D&D General Is DnD being mothballed?

[Alzrius]

Virtually every company that wants to stay in business puts profits first, it's not an incompatible goal with producing what they feel is a quality product if they consider long term profitability.

No, I think that companies that put quality first and trust in the idea that the money will follow are, in fact, companies that want to stay in business. And while I agree that making money and producing quality aren't incompatible goals, some companies (seem to) act as if they are; that's kind of what people have a problem with.

How that relates to how many books they produce goes back to ROI analysis. TSR was pretty horrible at it, they seemed to have learned their lesson in 3E and 4E that pushing out a ton of material can mean lower ROI. Whether by luck (because they never expected 5E to succeed) or by planning, it seems that they now believe a slower release rate is the best ROI. I think it also happens to be good for the hobby as a byproduct.

TSR's situation isn't really comparable to WotC's, as I've said before; their deal with Randomhouse, and their use of factoring, meant that their reasons for their production schedule were completely different from WotC's. It's an apples-to-oranges comparison. While WotC clearly does believe that a slower release rate is better for them, that's not any sort of proof positive that a faster release rate was unprofitable or unsustainable; again, we know that it's not, at least for a company of Paizo's size (which in turns leads us to ask where the line is between sustainable profitability and maximization of profit; $100M per year used to be acceptable, and now it's "undermonetized." What amount gets rid of the "under" in that label?).

 

[Vaalingrade]

If they consider long term profitability.

And the if rarely comes up because the stockholders have about three years of memory and that's only for lines going up.

 

[Parmandur]

I disagree. I think that the "bloat" idea is vastly overstated, and has no real evidence to support it, save for people mistakenly thinking that what happened to TSR is relatable to what happened to 3.5 and 4E.

I don't believe that it is, and that "flooding the market" is a bogeyman with little to support it, at least where D&D is concerned. Again, the overproduction of materials that sank TSR is not relatable to the Hasbro era, and the RPG market strikes me as being in a boom right now; concerns about a flood are at best vastly overrated.

You might feel that way, but my personal experience and all data that I have seen suggests differently.

 

[Alzrius]

You might feel that way, but my personal experience and all data that I have seen suggests differently.

I'm sure you believe that, but my lived experiences and the information that I've gathered says otherwise.

 

[dave2008]

To be clear, I'm not saying that there wasn't a drop-off over time; that's been universal insofar as editions of D&D go. But my understanding is that 3.5 was wrapped up because it was consistently falling short of the target number that was set for it, with Ryan Dancey's implication that said number was unrealistic.

That is not how I understood how things went with 3e, though it sounds a bit like 4e from what I remember. But I don't know enough to really comment.

Now, it's hitting that number, but that strikes me as being more due to a confluence of external factors than anything to do with the release schedule.

External factors played a part, but as others have shown the timeline doesn't completely add up. 5e was an immediate success a year or two before things like CR or Stranger things had any influence (and the numbers didn't move much when they did). It seems likely to me that a number of things have lead to 5e's continued success and it is not out of the realm of possibility that the release schedule is part of the reason.

I may be biased because the slow releases have completely worked on me. I was not interested in the glut of material in 2e, 3e, or 4e. It was too much and I purchased very little. I have purchased more 5e books than all other editions combined!

 

[Parmandur]

I'm sure you believe that, but my lived experiences and the information that I've gathered says otherwise.

All I know is, if WotC started releasing books like Paizo does, I would stop buying any.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Virtually every company that wants to stay in business puts profits first, it's not an incompatible goal with producing what they feel is a quality product if they consider long term profitability.

How that relates to how many books they produce goes back to ROI analysis. TSR was pretty horrible at it, they seemed to have learned their lesson in 3E and 4E that pushing out a ton of material can mean lower ROI. Whether by luck (because they never expected 5E to succeed) or by planning, it seems that they now believe a slower release rate is the best ROI. I think it also happens to be good for the hobby as a byproduct.

How is it good for the hobby?

 

[Alzrius]

That is not how I understood how things went with 3e, though it sounds a bit like 4e from what I remember. But I don't know enough to really comment.

Again, this is going off of a lot of what Ben Riggs said in his 4E seminar, with regard to what motivated WotC to switch editions in the first place. Again, I'm not saying that there wasn't any sort of drop-off, but it wasn't put forward as any sort of threat to the bottom line.

External factors played a part, but as others have shown the timeline doesn't completely add up. 5e was an immediate success a year or two before things like CR or Stranger things had any influence (and the numbers didn't move much when they did). It seems likely to me that a number of things have lead to 5e's continued success and it is not out of the realm of possibility that the release schedule is part of the reason.

I may be biased because the slow releases have completely worked on me. I was not interested in the glut of material in 2e, 3e, or 4e. It was too much and I purchased very little. I have purchased more 5e books than all other editions combined!

If it was a success right out of the proverbial gate, then it's hard to say that the release schedule was the reason, since by that point the only things that had been released were the Core Rules and maybe the introductory adventure? I can't quite recall, but either way, you don't end up with an immediate success because of how slowly future products are coming out.

Personally, I don't care much about the rate of 5E releases; I just want to put to bed the idea that a sustained schedule of frequent releases necessarily means death. Like I said, we have plenty of evidence to the contrary.

 

[Alzrius]

All I know is, if WotC started releasing books like Paizo does, I would stop buying any.

Okay, but that's not really a data point, since there's been at least one other person who's said the opposite.

 

[Oofta]

And because WotC changed their mind on the OGL issue because their profits were suddenly threatened, it doesn't matter that they had every intention to pull the trigger on it until then? As long as you don't take that last step (no matter what the reason) everything up until then is ok?

I don't judge people, or companies, on what they thought about but ultimately did not do. I also don't feel like beating the dead horse that went under the bridge and down the river a while ago.