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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 6360384" data-attributes="member: 59082">Pemerton, you and I have had a couple go-arounds before and I think they always tend to boil down to us having very different cognitive styles. For instance, you want more exactitude than I do; in this case, you want to define a single "metric" that I am using to state that 5E is a success so far, and I can't give you that single metric. Or rather, I have given some general phrases but they haven't satisfied you, they aren't exact or singular enough.I'm totally fine with this difference that may, perhaps, always lead us to an impasse, but I thought we might as well get it out on the table and not expect that we'll change each others minds. But I do appreciate conversing with you, partially because of our difference in cognitive style.No, I don't think we could have predicted it would "fail."* Dial back six years and I think WotC could have turned the ship around, or least gotten a few more years out of 4E. In other words, I don't think it was inevitable in the summer of 2008 that WotC would no longer be publishing 4E books just three and a half years later.(*Again, just so I'm not accused of bashing 4E, what I mean by "success" and "failure" has nothing to do with its merits as a game; it has to do with a variety of factors such as its embrace by the community and the life cycle of the edition)But here's the point you seem to brush aside: How many books an edition sells in the roll-out is only one metric of success, and perhaps not even the most significant one in terms of long-term success - 4E being a case in point. All editions sell a lot of core rule books, that's partially why we see new editions. But in terms of succcess, sustainable success, is how the edition does in year two and three and four...and remember, 4E stopped publication three and a half years in.Not really a fair comparison there, Pemerton. The LotR movies have a far wider appeal and viewership than D&D.Anyhow, I'm not really talking about the pundits. I'm talking about what I called upthread the Faithful, or the Hardcore Few. People like you and I that just love D&D and RPGs, that will probably always love them (even if we don't play them). It isn't even only the long-timers, but could be people that got into five, ten years ago. "Lifers." I know that I've gone through periods of four or five years at a time without playing D&D (c. 1995-1999, c. 2003-2007), but still paid attention to varying degrees, even bought books when I didn't plan on using them. I mean, the chances that I actually play Monte Cook's new RPG, The Strange, are very small, but I'm spending $40 on the book anyway - it just looks too intriguing not to check out and browse through every one in awhile (although my wife is trying to get me to whittle my RPG collection down to a shelf or two!).I don't know how many of "us" there are, but I imagine in the six figures somewhere - a couple hundred thousand, maybe? I also imagine that if you're reading this, or even posting on EN World, you're probably one of the Faithful/Hardcore Few. The pundits are just especially loud and vociferous in their views. But our views matter - the tone and tenor of EN World and RPGnet and the Wizards forum matter, because I think we are representative--at least to some degree--of the Hardcore Few.Any new edition is almost guaranteed to sell a few hundred thousand copies of the core rulebooks, if only to the Hardcore Few. That's a given. But whether or not an edition is a "success" depends upon 1. Whether those Hardcore Few keep buying books (which tells us how well the community embraces the edition), 2. whether lapsed players are drawn back in, 3. How many new players get into the game, 4. How many books are selling in year 2, 3, 4, etc. I'm sure there are other factors, other metrics, but those are some at work.And again, please let me be clear: "success" and "failure" have nothing to do with how good the game is. It has to do with perception, which translates into results in the medium and long-term. In this context, just about any edition of D&D will be a short-term success if only that lots of core books will sell and people will be generally excited about a new edition.4E was a short-term success. Medium-term it was a mixed bag, but veering towards the negative. Long-term it was a disaster.With all this said, I will rephrase what I said in the OP: my sense is that there are encouraging signs that 5E will be more than just a short-term success, at least more so than 4E was (in the medium and long term). Of course we don't truly know yet, but things look promising. And again, this doesn't mean that 5E is inherently a "better" game than 4E, but that the community perception is generally more positive than it was c. June, 2008.</blockquote>

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