I don't want 5E, I want a definitive D&D (the Monopoly model)

[MichaelSomething]

Why does WOTC have to do it? Paizo's all over 3.5 like orcs on pie!

 

[prosfilaes]

First we should stay away from words like "demand" because they put an ugly tone on this conversation that isn't productive.

Perhaps we should stay away from all words, then.

The original post never even touched the financial viability of a "Classic" brand.

It's one of the few important aspects of the question, though.

3. Publishing more support for 3.5 like "the Complete Fey" and other new ideas (Seriously they won't run out of ideas ever)

To hit just one point, let's look at the numbers for the 3.x monster manuals from LibraryThing and RPGGeek (LT/RG) (that is, the number of people listing a copy as held in their online libraries):

Monster Manual, 3.0: 530 / 322
Monster Manual II: 317 / 158
Fiend Folio: 172 / 112
Monster Manual, 3.5: 519 / 441
Monster Manual III: 164 / 127
Monster Manual IV: 105 / 77
Monster Manual V: 50 / 59

There's three times as many copies of Monster Manual II as Monster Manual V and consistently Monster Manual X has more copies held then Monster Manual X+1. I don't see much chance of selling another monster manual.

 

[Desdichado]

First we should stay away from words like "demand" because they put an ugly tone on this conversation that isn't productive.

No it doesn't. And I won't stay away from words that accurately describe how I percieve the discussion.

But anyway - I never claimed the edition treadmill was unprofitable, and I never claimed D&D could sell like Monopoly. I think I already said it wouldn't in another reply to a person claiming "D&D will never break Monopoly's record of selling 2million copies a year!". The original post never even touched the financial viability of a "Classic" brand. But I still believe it's possible to pull in new demographics. The edition treadmill doesn't work for everyone and they should address that with a separate product line.

Quite honestly, I'm not quite sure what you're claiming anymore, since it seems to change slightly with every iteration.

But clearly, the financial viability is an important facet of the discussion, right? I mean, you can see how "pulling in new demographics" with a line that isn't financially viable is hardly a winning proposition for WotC, right?

There comes a time when getting the next group of customers is more expensive than they are worth. That's when you don't worry about them and keep selling to your current customers.

The financial viability is a key component of this entire discussion. You want WotC to do something. You believe that it will bring in more customers (itself a fairly dubious claim). The financial viability of such a project by WotC is highly relevant discussion item, whether you claimed anything about it or not.

That's a good point. But maybe they don't buy books because they feel like the game's going to change after they buy them and they'll have to buy them again? I know it's primarily laziness and cheapness.

And maybe you're really reaching now.

I know 3.5 isn't everyone's favorite edition (if I were dictator I'd make it C&C) but Pathfinder demonstrates 3.5 is the most profitable edition to retroclone.

Actually, it demonstrates absolutely nothing of the sort. All that it demonstrates is that Paizo has been successful in marketing their product to their customers. A large part of their success is their ability to produce adventures that customers want. There's no way to figure out how much of an issue their game as a continuing legacy of 3.5 figures into their success, or which direction those customers would go given a change in the market.

I'd argue that the majority of Pathfinder's customers were big fans of their adventure paths, and that was the gateway that brought them to the Pathfinder game, not the fact that Pathfinder is "3.75." Without the continuing support of Paizo's adventures, I think you'd see the market for the Pathfinder game dry up fairly quickly. In order for WotC to poach those cusomters, it'd first have to come up with a line of 3.5 compatible adventures that are as in demand as the Paizo adventures have been.

Since WotC have said before in the past that publishing adventures isn't a profitable venture for a firm of their size, and since the newly in-house Dungeon Magazine hasn't killed the market for Paizo adventures, I doubt very much that they could do that even in the extremely unlikely event that they could manage to crunch the numbers so make it look like it might possibly under the best circumstances imaginable, be a good idea.

WOTC could profit off of this market by:

By essentially doing more of what they were doing when they stopped publishing 3.5 stuff, because it was no longer profitable enough and they had a business need to issue a new edition?

Logic fail.

I know not everyone agrees that 3.5 is "classic D&D" but the very existence of a Pathfinder is a powerful indication that a large block of people consider 3.x their definitive D&D. They are a profitable demographic that doesn't care much for change or the edition treadmill. WOTC gave up on profitting from them and supporting them with new products and they shouldn't have.

Just because A happened and then B happened doesn't mean that A caused B. You need to do quite a bit more work to demonstrate that what you believe to be true about this market actually is true. I think that there's a lot of very compelling evidence to suggest that your business model is based much more on wishful thinking than reality.

 

[Mark CMG]

It is obvious that there was still profitability in the 3.XE line but that WotC wasn't finding a way to sell to it because someone (many someones if you count third party pubs) is making money and it isn't WotC. Possible reasons include, one, WotC not being able to find a way present another semi-revision (Paizo bit the bullet and put out free Beta and super-afforadable PDF, then a healthy, pricey hardback), two, WotC had gutted the staff of people who most closely had worked with 3.XE (many of them now work with Paizo), three, WotC didn't have its mouthpiece under direct control anymore (Dragon and Dungeon mags were giving Paizo the chance to appear as the official 3.XE publisher, when WotC took them back they were switched to pushing non-3.XE and ceased being in-print), and, four, WotC didn't understand how to put out adventures for their system in a way that made them profittable for their corporate bottomline (Paizo apparrently knows how, has lower expectations of profitability, or some combination thereof).

 

[Desdichado]

Pshaw. There's no rudeness involved just because I used the word demand, or just because I don't think his story holds up under a cursory glance. There's a far cry from being rude to being unsupportive of an idea that is missing enough key elements of reality to be unfeasible.

As to the beginning of your post, you missed the one that WotC have itself claimed; (although not quite in so many words) scope, fixed cost, and opportunity cost.

WotC have said--via Ryan Dancey--that because of their size and overheads, they cannot survive on the slim margins that modules and other marginal sourcebooks provide. Not only that, especially under Hasbro leadership, even if such an enterprise were profitable (barely) or could be made so, there is an opportunity cost in spending those resources developing those marginable products. Namely, that they can't deploy those same resources to produce something that's more profitable.

What the OP seems to be missing--almost deliberately now, given the many times it's been pointed out, it seems--is that losing market share is not the same as losing profit. Making decisions that bring back the "lost" 3.5 players at the expense of a business plan that is more profitable, simply doesn't make any sense. They're not worth it as customers. The resources to "regain" them aren't worth the revenue they would bring in.

Probably. Of course, I don't have access to the WotC accounting data that would prove this supposition. However, it's true in most industries, including those in which I work and others in which I have worked, and I believe it to be true in this case too.

It's a nice dream--make the "one" evergreen version of D&D that everyone will play. No doubt, WotC would themselves also love to find such an edition. At the end of the day, however, it is just a dream. It doesn't make any business sense to bring back 3.5 and sell it in conjunction with 4e, developing new products like Complete Fey for it, and the dream also ignores customer taste, presuming that everyone will in fact fall in line under one edition. All my experience suggests that that has never happened and never will.

 

[prosfilaes]

I'd argue that the majority of Pathfinder's customers were big fans of their adventure paths, and that was the gateway that brought them to the Pathfinder game, not the fact that Pathfinder is "3.75."

Looking at the number of people still playing 3.x, and looking my own personal experiences, I think that a majority of PF's customers were looking for 3.75, or at least a well-supported D&D that wasn't 4e.

 

[Mark CMG]

Looking at the number of people still playing 3.x, and looking my own personal experiences, I think that a majority of PF's customers were looking for 3.75, or at least a well-supported D&D that wasn't 4e.

That does seem pretty clear since some at least moved toward systems like Savage Worlds and it is also true that many people look to retro-clones and other OGL offshoots that are well-supported as well. Given the number of non-D&D and retro-D&D options that also have extensive support, one has to assume that those who stuck with 3.XE didn't simply do it for the support but because of the quality of the support and the interest in sticking with the 3.XE system.

I think there's a combination of false premise and points being missed by the more vehement arguments against GregoryOatmeal ideas in that just because WotC couldn't find a way to make adventure support profitable doesn't mean it can't be made so (and Paizo seems to have found a way) plus losing market share is losing profit unless the market is growing so rapidly that your own share continues to provide the same profit level at the lower share as at the higher share.

The one thing much (not all) of the non-4E market has in common is use of the OGL which is saying something about that marketing scheme at the least.

 

[Imaro]

Looking at the number of people still playing 3.x, and looking my own personal experiences, I think that a majority of PF's customers were looking for 3.75, or at least a well-supported D&D that wasn't 4e.

I'd definitely agree with this. I expected 4e to be much closer to 3.5, along the lines of but not necessarily the same as the tweaks and revisions made to Star Wars Saga edition. Over time I've come to accept and even at times enjoy running 4e for what it is... but I definitely prefer running 3rd edition (using E10) overall.

OAN: A few points in the thread I wanted to address...

Couldn't (maybe even shouldn't) different playstyles be addressed by different games and campaign settings, when possible, as opposed to the trashing and abandoning of a rule set every couple of years for a totally new one?

I mean let's take the nWoD as an example (though the oWoD would serve just as well)... all of their games run on the same core engine (in the blue book for nWoD and in the individual splat cores for oWoD)... but the splat books (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Hunter, Promethean, Changeling, Geist, etc.) all have individual add-ons and tweaks to the rules along with specialized fluff that in fact creates different play experiences with the same basic rules.

Now over time you will release revised/updated and errata'd corebooks... but instead of throwing the previous system out for a new one, you refine, tweak and fix your base system... Perhaps release an optional rules/upgrade supplement once a year to accomodate particular playstyles and preferences within your system. Thus you don't always start from square one and repeat the process over and over again. Instead now you have a system that you really can make better over time and you have a family of games/settings that anyone who knows the system can pick up and play. In all honesty I thought this was going to be the route with 4e, but after the cancellation of Ravenloft and no mention of further branch off games I'm assuming Gamma World didn't do so great... of course I could be wrong.

In the end I think PF will probably end up as my go to game and 4e will probably be the last edition of D&D I purchase from WotC, unless a new edition just blows my mind and gets rave reviews. Honestly the buy in of reading 600+ pages to learn a new edition to run and play just doesn't appeal to me anymore... especially when it's essentially to do the same thing I did with the previous edition (3.5) and the edition before that (3.0). Add onto that the buy in of getting my group to accept and learn a new edition and it just seems a little pointless... especially since inevitably because it's a new system designed from scratch there will be new issues and problems with it. YMMV of course.