Making DnDN Popular

[grimslade]

Gronin is absolutely right. Good or heck even just competent customer service goes a long way. Buggy software can be a pain, but buggy software with no acknowledgement of the problem and no path to fixing it is infuriating. The haste and polymorph debacle in 3E ... Grrr.

5E will not be perfect right out of the gate. The design and development team need to get in front of the problems, admit them and initiate a plan to fix them. Customers like to be recognized. If it is a big glitch, release some free stuff for those affected, either additional time for DDI, access to a DDI article or two, or some of the OP stuff, in addition to the fix. It's not a bribe, well, it's a bribe to keep people buying WotC and D&D branded stuff.

The best thing WotC can do is keep community involvement in the development stream. Polls and and In the Works blog keep the community identity strong. This is really true with campaign worlds . Use fanatics to build very strong products.

 

[SlyDoubt]

Free while a cool idea is maybe unrealistic. Some version of the game for free, sure. Some little scenario to get a taste so anyone curious can see what it is for themselves.

What they really need to do is have the core rule book be like the rules compendium. Not necessarily in form factor though I don't mind it entirely, but in price and content. Release a book with only rules. Have it be expertly organized and indexed and charge $12 for it.

You will NEED to buy other books then of course but this means everything is basically pick and choose which is good. Probably they should be bundled even but have one book just basically mechanics and the other books be fluff and mechanics specifically related to that fluff.

The miniatures game Malifaux did this and it works. They sell a rulesbook which is a small book with all the rules nicely organized and laid out with diagrams and such. It costs like $12ish. There are also big books that cost about #30+ which contain the rules for specific miniatures and any 'expansions' in the mini line or rules ideas they've added over time.

They need to make a way for everyone at the table, even people who aren't super into the game to get something relevant to full on playing. Not just a starter set but something that is identical to what the big boys play with. So that everyone has access to the same basic rules. That way even when these new players bump into new modular content they haven't seen they can understand it because they spent $12 a few months ago.

That way if someone is interested enough to go check out the game AT ALL they will see their initial investment is sub $15 and might actually buy it on the spot. If someone sees a big ol' hardcover for $30-$40 I think that's a bit intimidating. Like the PF Core Rulebook. All fine and well for experienced players but for someone just somewhat interested in this whole RPG thing? Not a chance.

 

[Li Shenron]

Actually, now that I think more about it...

...the amount of free stuff WotC made for 3ed was unbelievable!

Core rules? FREE, download the SRD in Word format from the website and you can also easily print it if you want.

Supplementary rules? Not the whole books of course, but just what was included in the online previews was quite a lot, and completely usable.

Artwork? If you want to show your players how the monsters look like you don't need to have the books, just show them the PC screen (or print it out) from the gallery pages. I don't know how complete they were, but it seemed to me that pretty much every picture of every book was made available there!

Adventures? The free online adventures were certainly quite short, but they were many. Plus we got a couple of classic big adventures completely converted and FREE!

Campaign Settings? Ok, this is not so free, but still there was something from the AD&D era that was completely made available on WotC pages.

And all the above are just counting WotC... factor in the freebies from other publishers, and the truth is that if you ever wanted to play D&D 3ed without spending a single buck, you definitely could

 

[Simplicity]

I'm not sure what harm is going to come to Wizards by making the core rules DIGITAL version free, when they are probably already considering releasing something similar to an SRD. Print copies have costs, and those are never going to be free. But the digital version? Releasing the a free digital version would be the same as releasing the SRD, but entail less work because (surprise) they already have it.

Only worry that maybe people aren't going to buy print books because they have the digital version. Well, lots of those people probably would have gotten their hands on a digital version anyways. Just not from WotC. However, there are also people who would like to have the book to either (a) support gaming, (b) to have a fancy schmancy book, or (c) to rest on their cat.

The reverse model, sell the core and modules for free actually doesn't work at all. Why? Because there's no real incentive for Wizards to create new modules at that point short of increasing core rule book sales. They need to be able to create a product stream.