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

[The Little Raven]

-Software failure: after the belly flop of the etools, Hasbro bought the company, and electronic rights where licensed off (leading Peter A to leave the company). Now, software is at the heart of the new edition. May they get it right.

Hasbro purchased WotC in 1999, well before the E-Tools flop. Fluid Entertainment made the lowest bid on the project, got the contract, then failed to do what they said they could do.

-Product glut: 3E cut back from 2E, but they still released 160+ products (there is actually a new list in another thread, I will look for the link). They say they are not being as aggressive as they could be for 4E, and will spread products out. But they are releasing 29 products in 08, and seem to be targetting 1 hardback a month plus adventures and accesories. Seems like a lot. Seems like there will be a big falloff in sales after people buy the obvious stuff.

160 products over the course of 8 years is roughly 20 products a year. That ain't bad compared to 60 a year.

Note this quote from Ryan Dancy: "we spent too much time on our own worlds, and not enough time on theirs" What do we get for 4E, a whole new default world, plus a rearanging (nuking) of the Realms, and support for Eberron...EDIT: not that there is anything wrong with the later.

Yeah, they were spending too much time on a dozen actively supported campaign settings. That's worlds away from supporting two settings, who received a combined total of books that are less than what the Realms alone received during 2e's era.

 

[Banshee16]

Third party glut though, not so much the stuff Wizards produced. And it alone didn't kill 3e. Nothing has killed it as long as people have the books and play it.

I would contest that WotC glutted the market just as 3rd party companies did. Maybe not as much, because they were one company vs. dozens of 3rd party companies.....Yes, they had good products....but they also had crap. There were *alot* of 3rd party companies out there, so yes, there was garbage....but also good stuff......companies like Green Ronin, Malhavoc Press, Sword and Sorcery, etc. all produced excellent books. Some that weren't as good, but a lot of good product. I'd say that some of the stuff they produced was *better* than that produced by WotC.

I guess in terms of my own experiences, in my group, the single thing that caused them to stop being consumers was the release of 3.5. All of my players were pissed at the release of basically a new edition so soon after the release of 3.0, and for many of them, they vowed never to purchase another WotC release....and held true to that position. For most of the 3.5 lifespan, I was the only person buying books anymore out of my entire group.

That doesn't necessarily go for every group, but I'm sure we weren't the only ones with similar experiences. I've read enough on the board about people being pissed about 3.5.

Banshee

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

The RPG market is weird and atypical, IMO. It's probably the only market I can think of where the system is what sells, and not stuff to use with the system.

Campaign settings and modules don't sell. So the companies are obliged to keep churning out more rules, more and more and more rules, until finally the whole thing becomes so labyrinthine and bloated that they have to put out a new edition and start all over again.

It's not really the company's fault -- it's the fact that their customers will basically only buy rules in economically viable quantities.

It's like if people obsessed about buying more and more and more add-ons for a CD player, but never bought any CDs to use in it. Eventually, the player ends up filling a room, and essentially doesn't do anything it didn't already do -- except that now you need to read 50 pages of wiring diagrams to figure out how to turn it on. That's basically what the RPG industry is like.

Actually, I'm astonished that there's any RPG industry left at all -- it's such an inverted and difficult business model.

On the head.

IMNSHO the product "glut" is not a sign of or cause of failure in 3e. It is a sign of success that happens to inevitably yield diminishing returns.

I am grudgingly seeing the logic of a subscription model.

Any number of the world's greatest campaign and adventure writers cannot produce enough product to keep a game company afloat -- even if every DM buys their stuff. The profit margins are too razor thin.

There is a limit to how many splatbooks people are willing to soak up, even if they are pretty die hard fans. That will only take you so far.

Electronic subscriptions are the closet thing to a magic bullet. Even a dollar or two a month per player is a huge win. Better to get $15 per year electronically distributed than sell four times that amount in product.

The open questions are: (1) What is compelling enough to sign up the players? (2) What fate is in store for our FLGS's?

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I guess in terms of my own experiences, in my group, the single thing that caused them to stop being consumers was the release of 3.5. All of my players were pissed at the release of basically a new edition so soon after the release of 3.0, and for many of them, they vowed never to purchase another WotC release....and held true to that position. For most of the 3.5 lifespan, I was the only person buying books anymore out of my entire group.

That doesn't necessarily go for every group, but I'm sure we weren't the only ones with similar experiences. I've read enough on the board about people being pissed about 3.5.

FWIW, I was an opposite case. I was very disappointed in the quality of the material in Sword & Fist, and Defender's of the Faith. They were promising supplements, but they were in desperate need of tweaking and rebalancing IMO. 3.5 brought me back as a regular buyer.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Thanks for that Saishu_Heiki. Very interesting reading. I can't even imagine what the tabletop roleplaying market would be like today if WotC hadn't taken over D&D. EN World probably wouldn't even exist! What would I do with all my free time?

Olaf the Stout

 

[Plane Sailing]

Looks like 'General discussion' to me.

I'll zip it over to the appropriate forum.

 

[Fifth Element]

It's like if people obsessed about buying more and more and more add-ons for a CD player, but never bought any CDs to use in it. Eventually, the player ends up filling a room, and essentially doesn't do anything it didn't already do -- except that now you need to read 50 pages of wiring diagrams to figure out how to turn it on. That's basically what the RPG industry is like.

Not quite. To continue the analogy, most people don't buy any CDs because they make their own. And since they make their own, they want the very best system to play them on to do them justice. This leads to constant tinkering with the system. They wants their creations to sound as good as they possibly can. Don't forget that a lot of the add-ons are tried and tested on the system for a while, then later discarded as new add-one are acquired. The old add-ons may have been perfect for what you wanted your system to do two months ago, but your latest CD is quite different, so you need to change your system so it sounds the best.

 

[Lanefan]

Not quite. To continue the analogy, most people don't buy any CDs because they make their own. And since they make their own, they want the very best system to play them on to do them justice. This leads to constant tinkering with the system. They wants their creations to sound as good as they possibly can. Don't forget that a lot of the add-ons are tried and tested on the system for a while, then later discarded as new add-one are acquired. The old add-ons may have been perfect for what you wanted your system to do two months ago, but your latest CD is quite different, so you need to change your system so it sounds the best.

Or, to take the analogy in another direction, people already own the CDs - bought 'em years ago - but the new player uses a different data-read format. Which leaves one with a choice: either a) throw out the old CDs and buy new ones assuming they are even available, or b) buy or home-build a boatload of extra equipment to make the new player read the old CDs (while in the process heating your house as well), or c) take the new player back for a refund. The business model wants choice (a), and then for you to buy all the fancy add-ons as well that *really* make it sound good.

While 2e's bloat may have contributed to its collapse, I rather suspect TSR had bigger problems. This was made clear by the sudden improvements in the 2e releases once WotC bought the game.

One look at the groaning shelves at my FLGS tells me 3e has bloat problems too.

Lanefan

 

[jdrakeh]

Hardcore fans with a mental illness are not a large enough audience to base a product line around.

I dunno. There are days when I think that certain publishers have managed to cash in on this market.

 

[Wolfspider]

Spring 1997 - WotC acquires TSR; former TSR staff moves to Washington; development on 3rd Edition begins.
Autumn 2000 - 3rd Edition released.
Summer 2003 - 3.5 Edition released.
Summer 2008 - 4th Edition released.

Wizards had 3 years to take feedback (without the internet as it's primary tool) and develop 3rd Edition. They, then, had another 2-3 years to take feedback (with the internet as a primary tool this time) and develop 3.5. Then, they had 5 years to take feedback and develop 4th edition.

Last time I checked, 5 years (or 8 if you want to add in 3.5's development) is more than 3 years.

"The reality is that my R&D team didn't start seriously discussing the notion of the next edition of D&D until sometime in early 2005. That's when we began to examine different scenarios for how we might approach the process."
--Bill Slavicsek, Wizards Presents: Worlds and Monsters

Last time I checked, 3 years is equal to 3 years.