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!

 

[Trickster Spirit]

I have not seen any evidence that it pulled in that many new players. I know that you can find a lot of people who disliked 3E and like 4E. But in order for your claim to hold water it would have to be a lot more than was lost.
This was highly questionable day 1, even though a ton of people bought it, played it, gave it a fair shot. It was the "new shiny" and all that. It went down from there.

Mearls has talked before about how while the core books and the Red Box sold very well to new players, follow up research showed that those purchases didn't translate to large numbers of new players sticking with the game. There certainly were newcomers between 2008-2014 for whom 4E was their first edition, and have stayed with the hobby since then, but to hear Mearls tell it the jump from the Red Box to the full game was too drastic - you can see how this influenced the design of 5E in the difference between the two games' onboarding curves.

That said, though I was never a fan of 4E, I will defend it in that I think it probably pulled in as many new players as 3.x before it (at least over the same time period; 3.X lasted nearly twice as long so I suspect that overall it brought in more to the hobby). Anecdotally I have heard of several groups of all new players starting with 4E; anecdotes aren't evidence of course, but in terms of non-gamers walking into the stores and buying their first book of D&D I haven't seen any evidence that 4E turned away more newcomers than 4E. After all, newcomers weren't comparing 4E to preconceived notions of D&D, they were judging it based on whether it was fun or not - I have many criticisms of 4E, chief of which it was that it focused too heavily on tactical gameplay I find personally uninteresting, but I don't think anyonce can say 4E was somehow intrinsically "un-fun", especially not at the low levels first time players would start at.

Rather, I suspect that 4E simply wasn't able to bring in *enough* new gamers to compensate for the edition split. Experienced D&D fans who found it unfamiliar either never adopted the new edition, or, as I saw mentioned recently on ENWorld (don't recall the specific thread) started campaigns with 4E but eventually left after a drawn out period of long-term dissatisfaction. Personally I think 4E's ultimate fatal flaw was combat length - I've read comments from people who have otherwise said 4E was their D&D of choice stating that ultimately it was slogging through hours-long fights that led to them moving on to another game. I think the two streams of attrition (the initial splitting of the player base and groups leaving the game due to grind-y combat) was simply too much for even an otherwise very good rate of new player uptake to make up for.

 

[BryonD]

Mearls has talked before about how while the core books and the Red Box sold very well to new players, follow up research showed that those purchases didn't translate to large numbers of new players sticking with the game.

I can buy that. This doesn't mean that the gains offset the losses.

There certainly were newcomers between 2008-2014 for whom 4E was their first edition, and have stayed with the hobby since then

Sure, and there are new players today whose first experience is 5E. There are new players all the time.
And I continue to aggressively agree that for a certain niche of players, 4E hung the moon. That number is not remotely zero.

Rather, I suspect that 4E simply wasn't able to bring in *enough* new gamers to compensate for the edition split.

This is what I'm saying.

Experienced D&D fans who found it unfamiliar either never adopted the new edition, or, as I saw mentioned recently on ENWorld (don't recall the specific thread) started campaigns with 4E but eventually left after a drawn out period of long-term dissatisfaction. Personally I think 4E's ultimate fatal flaw was combat length - I've read comments from people who have otherwise said 4E was their D&D of choice stating that ultimately it was slogging through hours-long fights that led to them moving on to another game. I think the two streams of attrition (the initial splitting of the player base and groups leaving the game due to grind-y combat) was simply too much for even an otherwise very good rate of new player uptake to make up for.

I think there were a lot more issues than just grindy combat.

I know players who simply got a very much "been there done that" feeling.
I think 5E (which I very much enjoy) runs a comparable burn out risk.

(Not saying adding burn out to grind is a complete list of reasons for moving on)

 

[pkt77242]

Yeah, that is true. But so many things can happen in seven years that is seems like a waste of WotC resources. I mean, instead of working on 2022's AP, Perkins could work on the conversion documents.

Did you ever think that WotC/Hasbro is requiring the plan? Many companies demand long-term plans (usually around 5 years or so), so it should not be shocking (or upsetting) that he is working on a detailed business plan for the next 5-7 years.

 

[BryonD]

follow up research showed that those purchases didn't translate to large numbers of new players sticking with the game.

As an aside, I was recently told I didn't know what I was talking about regarding new players to 5E automatically becoming long term players and the related idea of players moving on to new things.

Getting people to stay loyal takes continuous effort. The core product can make that easier or ultimately impossible for the long term, but effort is required no matter what.

 

[Kramodlog]

Sure, but given that they've prioritized seven years of storylines over the conversion documents, they likely view the conversion documents as an afterthought. Something it would be nice to give to fans, with the staff working on it when they have some dead space in their schedule to fill, not a priority with a deadline even. Which would be a possible explanation for why one person's absence could derail the conversion documents - having to shuffle everyone else around might mean assigning more projects to everyone, leaving less time to work on non-priorities like conversion docs.

My comment was half serious. But the serious part about it is that maybe there are more important stuff than the APs for 2022. Mealrs made sense when he said he was working on those of 2018. These things need to be planned in advanced. But 2022 is ridiculus and other things are more important than the conversion documents. Like the OGL or preparing the announced PDFs or even editing the next AP and maybe its companion. They did fire two editors and who knows why the EE's companion was non-cancelled, maybe it wasn't ready for an April launch and had to be dropped.

Also, if they have enough free time to work on the 2022 APs, maybe Perkins should be worried about his job. Once APs are ready and all you have to do it give a binder to some 3pp, is he needed?

And finally, *ahem* the End is nigh! Be prepared, people! Be prepared!

 

[billd91]

Even though Monte Cook has stated that WotC had already planned for 3.5e when they were developing 3e?

I would say so. Planning for 3.5 while developing 3e may predict that sales will flag and a new revision will boost core sales, but it's all based on speculation when that will occur. Plus, there's good justification for a .5 edition anyway. Game development doesn't stop when the game heads out the door on ship date. Revision occurs, mass play uncovers issues, follow-up publications cause rule drift. Pretty soon, it's good time for a clean up release to incorporate the new things learned and developed. In many ways, it's exactly what 2e was to 1e. And it's pretty much exactly what many other games do with editions as well like Champions and Call of Cthulhu. They make incremental updates to tweak rules here and there.

 

[Kramodlog]

Did you ever think that WotC/Hasbro is requiring the plan? Many companies demand long-term plans (usually around 5 years or so), so it should not be shocking (or upsetting) that he is working on a detailed business plan for the next 5-7 years.

Shouldn't have this been done when they first started working on 5e? Budgets have been allocated for a bunch of people who were playtesting stuff for two years without much revenues. My guess is a detailed business plan must of been presented then.

 

[Fildrigar]

Even though Monte Cook has stated that WotC had already planned for 3.5e when they were developing 3e?

Incidentally, does anyone have attribution for this? I've seen it bandied about now and again, but have never been able to find the original quote. I can't help but feel it's taken out of context, or is apocryphal.

 

[Shasarak]

Incidentally, does anyone have attribution for this? I've seen it bandied about now and again, but have never been able to find the original quote. I can't help but feel it's taken out of context, or is apocryphal.

The best I can find is:

See, I'm going to let you in on a little secret, which might make you mad: 3.5 was planned from the beginning.

Even before 3.0 went to the printer, the business team overseeing D&D was talking about 3.5. Not surprisingly, most of the designers -- particularly the actual 3.0 team (Jonathan Tweet, Skip Williams, and I) thought this was a poor idea. Also not surprisingly, our concerns were not enough to affect the plan. The idea, they assured us, was to make a revised edition that was nothing but a cleanup of any errata that might have been found after the book's release, a clarification of issues that seemed to confuse large numbers of players, and, most likely, all new art. It was slated to come out in 2004 or 2005, to give a boost to sales at a point where -- judging historically from the sales trends of previous editions -- they probably would be slumping a bit. It wasn't to replace everyone's books, and it wouldn't raise any compatibility or conversion issues.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?56333-Monte-Cook-reviews-3-5#ixzz3UycMXgqx

 

[Fildrigar]

Allright, the Wayback Machine comes through again. ( http://web.archive.org/web/20030806073440/http://www.montecook.com/review.html )

Even before 3.0 went to the printer, the business team overseeing D&D was talking about 3.5. Not surprisingly, most of the designers -- particularly the actual 3.0 team (Jonathan Tweet, Skip Williams, and I) thought this was a poor idea. Also not surprisingly, our concerns were not enough to affect the plan. The idea, they assured us, was to make a revised edition that was nothing but a cleanup of any errata that might have been found after the book's release, a clarification of issues that seemed to confuse large numbers of players, and, most likely, all new art. It was slated to come out in 2004 or 2005, to give a boost to sales at a point where -- judging historically from the sales trends of previous editions -- they probably would be slumping a bit. It wasn't to replace everyone's books, and it wouldn't raise any compatibility or conversion issues.

It seems clear that the "plan" and "what actually happened" are not the same things. So it's at least a small bit disingenuous to point and say that the edition change was planned all along, when the plan was to reissue the books with errata, clarifications, and new art.