Is D&D (WotC) flaming out?

[Cyronax]

I've always sort of considered 3.0-3.5 to be essentially the same edition, repackaged, for an 8-year cycle total (5 years for 3.5 alone), but with a lot of re-use throughout internally. That repeat/reuse was frustrating then.

I don't take as much issue with cross-edition repackaging ... after all, you do want to bring core elements up to whatever the new mechanical baseline is. 4E had a lot of innovative changes, so it seems reasonable to expect to update/re-write a lot of prior mechanical material into the new mechanics. But much of the Essentials line looks like a repackaging internal to 4E. I suppose that's like a 3.5 without a 4.5 label.

Got it on all the business reasons to continue to sell products ... but where are the new innovative products? Is the answer to shop Paizo for Pathfinder?

I was being a little facetious in some of my earlier responses, but I respectfully disagree about the 3.0-3.5 transition. It felt much more drastic and annoying than the 4.0-Essentials transition. I felt that WotC forced me to buy the 3.5 books to stay current. The current model is much more seamless and has many more workarounds -- including free articles to help transition between the maths, explicit statements about their design philosophy, and their attempts to make Essentials and early 4e compatible.

But above all, yes the cycle for change has dramatically shortened.

I think one innovative step I'd like to see is WotC have a one more more products that also support miniature-less gaming.

It would be a niche product possibly, but it would be a money-maker I have no doubt. It could probably be part of 4e's version of Unearthed Arcana.

 

[catsclaw227]

The D&D design team at WotC split into two groups earlier in the year. The fruits of that change should be evident late next year.

Wow, really? I didn't know this. What two teams were they split into and are they focusing on totally different things?

I think it's premature to say D&D as a whole is flaming out, but essentials re-imagining came out less than 2.5 years from the June 2008 release of 4E so it's certainly a shorter cycle than in the past.

Interestingly, I don't see essentials as a re-imagining of past material, since we use Essentials PCs and "traditional" 4e PCs in the same campaign, and our Essentials player has some non-essentials powers and one of our "traditional" PCs uses an Essentials power.

Isn't Essentials more a parallel design paradigm that works with the existing one?

Now... there were some rules changes for powers introduced with Essentials, but I don't think that merits it being a re-imagining of previous material to the extent that the OP is claiming.

 

[ggroy]

Got it on all the business reasons to continue to sell products ... but where are the new innovative products? Is the answer to shop Paizo for Pathfinder?

Paizo hasn't been deviating much from WotC in this regard, unless one considers cranking out two distinct Adventure Paths per year to be "innovative".

 

[DaveMage]

Wow, really? I didn't know this. What two teams were they split into and are they focusing on totally different things?

Hopefully someone can find the link to the threads that discussed it. My search abilities are no more.

Interestingly, I don't see essentials as a re-imagining of past material, since we use Essentials PCs and "traditional" 4e PCs in the same campaign, and our Essentials player has some non-essentials powers and one of our "traditional" PCs uses an Essentials power.

Isn't Essentials more a parallel design paradigm that works with the existing one?

Now... there were some rules changes for powers introduced with Essentials, but I don't think that merits it being a re-imagining of previous material to the extent that the OP is claiming.

"Re-imagining" was probably too strong a term. Let's go with "re-organizing".

 

[Asmor]

I was surfing Amazon today looking for a way to burn up a new gift card. I haven't bought any new D&D books in a year or so, and figured there would be some great and intriguing new products out there. Much to my disappointment, it seems like the majority of recent WotC publications -- Dark Sun aside -- are essentially repackagings of existing material. Looking ahead, the only item in the next year's worth of projected publications that caught my eye as interesting/original is the Neverwinter Campaign Setting.

That may just be my perception, of course, but it did lead to this question: is WotC (and by extension, D&D itself) flaming out? We're three years into the current edition, and if we're already reaching the point where much of the official publication is repackaging/reimagining rather than truly original exciting material, I don't think it bodes well. Particularly as it seems the cycle has accelerated compared to the flame out/reboot times of the prior couple of edition cycles. (Note: this is not intended to be and edition war comment as I'm not comparing the edition content but rather the publishing cycles).

Or have I just become an old(er) grognard?

Haven't read the entire thread, so I apologize if someone else brought this up...

While Essentials appears to be a repackaging, it's really more of a combination of a splat book and a rules clarification (I hesitate to use the word update, because very little of consequence has actually changed). While the classes in the player books have the same names as existing classes, they're actually entirely new builds and in most cases play radically different from how the original builds played (e.g. the martial classes tend to use mostly basic attacks, which are augmented by a variety of stances the character has access to).

That said, the DM stuff is pretty much all repackaging, and if you've got the DMG stay away from the DM kit. The Monster Vault is in many ways a redo of the Monster Manual, but with the "new math" (MM1 and MM2 era monsters were, in many cases, ridiculously underpowered). There's also a lot of flavor text added, though, and the tokens are nice too.

So in summation, Essentials may appear as a repackaging, but it's really more of an expansion of the same sort D&D's always thrived on.

 

[ggroy]

Wow, really? I didn't know this. What two teams were they split into and are they focusing on totally different things?

The team was rearranged back in May 2010, shortly after the WotC mid-year layoffs.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Well D&D (as well as most fantasy) is 90% redoing from edition to edition and 10% new stuff.

But then again, so are movies, books, most magazine articles.

Blogs and most internet posts are more like 99% old and 1% new. (including this one)

People always redo things, but the new stuff is what is interesting. So I have no problems with playing edition after edition of D&D. Each one is mostly the same, (dragons, elves, spells, etc) but the 10% is more than enough to keep my interest.

 

[catsclaw227]

"Re-imagining" was probably too strong a term. Let's go with "re-organizing".

Fair 'nuff.

 

[catsclaw227]

The team was rearranged back in May 2010, shortly after the WotC mid-year layoffs.

Very interesting. I missed that. I wonder if they filled those empty posts he mentioned in the article. Or I wonder if they are going with freelance writers as well.

 

[Glade Riven]

Essentials seems to have a different focus than other D&D mid-edition revamps - it appears to be designed to grow the brand and clean things up a little rather than a major tweak to the rules.

On the setting note, Dark Sun was out-sourced for 3.0/3.5, and Eberron ended up not getting nuked because of the fan fall-out that happened from giving Forgotten Realms the Dragonlance treatment.

I suspect that WotC is more intereted in trying out new things with the brand in order to try and grow it instead of sticking to previous publishing cycles.