D&D 5E Is 5E Special

[Parmandur]

My point from the very beginning is that

The shift of demo in age, gender, race, culture, location and other characteristics in the D&D audience during 5e was massive.

It was caused by the circumstances of 2014-2022

WOTC didn't expect this shift. 5e was designed as a coming home edition for previous players.

WOTC did not adjust their schedule enough to match this extreme change. However the circumstances of 2014-2022 was a lo more forgiving than the circumstances of 2000-2008 and surely 2008-20014. It allowed the 5e policies to not be an edition killer.

Other editions would have loved the attitude of 2014-2022.
We'd be previewing 6e if WOTC kept their policies but have the atttudes of 2008-2014 or 2000-2008.

Having watched 3E and 4E livestreams...they would not have done as well in modern circumstances. 5E made a lot of those new demographics, as much as the other way around.

 

[Minigiant]

Having watched 3E and 4E livestreams...they would not have done as well in modern circumstances. 5E made a lot of those new demographics, as much as the other way around.

Never said they would.
I've said they would have done better.
I've said 4th Edition Essentials would have matched or done better that 5e in modern circumstances.. It's probably the only edition that would have.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You are simply assuming that 5 or 6 books a year (the current rate the past couple yeqrs, if you count them up) is not the equivalent of a 2000 calorie diet. Fact is, there is a moderate ideal, and 3-6 a year may well be it. Do you have any hard data that suggests otherwise....?

Are you counting the adventures and the books farmed out to other places, not actually made by WotC itself? 'Cause that's always been a factor here. EGtW isn't a WotC-made book, for example, though it was given their rubber-stamp.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Never said they would.
I've said they would have done better.
I've said 4th Edition Essentials would have matched or done better that 5e in modern circumstances.. It's probably the only edition that would have.

No. It would not.
It would have done a lot better than it did in its own time, but not better than 5e.

 

[clearstream]

You're doing that thing again where you take "criticism of the status quo" and treat it as "inversion to a strawman opposite."

Saying, "Man, the game's release schedule is glacially slow, that sounds like it probably cost them quite a bit in sales" is not the same as saying "they should've been releasing 12 books a year every year." Rebutting the idea of WotC "releas[ing] whatever, whenever" is specious at best, because no one is asking for that.

It is possible to critique a position and ask for a moderate change, rather than wild abandon, which is what you immediately assumed here.


This, at least, is a more cogent point....but you have no data to base it on. Would it have cost them 2.33x as much to only gain 1.25x the money? Or would it have cost them 1.25x as much to make 2.33x as much money? We literally cannot know. WotC doesn't even know.

Is the argument generally that however one defines "special" in connection with an RPG, such special-ness would be negated were it the case that the publisher of that game had not taken every conceivable opportunity to generate revenue? That seems speculative and tangential to me.

 

[clearstream]

I didn't say that. I would bet that they have someone looking over every DMs Guild product for good ideas that the 3rd party site can't realize on its own. Number of copies sold wouldn't be that metric, though. A lot of good ideas can be lost in other bad ideas that kill a product. They will be looking at what is done and making the decision themselves. The success or failure of the 3rd party product would be nearly worthless to look at.

I was thinking over the investment aspect that you touched on in a previous post. We know that of all TTRPG published only a small percentage return on investment. So were WotC to broaden their portfolio of 5th products, foreseeably they will have hits and misses.

For me it's important to keep in mind that investment in each project is not a guarantee of profitability, and at the same time, the more projects one has underway the greater ones ongoing expenses are. That implies that successful portfolio management will be a balancing act where one consciously wants to avoid having too many projects underway at any one time. One leaves money on the table - as some put it - in view of the risks of chasing that money.

Product development is always a gamble. Investment can be done at future risk by borrowing the money, or by reducing this year's profits, or by spending some of the accumulated profit from previous periods. Wherever the money comes from, their is a chance of not making a return. It would take more data to figure out, but it's possible WotC are investing the maximum that is reasonable to invest given the size and dynamics of their market.

Regarding the indie market, the numbers look something like this. Of each ten indies going into their own production, about seven will fail to break-even, two will break-even, and one will return on investment. Those three (and most likely that one) will be far better known than the failing seven. This may give the appearance that larger publishers should put more product into market (because of all those indie successes!)... but this is a false appearance. If they did so - if they greatly broadened their portfolios - they would have markedly diminishing returns and see more outright finanical failures. If they indeed put millions behind every one of those additional products, they would bankrupt themselves speedily, thus product quality would also dive (because they would not back them all equally.)

So were I including making as much revenue as possible (no opportunity untaken) in my definition for special, then I would need to understand this tightrope better to judge. It's very possible that WotC have taken an optimal position in regards to investment in new 5th edition products. And it's also possible that in doing so, they take the Nintendo position of aiming to guarantee players of their games higher quality products.

 

[glass]

I mean, the PHB3 isn't relevant to how people perceive 4E, because most people wouldn't know about it. I'm sorry, that just how it is. I am just talking core versus core, and the latter splats aren't core. I haven't been bringing in Xanathar's or Tasha's up Jeremy for that reason

If the claim had been "a lot of people believe (falsely) that 4e classes all have identical mechanics", then I would not have argued. A lot of people do believe that, due in no small part to oft-repeated claims on the Internet like the ones I have been rebutting.

I think a book with a Summoner class, A Beastmster class, an artificer reprint, a new caster, and a new martial would sell better than most setting books.

Ah, Beastmaster. That makes more sense than "Headmaster"!

Anyway, I suspect that you are right that that, as an individual product, would sell very well. However, WotC seem to believe that mixing up player-facing and GM-facing content in each (with the obvious exception of adventures) is better for the health of the gameline and therefore long-term sales than producing books that are entirely player-facing (or almost so), which a book with five new classes in it would inevitably be. Even if the latter type of book would sell better on its own. And I suspect they are probably right about that.

That said, their aversion to new classes in general is rather extreme.

Only when WotC changed the core and cut off the OGL. Notice how important the OGL and DMsGuild are to WotC now and how emphatic they are about backwards compatibility. That's what bit them in the ass before.

We'll see how emphatic about backward compatibility they actually are when the anniversary books come out. But in the meantime, they certainly were not worrying about backwards compatibility in 2014 when did not so much avoid compatibility with the edition being replaced as shoot it in the head, cremate the corpse, and salt the ground where it had been standing just to be sure.

_
glass.

 

[Imaro]

Not sure how it could be, considering the very first supplement was SCAG, an official setting book...less than a year after the DMG was published. Meaning it had to have been in the works before the DMG was published.

If the plan was "no setting books at all," it was abandoned before the game even hit the shelves.

It was not to saturate the market with multiple campaign settings to cannibalize sales and split the fanbase. Forgotten Realms was the "generic" setting for 5e... Now we have multiple campaign settings for 5e.

 

[clearstream]

Anyway, I suspect that you are right that that, as an individual product, would sell very well. However, WotC seem to believe that mixing up player-facing and GM-facing content in each (with the obvious exception of adventures) is better for the health of the gameline and therefore long-term sales than producing books that are entirely player-facing (or almost so), which a book with five new classes in it would inevitably be. Even if the latter type of book would sell better on its own. And I suspect they are probably right about that.

I initially liked the approach of mixing content, but as 5th matured I came to dislike it. Witness the books needed to round-up content that was spatchcocked into adventures! And in many cases I had no desire to purchase the adventure (the least valuable line of WotC's 5th books, for me as an experienced TTRPGer) just to get their non-adventure content.

 

[Parmandur]

Are you counting the adventures and the books farmed out to other places, not actually made by WotC itself? 'Cause that's always been a factor here. EGtW isn't a WotC-made book, for example, though it was given their rubber-stamp.

Yes, I absolutely am. Why wouldn't those "count"...? Usable game material is usable game material.