D&D General I'm a Creep, I'm a Powergamer: How Power Creep Inevitably Destroys Editions

[SlyFlourish]

My impression is that you would like folks to see 5e thought of as the principle game, and D&D as one of the variants. WotC clearly has the opposite agenda.

I don’t see 5e as a game but an underlying engine. D&D, Tales of the Valiant, and A5e are actual games. No one sits with just the 5.1 SRD or the A5e SRD and plays.

D&D, ToV, and A5e are all built on 5e.

 

[Minigiant]

The main ways to avoid power creep while continuing to make product are to

1) Create a baseline
2) Be willing to add new narrative ideas

1 wasn't a popular idea and I'm so e places outright hated until the popularity of video games.

2 didn't enter the TTRPG industry until companies sought customer diversity to increase profits.

 

[Mannahnin]

So you don't mind that 2E put D&D on the course of being owned by a megacorp???

This is such a complicated subject. As much as I don't love WotC, it was probably the best outcome from the trajectory TSR was on. What other steward would have absorbed 30M in debt? TSR was a hive of toxicity, infighting, and poor business decisions. I keep reading different histories, and they all seem to touch the same themes.

Yeah, I don't think 2E was the issue.

The proliferation of settings in 2E does seem to have split the fanbase and made a lot of books compete against each other, but I don't think that was an inherent problem with the edition.

The bankruptcy came down to a combination of factors, including profound failures to listen and respond to customer feedback and buying behavior, budgetary factoring meaning they were losing 18% of revenue off the top, building budgets at the beginning of the year and leaving themselves UNABLE to respond in a timely manner and print more of a popular item or start with a lower print run and bump it up after something turned out to be a hit, a lost of cost controls and awareness which led to some boxed sets being produced at a LOSS, and the terrible management decision to use the Random House agreement to get cash advances to cover basic operating expenses instead of to allow them to keep up with demand for popular books as it had been originally designed and used for at the beginning of the 80s. Then add on poor investments like Dragon Dice, Spellfire, and Dragonstrike...

 

[RealAlHazred]

This was pretty much my first thought on reading the OP.

But one thing I think that falls under power creep was when 5th ed. expanded on what you could do with autofire attacks.* I think that added a lot of oomph for minimal points cost. Then again the rules for the various skip fire, etc. etc talents are so convoluted I could be reading them wrong.


*Steve Long is a big fan of autofire attacks. Has everything to do with his favourite PC being a dude with a lot of autofire attacks.

Yeah, in 6E they fixed some of that with the Autofire skills. You can still do what you used to do in 5E, but you have to spend a lot more points. Which is how it should work! You pay for what you get!

 

[TiQuinn]

So you don't mind that 2E put D&D on the course of being owned by a megacorp???

Having been listening to When We Were Wizards, they were on the course to be owned by a megacorp by the late 70s. Gary Gygax and the Blumes never should’ve ran a business.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Having been listening to When We Were Wizards, they were on the course to be owned by a megacorp by the late 70s. Gary Gygax and the Blumes never should’ve ran a business.

I know you've heard this before, but I highly recommend reading Game Wizards. It's an amazing history, it fills in a lot of the details, and it gives a more complete (and accurate) history of that time.

But yes, in the end the conclusion is the same.

The primary issues are that:

1. Gygax wanted control, but never actually wanted to run anything, and was always willing and able to hand to off decisions to others. And the actual decisions that he made in terms of the company? Not great, Bob.

2. The Blumes (well, mostly Kevin) were terrible, but D&D's insane growrh in the 1970s and early '80s hid all of the terrible mistakes until it came crashing down.

For all the gnashing and wailing about Lorraine Williams, she did save TSR. At least for a time.

 

[TiQuinn]

I know you've heard this before, but I highly recommend reading Game Wizards. It's an amazing history, it fills in a lot of the details, and it gives a more complete (and accurate) history of that time.

But yes, in the end the conclusion is the same.

The primary issues are that:

1. Gygax wanted control, but never actually wanted to run anything, and was always willing and able to hand to off decisions to others. And the actual decisions that he made in terms of the company? Not great, Bob.

2. The Blumes (well, mostly Kevin) were terrible, but D&D's insane growrh in the 1970s and early '80s hid all of the terrible mistakes until it came crashing down.

For all the gnashing and wailing about Lorraine Williams, she did save TSR. At least for a time.

I'm at the point in the podcast where Gygax is basically spending cash like it's going out of style, which is a big contrast from where he started out - basically in poverty, big family, and just lost his one real paying job in insurance.

I need to check out Game Wizards, but I think I avoided it because I bounced off of Playing at the World. It's not that it was bad but that book was a bit of a slog for me.

 

[Mannahnin]

I'm at the point in the podcast where Gygax is basically spending cash like it's going out of style, which is a big contrast from where he started out - basically in poverty, big family, and just lost his one real paying job in insurance.

I need to check out Game Wizards, but I think I avoided it because I bounced off of Playing at the World. It's not that it was bad but that book was a bit of a slog for me.

Game Wizards and The Elusive Shift are notably more readable. I stalled halfway through PatW and had to pick it back up later.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I'm at the point in the podcast where Gygax is basically spending cash like it's going out of style, which is a big contrast from where he started out - basically in poverty, big family, and just lost his one real paying job in insurance.

I need to check out Game Wizards, but I think I avoided it because I bounced off of Playing at the World. It's not that it was bad but that book was a bit of a slog for me.

I wrote the review of the book here-

D&D General - Review: Jon Peterson's Game Wizards

Jon Peterson, author of Playing at the World, Art & Arcana, and Heroes' Feast, has a new book out ... Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons. If you read my posts, you know that I giddily announced when I received my copy in the mail, and promised that I would post my review-...

www.enworld.org

From the review:
Let me start by comparing this book to another Peterson masterpiece- Playing at the World. This is a more readable book. Peterson now manages to both "show the receipts" (allow his subjects to tell the story, usually in their own words or through contemporaneous correspondence) while also weaving together a compelling narrative. There was only a few times when I recall that this style just didn't work- I think it was when there was random correspondence from convention attendees describing Gygax that wasn't necessary, and I thought, "Eh, great to track that down ... but who cares?"

I've elaborated on that thought elsewhere, but Peterson has REALLY improved in terms of writing style since Playing at the World. It's night and day (and I agree that PaTW is a slog, and I am looking forward to reading the new release to see if he has managed to improve the readability).

This book is a page turner, while still remaining a neutral and fact-based history.


ETA- @Mannahnin ninja'd me. Somehow, he wrote fewer words.

 

[bmfrosty]

I wrote the review of the book here-

D&D General - Review: Jon Peterson's Game Wizards

Jon Peterson, author of Playing at the World, Art & Arcana, and Heroes' Feast, has a new book out ... Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons. If you read my posts, you know that I giddily announced when I received my copy in the mail, and promised that I would post my review-...

www.enworld.org

From the review:
Let me start by comparing this book to another Peterson masterpiece- Playing at the World. This is a more readable book. Peterson now manages to both "show the receipts" (allow his subjects to tell the story, usually in their own words or through contemporaneous correspondence) while also weaving together a compelling narrative. There was only a few times when I recall that this style just didn't work- I think it was when there was random correspondence from convention attendees describing Gygax that wasn't necessary, and I thought, "Eh, great to track that down ... but who cares?"

I've elaborated on that thought elsewhere, but Peterson has REALLY improved in terms of writing style since Playing at the World. It's night and day (and I agree that PaTW is a slog, and I am looking forward to reading the new release to see if he has managed to improve the readability).

This book is a page turner, while still remaining a neutral and fact-based history.


ETA- @Mannahnin ninja'd me. Somehow, he wrote fewer words.

I'm reading Game Wizards right now. I picked up on a humble bundle that's still going - Humble Book Bundle: All About Gaming by MIT Press - the bundle is more video game focused, but also has Zones of Control which is more focused on war gaming.