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!

 

[Mercurius]

All that follows from the market record of 4e is that not enough people wanted to keep purchasing 4e books to make it worth WotC's while writing and printing more of them. Hence they wrote and printed some different books - the 5e ones. In due course they might write even more new ones, using the same or different ruleset. Good luck to them!

Hmm...I don't think it is all so random and arbitrary as you imply. As [MENTION=957]BryonD[/MENTION] said, there was a whole host of people who stopped playing 4E because they burned out on it for reasons specific to 4E, not out of vitriolic nerdrage (like the Camp Two people).

5E came along for three reasons: Camp One wasn't large enough, Camp Two hated 4E, and Camp Three lost interest. In designing 5E, I think Mearls & Co tried to account for why Camp Three lost interest and why Camp Two hated it, while still trying to create a product good enough to appeal to a large chunk of Camp One. Remarkably I think they accomplished the first two, not sure about the third.

And, had those in Camp Two simply moved on and never looked back, the history of 4e would have been very different. But, they didn't move on and never look back. They constantly attacked 4e in every single place they could find. You could see edition wars starting in the comments sections of Time Magazine articles about D&D. "Don't play 4e, 4e is teh suxxorz!" was a pretty common thing to see, even if the article was about the history of the game, rather than 4e specifically.

What I never saw was a constant and never ending diatribe of vitriol on every single forum about Pathfinder. At worst you might see some shots about Pathfinder on the 4e boards, but, that was about it. It wasn't really commented on at all.

The campaign of vitriol didn't really stop until 4e finally went out of production and the crowing from the rooftops died down.

Yeah, it was really quite bad there for awhile and rather puzzling just how much people hated 4E, like it truly did kill Real D&D and take its stuff. But the point I was trying to make is that there wasn't just Camps One and Two, there was also a perhaps larger Camp Three - people who liked but didn't love 4E, played it for awhile, but burned out more quickly than they (we) "should" have. By "should" I mean long enough to support and nourish a healthy edition cycle. 4E was struggling mightily by 2010, just a couple years in, and basically dead in the water by late 2011 - three and a half years into it.

I actually think that 4E was good game, but that it might have proved more successful as a "tactical variant" to core D&D. What WotC could have done is let 3.5 go another couple years, come out with 4E in the form of a game that is a hybrid of board and RPG, and then developed what would become 5E and released it around 2010 or 2011, which would have given 3E a solid decade. On the other hand, I don't really regret the path they took because it led to interesting times, cool games in 4E and Pathfinder, and of course the gem that is 5E. In the world of psychology, sometimes we need what seems like a "bad" experience in order for further grown and development. I'm not saying that 4E was "bad," but that the whole Edition War era of 2008-11 was pretty difficult, but hopefully also taught people a thing or two. It certainly inspired WotC to make a beautiful game in 5E.

Unless the people that bruned out on 4E burned out on 4E because of *4E*. (just maybe)

Well exactly - this is what I was saying about Camp Three.

There was also PLENTY of serious and legitimate complaints about the way the game worked. But still acting like that didn't happen here in 2015 is juts par for the course.

I notice a tinge of this in the words of some 4E fans and apologists. It reminds me of how I've seen fans of certain tennis players, Rafael Nadal in particular, always find an excuse for when Nadal loses - as if Nadal can't possibly lose if he's healthy, playing well, has his head in the game, rested, etc. I mean, I get it - we all want our "guy" (or edition) to be "the best," even if only subconsciously. While the largest part of the 4E edition wars was due to the irrational hatred of 4E, another prt of the polarization that occurred over 4E, I found, was when fans of the edition couldn't accept the fact that some that didn't love it didn't actually irrationally hate it, but had legitimate complaints about it.

 

[Iosue]

I notice a tinge of this in the words of some 4E fans and apologists. It reminds me of how I've seen fans of certain tennis players, Rafael Nadal in particular, always find an excuse for when Nadal loses - as if Nadal can't possibly lose if he's healthy, playing well, has his head in the game, rested, etc. I mean, I get it - we all want our "guy" (or edition) to be "the best," even if only subconsciously. While the largest part of the 4E edition wars was due to the irrational hatred of 4E, another part of the polarization that occurred over 4E, I found, was when fans of the edition couldn't accept the fact that some that didn't love it didn't actually irrationally hate it, but had legitimate complaints about it.

I agree with this. As a TSR-D&D guy who enjoyed 4e, it quickly got tiring to talk to anybody. These days I'm really feeling "a plauge o' both your houses." Especially in 5e threads. I'm tired of people using them to throw in barbs about how 5e is good because it's not 4e. I'm tired of people using of them to throw in barbs about how 5e is not good because it's not 4e. The complete and total lack of empathy is numbing.

 

[Mark CMG]

I mean, I get it

You really don't if you ever thought and still think that . . .

(. . .) the largest part of the 4E edition wars was due to the irrational hatred of 4E

Because this is the mark of someone who doesn't get it and doesn't want to get it.

I'm going to be at a convention this weekend and there will be dozens and dozens of different RPGs being played where the attendance is going to be somewhere around a mere 750-800 (maybe a bit more). There will be tons of indie games and lots of odd duck one-off systems and even some pre-D&D Braunstein and there will be every stripe of D&D with the likely exception of 4E. 5E? Yup, some folks are interested. (O)D&D, 1E, BECMI, 2E, 3.XE, PF? Yup, there will be lots of all of that.

There will be people there who love RPGs of almost every kind and folks who have been designing RPGs and RPG adventures since the very beginnings of RPGs. The collective years of RPG experience of the people who will be in attendance and gaming and running games at this small convention will rival huge conventions (maybe not Gen Con which might top 60K+ in attendance this year ).

Most folks I have spoken to about 4E basically agree that 4E was seemingly designed as a set of Minis Skirmish Combat rules with aspirations of appealing to CRPG and MMORPG gamers then squeezed into a very thin tabletop RPG skin. And as a skirmish game, it's okay but there are many that are better. But as an RPG, it just doesn't do a very good job at all and used a couple / few of patches to try and fix that, like the oft mentioned Page 42 and Skill Challenges.

I know this doesn't fit your narrative as well as the folks who don't like 4E, the ones you might describe as two word posters on the comments section of a pro-4E articles (back when 4E was still being published). It's likely most of them even had reasons they just didn't deign to share. But the reality I have seen regarding the opinions on 4E is very different and very much grounded in the opinions of a lot of people who know quite a bit about RPGs. I'm not saying everyone who will be at the convention this weekend has an opinion. Most simply don't care or know much about 4E. What I am saying the ones who do have an opinion are quite rational indeed.

On the other hand, there are people who like the way 4E is designed and will continue to play it for many years to come. I hope they enjoy it and that it brings them many years of fun. I've played dozens and dozens of RPGs in my 40+ years of RPGing, wargaming, card playing, boardgaming, and general tabletop gaming and often gravitate to the games I like better than others, many of which have plenty of flaws not only in the eyes of others but also my own.

The next time I get the itch for a Western Gunfighter RPG, I don't even plan to use an RPG but rather Legends of the Old West, a Warhammer Historical series set of mini skirmish combat rules with some skill system of my own devising (or lifted from somewhere) grafted onto it. It won't really be an RPG except in the way we play it but I'll make it work because there is something about the rules I really like.

But what I don't need is for many others to like it, nor do I need everyone who doesn't like it to agree that they are being irrational if they don't like it, for me to feel okay about liking it myself. And that's really what you still don't get. You can like things that other people don't like without their not liking it having to be a personal attack on you or what you like. So, really, when you post . . .

(. . .) the largest part of the 4E edition wars was due to the irrational hatred of 4E

. . . I have to wonder why you need to believe this, still, and why you can't just let it go and move on already?

 

[pemerton]

I don't think it is all so random and arbitrary as you imply.

I certainly didn't assert that it's random or arbitrary, and I don't see that I implied that either.

I asserted that it is not a normative matter. And hence that language like "turning of the back" or "abandoning" has no work to do.

It would be absurd for me to complain about WotC "abandoning me" by stopping publishing 4e books and starting to publish 5e ones. My partner can abandon me. My friends can abandon me. But all that WotC is doing is making commercial decisions about what books to write and print.

there was a whole host of people who stopped playing 4E because they burned out on it for reasons specific to 4E, not out of vitriolic nerdrage (like the Camp Two people).

And? What is meant to follow from that? That those people were clever? Or silly? That WotC was evil? Or good?

All you are saying is that some people didn't like a game system, either from the start or after the passage of time.

5E came along for three reasons

5e came along for one principal reason: WotC formed the view that it could make more money from its ownership of the D&D intellectual property by publishing new books with a new ruleset.

This is much the same reason that 4e came along. And 3E before it.

You can then try and explain this commercial state of affairs, by pointing to different segments of the market and their preferences for purchase (which are probably more than tangentially related to their preferences for play). And that is important information for a commercial publisher like WotC to have and use.

But it does not generate any normative conclusions.

For instance, it doesn't give anyone a reason to play 5e. Nor a reason to play 4e. Nor a reason not to play 4e, or 5e.

It doesn't support any normatively-laden claims like "turning of the back" or "abandonment", either.

there was also a perhaps larger Camp Three - people who liked but didn't love 4E, played it for awhile, but burned out more quickly than they (we) "should" have. By "should" I mean long enough to support and nourish a healthy edition cycle. 4E was struggling mightily by 2010, just a couple years in, and basically dead in the water by late 2011 - three and a half years into it.

I don't really follow this. You define "should" by reference to "healthy edition cycle", but what does that mean? Healthy for whom? And in what sense?

Does anyone know what the profits were, or the rate of return, for the WotC D&D group was between 2008 and 2012? What it was during the time of the 5e playtest? And how this compares to historical rates of return for that commercial group? I certainly don't, and I've never seen such information published. Nor do I know how D&D at those various times compared to WotC as a whole, or to Hasbro as a whole, or to the hobby market or publishing market as a whole?

Without that sort of information, how do you characterise an edition cycle as healthy or unhealthy?

No doubt, in a perfect world from the point of view of Mearls in 2011, Essentials would have become the "evergreen" product it was intended to be, and WotC would have sold hundreds of thousands of books per year while spending no money on system support other than printing and DDI maintenance. But the fact that nothing like that happened, and the WotC had to spend money designing a new system, doesn't mean that they lost money, or went broke, or anything of that sort. Perhaps all that investment has already been recouped, and more, in 5e sales! (Plus ongoing DDI subscriptions. Plus sales of D&D PDFs. Plus sales of D&D novels. And boardgames. Etc.)

I think most posters on these boards would characterise 2nd ed AD&D as a "healthy" edition cycle, yet from the point of view of its publisher that did cause bankruptcy.

Does "healthy" really mean "pleasing to some segment of the fan base that includes you"? That would be fine as far as it goes, but doesn't have any grander normative reach.

I actually think that 4E was good game, but that it might have proved more successful as a "tactical variant" to core D&D. What WotC could have done is let 3.5 go another couple years, come out with 4E in the form of a game that is a hybrid of board and RPG, and then developed what would become 5E and released it around 2010 or 2011

This strikes me as an improbable scenario, for two reasons.

First, the only evidence we have of the financial viability, for WotC, of "letting 3.5 go another couple of years" is that they decided not to do that. What reason is there to think that sales of 3.5 core books + supplements in 2008 to 2010 would have been larger than sales of 4e core books + supplements? I don't know of any (eg PF probably didn't sell as many books as 4e in that time, and I don't see any reason to suppose that WotC could have replicated what Paizo did with PF).

(And a related question - what evidence is there that there was a large demand for a "tactical variant" of 3E? Didn't the Miniatures Handbook and Heroes of Battle already provide that?)

Second, I think that 5e couldn't exist, as a design, without Essentials, and so could not have been invented without 4e. Essentials follows a development pathway sketched by Rob Heinsoo - start with balanced because symmetrical class design, and then branch out:

We weren't always planning to give all characters equal numbers of powers. Many times we experimented with vastly different power acquisition schemes for different classes. And when we decided against those approaches, there were people in R&D, including myself, who sometimes balked and felt like giving different classes different numbers and types of power might be a good way of differentiating between classes. But sentiment didn't pan out. All of our actual experiments with different power-distribution schemes didn't work out, so we moved ahead with the notion that a richer understanding of our system might give us room to experiment in the future.​

5e is the outcome of that experimentation!

another prt of the polarization that occurred over 4E, I found, was when fans of the edition couldn't accept the fact that some that didn't love it didn't actually irrationally hate it, but had legitimate complaints about it.

I'm not sure what the standard is for "legitimate complaint". If people enjoy a game, they will play it (everything else being equal). If they don't, they won't (again, everything else being equal). The notion of "legitimacy" doesn't have much work to do in this domain, in my view. (Nor the notion of "complaint", really. "Complaint" implies some sort of legitimate expectation that was thwarted. The only complaint in this context can be "I'm not enjoying it any more.")

The "edition wars" aren't a function of people not wanting to play a game, however. Most people don't want to play Rolemaster, because they have a legitimate complaint against it - namely, they don't enjoy it - but there are no "edition wars" around Rolemaster. (I mean, if I post that I used to GM Rolemaster I'll get the odd crack about "chartmaster" but nothing vitriolic. Last time I was on the ICE boards there were people who swore by RMSS and others who preferred RM2, but they didn't generally get vitriolic either.)

 

[Hussar]

I wonder if BryonD will now start taking others to task for confirmation bias.

 

[pemerton]

what I don't need is for many others to like it, nor do I need everyone who doesn't like it to agree that they are being irrational if they don't like it, for me to feel okay about liking it myself.

<snip>

You can like things that other people don't like without their not liking it having to be a personal attack on you or what you like.

This seems true.

Most folks I have spoken to about 4E basically agree that 4E was seemingly designed as a set of Minis Skirmish Combat rules with aspirations of appealing to CRPG and MMORPG gamers then squeezed into a very thin tabletop RPG skin.

<sinp>

But as an RPG, it just doesn't do a very good job at all and used a couple / few of patches to try and fix that, like the oft mentioned Page 42 and Skill Challenges.

The motivations behind the design of 4e are publicly available. I've never seen it described by its designers as a skirmish game. They described it as an RPG. It has all the standard rules of an RPG. Unlike a typical skirmish game, but just like an RPG, the fiction matters to resolution.

Given the bit of your post that seems true, "doesn't do a very good job at all" might have just the same content as "Is not liked by me and some other people I know, many of whom are experienced and clever RPGers."

But if it's meant to carry more weight then simply a statement of preference - eg if you think there are design flaws in 4e that can be rationally analysed and reasonably discussed - then I think you have to start from the premise that it is an RPG and not a skirmish game.

 

[Mark CMG]

(. . .) if you think there are design flaws in 4e that can be rationally analysed and reasonably discussed - then I think you have to start from the premise that it is an RPG and not a skirmish game.

Naw. My own opinion and the one I most hear shared is that it's major flaw is that it is "seemingly designed as a set of Minis Skirmish Combat rules with aspirations of appealing to CRPG and MMORPG gamers then squeezed into a very thin tabletop RPG skin." That doesn't require me accept your premise. You're welcome to shrug off my experience as simply my preference. I'm comfortable with you doing so and don't feel I need to adjust my position to one that suits your needs. Heck, you're even welcome to suggest I am the only one who has ever thought this way about it.

 

[Kramodlog]

All that "intransigence" can mean in this context is that people chose not to buy the game. Which is true. They did not, and wilfully so. (Eg it's not as if they hadn't heard of it, and so simply failed to choose it out of ignorance.)

What ever happened to indifference?

Are people disinterested in indifference nowadays?

 

[pemerton]

Naw. My own opinion and the one I most hear shared is that it's major flaw is that it is "seemingly designed as a set of Minis Skirmish Combat rules with aspirations of appealing to CRPG and MMORPG gamers then squeezed into a very thin tabletop RPG skin." That doesn't require me accept your premise. You're welcome to shrug off my experience as simply my preference. I'm comfortable with you doing so and don't feel I need to adjust my position to one that suits your needs. Heck, you're even welcome to suggest I am the only one who has ever thought this way about it.

But if it's a skirmish game, then how can its unsuitability (in your view) as an RPG be a flaw?

 

[pemerton]

What ever happened to indifference?

I don't see any difference between intransigence and indifference in this context. If you don't care to buy it, then don't! It seems pretty simple to me.