D&D 5E Escapist article on SCAG is Brutal.

[Hussar]

I hope I never live to see a version of DnD that does not have enough imagination to produce the equivalent of a Spell Compendium and/or Complete Arcane.

Hrm, I played Basic/Expert for years with just 128 pages of rules. I played AD&D for years with three books. Heck, the first ten years or so of my gaming experience was in editions that had no need of a Spell Compendium or Complete Arcane.

I'm rather glad we've gone back to that level of simplicity.

 

[IlluminatedSeraph]

[MENTION=81852]Desh-Rae-Halra[/MENTION]

Jester's point is that while WotC has produced a lot of books and content, those books and content primarily serve as marketing for the place they actually make their money. While his formulation is reductive, he's not wrong. (Or she.)

Your typical game store is not in the business of selling RPG books. That may seem counter-intuitive to you, but go ask the person behind the counter to ask their boss at your LGS and you'll find that it's true. The bulk of virtually every game store's money is in miniatures and card games (MtG being the largest). So why bother with shelf space for RPG books and board games if they make so little on them?

Two words: customer traffic. RPG players, in that hobby, are rarely lucrative. But they are usually both extremely interesting people to have around your store (which makes you look like a cool place to be to walk-ins or uncertain customers) and into other hobbies which do make you money. The latest RPG book or in-store RPG campaign brings them in the door, and then you sell them the product that actually makes you your living. WotC essentially does the same thing on a corporate and brand level - the RPG fanbase generates buzz, passion and a general sense that something cool might be going on, and then they make their bank selling computer games and books and so forth to both that fanbase and everyone who hears about their products from that fanbase.

So no, WotC isn't in business - in the narrow sense of what keeps the lights on - to sell books. It's in business to sell a variety of other things for which RPGs are the value-menu item that draws customers.

 

[Celtavian]

I'm finding my creative juices boosted by 5Es simple design. I'm writing magic items and creatures up as I want them to be. I tend to mix realistic and cinematic mechanics in whatever fashion seems cool and/or appropriate. I find magic items creation far more enjoyable with 5E magic items. I like writing up custom magic items. I always hated the idea of production line magic items.

I don't find I need a lot of books in 5E. They seem unnecessary. It's very easy to write material including rules such as archetypes, magic items, feats, spells, and the like.

 

[Tia Nadiezja]

[MENTION=81852]Desh-Rae-Halra[/MENTION]

Jester's point is that while WotC has produced a lot of books and content, those books and content primarily serve as marketing for the place they actually make their money. While his formulation is reductive, he's not wrong. (Or she.)

Your typical game store is not in the business of selling RPG books. That may seem counter-intuitive to you, but go ask the person behind the counter to ask their boss at your LGS and you'll find that it's true. The bulk of virtually every game store's money is in miniatures and card games (MtG being the largest). So why bother with shelf space for RPG books and board games if they make so little on them?

Two words: customer traffic. RPG players, in that hobby, are rarely lucrative. But they are usually both extremely interesting people to have around your store (which makes you look like a cool place to be to walk-ins or uncertain customers) and into other hobbies which do make you money. The latest RPG book or in-store RPG campaign brings them in the door, and then you sell them the product that actually makes you your living. WotC essentially does the same thing on a corporate and brand level - the RPG fanbase generates buzz, passion and a general sense that something cool might be going on, and then they make their bank selling computer games and books and so forth to both that fanbase and everyone who hears about their products from that fanbase.

So no, WotC isn't in business - in the narrow sense of what keeps the lights on - to sell books. It's in business to sell a variety of other things for which RPGs are the value-menu item that draws customers.

WotC isn't in the business of selling RPG books, though they sell lots of books so that they can do the things they are (or at least their D&D arm is) in the business of doing - movies, video games (very much video games - have you seen the recent level of coordination they've put forth with Cryptic and Turbine?), novels, toys, t-shirts. That the RPG books tend to bring in a little profit on the side is lagniappe, omake, bonus. Plus, from listening to Mearls and the others talk, they honestly love working on the game, which... well, is great. I like them; they're great people and should get to do what they love.

Much like Marvel and DC aren't in the business of selling comic books - they're in the business of selling movies, and the comic books act as a creative and marketing feeder mechanism for the movies. Well, Marvel's in the business of selling movies. DC's in the business of breaking my heart and harvesting my misery to fuel Geoff Johns's death ray, which will reach 100% charge with the release of Dawn of Justice and he will hold the world hostage until we pay billions of dollars and admit that Hal Jordan is, in fact, the best Green Lantern.

 

[Celtavian]

WotC's D&D division used to be in the business of selling RPG books. Some of us miss when WotC was in the business of selling RPG books. The change of priority is understandable given the realities of the modern market. That's probably why some of us still like Paizo as a company better than WotC. Paizo is still in the business of selling RPG books. It shows up in the quality of their books. Right now, WotC is ruled by Hasbro. Hasbro wanted the D&D brand to push video games and the like as Tia outlined.

It wasn't always so. Many of us wish for the old days when WotC D&D's priority was great RPG products for tabletop D&D game.

 

[Tia Nadiezja]

WotC's D&D division used to be in the business of selling RPG books. Some of us miss when WotC was in the business of selling RPG books. The change of priority is understandable given the realities of the modern market. That's probably why some of us still like Paizo as a company better than WotC. Paizo is still in the business of selling RPG books. It shows up in the quality of their books. Right now, WotC is ruled by Hasbro. Hasbro wanted the D&D brand to push video games and the like as Tia outlined.

It wasn't always so. Many of us wish for the old days when WotC D&D's priority was great RPG products for tabletop D&D game.

Honestly? I think the current setup is actually better for the game than when the focus of WotC's money-making efforts was selling D&D books. 3.5's massive pile o' books and 4e's... well, 4e (I loved 4e, and I desperately needed it to renew my interest in the game as a whole when burn-out on 3e hit, but it was a mess and kept growing into a bigger one) were the outcome of WotC needing to sell books to turn a profit on the brand.

Because if you need to sell game books to make money, you're going to keep putting game books out. Quickly - too quickly. And each one is going to need to have something in it to sell it to every group of players, because you need to make as many sales as possible of each book.

Now they don't need to do that. Now, D&D makes money by being something people want to license and use to make other media, and it does THAT by providing high-quality ideas and inspiration and by being a brand that people want to be associated with. "Hey, look at us. We inspired basically the entire fantasy genre. We're objectively the best. Come, pay us to use our name and our IP in your work, for you will profit and we will happily take some of your money to let you."

I much prefer that over Sword and Fist.

 

[IlluminatedSeraph]

Honestly? I think the current setup is actually better for the game than when the focus of WotC's money-making efforts was selling D&D books. 3.5's massive pile o' books and 4e's... well, 4e (I loved 4e, and I desperately needed it to renew my interest in the game as a whole when burn-out on 3e hit, but it was a mess and kept growing into a bigger one) were the outcome of WotC needing to sell books to turn a profit on the brand.

Because if you need to sell game books to make money, you're going to keep putting game books out. Quickly - too quickly. And each one is going to need to have something in it to sell it to every group of players, because you need to make as many sales as possible of each book.

Now they don't need to do that. Now, D&D makes money by being something people want to license and use to make other media, and it does THAT by providing high-quality ideas and inspiration and by being a brand that people want to be associated with. "Hey, look at us. We inspired basically the entire fantasy genre. We're objectively the best. Come, pay us to use our name and our IP in your work, for you will profit and we will happily take some of your money to let you."

I much prefer that over Sword and Fist.

Hey I LIKED Sword and Fist! Which probably is more a comment on my bad taste than anything but nevermind, anyway....

Ahem.

Paizo, not to get too off-topic, is in the business of keeping the dead corpse of someone else's product twitching along at a reasonably attractive shamble, and the best that I can say for them is that I've always been impressed by their art and their willingness to portray diverse NPCs. Their actual game design has always struck me as uninspired at best and iteration for the sake of iteration at worst. I much prefer WotC taking its exceptionally sweet time with releasing material by comparison, no matter how annoying it is.

 

[Tia Nadiezja]

Hey I LIKED Sword and Fist! Which probably is more a comment on my bad taste than anything but nevermind, anyway....

Ahem.

Paizo, not to get too off-topic, is in the business of keeping the dead corpse of someone else's product twitching along at a reasonably attractive shamble, and the best that I can say for them is that I've always been impressed by their art and their willingness to portray diverse NPCs. Their actual game design has always struck me as uninspired at best and iteration for the sake of iteration at worst. I much prefer WotC taking its exceptionally sweet time with releasing material by comparison, no matter how annoying it is.

Was it Defenders of the Wild that was godawful, then? I don't think it's Tome and Blood.

Can we all agree that Complete Divine was a book full of terrible, terrible ideas?

Ah!

Tome of Magic. Tome of bloody Magic. I will never forgive that book for promising me not one, not two, but three REALLY AWESOME sets of character concepts then being designed in such a way that none of them, y'know, worked.

 

[sheadunne]

Hrm, I played Basic/Expert for years with just 128 pages of rules. I played AD&D for years with three books. Heck, the first ten years or so of my gaming experience was in editions that had no need of a Spell Compendium or Complete Arcane.

I'm rather glad we've gone back to that level of simplicity.

I actually thought it did have need of a spell compendium. With all the additional spells in modules and dragon mag, it could have benefited from a compedium. There was a need and I'd have gladly bought it. It was always a pain to track down that cool spell you couldn't remember which publication it was in. The same was true for monsters. We didn't seem to have a need for more classes though, at least not in my experience.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Tome of Magic. Tome of bloody Magic. I will never forgive that book for promising me not one, not two, but three REALLY AWESOME sets of character concepts then being designed in such a way that none of them, y'know, worked.

Oh, the shadowcaster worked. It just didn't work well, and it failed utterly at its design goal of being substantially different from the existing magic system.

I was not not the right author to try writing a class based around a new magic system, at that point in my career. Sorry.

(I thought the binder--which I think was written by Matt Sernett, IIRC--really worked, though. It wound up not being quite to my taste, since it was more a "jack of all trades, master of none" class, and that's not my playstyle, but I thought it was the most interesting and mechanically sound of the three options. I never played with the true namer, so I can't comment there.)