D&D 5E Is 5E Special

TwoSix

Unserious gamer
Yes and part of the reason WotC has such a huge difference is their ability to read their market and cater to it...
I think that's really only a small part. I've taken part in several Kickstarters of 5e additional mechanical material, that have sold 1000s of copies. I have no doubt that if WotC had published the exact same material with WotC branding, it would sell orders of magnitudes more.
 

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Warpiglet-7

Cry havoc! And let slip the pigs of war!
The economic argument that something that sells well is inherently good quality is always hilarious, but my printer decided to make make the 'cleaning my jets' noise just as I read it, reminding me that there's entire industries that thrive on purposefully making shoddy products. ~goes back to playing a 9 year old 'early access' videogame on a computer designed to die early.~
So if a model of car has its wheels reliably fall off, people will keep buying the model for a decade with no improvement. Got it.
 

Imaro

Legend
I think that's really only a small part. I've taken part in several Kickstarters of 5e additional mechanical material, that have sold 1000s of copies. I have no doubt that if WotC had published the exact same material with WotC branding, it would sell orders of magnitudes more.
Why? Why do you have no doubt? Is there some kind of market research to suggest this? Will it sell more than something they could divert those resources to?

EDIT: Just trying to understand the mentality of second guessing (with such confidence) a company that has, for all intents and purposes, struck gold with its product when it comes to sales.
 

Oofta

Legend
There's nothing to cannibalize.

That's my point. WOTC didn't create a bunch of content many 5e fans wanted. This allowed 3rd parties to fill that whole with WOTC only getting a fraction if the 3rd party used specific services and publishing.

The product is out there made by 3rd parties. WOTC is just not making money on it or pennies if they are.

Some of my money went to Morris and not WOTC because WOTC refused to make some desired content 5e.
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of companies that make add-ons for cars and trucks. Big companies don't go after the pennies, they go after the dimes and dollars.

Besides, do you really understand how many supplements are out there? It's one thing for a small publisher to take a risk on a product that may or may not have a good return on investment. If they fail, they're out a relatively small amount. If WOTC puts out too much product (even quality stuff) at best they dilute the brand, at worst they kill the cash cow. It's just not worth the risk.
 


Minigiant

Legend
Supporter
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of companies that make add-ons for cars and trucks. Big companies don't go after the pennies, they go after the dimes and dollars.

Besides, do you really understand how many supplements are out there? It's one thing for a small publisher to take a risk on a product that may or may not have a good return on investment. If they fail, they're out a relatively small amount. If WOTC puts out too much product (even quality stuff) at best they dilute the brand, at worst they kill the cash cow. It's just not worth the risk.
Artificer+ Summoner+Headmaster+Warlord would sell more than Strixhaven
 


TwoSix

Unserious gamer
Why? Why do you have no doubt? Is there some kind of market research to suggest this? Will it sell more than something they could divert those resources to?

EDIT: Just trying to understand the mentality of second guessing (with such confidence) a company that has, for all intents and purposes, struck gold with its product when it comes to sales.
Because any product that WotC markets is going to sell more than an identical 3pp because it has the imprimatur of being "official", which is a very important consideration to a wide swath of the playerbase.

If you think WotC material sells hundreds of times the number of copies of a book than a 3pp because their material is hundreds of times better, then we have very different views of the marketplace.

It has nothing to do with second guessing WotC. I don't particularly care what WotC sells. But what sells for WotC is the mark of officialness and widespread acceptance, not the quality of the material per se. Now, if WotC starts to release a bunch of shoddy, substandard material, that can certainly erode the value of their imprint, but we're very far from that point right now. 5e is quality material, and also at the right place at the right time, which is why their current material is so very successful. Much like each individual MCU movie, being part of the greater whole enhances each individual product.
 


Parmandur

Book-Friend
Not a story. It factually happened in this very thread, for everyone to see.
I am so sorry that bonus actions are confusing for you.
So long after both PHB3 and Essentials came out? Anyway, the claim was that 4e did not have things that it had. That it arguably did not have them for the first two years is irrelevant goalpost moving.

(Arguably because class feature mean even the PHB1 classes have slightly different power schedules in practice.)
It's not really moving the goal posts to just consider what was in the game: latter aplats aren't really going to be on people's radar. We don't all about Magic of Incarn much for similar reasons.
It was. PHB2 and 3 under that name were massive mistakes, regardless of the quality of what was contained therein. On that subject, are we considering marketting an internal or external factor? I must admit, I have not been entirely consistant in my thinking about it thus far.
Internal. It was an intentional design choice, made without sufficient consideration of how the market would receive such a product. It wouldn't have worked better at a different time.
 

Parmandur

Book-Friend
A 5e book with a summoner class, a pet class, the artificer reprinted with 5+ subclasses, and 2-3other classes and more races would have sold like hotcakes,

A 5e book with a bunch of optional variants to change 5einto different genres and styles and match the fantasies of media after 1995 would have been a money printer.

5e missed out on a lot of sales.
Theoretical sales, but not necessarily actual sales. The D&D team has stated that publishing just to have options has been shown not to worl of theybare options that most players do not want.
 

Parmandur

Book-Friend
The economic argument that something that sells well is inherently good quality is always hilarious, but my printer decided to make make the 'cleaning my jets' noise just as I read it, reminding me that there's entire industries that thrive on purposefully making shoddy products. ~goes back to playing a 9 year old 'early access' videogame on a computer designed to die early.~
The opposite doesn't hold either: just because something sells well doesn6mean it is low or high in some "objective" grade.of quality. It sells well because people want to pay money for it. Someone buys a cheap car or a predatory printer because they have to. Someone buys a game because they expect to have fun with it.
 


Parmandur

Book-Friend
Because any product that WotC markets is going to sell more than an identical 3pp because it has the imprimatur of being "official", which is a very important consideration to a wide swath of the playerbase.

If you think WotC material sells hundreds of times the number of copies of a book than a 3pp because their material is hundreds of times better, then we have very different views of the marketplace.

It has nothing to do with second guessing WotC. I don't particularly care what WotC sells. But what sells for WotC is the mark of officialness and widespread acceptance, not the quality of the material per se. Now, if WotC starts to release a bunch of shoddy, substandard material, that can certainly erode the value of their imprint, but we're very far from that point right now. 5e is quality material, and also at the right place at the right time, which is why their current material is so very successful. Much like each individual MCU movie, being part of the greater whole enhances each individual product.
But per WotC themselves...they found out the hard way that is not true. Just because they release Magic of Incarnum or a PHB 3 doesn't mean that people will buy it.
 

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
I think the question is... did any of these 3rd party products sell in the magnitudes that the WotC books did (IMO this is what constitutes whether "many" fans wanted it or not)? If a particular product did then it may have been worth it for WotC to publish a similar book for 5e. But if not, that product type probably wasn't published because they didn't believe there was enough of a demand to make it worthwhile.
I don't agree with this. First, no third party product is going to sell as well as even the worst D&D book put out by WotC. They simply don't have the resources, name recognition or advertising network. Second, third party products have a built in stigma with some people. I know that I personally automatically view them with suspicion, because there's no way that they playtested the material as well as WotC and don't have access to the exact game math. Third, they are mixed in with 10 bazillion other third party products and you have to slog through those products looking for that diamond in the rough.
 

TwoSix

Unserious gamer
But per WotC themselves...they found out the hard way that is not true. Just because they release Magic of Incarnum or a PHB 3 doesn't mean that people will buy it.
I don't think it's particularly controversial to suggest that WotC released too much mechanical material during the 3.5 era, which started to dilute the impact any one book might have had. A "Book of Incarnum" for 5e would almost certainly outsell the 3.5 version.

And yes, even WotC can put something out for 5e and have it not sell if it's poorly targeted. If WotC put out the "Complete Book of Flumphs" as the Winter 2023 hardcover, it's not going to sell anywhere near as well as a Planescape or Dark Sun or a new Magic setting book is.

I just don't see it as remotely controversial to suggest that WotC books sell a lot because they're the official books. The fact that 5e is so widespread makes their books have higher intrinsic value than a comparable 3pp book, regardless of quality, simply because the barriers to use it (and discuss it) are so much lower.
 


I think the question is... did any of these 3rd party products sell in the magnitudes that the WotC books did
i assume the reason they don't mind 3rd parties and the DMs guild is because they want to have us get our hands on things that they don't find it worth publishing...

if 100 people want a redone magic of incarnum wotc doesn't want to waste time and money on it... but If I sold 100 copies on the DMs guild I would be happy
 

glass

(he, him)
It's not really moving the goal posts to just consider what was in the game: latter aplats aren't really going to be on people's radar. We don't all about Magic of Incarn much for similar reasons.
If you make a claim, and then later, when called on the first claim, make a different claim and try to pretend that was what you were claiming all along, that is moving the goalposts. Also, trying to pretend that PHB3 is some obscure splat on the level of MoI is not classy.

At the end of the day, if you do not know much about 4e (or Magic of Incarnum), maybe don't make pronouncements about it on the Internet?

Internal. It was an intentional design choice, made without sufficient consideration of how the market would receive such a product. It wouldn't have worked better at a different time.
But marketing is not really a "design choice", and it has nothing to do with the quality or design of the game as a game. If someone had responded to "Is 5e special" with "Yes, the marketing was really good" would you really have felt they were praising 5e?

_
glass.
 

Imaro

Legend
i assume the reason they don't mind 3rd parties and the DMs guild is because they want to have us get our hands on things that they don't find it worth publishing...

if 100 people want a redone magic of incarnum wotc doesn't want to waste time and money on it... but If I sold 100 copies on the DMs guild I would be happy
Yep... I agree totally.
 

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