D&D General Ben Riggs interviews Fred Hicks and Cam Banks, then shares WotC sales data.

[AlViking]

agreed, but the question was does D&D innovate


I pointed to what imo was the biggest / most obvious innovation as I assumed that you could not dispute it, not the only or most recent one

You do have a point that the fanbase is reluctant to allow changes for whatever reason(s), but that is not the same as there being zero innovation.

Esp. with the 2024 version it also was WotC that hobbled any attempt at innovation, not just the fans. It started with the compatibility mandate which limits what is possible and continued with WotC’s decision to throw away changes that made it past the polls but they suddenly considered not compatible enough, probably because they got cold feet about doing anything to upset even a single person after they just upset a lot of people with their OGL stunt…

I agree that WotC is slow to innovate, I disagree that they haven’t done anything innovative for decades. Market leaders basically never are particularly innovative, too risky, let everyone else innovate and then incorporate whatever turned out to work.

The consequence of that lack of innovation in 2024 is that I decided to not wait for WotC to improve things and instead look for games I like better to begin with. If enough people move on from D&D, WotC will innovate again, just like every other time that happened, until then they won’t

The target audience and consumers of D&D are not static. Some people keep playing, some stop playing, others pick it up. With 5e the number that they retained and gained grew for years on end which broke a pattern that had been established for multiple editions. There are many reasons for that and I don't claim I know what they are, no one does. But one thing is clear - 4e was very "innovative" and the sales sunk to the level that WOTC was considering throwing in the towel. If innovation was always good, even if the old guard abandoned it, the influx of new people would have more than countered it.

Legacy players, people who played a previous version, are a small part of the market for D&D. If they "rejected" 4e it's because a lot of people didn't like the game. To be clear 3 and 3.5 don't get a pass here either - they struck out with those versions as well for different reasons. I think 3e was innovative in how it turned around the numbers (something that should have been done long before by TSR) and in trying to be more consistent. Where they fell apart IMHO was that it was too "crunchy" for a lot of people, system mastery made a vast difference in character effectiveness, the game was completely dominated by casters at higher levels.

But I guess I shouldn't be surprised that this thread, like what feels like the majority of threads has once more just become yet one more variation of "Let's bash the designers of the most popular TTRPG ever because they don't know what they're doing." We all have ideas of how the game could be better. Unfortunately almost all of them are different and incompatible.

 

[Hussar]

We are both in agreement that D&D is not particularly innovative and that the fanbase is at a minimum not clamoring for a lot of innovation (I’d argue they agreed to more than WotC actually gave them, so this slow pace is mostly on WotC however…), we just disagree that there hasn’t been any for decades (your claim)

Silly me.

You are right. Of course @mamba, you are right.

 

[Parmandur]

if it made it past the UA threshold, it was not a popular veto, was it? How was that veto determined if not by the 70% approval threshold, was there like a 10% ‘hate it’ threshold too?

What I mean ia, failing in UA meant they would be vetoed,but passing UA was not a guarantee of inclusion. It is a filter go winnow outnideas thwt did not excite, not a voting process.

I know one thing they said at different points was that they were comparing the results of various surveys...so something may have done well in the new UA version, but not as well as the 2014 version, for instance.

 

[mamba]

But I guess I shouldn't be surprised that this thread, like what feels like the majority of threads has once more just become yet one more variation of "Let's bash the designers of the most popular TTRPG ever because they don't know what they're doing."

I don’t think I was bashing the designers, I certainly did not say they do not know what they are doing. From my perspective I did three things 1) disagreed with the claim that WotC does not innovate at all, 2) said they are not particularly innovative and that market leaders pretty much never are, 3) wondered what made them become even more conservative in their approach during the playtest which resulted in them abandoning ideas that had passed the popularity threshold.

Was the end result a dud for me, yes, absolutely. Anything remotely interesting that was proposed during the playtest was abandoned halfway through it. That does not mean WotC designers do not know what they are doing, it just means I am not looking for the same things. As you wrote

We all have ideas of how the game could be better. Unfortunately almost all of them are different and incompatible.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Not an expert here so give me grace. I wonder if the delve format just suffered from 4es not so great adventures? Did the format get tossed out with the bath water when a new edition appeared?

Having spent time with D&D before the delve format, than with the delve format at the end of 3e and throughout 4e, and now without it again, here's my observation.

There was a time where I really felt like D&D was a combat game and the more they could to do reinforce and streamline that aspect of the game, the better. That was me going into 4e from 3e. But then I spent four years running combat-heavy 4e games and feeling frustrated. 5e was a welcome departure for that, getting back to better representation of the three pillars instead of just the big focus on combat all the time.

Now, ten years later, my own drive for those big detailed tactical combat setups isn't nearly as strong. I think that sort of thing can work well for a big boss fight but I prefer much more abbreviated descriptions of potential encounters because, a lot of the time, we don't know how they're going to go. Is it a fight? Is it a conversation? Do the characters bypass it? It's a lot of wasted space for a delve format if the characters Pass Without Trace.

5e is a big system with a lot of different preferences from a lot of different GMs, but my own preferences went from pre-delve, to delve, and back to loose narrative descriptions instead of big detailed two-page spreads. I think for games like Draw Steel, such formats can work and make sense. I don't think I need them in D&D anymore.

 

[SlyFlourish]

On the topic of innovation, it was interesting to see that the new D&D 2024 Forgotten Realms Adventures book has a big focus on bastions and renown. You can decide for yourselves if you think either of those are truly innovative or if you like them at all, but WOTC is clearly focusing on that.

The same is true for these new micro-adventure formats. There are more than 50 of them in the new FR adventures book. I'm still on the fence about them, leaning towards liking them, but they're definitely new for D&D. It is similar to the attempt at a delve format but almost the total opposite given their size and word count.

 

[AlViking]

I don’t think I was bashing the designers, I certainly did not say they do not know what they are doing. From my perspective I did three things 1) disagreed with the claim that WotC does not innovate at all, 2) said they are not particularly innovative and that market leaders pretty much never are, 3) wondered what made them become even more conservative in their approach during the playtest which resulted in them abandoning ideas that had passed the popularity threshold.

Was the end result a dud for me, yes, absolutely. Anything remotely interesting that was proposed during the playtest was abandoned halfway through it. That does not mean WotC designers do not know what they are doing, it just means I am not looking for the same things. As you wrote

I wasn't speaking of anyone in particular, but I do think some people want change for the sake of change or in the hopes that the change will be exactly what they personally want. I'm just not personally a big fan of Monday morning quarterbacking, it's always easy to say it could have been done better because of course it could have been done better. Meanwhile D&D is and will likely always be the mass market appeal game which means that some ideas that may have been fantastic for a different game just aren't going to make the cut and the design will never make everyone happy.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I do think some people want change for the sake of change or in the hopes that the change will be exactly what they personally want.

This is one of the ideas that got me all fired up in this thread. I don't think I heard it here but in other threads and other conversations I heard:

"I want a new D&D where they get rid of ability scores and bonuses and make it class-less and level-less" and I just shake my head. It's like saying "I want a D&D where the whole conflict resolution takes place by playing a game of Jenga. No, I don't want to play Dread. No one knows about Dread."

Why set ourselves up for disappointment like that?

 

[billd91]

Now, ten years later, my own drive for those big detailed tactical combat setups isn't nearly as strong. I think that sort of thing can work well for a big boss fight but I prefer much more abbreviated descriptions of potential encounters because, a lot of the time, we don't know how they're going to go. Is it a fight? Is it a conversation? Do the characters bypass it? It's a lot of wasted space for a delve format if the characters Pass Without Trace.

Good point. The delve might be OK for complicated encounters either because of the NPCs/Monsters involved, because of the setting, or because of other weird conditions and setup. In defense of the delve format's use in 4e, that was kind of 4e's main mojo - focusing on the encounter and how to make them thrilling (within certain "get to the fun" definitions of thrilling that may not apply to everybody).
But if you aren't thinking of your encounters as these set pieces, their presentation is kind of unnecessary. They were pretty, I'll give them that. But I also expect they were a resource sink in layout time, additional art/cartography, and page count of the end product.
I wouldn't oppose seeing them again for particularly elaborate situations in published modules, but I wouldn't want to see them return as a norm.

 

[Marc17]

But one thing is clear - 4e was very "innovative" and the sales sunk to the level that WOTC was considering throwing in the towel. If innovation was always good, even if the old guard abandoned it, the influx of new people would have more than countered it.

Ya, every fantasy heartbreaker was trying to be innovative. The thing is that innovation most often leads to less effective methods or dead ends. I have gaming group that explicitly meets to play new games going on for almost ten years now. We've played lots of games that afterwards, we said,'that was a really good, fun, innovative game' and then put it on the shelf probably to never be played again. Not enough depth, not interesting enough, too hyper focused on one play style. Some we played for longer. I think our Blades in the Dark game lasted a year and a half, longer if you include the Forged in the Darkness conversion of Unhallowed Metropolis I made. Still, in the end, setting and game play do not support wide amount of game styles. D&D is popular because it does support a wide amount of game styles between groups, sessions, or even players in the same game. Any innovation that breaks that is a net negative.

There is plenty of room for innovation in a slow methodical way. The addition books like Tasha's are a fine place to present such things. Many of the innovation I create for my D&D campaigns I run to help the mood or play style would not be wanted or needed in my other D&D games. Even then, some of them die in play while others might work in other campaigns.

For better and worse, WotC will eventually need to sell more books, and will probably eventually need to change things up. Then we'll get some hot shot game designer that will change things for the sake of changing things and try and innovate. So far, 5E is probably the best result of that basing itself on past versions, and still has plenty of warts.