D&D 5E A Board Game style Release Schedule

[Reynard]

World of Darkness is a good example. It had a couple robust release schedules that led to two versions, one being a major reboot, and is now no longer a major force in RPGs. They basically released themselves into irrelevance.

That's an interesting, completely unsupportable claim.

FATE is another good example. There's a lot of official content on DriveThru, but most of that is campaign settings and worlds. There's only a single real accessory, and that's pretty much the DMG.

Now you are moving the goal posts, claiming that all those settings aren't actually support for the game, which seems a very strange assertion to make.

Other systems are equally sparse. 13th Age has a couple accessories beyond the core book and bestiary after 18 months. Numenera has a similar amount of content after a comparable length of time.

13th Age does seem to have a sparse support library but then it is not a game with a big footprint. Do you know anyone who actually plays it? I don't. Numenera on the other hand has over 30 accessories available for it of varying sizes, plus a compatible spin off game.

The only game approaching D&D and Pathfinder...

Here's the thing: when we are talking about robust release schedules we are primarily comparing D&D to the likes of Pathfinder. No other games really matter at the scale we are talking about. (Star Wars and Shadowrun are probably the next their down.) there is no reason that D&D 5E could not support a schedule equivalent to PF. Just bringing back Dragon and Dungeon would get them halfway there. Throw in a campaign setting hardback and a few smaller setting expansion and you're there. There is nothing like that level of support on the schedule, and given the size of the D&D team, there won't be. That the new edition of D&D in its launch year has support on par with an indie game like FATE is mind boggling and very revealing on how WotC or Hasbro feel about the property.

 

[Zardnaar]

5e has adventures too. There's a super-adventure every six months plus the Adventurer's League content and the wealth of material on D&D Classics. And there are the weekly articles available for free on the website.

Even excluding old editions, there's more adventure content available now then there was in 1977 when 1e launched. Most published adventures didn't really start coming out until 1978.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dungeons_&_Dragons_modules
Heck, if you include the adventures written during the playtest, there are MORE modules for 5e than there were for 1e.

And Dungeon Magazine didn't start until 1986, closer to the launch of 2nd Edition than 1e.

Its not 1977 any more and 5E ha less support than any edition since about 1981 or so. I don't think most D&D players were playing in 1981.

 

[Zardnaar]

Here's the thing, ads and all, the first issue of Dragon Magazine was 30-odd pages. Including adds, silly comics, not D&D content and illustrations. If you include the five articles on the WotC website released in February and a couple of the previews, it's also about as much pages.

So we're seeing exactly the same amount of content for 5e as we saw for 1st Edition AD&D. And, if you look back at what was in Dragon in those days, the content is a heck of a lot better.
Even including just Tyranny of Dragons and the Adventurer's League adventures (and not the pre-launch 5e adventures), we've seen a comparable about of adventure content, the equivalent of six 32-page adventures. And we're going to see even more in the next month, between Princes of the Apocalypse and the free content PDF.

It's very likely 5e will blow 1e out of the water in terms of content per year. And that's before you consider that we saw all three Core rulebooks in the same year rather than once a year.

And the second WotC releases an OGL, there'll be a flood of content that will likely dwarf the content of 1e and even likely 2e. That's excluding all the stuff fans are already putting out.

5e only has a slow release schedule when you compare it to 3e and 4e. Which is like saying the Appalachians are small when looking at the Rockies.

--edit--
I thought I'd take a closer look at the numbers.

As a comparison, take at look at what TSR released for adventures during 1978*, the middle year of the AD&D rollout:
B1- In Search of the Unknown
D1 - Descent into the Depths of the Earth
D2 - Shrine of the Kuo-Toa
D3 - Vault of the Drow
G1 - Steading of the Hill Giant Chief
G2 - The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl
G3 - Hall of the Fire Giant King
S1 - Tomb of Horrors

(*1978 was the prolific year. Content in both 1977 and 1979 was much more sparse)

Ostensibly a nice mix. It was a year of classics. But, when you look closer, it's really a 1-3 adventure and then an 8-15 superadventure. Only 128-pages of adventure (including the art booklet from Tomb of Horrors). The Tyranny of Dragons adventures contain more adventures and 64-pages of extra content. And once Princes of the Apocalypse drops, there'll be another 120-odd-pages of content above and beyond that.

Quite frankly, after just six months, 5e is kicking 1e's ass in terms of pages. After a year, it'll be no contest.

1985 had 1E release 18 books mostly adventure type stuff. 5E and Numenera has raised the bar in terms of expectations of production values. Paizo has kind of raised the bar when it comes to terms of regular content for D&D. Ie monthly adventure support which D&D had form 1987 or so through to 2007.

Adventurer league stuff doesn't matter if you have no game store locally. Online support is actually less than what 3.0 was getting back in 2001. We had maps, NPC faces, adventures etc all online. It doesn't help HotDQ is an AP type adventure and not a very good one at that.

 

[Kramodlog]

Well, if we are going to speculate, might as well check how the PHB is doing on Amazon. Rank: 93. Sells numbers are another thing.

These are sells numbers for previous months.
Aug: 5,402
Sep: 5,105
Oct: 4,986
Nov: 3,066
Dec: 3,502
Jan: 4,784
Feb: 1,448

For March, the current estimate is 316 PHBs sold on Amazon accoring to novelrank. That number is underestimated, but they were close in February. On the 10th of February they were predicting 1,430 for the entire month. It ended up to be 1,448 PHB sold. Not too shabby.

It is not clear how novelrank gets its sells numbers, so they should be taken with a grain of salt.

The lower numbers for February and March could be explained by the post-holiday period. People have used the cash and gift cards they received at Christmas, and they are paying their credit cards now instead of using them. The novelty is a bit gone too. Diehard fans got their PHB already and how many copies can they buy? It will be interesting to see if sales go up when PoA comes out and if other periods in the year see boosts. Maybe this is just temporary.

 

[Zardnaar]

Well, if we are going to speculate, might as well check how the PHB is doing on Amazon. Rank: 93. Sells numbers are another thing.

These are sells numbers for previous months.
Aug: 5,402
Sep: 5,105
Oct: 4,986
Nov: 3,066
Dec: 3,502
Jan: 4,784
Feb: 1,448

For March, the current estimate is 316 PHBs sold on Amazon accoring to novelrank. That number is underestimated, but they were close in February. On the 10th of February they were predicting 1,430 for the entire month. It ended up to be 1,448 PHB sold. Not too shabby.

It is not clear how novelrank gets its sells numbers, so they should be taken with a grain of salt.

The lower numbers for February and March could be explained by the post-holiday period. People have used the cash and gift cards they received at Christmas, and they are paying their credit cards now instead of using them. The novelty is a bit gone too. Diehard fans got their PHB already and how many copies can they buy? It will be interesting to see if sales go up when PoA comes out and if other periods in the year see boosts. Maybe this is just temporary.

Well you will eventually reach saturation point with the PHB. 3.0 apparently sold 500k units and 300k in the 1st month so 2001 was a lean year by comparison. If those numbers are some what accurate and Amazon accounts for around 30% of book sales 5E has almost already outsold 4E and has been beaten by 2E and 3.0 and BECMI. 1E sold a lot over a long time, 3.5 did not do that well relative to 3.0 and they are outselling Pathfinder in a comparable time frame but if D&D is trending down Pathfinder core sales apparently have been trending up from 2009-2013.

 

[Kramodlog]

Well you will eventually reach saturation pint with the PHB.

Pretty much. That is what I ment when I said the novelty was a bit gone.

 

[Jester David]

Its not 1977 any more and 5E ha less support than any edition since about 1981 or so. I don't think most D&D players were playing in 1981.

Prior to 1984. Earlier than that was comparable to 1978 and still less than what 5e will release this year in official content. That was when TSR really started churning out the products.
Of course, that was also about the time the Blumes were also trying to sell TSR because it was in poor financial shape. Three years later and TSR laid off 75% of its employees.

D&D has a long history of poor finances and struggling to turn an adequate profit. Continuing using the strategies of the past seems like a losing proposition.

1985 had 1E release 18 books mostly adventure type stuff. 5E and Numenera has raised the bar in terms of expectations of production values. Paizo has kind of raised the bar when it comes to terms of regular content for D&D. Ie monthly adventure support which D&D had from 1987 or so through to 2007.

The difference between a monthly AP released in six parts and a single volume adventure products is largely cosmetic. I'm sure WotC could split up Princes of the Apocalypse into six books, with a total cost of 2.5x the single volume price. At 96 pages each, the Tyranny of Dragons storyline is effectively six 32-page adventures.
There's no point though. Most people aren't playing fast enough to get through an entire storyline in less than six months. And the number 1 bit of advice people are given when asking about running a Pathfinder is "wait until it's finished so you can read it all and be ready."

Individual AP volumes made sense for Paizo in 2008, because they were a magazine company and needed to continue monthly product for their subscribers. But the first part of their APs always sells better and later volumes sell far fewer copies. And there's a continual demand from the fans for collected volumes that Paizo cannot fulfil. Because the APs are written over several months, the authors can't coordinate well, and build a cohesive story. APs tend to be very episodic, and the overarching plot tends to be loose. If one chapter needs to be longer and another shorter, there's no way to shift content. And a lot of the content you're paying for in the AP is largely redundant: monsters that are hard to find later, some fiction, and a world article.
If they could start again, Paizo might very well opt to release single volume APs, where they could create a more cohesive and focused product.

Pathfinder has also been dethroned. It ruled for four years. Whether or not it reclaim the top spot or sinks into gaming history but remains to be seen. I bet not.
Personally, I'm not buying any more PF books. I'm still playing, but I'll barely get use out of what I already have. I just used my copy of Monster Codex for the first and likely the last time, essentially having paid $45 for a book that saw three hours of use. The value of future purchases is lower and lower. They've written themselves out of business. The more books they produced the less I needed them.

Adventurer league stuff doesn't matter if you have no game store locally.

It's better than during 1e when a lot of adventures were tournament specials and only a handful were ever re-released.
How many potential classics were never reprinted? How many RPGA modules are lost to time? I know of a half-dozen Ravenloft adventures that only saw print at a few conventions and the few remaining copies now sell for hundreds on eBay.

Right now, half a year in, the Adventurer's League stuff is limited to stores. Who knows if it'll stay that way and not end up on D&D Classics when the scenarios are retired?

Online support is actually less than what 3.0 was getting back in 2001. We had maps, NPC faces, adventures etc all online.

Yeah, I miss the web enhancements.
But the free PDF of the basic rules is nice. As is the HTML version of the rules. Oh, and the playtest content. And the planned free PDF of support stuff for Princes of the Apocalypse.

So much of the support stuff is unneeded. Why do I need to go to WotC for maps when I can browse around Google Images or the Cartographer's Guild and find ten times as much? I'm glad they're not wasting their limited resources on that stuff.

It doesn't help HotDQ is an AP type adventure and not a very good one at that.

They can't all be winners. Paizo has released some stinkers as well. And there's no guarantee that if they released two dozen adventures that any would appeal to you in just that special way.

If you don't like that, there are the handful of earlier Encounters adventures. Plus the D&D Classics ones. Or Pathfinder's adventures. Or the 3rd Party books. Or free stuff on fan websites.
There's no shortage of adventures that can be purchased. WotC doesn't *need* to add more. They get very little out of it.
There's no need to cut open the goose to try and get all the eggs at once.

 

[Jester David]

Now you are moving the goal posts, claiming that all those settings aren't actually support for the game, which seems a very strange assertion to make.

They're not accessories. They're a very different product. If WotC just released flavour-heavy campaign settings, I don't think that would alleviate people's calls for content. They're not *really* supporting the game.
Plus, most seem to be PDF products, making them comparable to the re-released campaign settings and content on D&D Classics.

13th Age does seem to have a sparse support library but then it is not a game with a big footprint. Do you know anyone who actually plays it? I don't. Numenera on the other hand has over 30 accessories available for it of varying sizes, plus a compatible spin off game.

Numenera has a lot of PDFs. After two years it only seems to have three real accessories. Four hardcover rulebooks compared to D&D's six in under a year. D&D will very quickly blow past Numenera in content, even with a leisurely 2-3 books a year.

Here's the thing: when we are talking about robust release schedules we are primarily comparing D&D to the likes of Pathfinder. No other games really matter at the scale we are talking about. (Star Wars and Shadowrun are probably the next their down.) there is no reason that D&D 5E could not support a schedule equivalent to PF. Just bringing back Dragon and Dungeon would get them halfway there. Throw in a campaign setting hardback and a few smaller setting expansion and you're there. There is nothing like that level of support on the schedule, and given the size of the D&D team, there won't be. That the new edition of D&D in its launch year has support on par with an indie game like FATE is mind boggling and very revealing on how WotC or Hasbro feel about the property.

All Paizo has is Pathfinder and they're willing to accept far less profits than WotC. And have yet to prove that their model is sustainable in the long term.
They're not necessarily the best business to emulate.

It's very likely Pathfinder will peak, drop, and then have to suffer heavy layoffs. Fours years as #1 isn't a great long term plan.
It's almost like Paizo saw D&D was struggling and decided to make as much money as possible while they were the only game in town, and hope to win enough fans to continue after the release of 5e. We'll see how that goes for them.

 

[Zardnaar]

Prior to 1984. Earlier than that was comparable to 1978 and still less than what 5e will release this year in official content. That was when TSR really started churning out the products.
Of course, that was also about the time the Blumes were also trying to sell TSR because it was in poor financial shape. Three years later and TSR laid off 75% of its employees.

D&D has a long history of poor finances and struggling to turn an adequate profit. Continuing using the strategies of the past seems like a losing proposition.


The difference between a monthly AP released in six parts and a single volume adventure products is largely cosmetic. I'm sure WotC could split up Princes of the Apocalypse into six books, with a total cost of 2.5x the single volume price. At 96 pages each, the Tyranny of Dragons storyline is effectively six 32-page adventures.
There's no point though. Most people aren't playing fast enough to get through an entire storyline in less than six months. And the number 1 bit of advice people are given when asking about running a Pathfinder is "wait until it's finished so you can read it all and be ready."

Individual AP volumes made sense for Paizo in 2008, because they were a magazine company and needed to continue monthly product for their subscribers. But the first part of their APs always sells better and later volumes sell far fewer copies. And there's a continual demand from the fans for collected volumes that Paizo cannot fulfil. Because the APs are written over several months, the authors can't coordinate well, and build a cohesive story. APs tend to be very episodic, and the overarching plot tends to be loose. If one chapter needs to be longer and another shorter, there's no way to shift content. And a lot of the content you're paying for in the AP is largely redundant: monsters that are hard to find later, some fiction, and a world article.
If they could start again, Paizo might very well opt to release single volume APs, where they could create a more cohesive and focused product.

Pathfinder has also been dethroned. It ruled for four years. Whether or not it reclaim the top spot or sinks into gaming history but remains to be seen. I bet not.
Personally, I'm not buying any more PF books. I'm still playing, but I'll barely get use out of what I already have. I just used my copy of Monster Codex for the first and likely the last time, essentially having paid $45 for a book that saw three hours of use. The value of future purchases is lower and lower. They've written themselves out of business. The more books they produced the less I needed them.


It's better than during 1e when a lot of adventures were tournament specials and only a handful were ever re-released.
How many potential classics were never reprinted? How many RPGA modules are lost to time? I know of a half-dozen Ravenloft adventures that only saw print at a few conventions and the few remaining copies now sell for hundreds on eBay.

Right now, half a year in, the Adventurer's League stuff is limited to stores. Who knows if it'll stay that way and not end up on D&D Classics when the scenarios are retired?


Yeah, I miss the web enhancements.
But the free PDF of the basic rules is nice. As is the HTML version of the rules. Oh, and the playtest content. And the planned free PDF of support stuff for Princes of the Apocalypse.

So much of the support stuff is unneeded. Why do I need to go to WotC for maps when I can browse around Google Images or the Cartographer's Guild and find ten times as much? I'm glad they're not wasting their limited resources on that stuff.


They can't all be winners. Paizo has released some stinkers as well. And there's no guarantee that if they released two dozen adventures that any would appeal to you in just that special way.

If you don't like that, there are the handful of earlier Encounters adventures. Plus the D&D Classics ones. Or Pathfinder's adventures. Or the 3rd Party books. Or free stuff on fan websites.
There's no shortage of adventures that can be purchased. WotC doesn't *need* to add more. They get very little out of it.
There's no need to cut open the goose to try and get all the eggs at once.

YOu are coming across as making excuses by this point. I'm not wanting 3E and 4E era releases but something would be nice and I am not really into APs any more. Paizo has been there and done that and done it better as the worst Paizo AP I have seen is still better than HotDQ when they can't even label the map right in that adventure and in places it makes no sense either.

APs are so 2002 maybe 2008, WoTC is playing catch up. Hope Elemental Evil doesn't stink as I am not overly excited about it.

 

[Jester David]

YOu are coming across as making excuses by this point. I'm not wanting 3E and 4E era releases but something would be nice and I am not really into APs any more. Paizo has been there and done that and done it better as the worst Paizo AP I have seen is still better than HotDQ when they can't even label the map right in that adventure and in places it makes no sense either.

APs are so 2002 maybe 2008, WoTC is playing catch up. Hope Elemental Evil doesn't stink as I am not overly excited about it.

I've heard some rumblings from people who have had early looks (connected to the Aventurer's League or stores). They've mostly been (infuriatingly) quiet for NDA reasons but they sound super excited.
This adventure is written by Rich Baker who has a lot of adventure writing cred, and wrote Phandelver. And they're not working around a changing edition.
I was "meh" about Elemental Evil, but they psyched me up.