D&D 5E Does this seem to be the edition that was made for splatbooks?

[Sailor Moon]

Please let Paizo do the asventures.

 

[Umbran]

I don't think the decision to be "splat-lite" is driven by Mearls's preferences.

I think it might be more accurate and clear to say that the decision to be light on supplements is recognition of market reality. Even if they had the staff, I suspect there's evidence that putting out too many supplements actually harms the overall business health of the game.

There is probably some odd dynamic there that creates a weird balance. You want to sell many books, but you don't want to saturate your customers with more stuff than they can use, either. So, if you want the edition to last a while, you need to balance those in your product plans.

 

[aramis erak]

Please let Paizo do the asventures.

Not likely for a variety of reasons.

• Paizo is busy with Pathfinder
• Paizo doesn't know 5E
• Paizo is the direct competitor
• Paizo would likely do them as "conversions" of PF modules.

Pathfinder keeps the Paizo staff busy - several adventure paths, and plenty of splatbooks. They don't NEED the work.

Paizo also doesn't have a vested staff that knows 5e - I'm certain some of them play it, but it's not their corporate baby. Any 5e work they'd do would be second fiddle to their own pathfinder stuff.

Paizo also is directly competing for player base, sales dollars, and market niche. More on that in a bit, but for the moment, it's not a good corporate choice for either.

Anything that Paizo throws out for D&D 5 is likely to have been written for Pathfinder and converted. This makes for a much less balanced, much less nuanced module for the D&D crowd.

Given that Paizo is in direct competition, this also would tend to have them make their modules tend to be better for their own house engine rather than the cross-statted games. Multi-engine modules really are not great for any of them. If Paizo does them and they're optimized for 5E, then their own shareholders have reason to be upset; if they favor Pathfinder, then there is little gain for WotC. It's lose lose, either way.

 

[Mistwell]

They haven't said "no expansions" - they've said no rapid fire splatbooks.

Remember, "splatbook" is a derogative term for shoddy expansion work..

Wait, what?

No, it's not. There is nothing inherently derogatory about a splatbook, and it does not need to imply anything shoddy about the content.

A Splat in this context is an Asterisk. It meant "Complete [Classname]" or "Complete [Character Type]". The Splat was in place of the part in brackets, like you used to do on computers when searching for something. So If you looked for Barb*.exe you would find all .exe files with Barb in the name, so Barbara and Barbarian and Barbers would all come up with such a search. The splat subs for "anything" associated with the remainder of the phrase (in this case "Complete").

Some splatbooks were excellent, others were not. But, the phrase does not carry a negative connotation.

 

[drjones]

No.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Big book of subclasses
Big book of backgrounds
Big book of feats

Or

Books with themes mixing all three plus optional rules

 

[Zardnaar]

Wait, what?

No, it's not. There is nothing inherently derogatory about a splatbook, and it does not need to imply anything shoddy about the content.

A Splat in this context is an Asterisk. It meant "Complete [Classname]" or "Complete [Character Type]". The Splat was in place of the part in brackets, like you used to do on computers when searching for something. So If you looked for Barb*.exe you would find all .exe files with Barb in the name, so Barbara and Barbarian and Barbers would all come up with such a search. The splat subs for "anything" associated with the remainder of the phrase (in this case "Complete").

Some splatbooks were excellent, others were not. But, the phrase does not carry a negative connotation.

It used to have negative connotations, now days not as much.

 

[Chocolategravy]

5E is less modular than 4E and much less than 3E. So saying it's made for splatbooks is wrong. However even 1E, which wasn't very modular either, had plenty of splat books and huge amounts of additions through Dragon. So regardless of how modular it may or may not be, the number of splat books we see is entirely up to them and how much we buy.

 

[Chocolategravy]

Big book of subclasses Big book of backgrounds Big book of feats Or Books with themes mixing all three plus optional rules

They could easily put out 10 monster manuals, seemingly people love content light but art heavy books. GW is putting out books that are nothing but art and charging an arm and a leg for them, I don't see why it wouldn't work for Hasbro.

 

[Mercurius]

I don't think the decision to be "splat-lite" is driven by Mearls's preferences. I think it's driven by simple budget and headcount realities at WotC. The D&D team is far, far smaller today than at any time since the days of Gygax and Arneson. The game simply doesn't make enough money to justify a larger staff. And with such a small team, they can't crank out splatbooks like they used to. So they are making a virtue of necessity here.

On the plus side, this seems like a good omen for third-party publishers. WotC needs a stream of fresh content to keep the community engaged, they don't have the capacity to make it all themselves, so the obvious thing to do is put out a generous licensing scheme. While they problably won't go full OGL, I think we have a good chance of getting something far better than the GSL for 5E.

I almost get the sense that Hasbro/WotC has said to the D&D team something to the effect, "OK, we're not cutting you off - but you've got to prove yourselves, and we're going to cut you down to a bare minimum. If what you create is popular and makes money, we can expand from there."