D&D 5E Is D&D Next Open?
- Thread starter JVisgaitis
- Start date
Tabletop RPGs have a problem with being slow to iterate. They cannot effectively correct design mistakes. Made a class way to powerful? It is part of the game now. DMs can ban it via house rule, but since it has an air of legitimacy there will always be people fighting to use it.
Furthermore, to keep making a profit, more and more books are released. They have more classes, more feats, more spells, more items, and more mistakes. All the little mistakes add up and the game eventually collapses under its own weight.
The tabletop RPG equivalent of a balance patch is when they decide to flip the table and start over with a newer edition (3.0, 3.5, Pathfinder, and 4th are all examples of this.)
Take anyones favorite edition and continue producing content for it for 15 years and you will most likely have a broken, unwieldy, abomination.
A big part of Paizo's early success were gamers who did not like 4th edition. It was a very divisive edition. There was a still a strong 3.5 following that felt abandoned by WotC. I don't think a company ripping off 5th edition while it is still active would be all that successful. Plus, Paizo doing what you claim would effectively be abandoning their existing crowd of former 3.5 enthusiasts. I think it is more of an irrational fear. Similar to the whole "we can't release PDFs, people will pirate them." Wizards pulling support for PDF format didn't really stop piracy in 4th edition. It just made people who preferred to buy via PDF unhappy.
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delericho
Legend
Actually, I'm pretty sure the mistake was failing to renew the Dragon license. That left Paizo in a position where they had to do something, which led directly to Pathfinder existing. That decision turned D&D's #1 cheerleader into its biggest competitor.
And I'm not convinced anyone else could have filled the void the way Pathfinder did. Paizo had the big advantages that the already had a list of tens of thousands of subscribers, many of whom would at least look at whatever came out, plus they already had the storefront set up and the subscription mechanism in place. Nobody else had those advantages.
Had any company other than Paizo done a 'Pathfinder', it would have been published in the normal way - estimate sales, print a number of copies, and put those in the FLGS; reprint if needed. It thus would most likely have sold a couple of thousand copies and then disappeared.
Halivar
First Post
This is absolutely correct. I can't fathom why they withdrew the magazine licenses.
But as for motivation to make Pathfider: IIRC, when they saw the preview material they were very much unhappy with the direction of the 4E mechanics. Or someone connected with Paizo was. I forgot where I read this, but others might remember.
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
I don't believe that was the case. It had to do with the fact that Paizo, like all companies, had to plan out their catalogue months in advance, and with no word on if they'd even be allowed to license the new game, they were essentially forced to part ways with WotC and make their own game.
delericho
Legend
It wasn't an entirely unreasonable step - by bringing the magazines 'home' they suddenly had something to build the DDI around, especially while the electronic tools were under development. And if they took the view that the magazine industry was dying (which, in fairness, it is, and has been for some time), there's no huge loss in taking them off the newsstands. It's only with the benefit of that 20-20 hindsight that it's obvious that it would lead to Pathfinder and all the rest.
That said, I did think it was a mistake even at the time, but for a very different reason - by having a monthly periodical on those newsstands they at least had something in the public's eye even on those months when the only releases were something fairly peripheral. The magazines served to keep the game visible in a way that the website doesn't to the same extent (and the DDI really doesn't, being a closed shop).
I did hear this also. However, even if they weren't the biggest 4e fans it might have seemed like too big a risk to drop the mags to go a different direction.
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
I'm not sure I agree with your reasoning, here. Bringing the magazines "home" didn't give them anything they didn't already have to build the DDI around. The magazines had nothing to do with the character creator or monster builder, for example. Likewise, simply adding new original material and adventures could have been done without withdrawing the magazines - WotC had already been doing that for years with web articles during the 3.X era anyway.
Likewise, Paizo was the one generating the magazines' content, so there was no huge loss for WotC in leaving the magazines on the newsstands; that's the whole point of licensing them out.
As I see it, there was no practical benefit to WotC withdrawing the magazine license from Paizo. I'm sure they thought there was, but I question if whatever reasoning they were working under turned out to be valid.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
I dunno. Paizo had some irons in the fire other than the magazines, and while those were key, I have the impression that they would've happily continued to make D&D products supporting 4e even without them. I think there's some alternate universe where 4e was OGL where Paizo never became a competitor and Golarion was a 4e setting and Erik Mona has a bitchin' evil beard
Aye, but you aren't thinking like a controlling brand manager hungry for sweet sweet unique IP!
I'd imagine WotC took the mags back for the same reasons 4e didn't go OGL: they wanted to control their brand. A lot of 4e's decisions seem to make sense in that context, where terrified brand managers skittish about this "shared IP" see it as a weakness that WotC doesn't control what a D&D orc looks like at every D&D table and in the minds of every D&D player. Look at flagging sales in late 3.5e, blame it on a weak brand, spearhead a new "rebranding" effort to secure in the minds of everyone one true message from the brand owners, and you have consistency and control and hypothetical benefits aplenty.
You wind up with old terms used in new ways, consistent visual imagery, one true model of "the world," and a desire to stop others from publishing things with "your" IP on them. 4e could be characterized by a lot of those things.
Alzurius said:
Aye, but you aren't thinking like a controlling brand manager hungry for sweet sweet unique IP!
I'd imagine WotC took the mags back for the same reasons 4e didn't go OGL: they wanted to control their brand. A lot of 4e's decisions seem to make sense in that context, where terrified brand managers skittish about this "shared IP" see it as a weakness that WotC doesn't control what a D&D orc looks like at every D&D table and in the minds of every D&D player. Look at flagging sales in late 3.5e, blame it on a weak brand, spearhead a new "rebranding" effort to secure in the minds of everyone one true message from the brand owners, and you have consistency and control and hypothetical benefits aplenty.
You wind up with old terms used in new ways, consistent visual imagery, one true model of "the world," and a desire to stop others from publishing things with "your" IP on them. 4e could be characterized by a lot of those things.
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delericho
Legend
In theory, it gives them name-recognition, continuity, and an inbuilt audience - I think the theory was that they could have a big digital relaunch, with Dragon #360 and Dungeon #151 appearing on a digital newsstand (and with an old Dragon editor at the helm, no less!), pick up where Paizo left off, and thus convert all the old subscribers into DDI customers.
Unfortunately, it didn't exactly work out like that, partly due to residual anger from fans of the Paizo-era magazines, partly because the customer base for print and digital products don't overlap perfectly, and partly because Paizo themselves did a much better job of converting those old customers.
As I've said up-thread, I think it was a huge mistake to do as they did. I just don't think it was entirely unreasonable - I think there are at least the outlines of a coherent plan there.
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