of information can lead to wrong results.

Sure. To that standard, everyone saying that Pathfinder ever beat D&D or that 4e 'failed' or whatever else - anything else - is dead wrong. Not a very useful standard.

 

[Wicht]

Sure. To that standard, everyone saying that Pathfinder ever beat D&D or that 4e 'failed' or whatever else - anything else - is dead wrong. Not a very useful standard.

Lacking confirmation data is not logically or factually the same as being "dead wrong." In point of fact, people do often reach the proper conclusion apart from having all the facts. There is even a word for such a phenomena: "intuition". The correctness of said intuition is most clearly analyzed after the fact, but success (whether predicatively or via accomplishment) is a fairly good indicator of sound intuition in a given arena.

That aside, your continued insistence that ICV2 is the only available evidence anyone can possibly use in these discussions continues to be mistaken and your over-reliance on it continues to weaken your analysis.