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

[scadgrad]

So much of the commentary here fails to address the MASSIVE marketing efforts that WizBro was able to aim at their target market for 3.X as compared to what a steadily-dying TSR in all its incompetence was managing during the dark days of the 90s. Additionally, the success of 3.X was clearly aided by the OGL & SRD ideas which created a tremendous wave of public interest in its own right which overwhelmed nearly every other RPG. The former King of RPG sales White Wolf, responded by shooting itself in the foot ("I guess we better nuke our setting and split our market via a new edition too") only to be driven into insolvency (now owned by CCP of EVE Online fame). Let us also not forget or fail to enter into the discourse, the staggering success of MtG which, clearly sucked up a lot of the air in the old Fantasy-based hobby game room.

What I'm trying to say here is that, yes, 3.0 brought a lot of folks back into the Fantasy RPG fold, but it's a mistake to say this was only because of "the vast improvements" foisted upon us by Cook, Williams and Tweet.

 

[prosfilaes]

The former King of RPG sales White Wolf, responded by shooting itself in the foot ("I guess we better nuke our setting and split our market via a new edition too")

Let us note that the King of the RPG sales is unproven. Hardly anyone even claims to have that kind of evidence.

I think WW's problems were more fundamental then "shooting itself in the foot" implies; they were at the same place 3.5 was. They has saturated the market for the basic book and splatbooks and all the expansions and there wasn't much space for their new books to expand into. WW basically had to create a new edition like Hasbro did. The question was how much change they put into it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You seem quick to label what supports you fact and everything else supposition.

No, not really. I haven't invoked any fact I can't back up at all. When I have an opinion I don't claim it is backed up by non-existent facts. Go read all the interviews with WotC people, Ryan's columns on this site, etc. Those are the only places I've drawn facts from. Anything else has been either anecdote or opinion and not claimed to be anything else.

That's false, though. The problem with 3.5 was that the existing customer base had all bought it, not that the existing customer base was too large.

The customer base for D&D has been slowly shrinking and aging since the peak of 1e in the early 80's. Again, you can verify all of this. It isn't a problem with 3.5 or any other specific edition of D&D. It is a problem with the whole business model and can't be solved by any pumping out of new books. All that can do is create a relatively short-term bump in sales to existing customers. Of course SOME new people trickle in over the years, but inarguably the overall trend has been slow decline since around 1983.

So it was obviously the right thing to do because they did it?

Nobody can say ahead of time with certainty what is the 'right' thing to do. They did what they did because they had business needs that weren't being met with the existing product strategy. Again, assuming WotC isn't a total ship of fools and Hasbro doesn't hand out development money on any old whim, the fact that they did something proves that they believed something needed to be done.

There's four Pathfinder books ahead of the first D&D 4 book (PHB) on the Amazon sales list. On LibraryThing, there's half as many people who hold a copy as 3.5, and less then 3.0, 2, and 1.

And this proves what? Again, this really has nothing to do with any other game. It has to do with the future of the game and the business need to escape from the existing edition cycle, which is destructive and contrary to those business needs (again go read Ryan's columns, don't take it from me). I don't know diddly about LibraryThing, so I can't even speculate what that means. Which supplement is selling right now on Amazon is again pretty meaningless because what WotC is looking at isn't sales to existing customers. What they are looking at is how in the long-term to get out of the edition treadmill and the dead tree publishing model. If Paizo wants to stick with that model and make sales, bully for them, but where will they be in 10 years if they don't try to do basically what WotC is doing now? This is like saying "hey, look at all those people abandoning the Titanic, they're all cold down there in the water, we're so much cleverer sitting up here on the deck listening to the band play." Yeah, right...

2E to 3E? Yes. There's a reason they kept the gnome, brought back the half-orc. 3E to 4E? I think it's clear they didn't want that much change.

Again, what the current player base wanted wasn't, at least entirely, germane to WotC's thinking. If you want NEW customers, a requirement in the long run, you have to think about what those people would want too. Again, we can argue all day if after the dust settles whether or not WotC succeeded in moving in the right direction to expand the market or if it is even possible, but at least they tried. Its easy to throw stones at them after the fact, it is a LOT harder to be them and look forward and take chances.

I have no clue what that means. 3E and Pathfinder have been successful products, nigh exclusively in the 21st century. All this blathering about modern is boils down to "you like it".

You're assuming my preferences. This isn't about preferences. It is about reality. It also isn't about 3e because 3e came out in 2000 and the only valid question for WotC would be what they would need to do to GROW the game instead of just selling into an ever shrinking market. What you or I prefer is not even relevant. WotC made choices to make a game that clearly is aimed at being compatible with modern 21st Century market conditions. You can argue it is just some preference of mine, but I don't make their decisions, or more than barely influence them like any customer. If this is all just about which one of us likes what, well your dislike is just as much your preference as my like is. That doesn't change anything.

4E comes out in a 300 page PHB, plus a DMG and MM. Prime Time Adventures comes out in a 48 page book. PTA for the win!

Again, you can read Ryan's stuff. He'd probably tell you something like PTA is more likely in tune with the current RPG market than either 3e, 4e, or even PF (and Paizo just released a cut down version of PF in their BB product I'd note). I'll also note that I've stated my preferences for a more svelte game as well. It will be interesting to see where 5e goes on that point. In any case there are likely to be differing opinions in different dev shops on what the next game should look like. My arguments for a game based around 4e mechanics really have little to do with the size of the game. They do however take consideration of the fundamentally simpler mechanics of 4e vs 3.x. Check the wordcount on the 4e PHB vs the PF core rulebook. I think you'll find that 4e is actually a good bit lighter weight than PF is.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The evidence is purely anecdotal, from places like here on ENWorld of people who said they hadn't played D&D since however many editions ago... and then started playing again with 4E.

But in the end, what difference does it make? WotC came to the conclusion that the sales they were generating with their late edition 3.5 stuff were less than the sales that they would generate from a new set of core books (the same conclusion they had with the release of 3.5 as well as 3.0). They went in a game design direction that allowed for new core and splatbook sales, online subscription tools, and also hopefully more miniature and dungeon tile sales (since their miniature tactics game didn't pan out but they still had all the minis in circulation and they seemed to sell well). And it worked. It generated sales. I'm guessing more sales than things like their Incarnum and Book of Nine Swords did. It just turned out that many players didn't come along, and the game itself didn't create enough of a new player base to replace those lost, over the longer haul.

But they wouldn't realize these results unless they had made the 4E game in the first place.

It's so easy now to look back on it and say "they should have known 4E wouldn't have sold!", but that's a bunch of hindsight crap and we all know it. After all... there is plenty of buzz about 5E right now that would make anyone involved get the sense that they are moving in a good direction... but who knows if in 2015 we're going to have people here on the boards making posts like "Trying to create one game that could appeal to ALL gamers?!? That was such a stupid idea! They should have known better than to have tried that, because *obviously* it wasn't going to work!" Sure, it makes that person posting feel better about themselves because they can act like they had this grand "forward vision"... but in truth, they are fooling themselves (if not trying to do the same to the rest of us.)

Exactly. It is impossible to sort out different factors, and definitely impossible from where we, with no real good data, are sitting. We don't even know ANY real numbers for D&D post-1997.

And, yup, hindsight is 20/20. There's more to it than that though. Lets suppose WotC gives up say 1000 customers (these are just simple numbers, not real ones of course) that spend $10 a month on D&D and whom their research says will only buy a product that won't appeal to new customers, and won't likely be around in 10 years. In return they gain 100 new customers right away that spend $20 a month each, but will also be around longer and will keep growing in number slowly over time. Clearly they're losing some immediate revenue. Equally clearly it may be a good move in the long term. It is easy for someone to come along and call that move a 'failure' by examining some book sales chart. The problem is such a judgment is not made on the basis of the same business case and with the same data that it was made with.

Of course it is also easy enough for a product group to pitch such a move without knowing ahead how much the loss of old customers might be or just soft sell that downside to management. Then when management sees the numbers they run around screaming and waving their arms and firing people and your perfectly logical and possibly long-run excellent plan may go down in flames. In fact business is rife with this kind of thing. In this sense it may well be that a 5e that is just aimed at those old customers could be the most terrible move imaginable in the long run, and yet be lauded as a brilliant recoup after a misstep by people looking in from the outside. Nor will anyone be able to say later one way or the other what might have been.

 

[am181d]

Can we all agree that Wizards of the Coast has the following goals?

1) retain as many 4e players as possible
2) regain as many players as possible who are still playing older editions
3) regain as many players as possible who switched to Pathfinder
4) attract as many new players as possible

From what they've said publicly, it sounds like they're focusing on #1 and #2.

(Either Monte Cook or Mike Mearls explicitly said that they didn't think they could get the PF players, but I think that was just them being polite. Clearly they want those players back.)

Of course, it's possible that the reason the focus of the messaging so far has been #1/#2-centric is that it's aimed directly at the existing fanbase. There's not much point in focusing on the new player-friendly elements to people who are not new players.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Can we all agree that Wizards of the Coast has the following goals?

1) retain as many 4e players as possible
2) regain as many players as possible who are still playing older editions
3) regain as many players as possible who switched to Pathfinder
4) attract as many new players as possible

From what they've said publicly, it sounds like they're focusing on #1 and #2.

(Either Monte Cook or Mike Mearls explicitly said that they didn't think they could get the PF players, but I think that was just them being polite. Clearly they want those players back.)

Of course, it's possible that the reason the focus of the messaging so far has been #1/#2-centric is that it's aimed directly at the existing fanbase. There's not much point in focusing on the new player-friendly elements to people who are not new players.

Well, yes and no. I think there are just deeper goals, or maybe it would be better to say intermediate goals, in there. It is clear from the whole "$100 million sales target" thing that the basic goal for 4e was to double or more the sales of 3.5. Clearly you do that with customers, but it is not as straightforward as "write some rules that appeal to the most people who will buy your game." There are at least a couple reasons for that.

1) EVERY new edition further fragments the player base, and players of old editions aren't active paying customers.

2) The demographics of the whole game, and maybe the whole industry, are evolving unfavorably.

3) The very concept of a TT PnP freeform RPG with face-to-face play and significant time investment is decreasingly well matched to people's behavior and wants.

These are all statements made by knowledgeable people in the industry, not things I pulled out of my back pocket (and pardon to any of those people if I might not be understanding them of course).

So achieving your #1-3 NO DOUBT is something WotC would like to do, but it may well be lower on the list of priorities than creating a business around the D&D IP that can survive and grow and be a high value cashflow producer for Hasbro. While it was never quite said that Hasbro has said "be a major product or else" that subtext certainly seemed to be there. Thus recapturing every player that played D&D in 2003 or whatever the peak of 3.x was, AND every one that has been a customer since then with the existing business model appears to be existential suicide for D&D because it simply can't lift them up to the requirements Hasbro has. Maybe if #4 is successful enough then for a while they might do that with the old business model, but they obviously didn't think so. That's why 4e with the DDI business model and anticipated other digital offerings, which was pitched as a roadmap to huge growth. Without that move to a different business model and evolution to a product that matches what people want to do and how they want to do it now today vs 1975 the attraction of a few OSR/PF fans is moot, the game will fold.

Thus my original statement, there is no going back, only forward. Back is death. Forward might be death too, but better to try and fail then to slink into extinction.

 

[prosfilaes]

And this proves what?

That D&D 4 sales are down from previous editions.

This is like saying "hey, look at all those people abandoning the Titanic, they're all cold down there in the water, we're so much cleverer sitting up here on the deck listening to the band play." Yeah, right...

Any one who hit the North Atlantic was dead of hypothermia. Any one on the Titanic might have survived had a ship got there on time. Many people on Ethiopian Air Flight 961 died because they inflated their life jackets prematurely. Waiting out the current course is frequently a better response then panicking and doing something.

Again, what the current player base wanted wasn't, at least entirely, germane to WotC's thinking. If you want NEW customers, a requirement in the long run, you have to think about what those people would want too.

The easiest way to get new customers is let your old customers evangelize to them. The hardest way to get new customers is to sell them something they didn't know they needed, worse yet under a name that invokes derision in many of them.

Again, we can argue all day if after the dust settles whether or not WotC succeeded in moving in the right direction to expand the market or if it is even possible, but at least they tried. Its easy to throw stones at them after the fact, it is a LOT harder to be them and look forward and take chances.

Did they try? You've failed to show me that they actually reached out for a new audience. What mainstream magazines did they advertise in? What TV shows did their ads run in?

They, like Paizo, made Basic Sets. That was an attempt to reach a new market, but let me note that there was nothing special about 4E in that; Hasbro could have done that if 4E had been Pathfinder.

It is a lot harder to be them, but I don't see why we should make it easier by dismissing their responsibility to get it right.

You're assuming my preferences. This isn't about preferences. It is about reality.

No, it's not. You claimed that it was "modern" and said something about a modern 21st century game. There is no meter in the world that you can plug in and measure the modernity of an RPG. There is no objective measurement that can measure that.

My arguments for a game based around 4e mechanics really have little to do with the size of the game.

It's a well-known argument that you can't attract new players with a $75 core set that runs to over 700 pages. That's why both Hasbro and Paizo produced their basic boxes.

They do however take consideration of the fundamentally simpler mechanics of 4e vs 3.x. Check the wordcount on the 4e PHB vs the PF core rulebook. I think you'll find that 4e is actually a good bit lighter weight than PF is.

You're cherry-picking; both the 3.5 and 4 PHBs were 320 pages, and the PF core rulebook is 576 pages, compared to 544 the 4E PHB and DMG (the books it replaced) are. (In any case, it's clear that PF is more complex in some directions then 3.5 was.) Difficulty-wise, 3.5 has a huge advantage that you can hand someone a fighter or rogue and everything after page 168 in the PHB becomes irrelevant; certain characters in 3.5 are much less complex then others, whereas 4E spread the complexity around.

In any case, neither word-count nor page-count are great ways of measuring complexity. The question in games generally comes down to the number of viable options a player has at any point and the difficulty of figuring out their long-term consequences. I'd say a level 1 Fighter has more complex and viable options in 4E then in 3.5, so the player of such would perceive 4E as more complex; higher levels and other classes would take more complex analysis. (This is not a claim that overall 4E is more complex then 3.5; I suspect high-level clerics in 3.5 are much more complex, but I don't have the experience to say.) (Note that this, unlike modernity, I regard as tractable by relatively objective means.)

 

[irontyrant]

-1. 4E needs to stay in 4E. Don't mix it with D&DN.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That D&D 4 sales are down from previous editions.

Eh, again though, neither you nor I have any idea what these numbers mean. You have a presupposition and you look at something and decide it supports your viewpoint, but objectively neither of us knows how to interpret that. 4e sold more core books than any previous edition, how do you interpret that (this is based on a statement made by WotC, presumably it is true and can be treated as a fact). For all we know, and it is a reasonable extrapolation though not a fact, 4e is the most popular D&D edition ever. We don't know. I'm not claiming one way or another, but no fact you can access disproves that possibility. It just isn't a debate that is even worth having.

Any one who hit the North Atlantic was dead of hypothermia. Any one on the Titanic might have survived had a ship got there on time. Many people on Ethiopian Air Flight 961 died because they inflated their life jackets prematurely. Waiting out the current course is frequently a better response then panicking and doing something.

So, then, you'd advocate not running out and panicking and dumping a new edition on the market in haste, eh?

The easiest way to get new customers is let your old customers evangelize to them. The hardest way to get new customers is to sell them something they didn't know they needed, worse yet under a name that invokes derision in many of them.

Yes, well, it is also an edition that is extremely well-liked by a lot of them too. ALL of the people I play with like it, and while some of them played 3.5 the vast majority of us never touched 3.x and weren't active WotC customers before 4e. I've turned a pretty decent number of people onto D&D in the last 3 1/2 years. Of course I have no idea how that all swings, but there have always been the throwers of rotten tomatoes at every edition roll. If you have 'contempt' for something that's your issue. I see MANY really experienced DMs who post here running 4e. I don't think your contempt is either universal, typical, or should be a big factor in WotC thinking. There are plenty of people I know who dislike 3.x too, including myself. Notice, I don't go around crapping on it, nor did I ever feel it necessary to repeatedly insult people with different tastes as I have seen happen repeatedly over the last several years in the other direction. One wonders which group of fans is really the one that is worth hanging onto at times. Maybe those who are interested in having fun with new variations of D&D are in the end the ones that are worth keeping? I don't know.

Did they try? You've failed to show me that they actually reached out for a new audience. What mainstream magazines did they advertise in? What TV shows did their ads run in?

Heh, yes, they did do some advertising campaigns back when 4e launched. It sold more than any previous core books, so they obviously did something right. Beyond that they've done a huge amount of market development over the last several years. They launched Encounters, Lair Assault, the new LFR, etc. They've put D&D in places where it hasn't been sold in decades too. I'm not sure where you've been but D&D's profile seems to me to be higher now than it has been since the 80's. That's just my impression though.

They, like Paizo, made Basic Sets. That was an attempt to reach a new market, but let me note that there was nothing special about 4E in that; Hasbro could have done that if 4E had been Pathfinder.

It is a lot harder to be them, but I don't see why we should make it easier by dismissing their responsibility to get it right.

It is your assertion that they 'got it wrong'. FOR ME they got it quite right. Maybe not perfect, but nothing is perfect. In a million years I wouldn't have come back to playing 3.5 and I have no interest in PF. I'm not really an edition warrior and what other people like is their business, but the idea that they have a responsibility to get it right makes no sense to me. They have a responsibility to make money, nothing more or less. There is no other objective standard to hold them to.

Of course anyone could make a starter set for any reasonable RPG. What's new? If the only goal was to make a starter set then they probably would have just done that. Clearly they didn't think that was enough.

No, it's not. You claimed that it was "modern" and said something about a modern 21st century game. There is no meter in the world that you can plug in and measure the modernity of an RPG. There is no objective measurement that can measure that.

I listed some things which 4e modernized. The very fact that it is highly amenable to supporting things like DDI and incremental exception-based extension and modification ARE objective statements. I guess you can play semantics and question whether that is 'modernization' or not. At that point any discussion is pretty much meaningless though.

It's a well-known argument that you can't attract new players with a $75 core set that runs to over 700 pages. That's why both Hasbro and Paizo produced their basic boxes.

It is AN argument. I find it to be rather dubious. Heck, I just helped a guy decide what books to buy to get into playing 4e yesterday. I had no problem recommending books and he looked at them and was quite happy. The guy has played various non-TTRPG games before, but 4e core books were quite appropriate for him. Of course there are people who would do better with a starter set. Of course WotC has one, so that's an option too. Not real sure what the issue is here.

You're cherry-picking; both the 3.5 and 4 PHBs were 320 pages, and the PF core rulebook is 576 pages, compared to 544 the 4E PHB and DMG (the books it replaced) are. (In any case, it's clear that PF is more complex in some directions then 3.5 was.) Difficulty-wise, 3.5 has a huge advantage that you can hand someone a fighter or rogue and everything after page 168 in the PHB becomes irrelevant; certain characters in 3.5 are much less complex then others, whereas 4E spread the complexity around.

A 4e PHB1 ranger is dirt simple to play. A fighter isn't exactly rocket science either. There are also now Essentials classes, though that falls outside the core books. 4e is not all that hard to play. There are a lot less weird dark corners of rules to worry about and IMHO basic play is simpler than either PF or 3.5. Beyond that the 4e guy can play his ranger, fighter, or barbarian and not have to be playing a tier 3 or 4 class that won't keep up with the other PCs. I consider that an advantage. If said player wanted to keep up in 3.5 he'd be stuck at level up trying to work out how to arm twist the skill system and MCing pretty soon to stay relevant, or at least figuring out what feats would actually work well. IMHO 4e is easier.

In any case, neither word-count nor page-count are great ways of measuring complexity. The question in games generally comes down to the number of viable options a player has at any point and the difficulty of figuring out their long-term consequences. I'd say a level 1 Fighter has more complex and viable options in 4E then in 3.5, so the player of such would perceive 4E as more complex; higher levels and other classes would take more complex analysis. (This is not a claim that overall 4E is more complex then 3.5; I suspect high-level clerics in 3.5 are much more complex, but I don't have the experience to say.) (Note that this, unlike modernity, I regard as tractable by relatively objective means.)

Sure, 4e has more options for your fighter or ranger or whatever. Since all of them actually ARE viable though you don't have to spend tons of time weeding out the sensible options from the bad choices. Overall I think 4e is more straightforward to understand and play. Not that I think 4e is perfect in this respect, but it clearly forms a good basis for straightforward playable options. Essentials pretty well demonstrates that. IMHO 3.x is just a hot mess. Figuring out good solid character options is a big PITA and requires a good bit of mastery. Of course you may differ there, but clearly WotC sees it that way or again they wouldn't have decided they needed to rewrite the game to fix it.

 

[prosfilaes]

4e sold more core books than any previous edition, how do you interpret that (this is based on a statement made by WotC, presumably it is true and can be treated as a fact).

"This is based on..." is problematic. Even if it is an accurate summary, it's still a self-interested statement.

For all we know, and it is a reasonable extrapolation though not a fact, 4e is the most popular D&D edition ever.

Which is somehow being outsold on Amazon by Pathfinder. Right.

In any case, then if that's true, the claim that RPGs were on a downward trend is simply false.

I guess you can play semantics and question whether that is 'modernization' or not. At that point any discussion is pretty much meaningless though.

So, if you use a highly loaded subjective adjective, and someone disagrees, discussion is meaningless?