Is the Split a Bad Thing?

[freebfrost]

A DDI that had support for all editions (in the form of character, npc, and encounter builders, along with rules compendiums and sales of electronic books), would have kept a revenue stream coming in from players of all editions, not just the currently supported one.

One small problem here.

If I'm not a 4E player, why on earth would I pay $X/month for access to books that I already own in paper and electronic forms? Regardless of how inclusive the DDI was, if I'm not using the current system and getting new material, there is no intrinsic value in their software when I can own or can easily purchase all the old rules, supplements, etc. instead of leasing it with a subscription?

(Full disclosure - I'm one of the "lost sheep" that went to Pathfinder. But I'm interested in why you think this would work for any of the old versions.)

 

[Bedrockgames]

Ok, there's been more than enough pixels spent claiming that the RPG community is split by the existence of competing versions of D&D. I'm going to take it as given that the community is split. How much and what percentage isn't really important.

My question is, is this a bad thing?

From all evidence, Pathfinder is doing very well. Paizo has claimed numerous times and the ICV2 data certainly points to that. Good for them.

As I look, DDI Insider has 66615 members, up from just over 60k when I joined in September (a 10% growth in 4 months isn't bad). And that's just confirmed subs - the actual number could easily be in the 100 k range. Again, a pretty solid base for an RPG company.

My question to everyone is, is the split a bad thing? Have we wound up with two companies making half as much money, or do we have two companies making decent profit, where before we only had one?

Or to put it another way, do we have a situation where we had a sort of asexual reproduction of D&D, fissioning into two entities that are now growing into full size?

I don't think the split itself is good or bad but I do think gamers dividing themselves up into camps has created overly focused and insulated approaches to the game. There has always been a certain amount of this, but before it seemed like groups were more likely to compromise and to be made up of a diverse group. Now I feel like I have to play with all optimizers, all role players, all combat focused, etc. This isn't always the case, I have managed to find a good mix of gamers willing to try different things. However I think the 4E/Pathfinder split is really part of a broader trend in the gaming community.

 

[El Mahdi]

One small problem here.

If I'm not a 4E player, why on earth would I pay /month for access to books that I already own in paper and electronic forms? Regardless of how inclusive the DDI was, if I'm not using the current system and getting new material, there is no intrinsic value in their software when I can own or can easily purchase all the old rules, supplements, etc. instead of leasing it with a subscription?

(Full disclosure - I'm one of the "lost sheep" that went to Pathfinder. But I'm interested in why you think this would work for any of the old versions.)

It works for 4E doesn't it? 4E players have books also (at least most of them), and yet there are 60,000+ DDI subscribers...

If DDI had OD&D, 1E, 2E, and 3E support in the form of character builders, npc/monster builders, encounter builders, rules compendiums, and Virtual Table Top rules support (with import of character/monsters/npc's), and occasional articles/adventures in Dungeon & Dragon - do you really think that they wouldn't get a significant number of older edition players/DM's to subscribe?

I think they would.

And if they included Pathfinder support in the same manner? (Which they can, it's Open Content, not to mention mostly their IP to begin with...)

Of course they wouldn't get everybody, just like they don't get every 4E player and DM, but Holy Crap that would increase their subscriptions.

And not everybody has every older edition product that was printed or that they wanted. Look at the uproar when they pulled the pdf's from RPGNow. They could be selling them through DDI. That's a revenue stream that they are solely able to exploit, but are instead leaving on the table.

You might not be ineterested in that, just like a lot of other people that wouldn't be. But I'm betting there'd be more than enough simply due to the builders and VTT.

60,000+ (or as much as 100,000+ as Hussar proposed) times 5 or more (OD&D, 1E, 2E, 3E, Pathfinder, etc.)...

We already have pretty good anecdotal data that Pathfinder players are approximately equal in number to 4E players, and 3E/3.5E players aren't too far behind...that's a lot of untapped customers. I'm betting all told, that could push subscription into the 300,000 to 500,000 range. At aprox. $10 a pop, DDI alone would push the D&D brand close to that $50 million threshold to be considered a major brand (like Magic: The Gathering), before even considering book sales, pdf sales, and other products...

That's a whole different ballgame. A ballgame they currently aren't even suiting up for...

 

[Dice4Hire]

Making DDI go back to previous editions further than looking at rulebooks would be an insane amount of work.

Cost prohibitively expensive? Maybe or maybe not.

Overall I think the split in players is a good thing as long as you can find players for the edition or game you want to play. One reason I do not play or even really look at Pathfinder and all the 3.5 clones is I would never be able to play them. My group is almost pure D&D, and I know of very few other roleplayers in Japan (Well, English roleplayers)

As for money, Pathfinder is getting a lot of money that would not otherwise be being spent, IMHO. A lot of their customers would not be going 4E in any case, and I do not think Paizo would be as successful making only settings, APS and other adventures/materials for standard 3.5.

So for that the split is good for the hobby.

Hyperbole in certain gameshops and on forums seems to show a lot of problems, but I think for average players it is not as serious as it seems.

 

[howandwhy99]

For me, diversity is a big positive. More opportunity for everyone.
Divisiveness is a big negative. Conflict impedes growth.

I like to think we can have the former without the latter.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

The good or the bad depends more on the book trade, public awareness, and public relations than anything else.

If games drop below a certain amount then it is likely that the bookstores will drop them. I believe that bookstores are the most common way that folks first see RPGs.

The public is most aware of D&D - there are still people that call or describe all RPGs as 'Dungeons & Dragon'. (Gamer: I play Pathfinder! Random Guy: Is that like Dungeons & Dragons?) If D&D disappears from shelves then public awareness will likely drop. Pathfinder may, or may not, be outselling D&D, but it does not have the notoriety - I very much doubt that the 700 Club has ever done a segment on the evils of Pathfinder.

If Hasbro is likely to drop D&D if it drops below a certain profitability then RPGs dropping from public awareness is something that is 'Bad'.

And gamers arguing in a store does not help relations, at all. But gamers happily discussing the merits of this game or that is fine.

For what it is worth, I have never seen 4e or Pathfinder gamers spewing hate for either 4e or Pathfinder in a bookstore. The only time that I saw such a thing was some GURPS players who went so far as to take a starter set of a 3.X D&D out of a kid's hands. I felt like beating them.

The Auld Grump

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The split is a very bad thing in France...

D&D4 is no longer translated. Playfactory that held the license dropped out.
Pathfinder is so badly translated in my language that it seems to be translated into a third language.

So there is no D&D in French anymore in the shops.

When I try to introduce new players to the hobby, I use Microlite20, and its nice translation from the Scriptorium.

It is also a bad thing because, there are very few amateur scenarios available for D&D4. For years, I found that those scenarios were the best around. Now, I am stuck with my own stuff. It is fine for me, as a Dungeon Master, but it is bad if I want to draw new people to the hobby on the DM side of the screen, especially young people.

OK, that qualifies as pretty bad in my book.

 

[Argyle King]

The public is most aware of D&D - there are still people that call or describe all RPGs as 'Dungeons & Dragon'. (Gamer: I play Pathfinder! Random Guy: Is that like Dungeons & Dragons?) If D&D disappears from shelves then public awareness will likely drop. Pathfinder may, or may not, be outselling D&D, but it does not have the notoriety - I very much doubt that the 700 Club has ever done a segment on the evils of Pathfinder.

While I agree (and have posted in other threads) that some people do associate D&D with rpgs, I would argue that's not the case as much as it was previously. I imagine my anecdotal evidence isn't worth a hill of beans, but I compare what the atmosphere was like when I first learned D&D 10 or so years ago compared to now and the time in between. I more often hear other rpg names being thrown around now than I had before. D&D is still seen as what I suppose as a flagship, but I feel a broader variety of games are seen and heard more than before.

Personally, I think what needs to happen is for the hobby -or at least a fracture of it- to reinvent itself. Embrace the split instead of fighting against it. I do not believe the term 'RPG' is still healthy as a blanket term. It has too much baggage, and I also believe that games have evolved enough to where it can be sometimes difficult to categorize some of them under the same thing. I'd like to see games which label themselves differently; create more of their own identity rather than trying to fit into the broader label. Imagine if with D&D 5th Edition we got the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game, but Paizo published the Golarion collaborative storytelling system.

I only chose to use WoTC and Paizo for ease of reference.

What's in a name? I suppose my question is whether the two ways of saying the same thing really say the same thing or if they cause your mind to have different expectations. How would the different label be perceived by someone seeing the product for the first time; someone who hasn't played rpgs?


edit: The funny thing about experiences are how different they can be. In your experience, you've never heard people trash D&D in public. I have. Likewise, your GURPS/D&D conflict is actually the exact opposite of what I went through. Back when I was looking to try games outside of D&D, I remember picking up a GURPS book in the store and having somebody tell me 'you don't want that; it's way too complicated to even be playable.' So, I spent about another hour in the store looking through the shelves of books; eventually coming back to GURPS and narrowing my choices between it and (if I remember correctly) Hero System 5th Edition. For some reason, GURPS seemed to click in my head during a brief look through the core books in a way that Hero didn't. (Not bashing Hero; for some reason, my mind just didn't take in the information as well during a cursory glance.) In spite of more heckling, I bought the core set, and I'm glad I did.

 

[Ahnehnois]

"The Split" is really the reason for 4e, not the other way around.

When 3rd edition was completely dominant, there were nonetheless various criticisms of it. These were wildly different. Some complained of rules bloat. Others that the game had become too mechanical and had lost some of its charm. And then there was balance. Certain people complained of "15 minute adventuring days" or that spellcasters outpaced the fighters.

The point is that if you were a person who had a certain complaint, you were playing a different game than the people who didn't have that issue. So even then, within one ruleset, there was a split.

I don't see it as an inherently bad thing that the market has started to catch up to the consumers, and that various games have evolved to address each set of complaints. d20 dominance was never going to be permanent.

 

[El Mahdi]

For what it is worth, I have never seen 4e or Pathfinder gamers spewing hate for either 4e or Pathfinder in a bookstore. The only time that I saw such a thing was some GURPS players who went so far as to take a starter set of a 3.X D&D out of a kid's hands. I felt like beating them.

I've seen rival RPG gangs rumble. It was erasable markers under the highway. I'm just glad their war council didn't decide on d4's...


*(...and I probably would have beat the GURPS jerks - if not physically, at least verbally...)