D&D General Ben Riggs on how to make D&D a $1 billion brand

[Zardnaar]

Baldur's Gate 3, while only in early access, is already a huge success and is frankly the best officially licensed D&D crpg ever made.

Well let's see how well it does when it's released.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Other potential source could be the fan-art. Some anime productions started as webnovel or light novels. Later webcomics or published manga, and later adapted into anime.

Of course writters would rather total controll about their characters, but some one-shot stories could work as "demo" to show their talent.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I suspect WotCs problem is that they simply can't put the time into iterative, complete-campaign playtesting. You'd need to run a bunch of groups through the entire campaign (faithfully as written!), then get all the feedback, synthesise it and make changes accordingly, then run through the same process again, multiple times, and then once you've finally got to a point where you're satisfied, publish the result as is without any further edits for space, word count etc.

If you have actual, paid playtesters whose job is to check for this--in exactly the same way that video games get paid QA people whose job is to poke and prod at every little problem--you could do this quite easily. Every day, have one four-hour gaming session, with two hours of prep beforehand and two hours of review after. A campaign that takes two years of once-a-week sessions takes only three and a half months at this pace, and that's only if you intend to publish the entire two-year adventure all at once. Most stuff is published in individual modules; say you have one every 2 levels (3 for 4e), that's 10 modules, meaning ~10.4 sessions per module, or about two weeks of intensive playtesting to finish. That's perfectly plausible as an actual QA effort, and just like QA, it won't be fun, it will be work, because you're playing through a thing trying to stress test every part of it as much as possible. And that's only if your stress-testing is actually done as real "live play" stuff, rather than accelerated stuff.

Edits for space and word count shouldn't be a problem. Just pass them by the QA team leads first. If they've run the campaign (say) three times over a month-and-a-half period, they'll be quite familiar with its inner workings.

I don't know if this is how it's done. You probably have some groups testing the balance of individual combat encounters with parties of different composition, you might have some groups going all the way through but offering progressive feedback as they go, etc etc. And of course you probably have different authors working on the post-playtesting fixes to different bits of the campaign, and they might not be the same authors who wrote the material in the first place, and this whole process continues all the way up to the day you send the files to the printer. There's lots of places for things o go wrong.

Being perfectly honest? Exactly as you've described it--with all the potential for problems--sounds like more playtesting than WotC does.

And WotC does more playtesting than most. Lookin' at you, Paizo.

Also to be fair, I suspect that if most 3pp campaigns were played by as many groups as WotC adventures, or were subject to the same level of scrutiny, then the same complaints would be levelled at them a lot more often. Writing campaigns is haaaard.

I dunno. Pathfinder APs tend to get pretty much rave reviews. Same for ENWorld. I still want to play the Zeitgeist (the original, 4e, accept no substitutes) at some point.

 

[pemerton]

If you have actual, paid playtesters whose job is to check for this--in exactly the same way that video games get paid QA people whose job is to poke and prod at every little problem--you could do this quite easily. Every day, have one four-hour gaming session, with two hours of prep beforehand and two hours of review after. A campaign that takes two years of once-a-week sessions takes only three and a half months at this pace

So that's 100 sessions. At five days a week, that's 20 weeks - so closer to 5 months than three.

I don't know how much a US playtester would get paid. In Australia, it sounds like a white collar position that requires some skills but for most of the testers not much management or decision-making. In an Australian University a mail clerk gets paid $50,000+ so that sort of role might be paid $60,000+.

Suppose we call it $50,000 to make the maths easy, and suppose we have 6 playtesters (5 players, 1 GM). That's $300,000 pa before on-costs, which I'm used to treating as around 30%. So call it .4 (20 weeks) * 400,000 (+ on-costs) = $160,000 to playtest the campaign, before we get to other costs like infrastructure, communications, editing that follows, etc.

I don't know what the margins are on a D&D AP, and so don't know how feasible your proposal is.

Of course it could be made cheaper by establishing a subsidiary or paying contractors in a lower-wage but educated English-speaking country (eg India, Malaysia, Kenya, Nigeria, etc).

 

[Bedrockgames]

So that's 100 sessions. At five days a week, that's 20 weeks - so closer to 5 months than three.

I don't know how much a US playtester would get paid. In Australia, it sounds like a white collar position that requires some skills but for most of the testers not much management or decision-making. In an Australian University a mail clerk gets paid $50,000+ so that sort of role might be paid $60,000+.

Suppose we call it $50,000 to make the maths easy, and suppose we have 6 playtesters (5 players, 1 GM). That's $300,000 pa before on-costs, which I'm used to treating as around 30%. So call it .4 (20 weeks) * 400,000 (+ on-costs) = $160,000 to playtest the campaign, before we get to other costs like infrastructure, communications, editing that follows, etc.

I don't know what the margins are on a D&D AP, and so don't know how feasible your proposal is.

Of course it could be made cheaper by establishing a subsidiary or paying contractors in a lower-wage but educated English-speaking country (eg India, Malaysia, Kenya, Nigeria, etc).

In the US I am sure they are having people playtest stuff for free. But it is an involved process. I also think it can be very hard to extract useful data when you have people playtest stuff outside your own group (it is still useful but it isn't a panacea). I've put myself on a two year development schedule to account for the need to playtest, and granted I don't have WOTC money or resources so that often just means I run it with two groups over those two years, do a number of pick up and play playtests during the week where I focus soley on mechanics, and get some other GMs to read and play the material. It still never feels like enough to me. It definitely helps. But when I was trying to release things every 6 months or so, the time frame felt way too tight (maybe if I had more resources it would not have felt that way though).

 

[pemerton]

In the US I am sure they are having people playtest stuff for free.

That seems likely to me, but I was trying to at least get a rough costing for @EzekielRaiden's proposal.

 

[robus]

I can‘t believe how much stuff is obviously poorly presented in the adventures before it even hits the table. The encounters are generally fine, it’s the surrounding adventure that often makes no sense, mostly NPC motivations but also location design.

I remember @pukunui and I trying to make head or tail of Dragon Heist when it came out. Absolute mess.

 

[Parmandur]

I can‘t believe how much stuff is obviously poorly presented in the adventures before it even hits the table. The encounters are generally fine, it’s the surrounding adventure that often makes no sense, mostly NPC motivations but also location design.

I remember @pukunui and I trying to make head or tail of Dragon Heist when it came out. Absolute mess.

YMMV: we had a good time with Dragon Heist.

Amusingly, I'm pretty sure Dragpn Heist was one of the times when Perkins went in depth on the playtest process WotC has set up on Dragon Talk.

 

[Umbran]

I like this one best, mostly since I do not play online. I would like it better if the box was not 100.00.

I will pay $100 if that's what it takes to get the creators payed properly.

 

[aco175]

I will pay $100 if that's what it takes to get the creators payed properly.

I guess it depends on what paid properly means and who are the creators. I can see wanting to pay the writers and editors. Some on the artists as well. Then you have people like the layout, printer, distributor and wholesaler or the FLGS who want some and the parent company who I would think most people do not count as much, but they created the game and other support that goes with the one adventure I would be buying, so maybe.

I'm thinking paid properly means being able to make a living in the game and not need another job as the primary means to feed one's family. I would think that scales somewhere from $40,000 to $100,000(+) mostly depending on renown of the author. Not sure where others in the chain would need to make to be fair. Then what a good profit margin for the parent company is? I also see where Amazon is generally discounter 30%, so does that mean the wholesaler price to the FLGS is 40-50% if Amazon is still making profit?

 

[FallenRX]

I can‘t believe how much stuff is obviously poorly presented in the adventures before it even hits the table. The encounters are generally fine, it’s the surrounding adventure that often makes no sense, mostly NPC motivations but also location design.

I remember @pukunui and I trying to make head or tail of Dragon Heist when it came out. Absolute mess.

Because there are two seperate teams working on WotC modules, a story team and a design team.

The design team makes a actual adventure that is more open ended and supposed to be a broader scenario, then the story team adds a odd "story" too it, that usually adds a pretty linear plot too a more open ended thing, with tons of odd rails and stuff to make it a "story".

I've noticed this and its bugged me every since, and notably curse of strahd and a few others which dont have the story team trying to rail it, are some of the best out there.

 

[Parmandur]

Because there are two seperate teams working on WotC modules, a story team and a design team.

The design team makes a actual adventure that is more open ended and supposed to be a broader scenario, then the story team adds a odd "story" too it, that usually adds a pretty linear plot too a more open ended thing, with tons of odd rails and stuff to make it a "story".

I've noticed this and its bugged me every since, and notably curse of strahd and a few others which dont have the story team trying to rail it, are some of the best out there.

The books become very useful when one sees them as constituent parts to be used like Lego bricks with a suggested build, rather than a fully cooked meal.

 

[pukunui]

They need to grow the entire brand by a doctor of 6 or 7. Good luck with that.

Yes, I'm sure someone as brilliant as Doogie Howser MD could figure it out.

But sometimes it's hard to believe that some encounters and areas were even played once before publishing.

If you have actual, paid playtesters whose job is to check for this ...

Amusingly, I'm pretty sure Dragpn Heist was one of the times when Perkins went in depth on the playtest process WotC has set up on Dragon Talk.

I can only speak from my own personal experience as a playtester. I can't say if there are or aren't any paid playtesters, but I can say there are heaps of us who do it for free. I can also say that often they send us only part of an adventure to test rather than the full thing (or ask us to playtest only part of it - like with Dragon Heist, we were asked to test a specific season only; with the Mad Mage follow-up, we were given only a single dungeon level to test). On top of that, they often don't give us very much time to do the testing. I don't know how many groups out there are able to playtest stuff at the drop of a hat, but I suspect WotC gets more "I've read this and here's what I think" type feedback than actual "I ran this and here's what we found in play" feedback.

 

[Parmandur]

Yes, I'm sure someone as brilliant as Doogie Howser MD could figure it out.




I can only speak from my own personal experience as a playtester. I can't say if there are or aren't any paid playtesters, but I can say there are heaps of us who do it for free. I can also say that often they send us only part of an adventure to test rather than the full thing (or ask us to playtest only part of it - like with Dragon Heist, we were asked to test a specific season only; with the Mad Mage follow-up, we were given only a single dungeon level to test). On top of that, they often don't give us very much time to do the testing. I don't know how many groups out there are able to playtest stuff at the drop of a hat, but I suspect WotC gets more "I've read this and here's what I think" type feedback than actual "I ran this and here's what we found in play" feedback.

Fair enough: it does make sense to me thar individual pieces get more playtest than the whole thing, since the books so often boil down to being collections of disparate parts that can be played together but don't necessitate a sequence. Which is fine, since that's more useful to me than a long railroad.

 

[robus]

The books become very useful when one sees them as constituent parts to be used like Lego bricks with a suggested build, rather than a fully cooked meal.

Yeah but that’s a silly bump in the road to minting more DMs. I can’t believe it has to be this way.

 

[vecna00]

I don't agree with everything he mentioned. However:

• "Return to the boxed set! Create handouts, maps, character portraits, in-game journals, & clues to go with the game. (Also make PDFs of those goodies available.)"

This I agree with wholeheartedly!

It's a shame that Beadle & Grimm's are really the only ones making boxed set product so far, and they're expensive! If they made basic boxed sets with softcover books without the main extras of their premium boxes, I would buy a lot more of them!

 

[Parmandur]

I don't agree with everything he mentioned. However:


This I agree with wholeheartedly!

It's a shame that Beadle & Grimm's are really the only ones making boxed set product so far, and they're expensive! If they made basic boxed sets with softcover books without the main extras of their premium boxes, I would buy a lot more of them!

I think that's the issue: how economically feasible ate box sets, and are they actually more helpful than hardcover books or Beyond...?

 

[vecna00]

I think that's the issue: how economically feasible ate box sets, and are they actually more helpful than hardcover books or Beyond...?

Speaking only for me, I can say that they are easier to use at the table than a hardcover book. The hardcovers tend to look nicer on my shelves though.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yeah but that’s a silly bump in the road to minting more DMs. I can’t believe it has to be this way.

It doesn't, unless one is committed to the notion that RPGs cannot be designed or taught, but that they are instead ineffable products of auteur intent, which can only be understood by intuitions that cannot be communicated.

This belief is infuriatingly widespread.

 

[Parmandur]

Speaking only for me, I can say that they are easier to use at the table than a hardcover book. The hardcovers tend to look nicer on my shelves though.

I did appreciate the slipcover format for Spelljammer, and a box set may have fit that even better (with a mite higher pace count)...but how much more might that have cost?