D&D 5E D&D Team Productivity?

[Urriak Uruk]

I'd say they are a bit too productive and with each subsequent release they worsening the main problem of 5e, lack of focus, instead of solving it.

I kind of love how you and @Maxperson have the opposite opinion and both dislike 5E's release format. It's a great example of how POV shapes opinion.

 

[Parmandur]

Why would we "include adventures" without shining a spotlight on the very when the fact that all of those adventures are set in one corner of one setting wotc has largely spent all of 5e attempting to force everyone to like? Dont forget that the very narrow band of d&d thst those adventures exclusively target has been part of the problem for a great many pages of this thread & pointed out repeatedly.

They focus on the FR for two reasons: first, it is very popular. Two, it is easy to repurpose to any other Setting. Any FR product in 5E is basically meant to provide generic material. Even SCAG has extensive suggestions for using the material in other Settings.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

@Maxperson has already said he doesn't consider Volos or Mordenkainens as general use rulebooks, as they contain a lot of lore and he doesn't consider monsters as more rules.

Which IMO means he doesn't consider the Monster Manual a rulebook (even though it obviously is), but I digress.



In @Parmandur 's defense, he has said that if you include a bunch of supplementary RPG content for previous editions, you should also include the DMsGuild for this edition.

My opinion is largely that we are focusing a lot on the count of books, instead of the amount of content in those books, which just seems to grow every year. Last year's adventure, the Frostmaiden, is a whole 320 pages chock full of adventure and content that is well-suited for a frozen environment. It's hard to sell to me that the D&D team is not productive, when they release products like this.

Wildemount: 304 pages
Theros: 256 pages
Frostmaiden: 319 pages
Tasha's: 192 pages
TOTAL: 1,071

If instead, we were given a product with 90 pages every month (which is about the same page lengths) would we complain about productivity?

I think we SHOULD be counting DMs Guild content...that is produced by WotC. Not the entire site, but all the Adventurers League 5e stuff for sure.

And for the 1e era we also should include the adventures, the magazine content applicable, and even (if you really want to fairly determine who was productive) Boot Hill, Star Frontiers, Gamma World, Marvel, etc...

Distilling down the 1e 80s era to just 13 hardbacks isn't a very accurate accounting for how busy that team was.

 

[Parmandur]

Unless you count magazine (and other RPG) content, which YOU have decided not to count but which an argument can be made to count. So it is STILL subjective.

Like I said previously, if we count the magazine stuff, then we have to also include the modern equivalent, DMsGuild, which dwarfs that material. We can ignore both, or consider both, but considering one and not the other would be absurd.

 

[Parmandur]

That's technically correct, which is the best and in this case pretty disingenuous kind of correct.

If you have a 1e car going 1 mph and a 5e car going 2mph, when you compare it to the 2e, 3e and 4e cars zooming by at 100+ mph, they're both freaking slow and you know it. It doesn't matter that the 5e car is crawling forward
forward a hair faster or that 2 is technically closer to the middle.

It's more like comparing 15 MPH to 30 MPH on city streets, as opposed to the 3E Autobahn.

 

[Parmandur]

I think we SHOULD be counting DMs Guild content...that is produced by WotC. Not the entire site, but all the Adventurers League 5e stuff for sure.

And for the 1e era we also should include the adventures, the magazine content applicable, and even (if you really want to fairly determine who was productive) Boot Hill, Star Frontiers, Gamma World, Marvel, etc...

Distilling down the 1e 80s era to just 13 hardbacks isn't a very accurate accounting for how busy that team was.

The magazine content was not made in-house, it was submissions, just like DMsGuild. There was some barebones editorial oversight, but really not much.

TSR made other games, but it also had a lot more people working on RPGs (and WotC also has a much larger Magic team, for that matter).

 

[Urriak Uruk]

They focus on the FR for two reasons: first, it is very popular. Two, it is easy to repurpose to any other Setting. Any FR product in 5E is basically meant to provide generic material. Even SCAG has extensive suggestions for using the material in other Settings.

3. I think its rumored WotC is still contractually obligated to release FR books about annually, part of when they bought it from Ed Greenwood. Just a rumor I think, but the annual adventure books help stymy that if its true.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

I think we SHOULD be counting DMs Guild content...that is produced by WotC. Not the entire site, but all the Adventurers League 5e stuff for sure.

And for the 1e era we also should include the adventures, the magazine content applicable, and even (if you really want to fairly determine who was productive) Boot Hill, Star Frontiers, Gamma World, Marvel, etc...

Distilling down the 1e 80s era to just 13 hardbacks isn't a very accurate accounting for how busy that team was.

I don't know... a lot of the magazine stuff was barely edited by the D&D team, it was just them taking submissions and putting them in their mag. It doesn't seem that much more "curated" than what the DMsGuild does with its rules on content labeling.

This is an apples to oranges comparison in many ways.

 

[loverdrive]

I don't know... a lot of the magazine stuff was barely edited by the D&D team, it was just them taking submissions and putting them in their mag. It doesn't seem that much more "curated" than what the DMsGuild does with its rules on content labeling.

Well, then if we count barely edited community created content... Sounds pretty much the same to me.

 

[tetrasodium]

It's more like comparing 15 MPH to 30 MPH on city streets, as opposed to the 3E Autobahn.

I don't know where you live that a street improperly zoned with the wrong speed limit because the kid of someone important once did something stupid to get killed doesn't cause drivers rage every time they need to crawl past the everpresent speed trap. In such a situation I'm sure people who live on that street & enjoy the needlessly slow traffic allowing a more significant road to get treated as their own personal living street will point to the lack of accidents & say how it's working perfect just as those who are in the narrow band 5e caters to almost exclusively have been doing in this thread with sales comparisons & the ever present appeal to popularity.

They focus on the FR for two reasons: first, it is very popular. Two, it is easy to repurpose to any other Setting. Any FR product in 5E is basically meant to provide generic material. Even SCAG has extensive suggestions for using the material in other Settings.

the popularity of FR is overblown. when nearly 100% of the content & focus is on FR since long before 5e & even the occasional deviation with other settings (5e cos, ddo in eberron, etc) tend to have the setting treated with a general lack of respect to make it support FR. As to FR being some kind of generic easy to port kitchen sink or something, Tasha's finally proved that farce for what it is by republishing the artificer & group patrons from Rising with the eberron fluff stripped to fit in FR fluff. To say that FR is generic is like saying that star trek is generic in a discussion about if starfinder can support star wars, babylon5, the expanse, red dwarf, & star trek inclusion at "spaceshownerdcon".... Eventually even the trekkies need to admit the space-shownerdcon is just failing a large segment of their attendees with that farce of a broom closet devoted to everything not what you all know to be the best space serial ever & only one deserving of mention so just get onboard with the popularity of star trek already.