D&D (2024) Do you plan to adopt D&D5.5One2024Redux?

[FitzTheRuke]

I would agree that there is a negative vibe in online discussions the last couple of years. The forumite "zeitgeist", but that doesn't seem to hold up when Iooking at the actual products themselves the last couple of years, or look at their sales numbers in the slices of data that are available.

There's another thing that factors in to how I get my "gut" feeling (and I trust my gut, it's rarely wrong) that the products have been lacking. (And I think you're right, not only is there no objective way to really judge these things, but if you try, I think that you can only conclude that there's no real drop in quality, at least not a substantial one). That is, that for US (my FLGS) there has been a fairly substantial drop in sales on Adventure books. This factor inevitably deflates my feelings on the state of things.

Of course, there are many reasons for that beyond quality. In no particular order, they are: A new "edition" is coming, which makes customers shy of new products; there is and must be some success on WotC's part in getting people to switch to DDB (or physical/digital bundles sold through DDB); customers are generally overwhelmed with Adventure products (IE they already possess more adventures than they can run & books that they still mean to "get to" on their shelves); justly or unjustly, many reviews of recent books do not do a lot to push people toward buying them; Spelljammer sold fine, but was nearly universally disappointing, which colors folk's opinions of things that come after. I could probably go on.

The "overwhelmed shelves" is probably the biggest factor for a small FLGS. Unlike, say Amazon (or WotC overall) we rely on a smaller group of regular customers buying more things. This would explain why the Core books are still selling okay, while the Adventures are slower. There's still a LOT of people "just getting into D&D". These people wouldn't really know what to do with an Adventure (yet). But our core customers have slowed down getting "everything". Therefore, core sales have dropped and we're down to (relatively) a book here, a book there.

 

[tetrasodium]

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There's another thing that factors in to how I get my "gut" feeling (and I trust my gut, it's rarely wrong) that the products have been lacking. (And I think you're right, not only is there no objective way to really judge these things, but if you try, I think that you can only conclude that there's no real drop in quality, at least not a substantial one). That is, that for US (my FLGS) there has been a fairly substantial drop in sales on Adventure books. This factor inevitably deflates my feelings on the state of things.

Of course, there are many reasons for that beyond quality. In no particular order, they are: A new "edition" is coming, which makes customers shy of new products; there is and must be some success on WotC's part in getting people to switch to DDB (or physical/digital bundles sold through DDB); customers are generally overwhelmed with Adventure products (IE they already possess more adventures than they can run & books that they still mean to "get to" on their shelves); justly or unjustly, many reviews of recent books do not do a lot to push people toward buying them; Spelljammer sold fine, but was nearly universally disappointing, which colors folk's opinions of things that come after. I could probably go on.

The "overwhelmed shelves" is probably the biggest factor for a small FLGS. Unlike, say Amazon (or WotC overall) we rely on a smaller group of regular customers buying more things. This would explain why the Core books are still selling okay, while the Adventures are slower. There's still a LOT of people "just getting into D&D". These people wouldn't really know what to do with an Adventure (yet). But our core customers have slowed down getting "everything". Therefore, core sales have dropped and we're down to (relatively) a book here, a book there.

That's a good point about filled ttrpg-gamer about shelf space. There's a big difference in value for an unused 5e book vrs what there was for an old 2e Complete X type book or almost any old 3.x book that remained useful to both sides of the gm screen for multibook charop & monster/magic item customization. With 5e so streamlined & simplified that PHB+1 alone is probably exceeding the curve pretty bad it's hard to find the same sort of value in shelf filling.

 

[Faolyn]

The new books may or may not make the game better, by some metrics, for some people. Can't answer that for anyone but me. But the reason they're being released the way they are is about making and/or saving as much money as possible.

Well, yeah. I mean, WotC/Hasbro is a business. It's silly to think they'd do anything that couldn't make or save them money. They're not a labor of love. They're not a bunch of people who are churning out free content for the masses from the comforts of their home, like me when I convert those monsters for LU.

If WotC doesn't t keep putting out books, then they go out of business because there will be nothing new to buy. If WotC doesn't have any adventures for sale, you'll buy a 3pp adventure from the DM's Guild.

If they don't keep improving their game, then they go out of business because other people will make games that are better in one way or another. Why buy the MM when there's Flee! Mortals which (apparently) does a lot more with the same monsters? Why buy the PHB when you can get more character options via Level Up?

To improve their game, they can either do it in dribs and drabs, like with little things in Xanathar's or Tasha's, or they can make major changes in a newer, updated PHB/DMG/MM and then put it out for their major anniversary.

Why do you think that nobody else realizes this?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, yeah. I mean, WotC/Hasbro is a business. It's silly to think they'd do anything that couldn't make or save them money. They're not a labor of love. They're not a bunch of people who are churning out free content for the masses from the comforts of their home, like me when I convert those monsters for LU.

If WotC doesn't t keep putting out books, then they go out of business because there will be nothing new to buy. If WotC doesn't have any adventures for sale, you'll buy a 3pp adventure from the DM's Guild.

If they don't keep improving their game, then they go out of business because other people will make games that are better in one way or another. Why buy the MM when there's Flee! Mortals which (apparently) does a lot more with the same monsters? Why buy the PHB when you can get more character options via Level Up?

To improve their game, they can either do it in dribs and drabs, like with little things in Xanathar's or Tasha's, or they can make major changes in a newer, updated PHB/DMG/MM and then put it out for their major anniversary.

Why do you think that nobody else realizes this?

I don't think that. At all. I choose my words carefully (most of the time). The goal isn't to make the best game they can AND make a profit doing it, as much as I wish it was. The goal is to make the most money off the brand as possible, using whatever practical means are necessary. They're calling D&D "undermonitized" in that board meeting proves that to me. Making the best game is further down the list IMO. People keep equating not always pushing for maximum profit with not making any profit. They are not the same thing.

But I've been told to stop harping on this, so I'm through talking about it. I only responded here because a direct question was asked

 

[FitzTheRuke]

.That's a good point about filled ttrpg-gamer about shelf space. There's a big difference in value for an unused 5e book vrs what there was for an old 2e Complete X type book or almost any old 3.x book that remained useful to both sides of the gm screen for multibook charop & monster/magic item customization. With 5e so streamlined & simplified that PHB+1 alone is probably exceeding the curve pretty bad it's hard to find the same sort of value in shelf filling.

For all their benefits, there are a lot of flaws to WotC's current adventure design when it comes to a purchaser who wants to play the adventure, and not just read it.

Somewhere along the line, they learned that there are a great number of people who buy adventures to read, and they leaned into that. While I don't have a problem with them taking that fact into account, I think that they leaned too hard.

It caused the very structure of how they present adventures to be designed, presented, and laid out in a way that I find antithetical to running their adventures. Or if not antithetical, then at least not helpful or ideal to an alternate design/layout that would make it much better to play/run. Worse, I'm not convinced that making it easy-to-run would harm the simple reader's enjoyment. But here we are.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I don't think that. At all. I choose my words carefully (most of the time). The goal isn't to make the best game they can AND make a profit doing it, as much as I wish it was. The goal is to make the most money off the brand as possible, using whatever practical means are necessary. They're calling D&D "undermonitized" in that board meeting proves that to me. Making the best game is further down the list IMO. People keep equating not always pushing for maximum profit with not making any profit. They are not the same thing.

Speaking of practices that I feel are antithetical - as a business person, specifically in the practice of selling RPGs (and Board Games and Comics), I find the practice of trying to "maximize profits" to always work against sustained profits (which I am personally much more interested in).

Publishers that I deal with, from Marvel to WotC (note: Owned by bigger Corporations) will always go for profit-schemes that will bump up "next Quarter" at the PROVEN EXPENSE of the quarter-after-that (or if not that, then a quarter-down-the-line).

So, yeah, the idea that "business gotta business" is a false one.

 

[tetrasodium]

For all their benefits, there are a lot of flaws to WotC's current adventure design when it comes to a purchaser who wants to play the adventure, and not just read it.

Somewhere along the line, they learned that there are a great number of people who buy adventures to read, and they leaned into that. While I don't have a problem with them taking that fact into account, I think that they leaned too hard.

It caused the very structure of how they present adventures to be designed, presented, and laid out in a way that I find antithetical to running their adventures. Or if not antithetical, then at least not helpful or ideal to an alternate design/layout that would make it much better to play/run. Worse, I'm not convinced that making it easy-to-run would harm the simple reader's enjoyment. But here we are.

I seem to remember hearing that the somewhere along the line realization was back in the 3.x days but could be wrong. The point where that influence you note really hit me hard with 5e adventures though was while running CoS where there is an NPC or something that was introduced and not really given anything describing their motive or purpose until tens of pages later in a different chapter/sub-adventure in the writeup for what some other NPC was doing.

 

[Hriston]

There are no published adventures that renders a background feature useless. There are DMs that might not be able to figure out how to incorporate the background feature. Or there are DMs that don't want to do the extra work it will take to incorporate the background feature. But there are zero backgrounds that are useless in a published campaign adventure from WotC.

I haven't read all the published adventures, so I don't know this to be true, but assuming you're right, as I suspect you are, I think this rather undercuts @Oofta's claim that it "simply isn't an option" for his Sage character to use their background feature because his group is running through Curse of Strahd, a published adventure which is set in Barovia, that "most background features simply don't apply" in that setting, and that the existence of published adventures set in places like Barovia is evidence that background features are "a bad idea".

 

[Clint_L]

I haven't read all the published adventures, so I don't know this to be true, but assuming you're right, as I suspect you are, I think this rather undercuts @Oofta's claim that it "simply isn't an option" for his Sage character to use their background feature because his group is running through Curse of Strahd, a published adventure which is set in Barovia, that "most background features simply don't apply" in that setting, and that the existence of published adventures set in places like Barovia is evidence that background features are "a bad idea".

Also, the PCs in Curse of Strahd aren't from Barovia.

 

[Parmandur]

Some people care about backgrounds, some don't. Most of the time it's been my experience that it's just a way to get a few extra proficiencies.

I xdo quite like the 5E Background system, personally, just never found thwt the "Background Feature" worked as seemingly intended in practice. The revision seems to me to be simply bringing the text in like with practice, that is, making it more relevant to play.