D&D General Does D&D (and RPGs in general) Need Edition Resets?

[mamba]

Are you happy with the current design? If not it's quite logical that you'd want more changes than WotC is planning on giving us next year.

I think 5e is the best edition yet (after that 2e), that does not mean there are not things I would like to see changed. Most of these are not being addressed by 2024 either however, and they still would not be if the first 5 playtests had made it through completely. I just like the proposed changes in them better than what we have now and continue to be stuck with, even if there are still things left that do not get addressed in either.

 

[mamba]

This thread isn't about 5e 2024. I stopped posting in that subforum because I had nothing good to say and people complained.

fair enough, this was more about @Lanefan saying they only want to buy something once / permanence (two posts), in which case any new set of books, whether iterative or not, is something they should not be interested in

 

[Staffan]

100k in year one, 20k in year two, then nothing? So you need a constant churn of material, hoping that the buyers stick with it instead of just using what they already have or not liking the new ones.

Yes. You want more sales, you make more stuff. You can't rely on your audience constantly growing, you need to sell to the established base. The growth of D&D over the last 10 years is exceptional, and not something you can base your business around. That doesn't mean you need a release schedule that looks like it did in 2e with dozens of new products each month, but you do need to keep making new stuff. Ideally things that do not overly build on all the stuff that has come before (which is one of many reasons why metaplot is bad).

Also, to me the graphs (other than the Greyhawk one) seem like pretty standard long tail sales, disrupted by new replacements. Sales of the grey box and FRA drop off in 1993 and 1994, because that's when the new box came out (and I'm pretty sure they stopped printing the grey box, and possibly FRA as well). PHB 2.0 sales remain at around 100k/year until 1994, and then gets replaced by 100k sales of the revised PHB in 1995 (and in 1996 TSR was starting to collapse). One might argue that they'd like the actual numbers to be higher, but I see nothing wrong with the shape of the graphs.

 

[mamba]

Yes. You want more sales, you make more stuff. You can't rely on your audience constantly growing, you need to sell to the established base.

No, you need to keep growing that base / attracting new customers. If you just sell to the established base, you get the 2e graphs. That does not mean you do not need to also release new products, that is a given.

The growth of D&D over the last 10 years is exceptional, and not something you can base your business around.

but it can be something I am working towards accomplishing, even if I cannot guarantee achieving it. How many FR setting books does one DM need? If the sales drop off after a year or two, then creating a new one will not help all that much, you will need to attract new buyers, not just sell to the ones you already have in ever diminishing numbers.

That doesn't mean you need a release schedule that looks like it did in 2e with dozens of new products each month, but you do need to keep making new stuff. Ideally things that do not overly build on all the stuff that has come before (which is one of many reasons why metaplot is bad).

there are diminishing returns either way. If WotC releases 4 setting books and 8 adventures a year, how many more sales would that generate? I assume not all that many, certainly nowhere near linear growth, you just spread them out over more products.

 

[haakon1]

The problem with 4e was that many didn't think it was D&D and it was released before the tech it wanted exist.

Yes on the first part.

No idea what you’re talking about on the second..

4e was the highest selling RPG until 5e. 4e was never outsold.

I suspect your claim of “highest selling” needs a lot of asterisks.

 

[Minigiant]

Yes on the first part.

No idea what you’re talking about on the second..

The senior project manager in charge of 4e's online and digital tools committed a murder-suicide which likely caused WOTC to end most of 4e's tools.

This seriously took away many of the potential tools needed to keep 4e going. Late stage 4e stuff was complex because

1. You have to go wackier and more innovative to produced new ideas
2. 4e devs were not as conservative as earlier ones and made some complex powers

Without online tools, 4e was too complex to run past PHB/DMG/MM 1. Like running Pathfinder without the AoN wiki and character builder.

This is why I believe a non-nichhe incrementally designed RPG is impossible without online tools and it all being available digitally.

I suspect your claim of “highest selling” needs a lot of asterisks.

It was best selling at it's time. It died because the online tools needed for PHB3+ and the power powers never happened and sales fell off.

 

[mamba]

Without online tools, 4e was too complex to run past PHB/DMG/MM 1. Like running Pathfinder without the AoN wiki and character builder.

This is why I believe a non-nichhe incrementally designed RPG is impossible without online tools and it all being available digitally.

you could have a simpler base game. I am not sure how feasible a non-niche TTRPG that requires online tools is even today. What percentage of your potential customers are you excluding that way

 

[Vaalingrade]

Without online tools, 4e was too complex to run past PHB/DMG/MM 1. Like running Pathfinder without the AoN wiki and character builder.

Or so they said when they thought they still have software to sell.

The only real 'complexity' over 3e was making everyone as page-turny as the sorcerer. Which for Rangers and Rogues was much much more, for Fighters, it depended on their feats (by late stage 3e when fighters finally had enough worthwhile feats across something like forty books including the one that straight replaced them with well-designed classes), and for Wizards and Druids was considerably less, especially for summoners and wild shapers.

 

[Minigiant]

you could have a simpler base game. I am not sure how feasible a non-niche TTRPG that requires online tools is even today. What percentage of your potential customers are you excluding that way

This is a thread about a RPG with no resets.

It doesn't matter if the base is simple, you still have to make new content.

Even if you only do 4 books a year, that still 80 books in 20 years for 1 edition.

How many races, classes, feats, quirks, traits, apects, etc is that?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not impossible.

But the D&D designers and much of the active community are not willing to do it.

That's a social problem, not a mechanical one.

Sounds like specific IP.

How many do you need for it not to be "specific"? I can think of four unrelated ones off the top of my head. You even mentioned one of them.

Generic Urban Fantasy tends to be low powered so the guns and cars and libraries and baseball bats still are still useful.

Again, I think you're reading of them is limited. There certainly are relatively low powered ones, but they're hardly all of them.