D&D 5E I want D&D Next to be a new edition, not just an improved version of Edition X

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't think it's being particularly conservative to want a game carrying the moniker "Dungeons and Dragons" to actually show responsibility and respect to the game's heritage, and be authentic to it's original design.

If you want a new Fandabydoobee-Whizz-Child-Offspring-Of-D&D RPG, then you should call it that, and not just stand on the shoulders of a giant to sell it.

D&D is a living game, not a museum.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sure, but the rules are different now; WotC's dominance has a solid competitor.

Yeah, but you don't win by chasing someone else's taillights. And again, since there has been a long term downward trend exactly what would you be chasing? A product like PF that has the same ultimate problem? It doesn't lead you anywhere you want to be in the long run.

I don't think so. One could explain it as simply wanting to evade the OGL.

I don't think so. I think there's a lot more to it than that. Even if they decided that the OGL was a factor in THIS edition (4e) being the big break with the past it was still inevitable. Better to move forward from a position of strength than from one of weakness.

That's irrelevant. That's key to the analogy; D&D, like x86, was not best, but it was the standard. It's easy for people at the bottom to change and innovate, but first place is selling compatibility and can't afford to change too fast. They don't want to be playing at the bottom for the best new fantasy RPG; they want to be selling the fantasy RPG everyone already knows.

And when your product isn't able to support the kind of sales you need to continue in that business, then you still have to change. It is irrelevant what the analogy tells you. Intel is not WotC. There's a huge difference between a CPU who's instruction set compatibility with virtually all existing software virtually requires you to maintain that compatibility and a game which all the same people can play regardless of how similar it is to last year's game. It is just not that good an analogy.

I'm not seeing what they did to fix that. As far as I can tell, 4E sold in the same market as 3E. With the exception of the D&D boardgames, how have they grabbed non-roleplayers, or at least tried to?

Really? 4e seems to me to clearly have a number of characteristics intended to make it more suitable to modern tastes. In fact if you look at other popular FRPGs you can see a number of similarities. Even PF has moved a good bit in the same direction 4e did. 4e is much more amenable to supporting things like DDI than 3e was. Clearly that was no accident. As for board games, 4e's regular modular rules worked quite well as a basis for board games, which are mostly just simplified 4e rules with canned options. None of this is an accident.

Of course even 4e is going to be selling to D&D fans, and so is 5e. That's still the basic core audience, but the fact is that audience has been shrinking slowly for more than 20 years. You can't succeed in the long run selling basically the same product to the same closed group of people over and over again. Sooner or later your product has to adapt to modern tastes, technology, etc or die.

Make no mistake, 5e faces exactly the same market realities that 4e did. It will inevitably have to solve the same problems and it would be highly unlikely to adopt radically different solutions to most of them. People who want a museum piece are going to be sadly disappointed. People who want a modern RPG that takes the elements of 4e, mixes things up a bit, and presents it in a better package are likely to find 5e to be just that.

 

[prosfilaes]

Yeah, but you don't win by chasing someone else's taillights.

Ever heard of Rembrandt Toothpaste? They pioneered tooth-brightening toothpaste...then they lost most of their customers to Crest and Colgate. Big brands can do that, let someone else pioneer the feature and then use their brand to take the market.

And when your product isn't able to support the kind of sales you need to continue in that business, then you still have to change.

If you're in the buggy whip market and automobiles are coming in and it's not supporting the sales you need to continue, you don't change; you sell.

There's a huge difference between a CPU who's instruction set compatibility with virtually all existing software virtually requires you to maintain that compatibility

Macintosh switched CPUs, twice. And unlike CPUs, where you're offering something that's inherently superior and vicious network externalities can get people upgrading once you get a toe in the market, many people may find the old game better and see no reason to upgrade.

and a game which all the same people can play regardless of how similar it is to last year's game.

But will they? That similarity is important to them.

Of course even 4e is going to be selling to D&D fans, and so is 5e. That's still the basic core audience, but the fact is that audience has been shrinking slowly for more than 20 years. You can't succeed in the long run selling basically the same product to the same closed group of people over and over again. Sooner or later your product has to adapt to modern tastes, technology, etc or die.

Sometimes the audience for a product shrinks. Using modern techniques for making your buggy whips isn't suddenly going to increase your market; in fact, you're likely to lose much of the market you had.

I don't see any reason why the change from 3E to 4E increased the core audience, or why they thought it would be successful in doing so. And if you don't realistically plan to get new audience, then you can't afford to throw away your old.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Ever heard of Rembrandt Toothpaste? They pioneered tooth-brightening toothpaste...then they lost most of their customers to Crest and Colgate. Big brands can do that, let someone else pioneer the feature and then use their brand to take the market.

Again, it isn't a good analogy. Who's the fancy new toothpaste here? It sure isn't Pathfinder, which is dead on 3.5 basically. That isn't some new kind of anything, it is the old thing, the buggy whip. PF hasn't 'pioneered' anything at all. In fact basically every minor thing PF changed in 3.5 made it more like 4e, lol.

If you're in the buggy whip market and automobiles are coming in and it's not supporting the sales you need to continue, you don't change; you sell.

You'd have to tell that to WotC. Clearly they'd rather be GM than the buggy whip factory. Those people didn't sell, they just plain went out of business. Adapt or die, that's the lesson.

Macintosh switched CPUs, twice. And unlike CPUs, where you're offering something that's inherently superior and vicious network externalities can get people upgrading once you get a toe in the market, many people may find the old game better and see no reason to upgrade.

There's no market for M68k or really even PPC personal computers anymore. Apple adapted, and it was painful, but they also successfully ascertained what was actually valuable about their product and separated it from what was not. They created a new product which appealed to a lot of new people who weren't already their customers too (IE iPods and whatnot). Notice that selling PCs is now only a small and rather insignificant part of their business. Again, when your existing product is no longer relevant to the market place, which has moved on, you have to reinvent yourself. That means determining what you do that is unique and valuable to the market and putting that into new products, combining it with new business models, and going forward. That's what 4e represented. What you're suggesting is like simply switching to selling generic PCs and competing with Dell or something. Apple didn't do that and they would probably be out of business right now if they had.

But will they? That similarity is important to them.

There is a huge difference between similar and functionally identical. 4e was still very similar in many ways to earlier editions of D&D. Nobody is suggesting that 5e won't be either. I think if you carefully read what WotC has said in the last year you'll see that they understand this as well. There is the essence of the product, and there is the way it is implemented. Much like those Macs, the object here seems to be to have a better and modern implementation that is viable going forward and will work for new customers, and which will continue to 'evoke' the traditional product in a way that maintains brand continuity. I see nothing they've said which indicates that they're thinking of going back to the old stuff in any particular way.

Sometimes the audience for a product shrinks. Using modern techniques for making your buggy whips isn't suddenly going to increase your market; in fact, you're likely to lose much of the market you had.

I don't see any reason why the change from 3E to 4E increased the core audience, or why they thought it would be successful in doing so. And if you don't realistically plan to get new audience, then you can't afford to throw away your old.

If you aren't getting a new audience, then you're dead. Its as simple as that. Adapt or die. Buggy whips aren't a viable product anymore at all. RPGs are. Your analogies are simply flawed. The change from 3e to 4e wasn't an attempt to create a bigger core audience any more than Apple switching to x86 processors was. It was simply a way to create a game that is designed in a way that can be supported using the incremental and service-driven 21st Century model of business. There isn't a choice there for WotC to make. Just like Apple continued to sell its computers to the same people and also created a technology that would work for iPods etc WotC created a game that would sell to its existing base and be appropriate to creating new business models that would allow it to appeal to new customers.

They can either go backwards and recreate 3.5 and basically chase PF's taillights or go forward. Even if they were to catch up with PF (which is quite possible) they're right back where they were in 2006 when this exercise started and they'll be forced to do the same things they did then, except it will be 2016 and they've wasted a decade. It solves nothing.

Or they can go forward, take the lessons learned from 4e and continue the evolution to a product and business model that might actually succeed instead of being a dead end. At least they have 6 years on any possible competitor. PF and OSR games seem like a big deal right now, but those vendors face the same issues in the long run. Only they have far fewer resources and far weaker brands.

 

[TrippyHippy]

D&D is a living game, not a museum.

D&D ceases to be alive when it gets moded out of existence. It's only at that point that it becomes a museum piece.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

D&D ceases to be alive when it gets moded out of existence. It's only at that point that it becomes a museum piece.

It is nothing but a museum piece if the only game with the D&D brand on it has to be nothing but a rehash of AD&D. If that was going to cut it then we'd still be playing 2e. MANY of us have no particular desire to do that. Sorry, times change, things move on. A living game that reflects the themes and legacy of D&D is the best tribute there can be. It is that or a discontinued product IMHO. Which do you want?

 

[MoonSong]

The new edition has to build over 4e as a necessary evil, 4e players are the ones supporting WotC and they can't have the luxury of alienating their current fanbase. The new edition also has to be very friendly to 3ers as that is the current audience Wizards needs to recapture from Paizo (or from being non-buyers at all as in my case) in order to build their market share. It also has to be easy for newcomers so it has room to grow. It has to capture the soul and feel of D&D so the true old-schoolers give it a try, however it shouldn't try too hard to catter to them, it should support their playstyles but never to the detriment of everything else, WotC win nothing by pleasing exclusively people who already have found their "perfect edition" and haven't bought anything new in 20 or so years, specially if that scares away their current customers and those that truly wish to be with them again.

I'm not saying somebody has to left out of the new edition, however I'm saying the designers shouldn't fill-up the new edition with old school nostalgia in an attempt to attract people who may as well come, look -but not buy, not even play, at most a 'good they pleased me'- and then go back to play their BECMI campaign as if nothing else had happened. If someone just stayed all of this years playing just AD&D and never switched to any new version, there's no reason to think they will switch this time either. The best chance Wizards has to get any money from them is by making available old books as pdfs and POD not by making the new edition a clone of their edition of choice and making it harder to grasp to those that are eager to embrace the new edition.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't know about 'necessary evil' but yeah. I think basically if the game is too much like 3.5 or PF there's also not a huge reason for people playing those games to switch either. I suppose the same goes for earlier editions as well. The game needs to allow for something LIKE the style of game you can get with any of the existing editions, but different and better in a general sense. More transparent, easier to run, easier to house rule, etc. Frankly I think basically 4e-like core mechanics, as much as that makes some people gnash their teeth. That also provides for things that 4e shows us were clearly considered necessary going forward. Rules that can be incrementally updated and presented in a way that is regular and compatible with reasonable online tools like what DDI provides.

I think there is a lot of angst about details of previous editions that really weren't as central to the play of the game as many people seem to think, like how attacks and saves work exactly, defenses, always high d20 based mechanics, etc. I'd personally put even more things in that category, but certainly general exception-based design. That will be a basic requirement for a 'modular' game anyway.

IMHO beyond that a lot of things that 4e did make good defaults. Classes with fairly closely balanced combat capability, clearly defined class design goals, and some standardized types of progression. Lots of things can be built on that base, and it isn't too hard to introduce LESS regular or balanced options on top of that, whereas you will never re-engineer the core mechanics of any of the past editions to do that stuff. At best it would be futile as it would end up just as different from old style D&D as 4e is, so what would be the point of doing that exercise twice?

Honestly I almost question the real need for an incompatible new edition in a full mechanical sense at all. Different presentation of options and a wider range of options is really the main thing required. OTOH saying "new edition" and removing the burden of strict compatibility is convenient in a lot of ways. It certainly has PR value, though the backlash from rapid edition thrashing may turn out to outweigh that...

 

[rogueattorney]

The best chance Wizards has to get any money from [people who still play older editions] is by making available old books as pdfs and POD not by making the new edition a clone of their edition of choice and making it harder to grasp to those that are eager to embrace the new edition.

Personally, I think the best chance WotC has of getting money from people who play older editions is to produce supplementary materials (adventures, settings, sourcebooks, etc.) that are reasonably usable with those older editions.

 

[prosfilaes]

If you aren't getting a new audience, then you're dead. Its as simple as that. Adapt or die. Buggy whips aren't a viable product anymore at all. RPGs are.

There's probably at least a half a dozen people still employed in the buggy whip industry in the US. Viable is often a matter of scale, and I'm not sure RPGs are viable in Hasbro terms. Whether or not they're on a long-term downtrend is also a hard question; GenCon numbers are going up, and we don't have hard numbers for most of the other questions we want to ask.

The point was, Hasbro had the the RPG market in its hand with 3.5. Where's the evidence that they did get a new audience with 4E? Where's the evidence that they were trying to get a new audience with 4E--the RPG market outside of them was so small that being a better RPG didn't mean anything?