How D&D Was Saved and Made It To 4e

[Dire Bare]

Of particular note:



The glut of products killed 3E.

I'm fearful we haven't learned from that. 4E already has supplemental products rolling down the pike shortly after the release. I would have preferred a year's moratorium on new material.

But you gotta make products to sell products, and you gotta sell products to make money.

Dangit.

W.P.

Sorry man, but as others have pointed out, there was no 3e "product glut" that killed or otherwise harmed the game. The glut of products mentioned in Dancey's info was specifically aimed at the 2nd Edition of the game. You think 3e had a lot of products? 2e was just crazy. I loved most of it, but it was definitely too much.

The only thing that killed 3e as a viable product was WotC's desire to reinvigorate the game with a new edition, 4e.

A year's moratorium on new material? What, nothing but the three core books for one full year? Now that is a recipe for ending a new product line right there, no immediate support. How much product to release is a careful balancing act, and 3e had it pretty close to right. I imagine we won't see much of a difference in the number of 4e products released per year.

 

[Saishu_Heiki]

Culture is learned, and corporate culture is no exception. These articles deal with the saving of D&D and the creation of 3e, but the lessons remain.

Ever since the designers have started talking about 4e they keep mentioning that they wanted to make it more fun and that they were paying attention to the lessons of 3e/3.5. I don't think I was alone in not really having a context for these comments. After reading those articles I begin to understand what they were saying - a major part of making the new edition was listening to the players and the problems that people had with the mechanics of 3e/3.5. This marks a major change from the way TSR (post-Gygax) handled the franchise. Second, they want to make it fun because they play and love the game as much as anyone else.

So, in short, these articles do not reference 4e but they help me to understand where the WotC people are coming from with their comments on 4e.

 

[Lacyon]

The only thing that killed 3e as a viable product was WotC's desire to reinvigorate the game with a new edition, 4e.

A year's moratorium on new material? What, nothing but the three core books for one full year? Now that is a recipe for ending a new product line right there, no immediate support.

3rd Edition will continue to be supported as long as there are enough people interested in paying for it. It is the first edition of D&D (possibly, the first edition of any RPG) for which this is true. Wizards of the Coast gave us this guarantee 8 years ago in the form of the OGL.

Though I will probably want to move to 4E when it comes out, I still appreciate the gift (and hope the GSL does the same for 4E).

 

[Wisdom Penalty]

...there was no 3e "product glut" that killed or otherwise harmed the game.

Um. Yes there was.

The glut of products mentioned in Dancey's info was specifically aimed at the 2nd Edition of the game.

I know. Seems applicable to 3rd edition. Heck, didn't Monte Lord Cook state 3E was beaten down by the sheer deluge of new material? (I'm asking - I'm not saying he did. Please don't beat me down with your unused copies of Song & Silence or Sword & Fist.)

A year's moratorium on new material? What, nothing but the three core books for one full year? Now that is a recipe for ending a new product line right there, no immediate support.

I agree. Doesn't mean a girl can't dream.

W.P.

 

[malraux]

Sorry man, but as others have pointed out, there was no 3e "product glut" that killed or otherwise harmed the game. The glut of products mentioned in Dancey's info was specifically aimed at the 2nd Edition of the game. You think 3e had a lot of products? 2e was just crazy. I loved most of it, but it was definitely too much.

And it wasn't just a lot of books, it was a lot of specialized books. It was books that only a dm running a particular campaign setting might want. Sure 3e has made a lot of books with rules that sort of overlap in weird ways, but there's a reasonable market for most of the books. But a quick look at the rpgnow site has stuff like The Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide and a separate Castle Guidebook. A seafaring book and a vikings book. And don't forget lots of bad secondary products like Dragon Dice.

 

[Dausuul]

I know. Seems applicable to 3rd edition. Heck, didn't Monte Lord Cook state 3E was beaten down by the sheer deluge of new material? (I'm asking - I'm not saying he did. Please don't beat me down with your unused copies of Song & Silence or Sword & Fist.)

It may apply to some extent, but not the way it did with 2E. 2E was insane. A dozen different settings, each with its very own product line--countless hyper-specialized sourcebooks--assorted bizarre and ill-conceived products like Dragon Dice. It didn't occur to me at the time how crazy this was, but looking back on it I can see exactly what Dancey was talking about, and nothing since the release of 3E holds a candle to it.

The thing that distinguishes "a lot" of sourcebooks from "a glut" is very simple--are people still buying the new material? As long as the answer is yes, then there is not a glut, at least not from a corporate perspective, regardless of how the besieged and desperate Dungeon Masters feel about things. I'm pretty sure people were still buying 3.5E material, up until 4E was announced. (After that, obviously, sales no doubt plummeted.)

 

[ThirdWizard]

Um. Yes there was.

TSR was releasing 60 books per year. Sixty. Books. Per. Year.

No. Wizards was not producing glut.

 

[Li Shenron]

The glut of products killed 3E.

The funny thing is that nobody HAS to buy all the products to play the game. Many gamers just bought everything out of a collecting urge, then complained that there was too much, and too many gamebreaking elements. Even more funny, most of the collectors largely underuse what they buy, and just cherry-pick. But what is most attractive to cherry-pick, if not exactly those few abusable things?

Hearing gamers relieved by the fact that now the game is "refreshed" by going back to core, is a bit like hearing someone who was overweight and blamed it on the supermarket displaying too many donuts... then got her fat reduced with a surgical operation, only to start again eating the same things over and over. :\

I think everyone's ultimately responsible for killing their own game, or keep it alive if they like it as it is. I am not at all sad to see the 3.5 product line end, just like I haven't been sad to see the 3.0 line end (and 3.0 is my favourite edition of the game). But being happy at the idea that now you're "free" because you don't (YET) have 50 books to consider when playing sounds quite ridiculous to me... plus, I'm more than sure that the same people who collected all 3e books will do the same with 4e books.

 

[Firevalkyrie]

TSR was releasing 60 books per year. Sixty. Books. Per. Year.

No. Wizards was not producing glut.

Agreed. In the most active year (2006) of 3E, Wizards put out 3 sourcebooks or large adventures per month, for a total of 36 products in that year.

 

[Dausuul]

The funny thing is that nobody HAS to buy all the products to play the game. Many gamers just bought everything out of a collecting urge, then complained that there was too much, and too many gamebreaking elements. Even more funny, most of the collectors largely underuse what they buy, and just cherry-pick. But what is most attractive to cherry-pick, if not exactly those few abusable things?

Hearing gamers relieved by the fact that now the game is "refreshed" by going back to core, is a bit like hearing someone who was overweight and blamed it on the supermarket displaying too many donuts... then got her fat reduced with a surgical operation, only to start again eating the same things over and over. :\

I think everyone's ultimately responsible for killing their own game, or keep it alive if they like it as it is. I am not at all sad to see the 3.5 product line end, just like I haven't been sad to see the 3.0 line end (and 3.0 is my favourite edition of the game). But being happy at the idea that now you're "free" because you don't (YET) have 50 books to consider when playing sounds quite ridiculous to me... plus, I'm more than sure that the same people who collected all 3e books will do the same with 4e books.

It's not really that simple. For a game as crunch-driven as D&D has long been, new crunch is a large part of maintaining the novelty of the game. New sourcebooks help to keep the game fresh and interesting, particularly for those who play combat-heavy games.

(Right about now is the place where I expect somebody to bring up what I call the Straw DM--the hypothetical "good DM" who makes the game fresh and interesting all by him/herself, solves every rules-related issue with a casual yet precisely calibrated judgement call, and carefully attends to the needs of each and every player, each and every game. Not every group has such a paragon, however, and even good DMs have bad days... and anyone can fall into a rut after a while.)

People buy sourcebooks as they get bored with the same old crunch. They want to try out new concepts and new systems, without having to abandon the existing campaign or learn a whole new ruleset. This novelty comes at a price, though, mostly in terms of mental space devoted to keeping track of all those sourcebooks. So it does come as a relief to have all that mental space cleared out, even when you're just going to start filling it up again.