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

[Micah Sweet]

So selling the same stuff to the same people?



Actual hard setting books?

WOTC sucks at those and they don't sell well even when you do them good.

5e style setting books sell but you can only sell a brief summary, a few feats, a subclass or variant rule, and an adventure ONCE.



So adventure books not setting books.

They suck at setting books now. There was some decent work in that area back in 3e.

 

[Thomas Shey]

They seem to have an aversion to publishing anything that you would want or need any material beyond the core three to use properly. This wasn't the case pre-5e, so it seems to be a relatively new phenomenon.

I'd speculate that they want people to be willing to buy material without expansive investment in other material, even if that means some that would be dragged into buying the prerequisite material don't. Its hard to say if this is a net gain or loss without numbers.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Let's say someone buys Planescape, Tashas, and Fizbans now.

What's going to make them buy those three books again in 2027 if the rules barely change

Especially since most of the updates are PC side. Crawford said the monster stats and CRs are staying the same. They are just adding the skills/saves/modifiers and redoing the layouts.

The new books would have to come out with new content. Such as being high level and in the broken stages of 5e. Or reveal new subclasses or races that WOTC already struggles with. Or create new classes that WOTC is hesitant to do. Or pump out new monsters with new tactical or narrative aspects.

and that's "bloat".

There is no way you are going to use the same rules skeleton for 20 or 30 or 40 years without bloat. New classes. New Subclasses. Now Monsters. New Traps. New Races. New Obstacles. New variants. New settings. Every year.

the "I'mma make corebooks, slow support to a crawl, and live off that" is one feasible for a small company with few employees that doesn't need much to keep going

They could always try making another game, and keep D&D at a low ebb for new content. It doesn't have to be the only RPG they publish; after all, it's a big company. Pull some folks off the low-performing toy department.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'd speculate that they want people to be willing to buy material without expansive investment in other material, even if that means some that would be dragged into buying the prerequisite material don't. Its hard to say if this is a net gain or loss without numbers.

Probably, but it does lead to a lamentable lack of depth.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I mean there is one way to never innovate or add content and drag money out of the consumer forever: Exclude Third-Parties from participating unless they pay a crushing fee, move everything digital and then enforce a pay forever subscriber scheme.

But in order to do that you'd have to... like not get the evil plan leaked and be RKO'd from the top rope from a fanbase that absolutely wants to do that every waking moment of their lives.

 

[Minigiant]

I mean there is one way to never innovate or add content and drag money out of the consumer forever: Exclude Third-Parties from participating unless they pay a crushing fee, move everything digital and then enforce a pay forever subscriber scheme.

But in order to do that you'd have to... like not get the evil plan leaked and be RKO'd from the top rope from a fanbase that absolutely wants to do that every waking moment of their lives.

More jumping in the Undertaker's or Kane's chokeslam.

RKO from the top rope is out of nowhere. They knew if this leaked they were screwed.

A forever RPG that never resets either becomes niche or dies. There's no way to do that and keep the publishers' doors open.

It's basically a video game.
If you aren't pumping out DLC and Expansions, your game gets old the new buyers stop coming.

 

[MockingBird]

I don't think they will rerelease Planescape etc. The 5e books will work with the revised PHB. What they have stated and what is more likely in my opinion, will be a new release that happens to be set in Planescape or the material that wasn't covered in the core Planescape campaign guide. I'm just using Planescape as an example but I'd also expect the same treatment with Ravenloft, Dragonlance etc

 

[payn]

This is interesting, because the only player I've ever known to not get at least the corebook was one who was, to be really blunt, pretty much constantly broke. These days they might only bother with a PDF version, but they still want to be able to reference the main book without borrowing it from someone.

IDK, maybe this is just my anecdotal but 5E is so simple you only need to reference the book for like 2-3 min to level up. So, its not like the old days where you had piles of them on the table. Also, SRD and DDB.

 

[mamba]

I very much have. Don't confuse my interpretation of the available data as being different than yours with my not having it.

then you are drawing wrong conclusions… there really is not much wiggle room here to get the data and your claims to overlap. Basically the only one I can think of is that you declare 2014 to 2021 the initial phase and hope for a drop-off soon, so your long tail works out.

Otherwise I’d like to hear your explanation

 

[mamba]

Except the definition of "too many" seems, shall we say, hyper-conservative in some cases.

possibly, but I do not consider less than ‘3 to 4 per year’, which was the number brought up, to be conservative.

If you consider my ‘2-3 in total, every other year or so’ conservative, be my guest