Congratulations WotC...

[Ruin Explorer]

3E was a golden era for me (with warts and all) because of the sheer amount of third party content that was being added.

Yeah, like I didn't love 3.XE's rules, like, at all. The longer I played it, the less I liked them. But I did buy a lot of books in that era, especially between 2000 and 2004? HELL YES. Were a lot of them 3PP ones? Absolutely. And what's interesting is, that's when the other DMs I know and play 5E and other games with also bought an awful lot of books and adventures and so on. Many of them 3PP. Also in that era, players bought more books, in my experience, than they do now, too. Because there were so many books, it was much more likely there was one the DM didn't have. That's probably not a great thing from a sales efficiency perspective, but it's interesting and still shows high total sales.

 

[Horwath]

Haha, just to prove my point @Morrus adds "OGL" and "1D&D" prefix tags.

it would be sad if it isn't funny in a way.

 

[WarDriveWorley]

Also in that era, players bought more books, in my experience, than they do now, too. Because there were so many books, it was much more likely there was one the DM didn't have.

I had that same experience. While I owned the majority (meme for tax) our group overall had a ton of additional books because the others would buy books I didn't or ones we used enough that we needed more than one copy. I don't remember the same happening in 4E and 5E.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

If I wanted to clone 4e, I'd have to write like 500 powers without infringing copyright... not easy or quick.

I bet you would make a better game if you don't write 10 copies of 1 power and instead use power lists and upleveling. And while you are at it, consolidate feats too.

The engine is powerful but suffers from clutter. Actually if you just take the phb fighter and give it essentials style power attack, you have a working fighter.

Maybe also reduce stat increases and reduce 1/2 level bonus to 1/3 level bonus and instead of creating minions for every monster, introduce a crit rule, that if you hit a creature of 5 levels below your level, if you hit by 5 or more, you kill it with a single blow.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I don't remember the same happening in 4E and 5E.

In 4E I saw it a tiny bit, with the power source books, but we stopped buying books almost entirely before long because we were subbed to the DDI once it became available. That probably wasn't the greatest for WotC's profits lol, but more than one sub was dumb because they weren't linked so you need all the characters in one place on the DDI, so we all shared a logon - I think with the character creator weirdly maybe only one person could be on at once and we had to organise, but certainly with the rules encylopedia thing we could all be in it at the same time. Beyond cracked that at least, giving everyone separate and connect-able accounts, with shared content if the DM allows it (and has a paid sub - fair enough honestly).

With 5E we didn't see it at all for two reasons:

1) The books came out extremely slowly, and of them which were vital, I just got more or less immediately, as it wasn't like I was being firehose'd with books like 3E lol.

2) The books I didn't get often did have some player options (races, subclasses), but they weren't really attractive to players because the amount of options were soooooooooooooooo small compared to what was in the book generally. Like, I could easily see a player buying a book with 15+ races and 20+ subclasses or whatever, but instead they've gone up usually with low single digit numbers of either.

That's not a criticism, per se, it was an intentional and conscious strategy, and I have no doubt it was more efficient in the sense that, if you're selling printed books, you're going to sell more copies if every one seems special and important than if you firehose them. But as we increasingly go to digital...

 

[Branduil]

I bet you would make a better game if you don't write 10 copies of 1 power and instead use power lists and upleveling. And while you are at it, consolidate feats too.

The engine is powerful but suffers from clutter. Actually if you just take the phb fighter and give it essentials style power attack, you have a working fighter.

Maybe also reduce stat increases and reduce 1/2 level bonus to 1/3 level bonus and instead of creating minions for every monster, introduce a crit rule, that if you hit a creature of 5 levels below your level, if you hit by 5 or more, you kill it with a single blow.

Oh believe me, I've spent time thinking about my 4e heartbreaker... hard to say if now is a good or bad time to work on that.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Oh believe me, I've spent time thinking about my 4e heartbreaker... hard to say if now is a good or bad time to work on that.

I always wanted to just build characters and play it as an advanced tabletop game.
I really liked 4e (especially how strategical combat worked), but it just did not fit with our available time, so we did not make progression in our adventure.

 

[Retreater]

Let's work on building an analogy that might be a way the suits at Wizards (coming from the video game business) would understand. Those of you who know more about current Triple-A video games might be able to think of real examples.
Let's say you have an enormously big and popular video game, for example Call of Duty. Let's say that game has been more popular than it's ever been.
Let's say that game has a vibrant modding community, creating new maps, skins, etc. Of course many play it online on Xbox, etc, and show livestreams.
So you announce that you're coming out with a new version (as you should every cycle). You announce you want to monetize it more with microtransactions. You're going to destroy the modding community. You're planning to take away the ability to play it on anything but Call of Duty online play network, and live streams are potentially out too.
But they've also told you that Call of Duty is perfect the way it is. It needs only a few gameplay tweaks. People who still have Call of Duty 2014 can play with people who have Call of Duty 2023.
Then they see a massive negative social media campaign, streamers on YouTube with millions of subscribers calling them terrible names, their biggest content creators and live streamers say they're not going with the new game.
So how do you think the suits of WotC are seeing this? Just another day at the office if you are used to the video game industry?

 

[Staffan]

Yes, but let's be clear, this was the THIRD TIME the Forgotten Realms had suffered because rules were being put ahead of setting. Because it was the biggest rules change, it also featured the most dramatic idiocy. I won't defend what they did to the FR. It was just dumb. There were other ways to handle it. But again, the third time, with the first being the Time of Troubles, the second being whatever the idiocy was with 3E (involving The Weave somehow? I don't even remember at this point)

3e actually didn't alter the Realms significantly. I mean, there was still the steady metaplot progression, but it didn't come packed with a Big Event to explain why things are Different. Instead, the official line was something like "The Forgotten Realms books are an approximation of the 'real' Realms, and the 3e books are a better approximation."

In other words, when the Symbul changed from a wizard to a sorcerer, that wasn't an in-setting change but rather that sorcerer is a better fit for whatever she "really" is. Unlike 2e which explained the disappearance of the Assassin class by saying that Bane sucked out the life force of all the assassins to help him fight Torm.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

3e actually didn't alter the Realms significantly. I mean, there was still the steady metaplot progression, but it didn't come packed with a Big Event to explain why things are Different. Instead, the official line was something like "The Forgotten Realms books are an approximation of the 'real' Realms, and the 3e books are a better approximation."

In other words, when the Symbul changed from a wizard to a sorcerer, that wasn't an in-setting change but rather that sorcerer is a better fit for whatever she "really" is. Unlike 2e which explained the disappearance of the Assassin class by saying that Bane sucked out the life force of all the assassins to help him fight Torm.

I mean, they literally and very intentionally rescaled the entire continent to change distances (decreasing them), and moved around some places on the map (not very far in most cases I think, but still). I would personally call that a significant alteration.

I actually thought I'd gone insane or had memory problems when I played 3E FR a bit (we mostly didn't play FR in 3E), because some stuff wasn't where I was very sure it was. Turns out WotC just accidentally gaslighted the hell out of me by not actually telling people they did this.

5E fixed it all, and is the same scales and positions as 2E, interestingly. But I bet that gaslighted a few people who started with 3E lol!

I looked into the event thing, and there was an event planned by they skipped and then quietly added it in as a retcon. Still, the maps changes are kind of nuts.