D&D 5E Is long-term support of the game important?

[sunshadow21]

But, yes, for D&D and Pathfinder, subscriptions are the future.

That's probably true, but Paizo has proven that subscriptions and books are not mutually exclusive. Likewise, WotC is proving that purely web based subscription content sitting on a corporate server has it's own problems. The idea that subscriptions is the future is not a new one, just a new one to the RPG genre; comic book companies have been using it for decades and for good reason; notably, most of them are still putting out a physical product. The key is how those subscriptions are implemented. Paizo set up subscriptions to provide access to individual product lines that come as a physical book and pdfs, which once downloaded are basically books in a digital format. WotC tried to setup a one subscription for everything, whether you really want or need it all or not, and the vast majority of the content is reliant on WotC's whim as to whether or not they decide to continue 4E support in Next's version of DDI, which may or may not stay the same.

WotC's approach is fine for gathering already firm supporters of a system that is otherwise being supported in other ways, but 4E's reliance on DDI is high enough that if WotC decides that maintaining DDI support for 4E simply isn't worth it after the new edition is formally released and becomes the focus, 4E's remaining fans are basically left with access to a few books that all received massive amounts of errata no longer available, and even at it's best, it was never an effective marketing tool. That's going to do little to encourage 4E fans to switch over to Next and even less to assuage their numerous critics of the potential for the same thing to happen again with Next.

On the other hand, if Paizo were to discontinue their subscriptions tomorrow, none of their former subscribers would really be out anything. The pdfs already gained would still be accessible as long as the website stayed up, which would be very likely because the forums generate a lot of traffic; the content in the books and pdfs would still be accurate and reliable; their ability to purchase future products would be impacted slightly, but not overly so, given that they could still probably purchase directly from Paizo from the website or go to their local game store, just like they can now for product lines they don't subscribe to. They would have to take an additional step for each product they wanted instead of getting it automatically, but that's really about it.

Both companies rely on subscriptions but the impact of the structure of those subscriptions could not be more different. Paizo actually has a very sustainable method that does not completely remove other components of their distribution network or make their subscribers 100% reliant on their servers 100% of the time. WotC's model just doesn't have that sustainability and it cannabalizes other marketing and distribution methods to work, so while I don't disagree on the subscription aspect, I do tend to take most assertions made about DDI specifically or comparisons between DDI and Paizo's subscriptions with a heavy grain of salt.

 

[delericho]

Well, indeed. It's also hugely significant that Paizo's primary offering is their Adventure Path product.

Ever since 2nd Ed's "Complete Fighter's Handbook", if not before, the vast majority of RPG support has been what I'll term "non-perishable". You buy the splatbook, you add it to your game, and it remains part of the game forevermore (well, until the edition change). Much the same is true of settings - once you buy the book on Sarlona, that's it.

The problem with this approach is that it quickly saturates - once you've got one set of splatbooks out there, you probably can't sell another (as, I suspect, WotC found with both the second round of "Complete..." books in 3.5e and with the likes of "Martial Power 2" for 4e). Or, at least, if you can, you can only sell them in vastly reduced numbers. Likewise, once you've published "Secrets of Sarlona", how attractive is a book called "Deeper Secrets of Sarlona" likely to be?

Simply put, there's only so much you can sell, and diminishing returns are inevitable.

Ideally, then, a company that wants to sustain the same edition long-term should probably aim to base this on sales of items that are somehow "perishable". That is, the group buys them, uses them for a while, and then sets them aside.

The best example of such items are, of course, adventures: although some adventures get run multiple times, it's pretty unusual for the same group to play the same adventure multiple times (especially modern adventures, which are much more story-focussed than older ones, and so resistant to repeats).

(Of course, White Wolf also managed to make their setting materials "perishable" by the implementation of a metaplot - people 'had' to keep buying in order to stay current. But that, of course, has its own problems. In theory, a company could even make their rules materials "perishable" if they would be willing to deliberately embrace power-creep, but that would most likely see the game rejected pretty quickly.)

Paizo, of course, put out big books of "non-perishable" rules expansions - Ultimate Magic, Mythic Adventures, etc. I'm not denying that. But their primary offering is apparently their Adventure Path product, which is "perishable" - I can always use more adventures. This at least slows down the rate at which the edition saturates.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The problem with this approach is that it quickly saturates - once you've got one set of splatbooks out there, you probably can't sell another (as, I suspect, WotC found with both the second round of "Complete..." books in 3.5e and with the likes of "Martial Power 2" for 4e). Or, at least, if you can, you can only sell them in vastly reduced numbers. Likewise, once you've published "Secrets of Sarlona", how attractive is a book called "Deeper Secrets of Sarlona" likely to be?

Simply put, there's only so much you can sell, and diminishing returns are inevitable.

This is undoubtedly true, but I feel like continuing to produce this kind of material does ensure that people continue to subscribe to services like the DDI in larger numbers than they otherwise would. Maybe physical books aren't a great model for that kind of material.

I feel like there's also an "excitement" issue - repeating the same thing with a similar name (PHB2, Martial Power 2, etc.), even if the contents is good is inherently a lot less exciting and likely to move books than giving it a stronger theme, a stronger reason to buy and so on. 4E really wasn't helped by all this "PHB3" nonsense - if they'd hit a stronger theme, they might well have sold rather better.

Ideally, then, a company that wants to sustain the same edition long-term should probably aim to base this on sales of items that are somehow "perishable". That is, the group buys them, uses them for a while, and then sets them aside.

The real issue here is that, historically, WotC has produced very few good adventures over both 3E and 4E. The vast majority of WotC-produced adventures and quasi-APs and so on over that period have just been middling at best, and in many cases, quite painfully bad. Virtually all of them can be fixed, but in many cases doing so is as much work as writing your own adventure and renders the whole exercise rather pointless!

Towards the end of 4E, quality came up a fair bit, but it remains to be seen whether that will continue into 5E.

So they have a bit of a trust issue to overcome when attempting to sell this kind of "perishable" product. Paizo, for all that their adventures might be a bit dodgy from time to time, have never had the same kind of issue to overcome. So this makes attempting to switch to this kind of material rather tricky.

Another kind of material which hovers between perishable and not, of course, is setting material. Particularly new settings which actually have something to say. Stuff which just digs deeper into or adds on to an existing setting has a limited market, but if one keeps putting out new settings, so long as you only make ones which people might actually want, I think there is much less chance of saturation. One has to watch one's costs, though.

 

[delericho]

This is undoubtedly true, but I feel like continuing to produce this kind of material does ensure that people continue to subscribe to services like the DDI in larger numbers than they otherwise would. Maybe physical books aren't a great model for that kind of material.

True, to a point. While everyone who subscribes has their own reasons to do so, my guess is that the overwhelming majority subscribe for the tools (specifically the Character Builder and/or Compendium). Both of these benefit a great deal from having a signficant amount of material in them. (And, whenever a new edition comes out, there's an immediate demand for WotC to "fill in the gaps" - Eberron players 'need' Warforged and Shifters, many people 'need' Psionics, there are monsters that people 'need', and so on.)

So it makes sense to put out quite a lot of support material quite quickly - probably the equivalents of PHB2&3, MM2&3, the first round of "* Power", the "Adventurer's Vault", and a few other products. That gets the CB & Comp well-stocked with stuff to the benefit of subscribers, and it fills in the gaps pretty well for people to convert their games.

The problem is that once you've done that, you've already saturated the game. Adding more stuff to the tools is almost certainly a matter of sharply diminishing returns - most people who will subscribe for 'stuff' have already subscribed. And all your best-selling books are out and done.

And that's you, at most, two years into your release schedule (because (horrors!) people actually want those books).

Now, you can start looking into niche subjects (Frostburn, Libris Mortis...), or you can start doing a second round of splats but, alas, these just don't sell all that well. Unless you're willing to accept a dramatically reduced income stream, it's already time to start looking at a new (half-)edition. Not good.

(Unfortunately, it was also worse for 4e. As we know, DDI subscriptions canibalised sales of those best-selling books. We don't know by how much, but we do know that a not-insignificant number of people subscribed rather than buying the books. And, frankly, with books like "* Power" that's a no-brainer - the DDI is just a better way to get that content, and would be even if the books were free. But we also weren't, and probably still aren't, at the point where WotC could just drop the print delivery entirely and instead deliver splat material online-only - many people would simply refuse. What this probably meant is that the lost sales due to DDI subs reduced those "best-sellers" to a point where they were barely worth printing, while the DDI itself didn't achieve the (absurd) targets WotC had set for it. Instead of one reasonable success, they had two relative failures on their hands.)

It will be interesting to see what WotC do with 5e. My gut feeling is that we won't see a dedicated 5e DDI (we'd have heard about it by now), but that we'll also see very little in-print support for the edition - those 'gaps' will probably remain unfilled. It appears that WotC have decided to focus on D&D as a brand, and with a multi-platform offering, of which the TTRPG is only a tiny (and probably the smallest) part. We're just not worth supporting.

The real issue here is that, historically, WotC has produced very few good adventures over both 3E and 4E.

Indeed. WotC have produced barely a dozen adventures, ever, that reached the heady heights of "okay".

So they have a bit of a trust issue to overcome when attempting to sell this kind of "perishable" product. Paizo, for all that their adventures might be a bit dodgy from time to time, have never had the same kind of issue to overcome. So this makes attempting to switch to this kind of material rather tricky.

Again, agreed. What works for Paizo won't work for WotC, and vice versa.

Another kind of material which hovers between perishable and not, of course, is setting material. Particularly new settings which actually have something to say. Stuff which just digs deeper into or adds on to an existing setting has a limited market, but if one keeps putting out new settings, so long as you only make ones which people might actually want, I think there is much less chance of saturation. One has to watch one's costs, though.

The problem with this is that most groups don't use any published setting at all and the vast majority of groups that do use a published setting only use one. This very sharply limits your ability to publish settings - any given setting will saturate if supported indefinitely, but multiple settings compete against one another. In that regard, I think Paizo have been very wise to stick exclusively with Golarion, and WotC are wise to likewise focus heavily on FR, but it does mean that these are rapidly heading to saturation.

(There's no reason, of course, that the DDI couldn't be used to support the other TSR settings (or Eberron), or even to introduce an entirely new setting - since subscribers get everything anyway, this gives them the ability to experiment significantly with content. With such a subscription service they don't need to sell customers on each new product; they just need to do enough to avoid them cancelling - a much easier proposal.)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

So it makes sense to put out quite a lot of support material quite quickly - probably the equivalents of PHB2&3, MM2&3, the first round of "* Power", the "Adventurer's Vault", and a few other products. That gets the CB & Comp well-stocked with stuff to the benefit of subscribers, and it fills in the gaps pretty well for people to convert their games.

The problem is that once you've done that, you've already saturated the game. Adding more stuff to the tools is almost certainly a matter of sharply diminishing returns - most people who will subscribe for 'stuff' have already subscribed. And all your best-selling books are out and done.

I agree, but they do need to get that stuff out, and I'd suggest keep a steady trickle of such stuff via Dragon-mag-type deals to keep it going.

It will be interesting to see what WotC do with 5e. My gut feeling is that we won't see a dedicated 5e DDI (we'd have heard about it by now), but that we'll also see very little in-print support for the edition - those 'gaps' will probably remain unfilled. It appears that WotC have decided to focus on D&D as a brand, and with a multi-platform offering, of which the TTRPG is only a tiny (and probably the smallest) part. We're just not worth supporting.

They're going to need some kind of DDI! I ain't ever going back to my book-haulin' days! NEVER!

The problem with this is that most groups don't use any published setting at all and the vast majority of groups that do use a published setting only use one. This very sharply limits your ability to publish settings - any given setting will saturate if supported indefinitely, but multiple settings compete against one another. In that regard, I think Paizo have been very wise to stick exclusively with Golarion, and WotC are wise to likewise focus heavily on FR, but it does mean that these are rapidly heading to saturation.

(There's no reason, of course, that the DDI couldn't be used to support the other TSR settings (or Eberron), or even to introduce an entirely new setting - since subscribers get everything anyway, this gives them the ability to experiment significantly with content. With such a subscription service they don't need to sell customers on each new product; they just need to do enough to avoid them cancelling - a much easier proposal.)

I don't think this is as big an issue as it might be, oddly enough. Just because a group only uses one setting at once, doesn't mean that they don't go through multiple settings, nor that settings get bought without a strong intention to use.

The problem, I would offer, is BORING settings. Too many settings for 3E were "default fantasy with a twist you have to squint to even notice!", whereas with 2E, they had some truly wild settings (Spelljammer, Dark Sun, Planescape, for example), and I think it's those that WotC needs to focus on if they go for new settings (Eberron was also "different enough"). Not just re-issuing a litany of previous D&D settings, all of which people already know if they love or hate, which is what I fear they will actually do. I'm talking settings which excite, which seem like something different, which seem like they'd make people sit up - "Not your father's D&D", as it were. If they can't come up with settings like that, better to not publish them than waste our time with "Greyhawk 5th edition, this time it's the same as 1E but with higher production values!" or the like. I think Greyhawk for DDN would have a vastly smaller likely market than really any setting which felt new and exciting. Nostalgia needs to avoided, if you want to actually move settings, I'd say.

 

[Bluenose]

Ideally, then, a company that wants to sustain the same edition long-term should probably aim to base this on sales of items that are somehow "perishable". That is, the group buys them, uses them for a while, and then sets them aside.

The best example of such items are, of course, adventures: although some adventures get run multiple times, it's pretty unusual for the same group to play the same adventure multiple times (especially modern adventures, which are much more story-focussed than older ones, and so resistant to repeats).

Another type of product that's "perishable" in that sense is exemplified by the Poor Wizard's Almanac that TSR put out for Mystara. Some world description, though not a huge amount compared to what you could get from other sources, but the most significant part was the events of the year section. GDW of course did something similar in a different way with the TNS news in their various magazines. Selling metaplot in this way is somewhat different from the approach in the White Wolf games, since the almanacs in particular are bought mostly for the plot rather than for other background information with some plot included. Whether that could work now is another question, since it would be perfectly possible to deliver the same sort of content online. Indeed, SJG have done that with their version of Traveller and their TNS news items. Compared to the mix of supplements, novels, and new versions of supplements that settings like FR have delivered, this would seem to have some value. Although for the company, turning that value into money is going to be a problem.

 

[delericho]

I agree, but they do need to get that stuff out, and I'd suggest keep a steady trickle of such stuff via Dragon-mag-type deals to keep it going.

Aye, it's a really tricky one.

They're going to need some kind of DDI! I ain't ever going back to my book-haulin' days! NEVER!

Well, they'll almost certainly release the new editions as PDFs also. Will that do?

On a serious note: how many people do you think are out there who:

1) Are not currently DDI subscribers AND
2) Would subscribe to a 5e DDI?

Because that's the number that needs to be high enough to justify the investment in developing new 5e tools. And I just can't see it myself.

(Okay, technically there's also the number of people who are current DDI subscribers and who would definitely cancel unless 5e tools were added. But if they're still subscribing now when the only thing in DDI is the 4e tools, it's hard to imagine they'd cancel en masse without dedicated 5e support. I might, of course, be wrong.)

I don't think this is as big an issue as it might be, oddly enough. Just because a group only uses one setting at once, doesn't mean that they don't go through multiple settings, nor that settings get bought without a strong intention to use.

There will be some people who do that, but how many sales does that represent?

whereas with 2E, they had some truly wild settings (Spelljammer, Dark Sun, Planescape, for example), and I think it's those that WotC needs to focus on if they go for new settings (Eberron was also "different enough").

Sadly, the proliferation of settings was one of the things that killed TSR (though certainly not the only thing, nor the biggest). It's the same issue as with DDI cannibalising splatbook sales - you probably end up with more sales in total with multiple offerings. But instead of concentrating those sales into one success story, they're spread out amongst several that become individual failures.

(Here, again, I think the "Kickstarter Model" is probably ideal for settings - pitch your setting book as the main offering, with the rest of the line as stretch goals. That way, you know up-front how much interest is there, you know going in that the money is there, and you also know you won't have to scrape around for more supplements down the line. Plus, Eberron and Al-Qadim have both shown that a setting with a fairly short, high-quality product line can do very well indeed.)

Not just re-issuing a litany of previous D&D settings, all of which people already know if they love or hate, which is what I fear they will actually do. I'm talking settings which excite, which seem like something different, which seem like they'd make people sit up - "Not your father's D&D", as it were. If they can't come up with settings like that, better to not publish them than waste our time with "Greyhawk 5th edition, this time it's the same as 1E but with higher production values!" or the like. I think Greyhawk for DDN would have a vastly smaller likely market than really any setting which felt new and exciting. Nostalgia needs to avoided, if you want to actually move settings, I'd say.

Honestly, I will be quite surprised if any setting other than Forgotten Realms gets in-print support from WotC for 5e. It's just about possible that they might license out a few other settings, but I suspect the bulk of the rest (and any new settings) will be presented in DDI... assuming they do indeed resume the eMags.

 

[delericho]

Another type of product that's "perishable" in that sense is exemplified by the Poor Wizard's Almanac that TSR put out for Mystara.

Yep. IIRC, the "Heavy Gear" RPG did something similar.

 

[jodyjohnson]

Straight form the horses mouth.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/dndarchives_history.asp

This is also interesting. Print runs and the sources.
http://www.acaeum.com/library/printrun.html

30 year history, a bit yay for me but interesting.
http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/538/538262p1.html

Thanks for the nice listing of factual sites.

The number of employees you were looking for was 300 not 3000+.

Twice now you've added an extra zero to a significant factoid.

 

[Jester David]

I honestly think that you are very, very far off if you think WOTC sees 8 bucks for a 40 dollar book. I mean, distributer and retailer both get 100% markups, and you still haven't actually printed it yet. At a guess, I'd say that a 40 dollar book puts less than half what you think in their pockets. And that's still not counting the costs of developing the book in the first place.

From Ryan Dancy's Escapist interview on this site:

In this field, we often use a shorthand pricing system called the “Rule of 5”. Under this rule, you determine the suggested price of a product by multiplying the cost of the product by 5. Factoring in the 3-tier distribution system the industry uses, the result is that the final suggested retail price produces the following divisions:

• 20%: Cost of Goods (the cost of the production of the product, plus the wages paid to people who worked on it and any licenses or royalties)
• 20%: Gross Profit (that is, profit before subtracting all operational costs like salaries, marketing, rent, etc.) to the Publisher
• 20%: Distributor Margin (the gross profit the Distributor earns)
• 40%: Retailer Margin (the gross profit the Retailer earns)

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?315800-4-Hours-w-RSD-Escapist-Bonus-Column#ixzz2wVp4PQaS

So a $40 would cost $8 to print, $8 to distribute, give the retailer $16, and make the company $8. Unless WotC is under/overvaluing their product.