D&D 5E D&DN going down the wrong path for everyone.

[Nemesis Destiny]

Yeah, we're not everyone, but I did have a pretty parallel experience. We played a LOT of 1e back in its early days, but then got a bit jaded by the time 2e came out, and while we played a couple fairly extensive 2e campaigns we were really off onto other games and other things by the time 3e came around. I READ a 3e PHB, but didn't much like what I saw. There were a lot of things that desperately needed reworking and 3e did rework a lot of them, but I just never could see it working well, the MCing and general caster power bloat was off-putting.

For my part, I was very ready for 3e at the end of the 2nd ed era. I was sick of boring fighters, sick of limited options, and really sick of all the fiddly rules subsystems, so the promise that 3e made of warriors with options, more diverse characters, and a unified, internally-consistent game engine were super-appealing to me. It wasn't until later when I realized that it wasn't meeting my expectations, and more importantly how and why it was failing to do so that I became discontented with it as well (ridiculous MCing and LFQW chief among the reasons).

Anyway, we had no qualms about the content of the game. I was a bit dubious about the presentation, but we started up a game and sure enough people picked classic archetypes, the roguish spy, the dour dwarf warrior, the flirty elvish wizard, etc. Things played pretty OK from the start, but I did find that the game was less forgiving in terms of knowing how to put together a good adventure. It really took me a couple years to FULLY appreciate the almost-Pemertonian degree that you could push it into open narrative type play (and for the record I assume this sort of play was not really anticipated by the 4e developers, in fact I'm skeptical they have yet cottoned to this style of play at all, maybe Chris Perkins has).

For us, it was a combination of content and presentation. My first character I deliberately picked choices that I thought I would hate, because I wanted to dislike the game. I actively tried to sabotage my experience with it. I failed, and I'm delighted that I did; I was having fun despite myself.

But yes, you make a good point; the game offers poor advice on how to really make it sing, and no prior D&D experience really prepares you for it either. I eventually got wise to the techniques required, but stumbled by them accidentally. It wasn't until I started having conversations about pemertonian scene-framing on these board that I began to understand why these techniques worked so well. Now that I'm in the know, I don't want to go back, and I think that's one of the reasons why I'm finding Next to be such a disappointment so far.

So, yeah, I don't know if 4e is 'ugly but plays well'. In some ways it isn't ugly at all, but OTOH the presentation of a lot of the elements and ideas is inconsistent or misses some really interesting aspects of the game. This is all a major reason why I'm more interested in what can be done with 4e than in Yet Another DnD-Like which is what DDN seems to be. It just doesn't spin any wheels for me. I can do what DDN seems to be aiming to do using 2e and have been able to since before many younger players were even born! lol.

I should clarify. Yes, in some ways it's not ugly, per se, but it's not what I wanted in a D&D book - or so I thought. *Now* I appreciate the clean presentation, but when it launched, I thought it looked silly, contrived, and very clinical, for lack of a better word. Even then, though, I thought they would have been better off presenting the rules in a neutral SRD-like way and letting individuals add their own skin to it (because I hated a lot of their default choices). Something like the more-stark presentation of the X Power series. The presentation they chose is excellent for conveying game information, and I thought I wanted a book of Gygaxian prose with a game in it. Now I think they made the right choice. Though as supplements like Heroes of the Feywild shows, there is room for movement in both directions.

I pretty much agree with the rest of your point here; I would sooner see them push the limits of 4e design further, and still cling to hope that after the initial hubbub of 5e has subsided, that we may yet get back to that (though I'm not holding my breath, lol). At the same time, I understand and generally support what they're trying to do, even if I don't like how they're going about it. If only they had produced Next instead of 3e back in 2000...

 

[Jester David]

4e is unsupported? If you go look at WotC's product catalog it is FILLED with 4e products. Yes, they have REPRINTED a smattering of classic adventures and a book or two from each of several older editions as limited collector's releases. There were only 1000 sets of the 1e books for the memorial IIRC, that's hardly a massive number. Sure, they will release a new 1e adventure, that's hardly reviving the product. Meanwhile they will publish 24 4e adventures in Dungeon and several more that have been released for LFR and organized play (admittedly some of these are technically not 'published', but they are all available). So, June 2008 to August 2014, I make that 6 years. Anyway, it is a silly argument, but you do this all the time, spinning things in a way that diminishes 4e as a game, like you want to see it reduced to some sort of insignificance or make some point.

4e was supported, but that support has ceased. Would you count the time between December 2007 (the date of the last book 3e was published) and the release of the 4e books as being part of the lifespan of 3e?
By your definition, if 5e is a failure and books cease in 2015 and WotC shelved the D&D brand for 20 year before resurrecting it in 2035, then 5e would have run for 21 years and been the longest lasting edition.

The e-magazines are the exception, but this is because they can’t stop publishing content for two years and it’s too early to release 5e content, but it’s not really as sign the edition is alive.

And, more importantly, how does it diminish the game? The game should stand for itself. Something doesn’t need to be popular to be good. You don’t need external validation to enjoy 4e. Having it be a runaway success exceeding all expectations or a commercial disaster that almost kills the company does not change your enjoyment one iota.
Especially since I keep saying the lion’s share of 4e’s early end is unrelated to the actual mechanics and game.

The ROI on a book with NO editing or typesetting costs is pretty darn low! What do they have, new cover designs?
I’ll remind you of this in a second.

For every dollar they make on that stuff they're bringing in $100 or $1000 from DDI alone. I'm sorry, I think you've stretched this whole hackneyed thing a bit too far.

DDI is a perk. It won’t survive indefinitely without the books. It’s a service that makes the game easier to run but if the game goes away so does DDI.
While the tools are specific to 4e, DDI itself is system neutral. The magazines will work just as easily with 5e content. And I’m sure they’re already working on tools for Next. Given the framwork is pre-built it should be much faster and ready for launch.

Meh, not really, once the volume falls below a certain amount the cashflow is too low and you can't make money anymore, you won't meet overhead. It costs money to maintain stock, sales force, distribution, returns, etc. Each sale gets more and more expensive even though the cost of the actual product sold may go down. In the case of a book it only goes down so much too, printing is a big expense.

In this case you’re just plain wrong. You even know it, using your earlier words: “The ROI on a book with NO editing or typesetting costs is pretty darn low! What do they have, new cover designs?”

If you sell 200,000 copies of a book during the first print run a portion of those sales generate no profit and only go to paying off the production costs (writing, art, editing, layout, etc). After that all money that comes in is profit. Printing costs never go down but if you do a second print run of 200,000 you make significantly more money than the first time. Even if the print run is slightly smaller, say 175,000, with a higher per-item cost (because printing costs are based on the number of books you print) you might make more money than the initial print run when you’re not paying the production costs.
It makes significant financial sense to keep a Core Rulebook regularly in print and very relevant as a perpetual source of income. And it makes sense rather than releasing a whole new edition every 4-6 years to do an extra editing pass, clear up some text, and make revisions and then release a revision with most of the same art, writing and lay-out.

Now, 2e and 3e both failed at this. 2e by changing all the art and 3e by not keeping the revision easily compatible. 4e failed by not even revising but releasing an entirely new product rather than reprinting with incorporated errata.
That is, as long as the game is designed to aim sales at the Core Rulebooks.

This is something WotC has gotten bad at. Their sales team tends to think more as a board game or CCG company. Board Game expansions require the core game to play, so this is a different beast than books. And as cards are cheap to produce with no central starter set required, so it’s easy and profitable to always look forward and focus marketing and attention on the next product.
Books are different, RPG books especially. Everything needs to point back to the Core Rulebook. It should always, always be on shelves.

But again, we have little idea what the sales figures are for 4e books either. The problem with the comparisons people do with 4e and PF in particular is PF came out a full year after 4e, more actually. So what happened? 4e sold a TON of core books, and then, as always, sales tailed off and PF comes out with their core book, which outsells 4e AT THAT TIME.

But sales don’t always tail off. As I said, sales of Pathfinder’s core book increased in 2010 and 2011 respectively and it continues to sell well both on Amazon and their online store. Sales only tail off if no one is getting into the game and the player base plateaus. And this is bad.

I know factually that the 4e PHB outsold the 3.5 and 3e PHBs, and it is perfectly reasonable to assume it has also outsold the PF core book, and may well have outsold all 3 combined.

It was quoted in a piece on one of the industry blogs right around the DDN announcement, quoted from one of the 4e developers that was released at that time. You can accept it at face value or not, frankly I don't need to prove anything, but it was a very plain straightforward quote, which I BARELY paraphrased from memory. Of course I presume that the statement would be qualified "sold more than any other WOTC game book in history" though that would probably also count TSR since their numbers are a matter of public record. I doubt WotC devs are privvy to the sales figures of other companies.

Joseph Goodman did some research on the sales of 3e versus 4e at the start of the edition. He was pretty emphatic that 4e was doing quite well but not as well as 3e, which had a once-in-a-generation perfect storm of a sales peak. 3.5e less so.

I’ll buy that the 4e PHB sold better than the 3.5e PHB but not the 3.0PHB. And even to have outsold the PF Core Rulebook.
But how many people continued to buy books after? How many people just picked-up the PHB and stopped with that book? That’s the (unanswerable) million dollar question.

Still, I’d love a link, because the exact words, context, and who was saying it are crucial.
If it was “sold more than any other WOTC game book” then, as you say, it wouldn’t include 1e or 2e which were not published by WotC (although they did have access to TSR’s financial records).
But it could also have been “sold to stores” which is different that actual sales because many PHB just sat on the shelves. Or it could have been something that is recalled as “sold more than” after a year, but was actually “generated the most money” which is different given the 4e PHB was 160% of the price of the 3.5e PHB.
Or it could have been someone who didn’t have the full sales figures. I doubt WotC circulates that information throughout the company.

They've talked about it, and they will do it eventually. If DDN is timed correctly then WotC can drop at least a minor refresh on PF2's tail and you can bet they will try.

Well... you’re pretty certain of your every-five-years theory, which would mean Paizo is working on a new edition right now and we don’t know what they have planned for 2014 or 2015. They could very, very easily release a core rulebook revision in 2015 and catch 5e a year after release again.
The only way WotC could catch Paizo is if PF1 lasts nine years and PF2 is released on 2018 and 5e only lasts 4 years and 6e drops on 2019. Which wouldn’t say much about 5e...

That said, I expect a reprinting of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook sooner rather than later. The book is big and daunting. I expect they’ll re-release it as two books with the improved formatting and layout of their more recent books but also incorporating the major additions of PF such as archetypes; I expect a smaller and cheaper Core Rulebook with fewer classes and races and then a larger expansion book (the Player’s Guide, so having the Advanced Player’s Guide still makes sense).
And, thinking about it, if I were going to do a major revision of PF, 2017 might be the date I’d aim for. That’s the 15th anniversary of Paizo and 10th of the Pathfinder brand. Or at least releasing a playtest then.

 

[pemerton]

I agree that this is the obvious solution, but I'm not convinced it's the best one. It draws far too much attention to the metagame during play, and it's very difficult to design a dual combat system in which the choice between "simple" and "complex" does not significantly affect the likelihood of victory.

Agreed on metagame issues. Also victory issues - in systems like BW and HW/Q this is ameliorated by (i) "fail forward' style adjudication and (ii) the economy of metagame currency (Fate Points etc).

I'd say a more promising avenue would be to focus on the opponents rather than the combat rules.

Where it gets challenging is in the case that you're building, say, a lich. Liches are certainly "boss monster" foes. You'd never expect to fight a lich and have it be a trivial skirmish! At the same time, the lich is primarily an arcane spellcaster, and it feels wrong for arcane casters--even undead ones--to have hit points on par with dragons and giants. One of the defining traits of D&D spellslingers is (relative) physical frailty. So the lich would have to be designed more creatively, perhaps giving it an array of defensive powers that allow it to hold the party at bay for several rounds.

The other difficulty is when you're making something like an ogre, which could be a boss monster at low levels and a skirmish monster at high levels. I'm not sure how to address that. 4E's solution was to have the same monster represented by different statblocks depending on what level you're fighting it at, but I really dislike that approach.

Well, I'm not sure how much less meta-game that is. It is just more diffusely meta-game. Instead of concentrating the game-related choices into "which combat system do we use for this fight" you spread it out and it becomes a factor in the design of all the monsters in the game.

I thought of the monster option when I made my post, but for the reasons you both give also think it has limits.

There are traditions of D&D monster design, too, that would have to be put to one side to make your approach work.

I'm not arguing for or against either approach - I just think they're both hard to implement within a trad-feel D&D.

After only a few sessions we were sold. The game "reads like crap, plays like gold" was a new saying at our table. It had little to do with the DM - normally I can't stand his style, as its usually quite pretentious and dis-empowering to players (it still was, but the 4e rules actually gave us a semblance of "control" over our own fate).

Interesting. Especially about the "player empowerment" aspect.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I wouldn't radically alter a monster's stats to fit this model. But I think it's useful when considering how to "express" a monster concept. It's really not much different from 4E's minion/regular/elite/solo classification--and as I said, we've seen some of this already in D&DN.

Let's say you're designing the standard-issue orc. The "skirmish monster/boss monster" approach would suggest that the standard-issue orc should have a few simple abilities without a strong tactical focus (e.g., nothing that depends on exact positioning), should deal solid damage, but shouldn't have a lot of hit points. You consider this and ask yourself, "Can I build a monster like this and have it still feel like an orc?" I would say that none of these traits is in conflict with the orc concept, so that's the way to go.

Then you design the standard-issue dragon. If you figure a dragon is typically a boss monster, you're looking at high hit points relative to damage output, and an array of tactically interesting abilities. Can you build a monster like this that feels like a dragon? Again, I would say yes, so there you are.

Where it gets challenging is in the case that you're building, say, a lich. Liches are certainly "boss monster" foes. You'd never expect to fight a lich and have it be a trivial skirmish! At the same time, the lich is primarily an arcane spellcaster, and it feels wrong for arcane casters--even undead ones--to have hit points on par with dragons and giants. One of the defining traits of D&D spellslingers is (relative) physical frailty. So the lich would have to be designed more creatively, perhaps giving it an array of defensive powers that allow it to hold the party at bay for several rounds.

The other difficulty is when you're making something like an ogre, which could be a boss monster at low levels and a skirmish monster at high levels. I'm not sure how to address that. 4E's solution was to have the same monster represented by different statblocks depending on what level you're fighting it at, but I really dislike that approach.

Yeah, I think you do run the risk of ending up with monsters that are rather pigeon-holed, especially since the flat math means things won't naturally evolve much. In 4e even if you didn't change things a low level elite would become largely trivial in 5 levels or so to the party, you'd change it to a standard or even a minion more for convenience than anything else.

I think the 4e monster roles are a bit more subtle than 'mook' and 'boss', that's PART of what the monster types do, but it is more flexible than that, and you have actual roles which are orthogonal to that, so a 'leader' can be a standard controller monster, while its huge hulking sidekick could be an elite brute. I also wonder about the mooks, I mean are they going to end up being just brushed aside again and again? Most fights might (4e experience with minions speaking) tend to come down to 'clear the mooks first round' and 'surround and bash the boss 2nd round'. Clearly mooks might not always roll over and die, and they would presumably do more damage than minions, but OTOH they aren't as cheap and etc. I think it will work, but I think in some ways 4e's technique provides a wider range of encounter templates, and allows easier changing of roles, but you've also noted that. Anyway, you're far from the first person to suggest a monster type intermediate between minions and standards. It does not lack merit as an idea, though I'd be hesitant to add it to a game that has already 4 types of monster.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

I like pairing minions with leaders that keep the minions alive. Basically, while the leader still lives, the minion gets a saving throw to avoid damage.

That way they become minions+: mooks, if you will.

I've even experimented with leaders that grant a +5 bonus to the saving throw but with an instant end if a condition was met. In one case they were wererats that had been infected with a necromantic "virus". If they were hit with a silver weapon there was no saving throw - they simply died - otherwise they had a saving throw with a +5 bonus while they were within the leader's aura.

It was actually one of the most satisfying 4E fights that I had run. It felt like an earlier edition fight in some ways - certainly in terms of speed - but it was also swing-y and tactically satisfying (I also used a good mix of terrain types). It was over in about 20 minutes of real time.

TL;DR: There's no need to specifically create a mook category. Just use leaders that have an aura that grant their allied minions a saving throw unless a specific condition - like hitting a lycanthrope with a silver weapon - is met.

 

[Mournblade94]

Yeah, that isn't adequate. Look at a 4e combat for instance. Setting aside arguments about table time, etc, what you have is a fairly elegant little mini-story wrapped up in a simple package. You have some monsters, and some PCs. The monsters have a bunch of front-loaded powers (encounter, recharge) which they can quickly unleash, but not so much staying power and few recovery options. The PCs OTOH have just enough resilience to absorb the up front monster 'rush' and then a whole series of escalation options and recovery abilities. This wraps up in a typically 5 round fight that acts like a little play with 5 acts. In act 1 the PCs are 'introduced' to the monsters, they establish how to achieve their goals, the monsters create the challenge by unleashing their front-loaded attacks, then in round 2 the PCs try to recover, wrong-foot the monsters (establish control), and begin to achieve their basic objectives (IE probably at least one monster goes down, maybe more). In round three the action rises to a peak with the monsters probably unleashing anything else they have in reserve and putting maximum pressure on, the PCs will typically unleash any remaining escalation here to turn the tide. In round 4 the tide may be already turned, or it may decisively turn at this point, and round 5 is usually falling action, but in a big fight would be the final triumph (or defeat). Usually a fight that goes past round 5 has exceeded its sell-by date and become a slug-fest.

How would I be able to do that with a fight that is tactically over on round 2? That basically gives each player one decision point in the whole fight. 4e's fight dynamics will give you around 3 decision points, which is enough to try something, recover, and then make the winning move.

I agree with you about the 4e combats. They are certainly elegant but they are very formulaic. I don't consider that a good thing. Every combat is a numbers game, (they are in other editions as well) but to me 4e was much more obviously a numbers game.

For many that was one of the problem with 4e combats. They were VERY formulaic. The 4e combat system is a nice mini game of positioning, but that became the point of 4e.

Make sure to have class that can block, make sure to have a class than can set up the guy that kills, make sure to have a guy that kills, and if you want a guy that throws enemies around go for it. It is exactly that formula of 4e combat that got me bored after 6 months of playing it.

 

[Mournblade94]

There are two kinds of fights in D&D. There's the kind of fight you have where you walk into a 10x10 room and an orc is guarding a chest, and there's the kind of fight you have where you walk into a gargantuan throne room in the Abyss and Orcus is guarding the artifact that will suck all life from the world. Or, to put it another way, there are minor skirmishes and there are big boss fights. And what most of us want out of each type of fight is very, very different.

For a minor skirmish, two rounds is plenty. A skirmish doesn't need internal decision points; the main decision point is simply, "Do we have this fight or not?" Once that decision is made, everybody chooses their opening-round tactics and things are decided in 10-15 minutes of play time. This is typical of BD&D, 1E, and 2E combats, and to some extent 3E as well.

For a big boss fight, two rounds is far too short. The fight should be an Event, with the kind of narrative structure AbdulAlhazred describes above. There need to be multiple decision points, unexpected reversals, and fresh challenges midway through. This is what well-executed 4E combats are like.

The problem is that an adventure really wants both types of fights, and no edition to date has done this very well. The old-school editions were superb at allowing players to battle their way through labyrinths full of lurking beasties, but when you got to the giant monster at the heart of the maze, the final battle often fell flat (unless the DM cheated shamelessly, which a lot of us did). Conversely, 4E could deliver some truly epic clashes, but the labyrinth full of beasties didn't work at all--you simply can't give every little skirmish the epic-clash treatment. "Keep on the Shadowfell" was a perfect example. It was a 4E adventure designed with a pre-4E mentality, and while it had some very memorable boss fights *cough*Irontooth*cough*, most of the module consisted of a brain-numbing slog through endless minor encounters.

My dream is that D&DN will find a way to deliver both. It's a pretty tall order, though.

I think the prior editions to 4e did this better. Small combats in fact were small. The big combat in any edition I played (barring a smart player trump) lasted as many rounds if not more than a 4e combat. That was the point though, it was supposed to. Fighting the vanguard does not have to be a 5 round combat. Even films do this. The mook fight is done in under a minute, where the villain fights take several minutes.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

4e was supported, but that support has ceased. Would you count the time between December 2007 (the date of the last book 3e was published) and the release of the 4e books as being part of the lifespan of 3e?
By your definition, if 5e is a failure and books cease in 2015 and WotC shelved the D&D brand for 20 year before resurrecting it in 2035, then 5e would have run for 21 years and been the longest lasting edition.

I would consider the lifetime of 3.5 extends to the release date of 4e, yes, again the magazines etc continued to support 3.5, as did customer support until that date. It was the currently available edition of D&D and remained in stock (at least the core books did). A 20 year hiatus would be a very different thing, and I don't know how to answer your question without details. You're attempting reductio ad-absurdum, but I think the difference here is so huge that it is probably qualitative. Clearly if WotC continued to sell DDN then it would be 'alive', but if not, if it wasn't a product at all? Then in at least some sense, yes, it would 'end' in 2015, but these are rather academic considerations. If you're going to try to argue it into "4e is not supported and there is no current D&D product" NOW TODAY, that's just not reasonable at all, and I don't buy it. Anyway, this is one of those debates that gets silly quickly. If it pleases you to believe that D&D is a dead product that has no current edition, that's fine with me...

The e-magazines are the exception, but this is because they can’t stop publishing content for two years and it’s too early to release 5e content, but it’s not really as sign the edition is alive.

And, more importantly, how does it diminish the game? The game should stand for itself. Something doesn’t need to be popular to be good. You don’t need external validation to enjoy 4e. Having it be a runaway success exceeding all expectations or a commercial disaster that almost kills the company does not change your enjoyment one iota.
Especially since I keep saying the lion’s share of 4e’s early end is unrelated to the actual mechanics and game.

I don't really actually care that much, though I would really like to see WotC work on a follow-on game to 4e, which DDN doesn't currently seem to be. I think this discussion started with your assertions of 4e having 'failed', which I find tiresome (though otherwise I think your thoughts/ideas are fine, it is just one of those things I've heard way too many times).

The ROI on a book with NO editing or typesetting costs is pretty darn low! What do they have, new cover designs?
I’ll remind you of this in a second.


DDI is a perk. It won’t survive indefinitely without the books. It’s a service that makes the game easier to run but if the game goes away so does DDI.
While the tools are specific to 4e, DDI itself is system neutral. The magazines will work just as easily with 5e content. And I’m sure they’re already working on tools for Next. Given the framwork is pre-built it should be much faster and ready for launch.

What difference does it make if it is a 'perk' or a flying saucer, it is a product that RIGHT NOW supports 4e and is an active product that WotC is supplying to customers who presumably play 4e. Whether it can be adapted for 5e content or not isn't even relevant to the discussion. DDI supports 4e, DDI is a WotC product, ergo WotC supports 4e, and 4e is the 'current' version of D&D.

In this case you’re just plain wrong. You even know it, using your earlier words: “The ROI on a book with NO editing or typesetting costs is pretty darn low! What do they have, new cover designs?”

Huh? Yes, it is not AS expensive, you can afford to print some coffee-table books like 1e core book collector's editions, which you sell at a relatively high cover price, but frankly they didn't do this to make money. Even at $50 each WotC couldn't do more than GROSS in the low 5 figures, let alone NET. The ROI may be decent but the amount of money put into it is too small. In fact I would virtually guarantee you WotC is losing money on physical reprints. They just have too high a cost basis. Even if they are making money, lets imagine a book that you print 10k of an sell at $50, that's $500k retail, but WotC's costs are easily $15 (printing, shipping, stocking, sales, warehousing, etc) and THEIR net is probably in the range of $25, maybe less. They might make $100k on that entire run. That's equal to about 5 days of DDI gross revenue. In truth my bet is that BREAK EVEN for WotC on a reprint is around 5k books, and for an actual NEW book, probably well over 10k.

If you sell 200,000 copies of a book during the first print run a portion of those sales generate no profit and only go to paying off the production costs (writing, art, editing, layout, etc). After that all money that comes in is profit. Printing costs never go down but if you do a second print run of 200,000 you make significantly more money than the first time. Even if the print run is slightly smaller, say 175,000, with a higher per-item cost (because printing costs are based on the number of books you print) you might make more money than the initial print run when you’re not paying the production costs.

Printing, shipping, stocking, sales, warehousing, marketing, etc are all costs that do not change no matter how many of something you sold before, they are variable costs overall. While the ROI is obviously a good bit higher when you have large volumes to amortize fixed costs against, and you may with a reprint have already paid those off, it isn't just some sort of gravy train. You can very easily lose money on reprints. This is mainly because the publisher generally takes 100% of the risk, distributors don't eat unsold inventory, you get it back in most channels (WotC is FAR too small to have the leverage with D&D to do otherwise, except maybe in the retail hobby distribution chain). Reprints are certainly a cheaper way to make money, but given the low volumes at best it is a small side business. Second and further print runs of a successful book CAN be gravy, but thats generally something that happens during the initial sales hump where the first run was smaller than demand due to financing or just risk aversion on the publisher's part (IE you print 200k books even though you hope to sell 350k because it could flop or you simply can't afford/don't want to pay the printer more money up front, etc).

It makes significant financial sense to keep a Core Rulebook regularly in print and very relevant as a perpetual source of income. And it makes sense rather than releasing a whole new edition every 4-6 years to do an extra editing pass, clear up some text, and make revisions and then release a revision with most of the same art, writing and lay-out.

Now, 2e and 3e both failed at this. 2e by changing all the art and 3e by not keeping the revision easily compatible. 4e failed by not even revising but releasing an entirely new product rather than reprinting with incorporated errata.
That is, as long as the game is designed to aim sales at the Core Rulebooks.

There are of course many possible business strategies. I'm not sure what the relevance of all this is to the "4e is alive" thing.

This is something WotC has gotten bad at. Their sales team tends to think more as a board game or CCG company. Board Game expansions require the core game to play, so this is a different beast than books. And as cards are cheap to produce with no central starter set required, so it’s easy and profitable to always look forward and focus marketing and attention on the next product.
Books are different, RPG books especially. Everything needs to point back to the Core Rulebook. It should always, always be on shelves.

Well, I don't know what they're good or bad at in terms of sales to the channel etc. They HAVE SO FAR had a model of selling a new set of core books as a new edition every 3-5 years. Maybe that will change, and I don't know why it is they can't do some other thing, but presumably it has a LOT to do with what people will actually buy. Maybe they can change that, maybe they can't. Again, does this relate to 4e being the current product? Not really...

But sales don’t always tail off. As I said, sales of Pathfinder’s core book increased in 2010 and 2011 respectively and it continues to sell well both on Amazon and their online store. Sales only tail off if no one is getting into the game and the player base plateaus. And this is bad.

PF's sales will peak and drop. In fact I have no idea how you can say what they are doing, we have virtually no information, unless Paizo is releasing sales figures or you have some insider info to share.

I know factually that the 4e PHB outsold the 3.5 and 3e PHBs, and it is perfectly reasonable to assume it has also outsold the PF core book, and may well have outsold all 3 combined.


Joseph Goodman did some research on the sales of 3e versus 4e at the start of the edition. He was pretty emphatic that 4e was doing quite well but not as well as 3e, which had a once-in-a-generation perfect storm of a sales peak. 3.5e less so.

I’ll buy that the 4e PHB sold better than the 3.5e PHB but not the 3.0PHB. And even to have outsold the PF Core Rulebook.
But how many people continued to buy books after? How many people just picked-up the PHB and stopped with that book? That’s the (unanswerable) million dollar question.

Well, you may choose to believe what you wish, people always do. The fact remains the 4e PHB1 is IIRC how it was phrased "the best selling RPG book of all time", something similar to that. Honestly the guy didn't make a whole lot of that either. His main point seemed to be that even that stellar effort was far short of what had been promised in order to get the project funded. As for other books, you can of course imply that they didn't sell well, but consider that they continued pumping them out for 2 years, you don't keep up that kind of release of books that all don't sell. Many of them were up on the top of the Amazon and IC2 chart, etc as well, so the only real question is relatively to previous editions and expectations how did they sell? Its hard to imagine how they were all that different from 3.5 since they have run 4e out to roughly the same length of time and books released. Honestly, toss all the internet FUD and look at just the primary source evidence. There's no real evidence that 4e has done poorly at all.

Still, I’d love a link, because the exact words, context, and who was saying it are crucial.
If it was “sold more than any other WOTC game book” then, as you say, it wouldn’t include 1e or 2e which were not published by WotC (although they did have access to TSR’s financial records).
But it could also have been “sold to stores” which is different that actual sales because many PHB just sat on the shelves. Or it could have been something that is recalled as “sold more than” after a year, but was actually “generated the most money” which is different given the 4e PHB was 160% of the price of the 3.5e PHB.
Or it could have been someone who didn’t have the full sales figures. I doubt WotC circulates that information throughout the company.

No, it wasn't qualified in any way. The gist of it was "this book sold more than any other RPG book ever, period." I don't of course blame you for wanting to read it, but you might try Google, you got as much chance of finding it as I do. It was an article on a big gaming site, one that covers PnP games, computer games, etc. not 'Job Bob's blog o' OSR', you'll recognize the name when you see it, I know I would.

Well... you’re pretty certain of your every-five-years theory, which would mean Paizo is working on a new edition right now and we don’t know what they have planned for 2014 or 2015. They could very, very easily release a core rulebook revision in 2015 and catch 5e a year after release again.

I have no idea what Paizo will do, I only stated that SO FAR WotC has done basically a release every 3-6 years. Paizo has SAID they aren't going to release a 'new edition' of PF anytime soon. That may well be true, I don't know. I do know that there's good evidence (and industry people will all tell you this) that games have a 'shelf-life' and rule book sales fall of, usually quite sharply, but maybe less so in the case of the most popular games. So, yeah, the could catch WotC flat again, OTOH you have 2 choices, try to outlast the other guy, or else go faster and get out of phase with them. WotC clearly has decided not to do the former and has doubtless planned for a long time to have SOME sort of significant product release in 2014 anyway.

The only way WotC could catch Paizo is if PF1 lasts nine years and PF2 is released on 2018 and 5e only lasts 4 years and 6e drops on 2019. Which wouldn’t say much about 5e...

No, but that's what I mean, and the faster 5e comes the more time it can sit on the shelves before that 2019 date.

That said, I expect a reprinting of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook sooner rather than later. The book is big and daunting. I expect they’ll re-release it as two books with the improved formatting and layout of their more recent books but also incorporating the major additions of PF such as archetypes; I expect a smaller and cheaper Core Rulebook with fewer classes and races and then a larger expansion book (the Player’s Guide, so having the Advanced Player’s Guide still makes sense).
And, thinking about it, if I were going to do a major revision of PF, 2017 might be the date I’d aim for. That’s the 15th anniversary of Paizo and 10th of the Pathfinder brand. Or at least releasing a playtest then.

Eh, who knows? I think Paizo is not married to any specific schedule right now. They have much better communication with their customers than WotC seems capable of, I think they figure they'll know when the fans are ready for something new. They're a small company and don't need to be so formal about it.

 

[Zardnaar]

Paizo indicated that they were looking at a 10 year cycle for PF. Then again so did Sony with the PS3.

D&D is now number 3 BTW so all things relative its not a good sign.

 

[Jester David]

I would consider the lifetime of 3.5 extends to the release date of 4e, yes, again the magazines etc continued to support 3.5, as did customer support until that date. It was the currently available edition of D&D and remained in stock (at least the core books did). A 20 year hiatus would be a very different thing, and I don't know how to answer your question without details. You're attempting reductio ad-absurdum, but I think the difference here is so huge that it is probably qualitative. Clearly if WotC continued to sell DDN then it would be 'alive', but if not, if it wasn't a product at all? Then in at least some sense, yes, it would 'end' in 2015, but these are rather academic considerations. If you're going to try to argue it into "4e is not supported and there is no current D&D product" NOW TODAY, that's just not reasonable at all, and I don't buy it. Anyway, this is one of those debates that gets silly quickly. If it pleases you to believe that D&D is a dead product that has no current edition, that's fine with me...

Alright, let's change that perspective a bit. D&D Next seems to be as informed by Basic D&D as Advanced, and it sounds like WotC is going to release a "Basic" version of the game as a separate product.
So, given the last Version of Basic D&D we saw ended in 1999 when the released Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. So, from your definition of "an edition's lifetime is until it is replaced" the 4th version of Basic D&D ran from 1991 (when the Rules Cyclopedia was released) until 2014 when the Basic D&D Next products comes out?

Huh? Yes, it is not AS expensive, you can afford to print some coffee-table books like 1e core book collector's editions, which you sell at a relatively high cover price, but frankly they didn't do this to make money. Even at $50 each WotC couldn't do more than GROSS in the low 5 figures, let alone NET. The ROI may be decent but the amount of money put into it is too small. In fact I would virtually guarantee you WotC is losing money on physical reprints. They just have too high a cost basis. Even if they are making money, lets imagine a book that you print 10k of an sell at $50, that's $500k retail, but WotC's costs are easily $15 (printing, shipping, stocking, sales, warehousing, etc) and THEIR net is probably in the range of $25, maybe less. They might make $100k on that entire run. That's equal to about 5 days of DDI gross revenue. In truth my bet is that BREAK EVEN for WotC on a reprint is around 5k books, and for an actual NEW book, probably well over 10k.

First, they printed more than a thousand copies. Anything less than 10,000 copies just isn't worth doing.

Second, let's do the math for how much WotC makes off a book. Based on the Rule of Two, prices double every time they change hands. The store sells for $50 but buys the book for $25 from the distributor. The distributor buys from WotC for $12.50. Half the book goes to printing, so WotC makes $6.25 off of each book. If it cost half-a-million dollars to write, layout, edit, and do art for a book they need to sell 80,000 copies before they cut even.
But it's actually likely slightly less than $6 per book because printing costs are likely higher.

Printing, shipping, stocking, sales, warehousing, marketing, etc are all costs that do not change no matter how many of something you sold before, they are variable costs overall. While the ROI is obviously a good bit higher when you have large volumes to amortize fixed costs against, and you may with a reprint have already paid those off, it isn't just some sort of gravy train. You can very easily lose money on reprints. This is mainly because the publisher generally takes 100% of the risk, distributors don't eat unsold inventory, you get it back in most channels (WotC is FAR too small to have the leverage with D&D to do otherwise, except maybe in the retail hobby distribution chain). Reprints are certainly a cheaper way to make money, but given the low volumes at best it is a small side business. Second and further print runs of a successful book CAN be gravy, but thats generally something that happens during the initial sales hump where the first run was smaller than demand due to financing or just risk aversion on the publisher's part (IE you print 200k books even though you hope to sell 350k because it could flop or you simply can't afford/don't want to pay the printer more money up front, etc).

Printing, shipping, stocking, warehousing, and marketing are static costs. They're going to be the same if you're releasing a new book or a reprint.
If you can reprint a book with a comparable print run to the first printing it is very profitable.

PF's sales will peak and drop. In fact I have no idea how you can say what they are doing, we have virtually no information, unless Paizo is releasing sales figures or you have some insider info to share.

They're pretty open. We know that the first print run for the Pathfinder core rulebook was the largest print run Paizo had ever done and they sold out before GenCon and the actual release. They did a second printing in November 2009, the 3rd and 4th in 210 (April and September) and a 5th printing - which was the largest print run to date - on November 2011. The book continues to sell well, both on Amazon and on the Paizo store, regularly being featured in the store's Top 10 list (right now it's #3).

Two years after the release of 4e, WotC was trying to bolster sales with Essentials. Two years after the release of Pathfinder, Paizo had to print more Core Rulebooks because they were selling out.

Well, you may choose to believe what you wish, people always do. The fact remains the 4e PHB1 is IIRC how it was phrased "the best selling RPG book of all time", something similar to that. Honestly the guy didn't make a whole lot of that either. His main point seemed to be that even that stellar effort was far short of what had been promised in order to get the project funded. As for other books, you can of course imply that they didn't sell well, but consider that they continued pumping them out for 2 years, you don't keep up that kind of release of books that all don't sell. Many of them were up on the top of the Amazon and IC2 chart, etc as well, so the only real question is relatively to previous editions and expectations how did they sell? Its hard to imagine how they were all that different from 3.5 since they have run 4e out to roughly the same length of time and books released. Honestly, toss all the internet FUD and look at just the primary source evidence. There's no real evidence that 4e has done poorly at all.

Googling the phrase and no luck so far. I have no doubt the 4e PHB sold very well, with many 3e players and players of other editions buying the book to see what the fuss is. But I do doubt that it was higher than 1e or 3e which were phenomenons.