billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
People say this a lot but you need to look at the timeline. D&D lost marketshare to Pathfinder right about the time of D&D Essentials, when they were still producing books.
D&D 5E Brand Vs RPG
- Thread starter Zardnaar
- Start date
People say this a lot but you need to look at the timeline. D&D lost marketshare to Pathfinder right about the time of D&D Essentials, when they were still producing books.
Parmandur
Book-Friend, he/him
I'm with Mistwell. I want a water bottle with the D&D ampersand on it. I want a giant beholder pillow. I want blankets and sheets with D&D stuff on 'em. I want D&D-branded accessories for my game. I want D&D ALL OF THE THINGS.
This, big time; I have a kid, and he needs D&D toys, lots of 'em. :0
Tony Vargas
Legend
Yeah, there's no telling exactly how the 'market share' shook out, but by the /one/ measure made public, Pathfinder solidly beat D&D - once they stopped printing new D&D books, until they started again. But PF did have one quarter before that - the quarter Essentials launched - when it took the top spot, and another shortly thereafter when it tied. Then D&D went back to the hardcover format for the tail of it's run and stayed on top, even though it wasn't really doing that many books per year anymore. Again, by that one measure. How much faith you put in factoids like those depends on whether you were crowing over PF beating D&D in that one quarter, right when it happened, or dismissing D&D beating PF for the last 6 quarters before that two-year hiatus.
D&D's back on top, solidly, ever since it started putting out books again, even though it's terribly few books, directed mainly at DMs. That's pretty conclusive.
Of course it is conclusive - nothing sells better then the core books. As Mike says, it is after year three that things become more interesting.
pming
Legend
Hiya!
And equally funny, they haven't produced any RPG book (themselves or through direct licensee's) that is for anything but FR. It's like saying "Most people are buying cars that run on petrol, so the car industry must be doing something right"... are people buying gas-based cars because they actually want to...or because that's pretty much all they can buy? If WotC stopped producing FR related RPG stuff for a year, would that "poll" change?
I find it much more telling that, despite them only making FR based RPG stuff, there are more people playing in non-FR campaigns. It's like if 90% of the car industry were producing gas based cars, but the last 10% of the car market is selling to more than 50% of the people buying a new car.
As for all the other comments I've gotten about my "brand"..er...comments... What my base feeling on the matter is, is that it seems like The Suits are trying to "force" everyone to accept what they are saying simply because that's what they are saying and doing. They aren't giving us what "we" want (me and my group at least), and instead giving us what "they" want to give us. I have no problem with lots of offshoot D&D stuff...e.g., the whole "branding" thing, as a concept. But I want things to come about because of all the cool and diverse D&D stuff out there. I don't want "the company" to try and dictate what "is D&D".
Anyway, as I said, right now I don't really have a pegasus in the race...with what they are producing, we aren't buying. I'm letting them know what I want and don't want 'with my wallet', as many people say to do. I just wish that the other 50%+ of people playing D&D not set in FR would stop buying the FR based stuff they are putting out. That's the only way to keep "D&D Brand" as encompassing a plethora of unique, fun and interesting ideas...other wise we will have "D&D Brand" as encompassing pretty much nothing but FR. In 10 years, we'll have "Forgotten Realms: The Role Playing Game". Someone want to archive this prediction for future use?
^_^
Paul L. Ming
And equally funny, they haven't produced any RPG book (themselves or through direct licensee's) that is for anything but FR. It's like saying "Most people are buying cars that run on petrol, so the car industry must be doing something right"... are people buying gas-based cars because they actually want to...or because that's pretty much all they can buy? If WotC stopped producing FR related RPG stuff for a year, would that "poll" change?
I find it much more telling that, despite them only making FR based RPG stuff, there are more people playing in non-FR campaigns. It's like if 90% of the car industry were producing gas based cars, but the last 10% of the car market is selling to more than 50% of the people buying a new car.
As for all the other comments I've gotten about my "brand"..er...comments... What my base feeling on the matter is, is that it seems like The Suits are trying to "force" everyone to accept what they are saying simply because that's what they are saying and doing. They aren't giving us what "we" want (me and my group at least), and instead giving us what "they" want to give us. I have no problem with lots of offshoot D&D stuff...e.g., the whole "branding" thing, as a concept. But I want things to come about because of all the cool and diverse D&D stuff out there. I don't want "the company" to try and dictate what "is D&D".
Anyway, as I said, right now I don't really have a pegasus in the race...with what they are producing, we aren't buying. I'm letting them know what I want and don't want 'with my wallet', as many people say to do. I just wish that the other 50%+ of people playing D&D not set in FR would stop buying the FR based stuff they are putting out. That's the only way to keep "D&D Brand" as encompassing a plethora of unique, fun and interesting ideas...other wise we will have "D&D Brand" as encompassing pretty much nothing but FR. In 10 years, we'll have "Forgotten Realms: The Role Playing Game". Someone want to archive this prediction for future use?
^_^
Paul L. Ming
Zardnaar
Legend
It became public knowledge a few years back about Paizos sales. 30% annual growth rate form 2009-2012 when Paizo was getting around 11.2 million per year. Even if Paizo took 20% (and it was more like 40-60% of the D&D fanbase) that would probably cut into the margins a huge amount and make it unprofitable to print 4E books. Even a small drop in sales can destroy the profit margins.
Azurewraith
Explorer
Hiya!
Anyway, as I said, right now I don't really have a pegasus in the race...with what they are producing, we aren't buying. I'm letting them know what I want and don't want 'with my wallet', as many people say to do. I just wish that the other 50%+ of people playing D&D not set in FR would stop buying the FR based stuff they are putting out. That's the only way to keep "D&D Brand" as encompassing a plethora of unique, fun and interesting ideas...other wise we will have "D&D Brand" as encompassing pretty much nothing but FR. In 10 years, we'll have "Forgotten Realms: The Role Playing Game". Someone want to archive this prediction for future use?
^_^
Paul L. Ming
This is the issue though 90% of the worlds population are just drones to the corporate overlords and buy it anyway lets look at some prime examples shall we. " DLC sucks its way over priced, but im still going to buy that CoD map pack or the next destiny expansion even though its only worth half of what they are charging ill still buy it" Same way people complain that the bins don't get emptied properly or that street lights don't work yet still pay council tax.
pming
Legend
Hiya!
Preach it, brother!
Thankfully I'm not one of those drones.
I happily give money (usually money I don't have) to companies that I don't even want their stuff...because I support the company (very few and far between, unfortunately). When WotC starts to treat D&D as a Brand, as D&D, I'll consider forking over the cash. But as long as they continue to try and mold "D&D" as "That game that Forgotten Realms uses"...no thanks. They need to stop trying to tie everything into FR as a setting base, and FR characters and FR 'factions', and FR story/plot lines ...and start tying everything into Dungeons & Dragons, the RPG, that is a "Game of Imagination, for Adults aged 12 and up".
...I'm not holding my breath...
^_^
Paul L. Ming
Preach it, brother!
Thankfully I'm not one of those drones.
I happily give money (usually money I don't have) to companies that I don't even want their stuff...because I support the company (very few and far between, unfortunately). When WotC starts to treat D&D as a Brand, as D&D, I'll consider forking over the cash. But as long as they continue to try and mold "D&D" as "That game that Forgotten Realms uses"...no thanks. They need to stop trying to tie everything into FR as a setting base, and FR characters and FR 'factions', and FR story/plot lines ...and start tying everything into Dungeons & Dragons, the RPG, that is a "Game of Imagination, for Adults aged 12 and up". ...I'm not holding my breath...
^_^
Paul L. Ming
ProgBard
First Post
In contrast, my impressions of 5E are that it's the most supportive of D&D's diversity of settings in its baseline assumptions that any edition has ever been.
I don't recall any prior edition taking as much time in its PHB and DMG to namedrop all the established settings, nor to make as much point as they do to say that you might have a homebrew world that you can twiddle the knobs on to your liking. I've never seen an edition that puts out adventures with guidance on how to adapt them from the baseline setting, nor a setting-specific guidebook that does the same thing. I've never experienced a D&D with as much baked-in perspective that this is your game to do with what you will, from the core books to the APs. It's one of the reasons I came back to the game with 5E.
You want to know why the 5E line has focused on the Forgotten Realms? It's not a swiving conspiracy. It's because FR hits the sweet spot of generic + popular that represents the biggest spread of the game's baseline assumptions. It's a way of saying, "Hey, we bet your campaign world looks a lot like this, and where it doesn't, you know what to do." It's because the map in the adventure needs to have some place names on it, and they might as well be in the context of the world with the most name recognition. It's not because Ed Greenwood is secretly the Borg Queen. You want to boycott the line because it says "Faerun" in the background text - hey, if that's the hill you wanna die on, go right ahead. But don't fool yourself into thinking it's because you're being "forced" to do anything in particular with the fifth edition of D&D, not when the designers have gone out of their way to point out the opposite.
This game isn't designed to "support" all our special snowflake homebrew worlds. It's not Fate, for the gods' sake, and we shouldn't expect it to be; indeed, there are reasons to think that trying to move it in that direction is a suboptimal choice. Yeah, it can give you a certain number of varyingly-crunchy toolkit options, but those were always going to be within the more or less narrow confines of "generic D&D." The days of crazy-ass niche-y splatbooks are past, for good or ill. That's not The Man trying to keep you down, it's a matter of necessary focus and careful resource management (a thing one might think gamers had a more intuitively sympathetic perspective on, it bears pointing out).
And let us not forget: You know who was really invested in making sure everyone was playing D&D the same way? Gary bloody Gygax, while we're waxing nostalgic about how wonderful things useta be. (A tradition that seems to have been taken up by a not-inconsiderable number of OSR folks, more's the pity, which is one of the several reasons I wish those guys well but am not one of them.) Exactly none of that attitude has been present in any of what the Wizards folks have been saying, in the game text or outside of it, even if you squint really, really hard. (With the possible exception of AL, for reasons that are both practical and glaringly obvious.)
I'm old enough to remember the first time D&D was a "brand." It was pretty great, actually - we had not just the Saturday morning cartoon, but action figures and toy figurines in KayBee (while I'm dating myself) and all kinds of ancillary merchandise. You know what came with that? Iconic characters and other stuff that grounded an "official" baseline for stuff that was recognizably D&D. If they're going to achieve anything like that again - and keep in mind that it took about a decade from the genesis of the game to get the property to that level, back in the Golden Age and all - the managers of the brand would be stone fools to not build on the proper names and iconic characters of their most recognizable setting. "Some chubby nerd on the Internets curls his lip every time you say 'Drizzt'" doesn't even register as a blip in the Con column for that. Sorry. That's not purely cynical capitalism at work there, either. It's the sound decision-making that people who are trying to thread the needle of marrying a beloved creative hobby to a vocation make instinctively, and rightly so, and I'd wager the little finger of my chording hand that they're making it out of love at least as much as for any other reason. Making "The Suits at Hasbro" into a bogeyman does these creators a huge disservice in this regard. And, frankly, says a great deal more about fannish entitlement than anything about the actual people making the game.
I don't recall any prior edition taking as much time in its PHB and DMG to namedrop all the established settings, nor to make as much point as they do to say that you might have a homebrew world that you can twiddle the knobs on to your liking. I've never seen an edition that puts out adventures with guidance on how to adapt them from the baseline setting, nor a setting-specific guidebook that does the same thing. I've never experienced a D&D with as much baked-in perspective that this is your game to do with what you will, from the core books to the APs. It's one of the reasons I came back to the game with 5E.
You want to know why the 5E line has focused on the Forgotten Realms? It's not a swiving conspiracy. It's because FR hits the sweet spot of generic + popular that represents the biggest spread of the game's baseline assumptions. It's a way of saying, "Hey, we bet your campaign world looks a lot like this, and where it doesn't, you know what to do." It's because the map in the adventure needs to have some place names on it, and they might as well be in the context of the world with the most name recognition. It's not because Ed Greenwood is secretly the Borg Queen. You want to boycott the line because it says "Faerun" in the background text - hey, if that's the hill you wanna die on, go right ahead. But don't fool yourself into thinking it's because you're being "forced" to do anything in particular with the fifth edition of D&D, not when the designers have gone out of their way to point out the opposite.
This game isn't designed to "support" all our special snowflake homebrew worlds. It's not Fate, for the gods' sake, and we shouldn't expect it to be; indeed, there are reasons to think that trying to move it in that direction is a suboptimal choice. Yeah, it can give you a certain number of varyingly-crunchy toolkit options, but those were always going to be within the more or less narrow confines of "generic D&D." The days of crazy-ass niche-y splatbooks are past, for good or ill. That's not The Man trying to keep you down, it's a matter of necessary focus and careful resource management (a thing one might think gamers had a more intuitively sympathetic perspective on, it bears pointing out).
And let us not forget: You know who was really invested in making sure everyone was playing D&D the same way? Gary bloody Gygax, while we're waxing nostalgic about how wonderful things useta be. (A tradition that seems to have been taken up by a not-inconsiderable number of OSR folks, more's the pity, which is one of the several reasons I wish those guys well but am not one of them.) Exactly none of that attitude has been present in any of what the Wizards folks have been saying, in the game text or outside of it, even if you squint really, really hard. (With the possible exception of AL, for reasons that are both practical and glaringly obvious.)
I'm old enough to remember the first time D&D was a "brand." It was pretty great, actually - we had not just the Saturday morning cartoon, but action figures and toy figurines in KayBee (while I'm dating myself) and all kinds of ancillary merchandise. You know what came with that? Iconic characters and other stuff that grounded an "official" baseline for stuff that was recognizably D&D. If they're going to achieve anything like that again - and keep in mind that it took about a decade from the genesis of the game to get the property to that level, back in the Golden Age and all - the managers of the brand would be stone fools to not build on the proper names and iconic characters of their most recognizable setting. "Some chubby nerd on the Internets curls his lip every time you say 'Drizzt'" doesn't even register as a blip in the Con column for that. Sorry. That's not purely cynical capitalism at work there, either. It's the sound decision-making that people who are trying to thread the needle of marrying a beloved creative hobby to a vocation make instinctively, and rightly so, and I'd wager the little finger of my chording hand that they're making it out of love at least as much as for any other reason. Making "The Suits at Hasbro" into a bogeyman does these creators a huge disservice in this regard. And, frankly, says a great deal more about fannish entitlement than anything about the actual people making the game.
Tony Vargas
Legend
30% growth is not hard to achieve with a small company - and it's very easy to report for a small, privately held one.
Pathfinder premiered in 2009. The core books are always the biggest seller with an RPG, but it failed to challenge D&D for the top spot at that time, even though D&D was just publishing supplements. PF had two winning quarters vs D&D, when WotC was trying out the new Essentials rules and format, which apparently, didn't work out that well. When they went back to the hardcover format, D&D went back on top until they stopped printing it.
It's back on top now, with only a few books a year against everything Paizo can put out.
No amount of speculation, out of date 3rd-hand statistics, or made up numbers is going to change that.
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