Mike Mearls Talks (er, Tweets) About the Industry

I think history has proven Mike wrong. The problem is that D&D isn't a game. D&D is a framework that allows 5 players to make a game.

So if you like boardgames, you got lots of different games to choose from. If you like RPGs, you got lots of games to choose from. But those games are the things GMs do with D&D. My campaign is my own game I've developed. Your campaign is yours.

I think there's a market for lots of different RPGs in that sense. Because each gaming group playing D&D is running its own unique game, in their own homebrew setting with their own house rules.

But I don't think there's a market for different *frameworks*. I think there's demand for *a* framework, that players use to develop lots of different games.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Obviously I do not have any sales reports or special insight but the sales charts showed Essentials putting DnD on top again after the first dip so the sales can not have been too terrible.

They couldn't have been as good as any quarter since Pathfinder had come out, though, and the rumor was 4e sales had been dropping off after their strong start (WotC /always/ claims a strongest-ever start with each new ed), so way behind the 4e intro.

And, the Essentials format was abandoned almost immediately with HoS, so how much credit does the Essentials idea really get for that bounce? I don't know, but it looks like Essentials was pretty bad for D&D, compared to either 4e or 5e, both of which consistently beat Pathfinder every quarter they had something new coming out.

Again I am wary of stealth errata given the WotC track record. So if they want to do a 5.1 release then I hope it is at least obvious.

There has been an actual errata (typos and such, not a rules-re-writing, broken-stuff-nerfing 'update'), and it's going into the next PH printing - there was a thread about it a while back.

 

[Jester David]

Actually a better idea then just reprinting the Core books would be to merchandise a new issue of the Core books. Maybe have a Minecraft or Transformers version of the Core books. Decrease the staff to one or two people with freelancers and milk the "collectible" market.

This would be a terrible idea, as it turns WotC into its own competition.

Obviously I do not have any sales reports or special insight but the sales charts showed Essentials putting DnD on top again after the first dip so the sales can not have been too terrible. And there was rumor that the managers wife who also worked at WotC had been fired so maybe his resignation was not to do with Essentials at all.

Look again. When Essentials was released in the Fall of 2010 Pathfinder tied D&D for the first time. Pathfinder slipped a bit after (back to #2) for the next chart, but after that it claimed the #1 spot.

 

[Shasarak]

Oh, you don't mean had double the run, you mean had a run of a similar length. I get it.

If you have a three year run of 3e and a five year run of 3.5 then 3.5 has more then doubled the length of 3e. Just like Essentials did with 4e.

It's a tenuous one. Initial release tends to be the strongest in-store sales. Essentials, at release, was beaten by Pathfinder (not at release), but Pathfinder, at release, had been beaten by 4e, in it's second year. Ergo, Essentials didn't do /nearly/ as well as 4e. As has come out in this thread, the same seems to have been true of 3.5 vs 3.0, FWIW.

It is not really surprising that Pathfinder had to grow their business. What was surprising was the success they had in growing their business.

No way of knowing that. It might have lasted the four years it survived in spite of Essentials, or it might have lasted 10. It's really up to WotC's design decisions (and Hasbro's financial ones) how long an ed goes.

There must be some internal figure that triggers the "re-release core books" cycle.

More than one was quite enough to qualify as 'broken,' and even the base power, without any 'abuse' was questionable. Nerfing it meant DMs who didn't care if it was broken could just keep it working as-was, while DMs who did care didn't have to argue with players about nerfing it, themselves (there was still lingering 3.x-RAW-style attitude out there at the time).

And that probably says all that needs to be said regarding WotC errata when it gets issued to fix a out of game problem rather then an actual in game problem.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Again I am wary of stealth errata given the WotC track record. So if they want to do a 5.1 release then I hope it is at least obvious.

They sure need to spin it carefully. Call it a '5e Revised PHB/DMG/MM' and include only baseline errata, stuff that is actually in error and minor clarifications to wording, but not design changes of any sort. Make it clear that the 5 page PDF you can download covers all of it, and that it is simply a convenience to players so that if and when they buy a PHB for some reason, it will have fixed the errors in the old one, but it won't be 'a new game' in ANY sense. I think that would be tolerated if the messaging is very clear.

Anything beyond that can and should be released in some sort of 'Unearthed Arcana', a book that explicitly is billed as revisions and extensions of existing material, where they can offer slightly tweaked Bladelocks and whatnot alongside some new content. Assuming they even ever want to go there.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

They couldn't have been as good as any quarter since Pathfinder had come out, though, and the rumor was 4e sales had been dropping off after their strong start (WotC /always/ claims a strongest-ever start with each new ed), so way behind the 4e intro.

And, the Essentials format was abandoned almost immediately with HoS, so how much credit does the Essentials idea really get for that bounce? I don't know, but it looks like Essentials was pretty bad for D&D, compared to either 4e or 5e, both of which consistently beat Pathfinder every quarter they had something new coming out.

I think the problem with Essentials is that it was ill-conceived at a BUSINESS level. The idea was that they felt the 4e line was too complex and extensive, and that the PHB1 was somewhat obsolete already. If they released a '4.5e' PHB1, that would just FURTHER complicate the product offering. Consider when potential new customers come to Amazon or FLGS and want to buy D&D, they were finding 3 PHBs, lots of other books, plus probably old 3.x stuff, and just not knowing if they could buy PHB2 and play D&D or not. Imagine if they also saw 'PHB1 v 4.1' as well, brain melt, go home without making purchase, get distracted by latest video game.

So the IDEA was to offer a visually distinct product at a lower price point that could easily be kept in stock. The mechanical 'redesign' (to the extent there was one) was IMHO a secondary thing, but also a mistake. The problem was, adding more product to the mix didn't make customers less confused. It may have had some positive benefits for stock keeping and whatnot, who knows? The fact that they also revised the CONTENT of the game, making a very different set of classes, didn't help, it just added divisiveness.

I think they should have issued an errataed PHB1, maybe eventually the same for PHB2, and just continued to sell the system. The truth is, if some people liked 3.x better and wanted to buy PF, no amount of playing around with 4e classes was ever changing that, and really, that ship has sailed.

Its still a good question whether 5e even made sense. I mean they say it has been selling well. Undoubtedly it has done OK, but in 2 years will they even be above the long term curve that 4e sales were on? Seems to me they are unsure of that too, and this is why basically the 5e core books are it, they're actually still following the 4e release schedule! In essence they replaced some late 4e supplements with 5e and at this point 4e would have what, 2 adventures a year? Maybe a new setting? Sounds pretty much like business-wise 5e is just a minor blip. It will simply be a 'success' or 'failure' depending on if it recoups its dev and sales/marketing expenses.

 

[Remathilis]

They sure need to spin it carefully. Call it a '5e Revised PHB/DMG/MM' and include only baseline errata, stuff that is actually in error and minor clarifications to wording, but not design changes of any sort. Make it clear that the 5 page PDF you can download covers all of it, and that it is simply a convenience to players so that if and when they buy a PHB for some reason, it will have fixed the errors in the old one, but it won't be 'a new game' in ANY sense. I think that would be tolerated if the messaging is very clear.

Anything beyond that can and should be released in some sort of 'Unearthed Arcana', a book that explicitly is billed as revisions and extensions of existing material, where they can offer slightly tweaked Bladelocks and whatnot alongside some new content. Assuming they even ever want to go there.

Or do what they are doing: releasing a new print run with eratta and release a PDF of changes, but don't draw attention to the changes.

 

[Shasarak]

This would be a terrible idea, as it turns WotC into its own competition.

Only in the same way that the Transformers Monopoly competes with Monopoly.

 

[Jester David]

Only in the same way that the Transformers Monopoly competes with Monopoly.

It does. You don't need more than one version of Monopoly.
And making a Transformer variant of Monopoly won't take a year of writing and playtesting and require thousands of dollars of art.

This is exactly why WotC ended the Basic and Advanced versions of D&D. And limits their number of campaign settings.

 

[GobiWon]

Anything beyond that can and should be released in some sort of 'Unearthed Arcana', a book that explicitly is billed as revisions and extensions of existing material, where they can offer slightly tweaked Bladelocks and whatnot alongside some new content. Assuming they even ever want to go there.

I think any major rule revisions should be handled in an Unearthed Arcana / Pathfinder Unchained like product and be presented along with new rule options side by side. This would make the new rules optional while keeping the original edition as canon. I think this has the potential to extend the edition life cycle.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Or do what they are doing: releasing a new print run with eratta and release a PDF of changes, but don't draw attention to the changes.

I don't know, I think that leads to confusion where the new guy shows up with his book and it says X and the DM's book says Y, and its kind of a WTF? moment. I think transparency is ALWAYS better, don't do anything under the table. WotC should have learned that by now, but they haven't, which I find perplexing. They seem to have a poor institutional learning curve. However, the errata is small and focused, which is good, and the books are revised, which is good. And frankly people who pay attention will know, but it might be a little more out in the open.