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.

 

[Corpsetaker]

Yes and no. While the publishing/merchandising arm has pretty much said "two APs, plus all the electronic variants you want" Mearls himself seems to muddy the water. On the one hand, the Eberron UA + feedback insinuates we're getting Eberron stuff at some point (otherwise, they are wasting their time on new warforged and artificers) which certainly goes against the "two FR AP" notion. Similar things with psionics.

All I can gather is WotC has NO idea how to go forward with D&D anymore, save biannual modules. They have lots of ideas (psionics, other settings, etc) but no clear vision on how to get said things to us.

I agree with this.

I would also like to give me view on what it could be as well.

Let's say their planned material goal is 2 AP's per year. I don't think they are going to flat out tell us that we are definitely going to get two AP's plus some online material because they know lot's of people will walk away. I think one of their strategies is to keep us guessing, keep us hoping that something else will come out.

 

[Kramodlog]

Dean Gilbert, 11:18
I'm starting to think that there isn't a very large market at all for supplementary material.

Mike Mearls, 11:21
it's tricky, and I think it looks much more like the board game expansion market than what RPGs have been

How does the board game expansion market look like?

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think there's, while not exactly a catch-22, a bit of a contradiction between what people say what they want and what experience has borne out in terms of what they purchase. There's a certain cachet to long term games, and to playing games that take place over years, and I don't think the market is necessarily ready for a game that doesn't promote that as an explicit goal. But at the same time, people's actual campaigns rarely last longer than a year, according to most of the marketing surveys we've seen, and books that sell new crunch, new options for play, are always the best sellers.

I also think the "dark side" of that crunch is that it falls off fast, because tables realize they can't possibly use all the options they're getting at some point. By the time Martial Power II or Complete Scoundrel and Monster Manual III are out, people aren't buyin' 'em, because people don't need 'em. They don't have that many game loops. The development dollars in to actual gameplay out is probably itsy bitsy even for "second tier" D&D stuff like psionics or campaign settings. Crunch seems useful to DMs and players, more useful than raw fluff because you can import it, but eventually you get to a point where you realize it's useless - you don't use it in play.

I'm wondering if there's an issue with the current D&D setup where new powers and abilities are almost automatically presented as learned, integral to the character, and persistent with the character. Maybe a better model is a system where picking a class is merely a starting template, which gives you a few background abilities and a few combat options. Then the rest of the character's progression is tied to the acquistion of magic items, primarily consumable, and other boons earned through play. With enough experience, you might also earn stronger uses of your primary abilities.

Class-level systems, man. To choose every major character option for yourself from level 1 on means that you aren't looking for new character options until you're done with the current one. Currently, if you don't use feats, the only option for non-spellcasters as they level up is magic items, which aren't in player control in 5e (RIP, the concept of a fighter who forged their own magic items!).

IMO, the idea of a class should probably be broken up into more, smaller pieces, that encapsulate smaller loops. But then it arguably "wouldn't be D&D anymore," which is fair enough.

Like, what if a class only covered one tier? You could be a fighter or apprentice or acolyte or rogue up to level 5, and then at level 6 you have to take a brand new class (paladin, ranger, assassin, or mage, lets say). Now you have a smaller loop and a natural break-point: you can sell people four 5-level classes in the same space that it takes to give a 20-level class, you wouldn't have to sweat each individual class as hard, and each class is a smaller decision point. It's not very "D&D," but it'd be a better way to turn development dollars into usable game material.

This is potentially upped complexity, but I think clever design can make it so that these are exciting and natural decision-points.

I think the idea of selling adventures as almost like expansion packs makes a ton of sense. The closest example I can think of is actually 4e's Neverwinter campaign setting. While it still had races and classes, most of the heavy lifting of tying the characters to the adventure was done by the choice of the theme, which all had a story tied into the adventure, and the adventure was meant to be a limited sandbox, only going up to level 10. I could totally see an adventure for 5e being released every year that was pre-packaged with 8-10 new subclasses specifically designed for the adventure, and with 1 or 2 new races as well, and a whole slew of new magic items. This provides new crunch for people who want it, gives a starting point for new players every year, while not overwhelming people who want to play the traditional long-term campaign model.

This also reminds me of some conceptual space that TTRPGs would be wise to borrow from: MOBAs. I've been playing Heroes of the Storm recently, and I was thinking how many similarities to D&D it had. You play in a group of 5 people, all with radically different abilities, who are expected to work together to gain experience and learn new abilities by doing so. I can't help thinking MOBA style D&D would work very well with the idea of limited space adventures. The adventure gives you a bunch of different character types, all of whom have 2-3 unique abilities. You can customize them in appearance and backstory, and maybe with some mechanics borrowed from earlier releases. The characters obtain lots of different potions, wands, and scrolls during the adventure, and occasionally gain a powerful permanent item that's fairly character defining. Leveling gets you more hit points, and sometimes one of your character based abilities becomes more powerful, but that's pretty much it in terms of personal power advancement.

So yea, pretty much some sort of unholy love child of Talisman and League of Legends, where you retire your character after you finish the adventure pack and go to the new one. If you really like the characters, the DMG has guidelines to keep the game going.

I'm not a big MOBA fan, but more smaller packets with a faster "loop" is a solution I'd look at closely.

 

[I'm A Banana]

This is a pretty solid description. The big stories do work like this, in some regard. Each is its own loop, and has supplemental products. Some directly for the game, such as the miniatures, plus others such as MMO updates, comics, novels, etc.

Paizo does even more of this, offering all sorts of products in support of each adventure path, plus making each path six separate volumes. Each path is an entry point and an opportunity to spend money.

Totally. The loops are just too big to do much with them in the tabletop other than sit in them for a year or more. And if you're not interested in the newest Generic Adventure In The Forgotten Realms Featuring Characters You Don't Really Care About (tm), that's a year or more you're not doing a WotC thing.

I think even Paizo's loops are too big, but I think they have a loyal audience of folks who happily buy stuff without using it that can keep them ticking along.

This aspect of the 5E model is solid. But, there are people who use material more quickly. Perhaps they mostly play a few levels at at time. Or they play in a lot of games. Something about their playstyle causes them to be able to consume content far more quickly.

As a DM who creates their own adventures, the loops are far smaller. Each session, in a way, is its own loop. I can consume lots of small adventures, plot ideas, monsters, magic items, and other tools used in adventure design.

There is still a gap that the big stories don't fill which isn't being addressed. At least, not by WotC. To some extent that's okay. And I do believe we'll see occasional products outside of the big stories. But he's right. It's in years 2 and 3 that a majority of players will be really interested in new material. Which would be a really good time for a published Unearthed Arcana.

It'll be interesting. My guess is some sort of PHBII or something in late 2016 or early 2017. If they're happy milking the other licensed products in the meantime, well, that's generally OK with me.

It'd be even more OK with me with an OGL in place.

 

[Mistwell]

I think one of the market issues is that RPGs don't have the same short play loop that a board game has.

A board game lasts a few hours. A really long board game might last all day. Then the loop starts over. Every time the loop starts over, you have an opportunity to sell folks stuff: "On this loop, play with Expansion X!" is an easy way to add some variety and excitement, and you have enough loops that people who are hardcore about your game are interested in new stuff pretty early on. Even if your game's been out for a year, you could've had a dedicated table with MANY loops through that play experience.

A tabletop RPG doesn't have a short loop. Its loop runs on the order of years. Even a regular D&D group doesn't run 1-20 in one session. Heck, we're lucky if any group gets through 1-20 before breaking apart due to real life constraints. XP and character advancement are highly dependent on DM whims, and DMs tend to be conservative when awarding XP due to perceived "sweet spots" or trepidation for high-level play (which experience with pre-4e games would bear out).

This makes it difficult to restart the loop. New classes, new races, these things don't get used. If you've been playing in an ongoing game since the game's launch and WotC came out with 9 new classes tomorrow, you wouldn't be able to use any of them until 2016. The number of players playing a race from PotA is probably vanishingly small. You're still on the same game loop you started late last year. You aren't likely to start a new one any time soon. You're not finished with your current story.

Adventure modules have a slightly smaller game loop, though WotC's preference for mega-adventures hurts that. When you make a module that runs levels 3-20 or whatever, that's still going to take years to play through, especially given digressions and the like. Something that's more like a one-level adventure or a one-tier adventure might turn around slightly faster, but it's a smaller book, too, and still doesn't give you the sexy new character options that the fans seem to be demanding.

In the middle of a loop, you're not going to sell much (unless it is directly relevant to that loop).

Were I pondering what to release, I think I would focus on smaller adventures, with a higher turn-around time, and give free "support material" (like PotA) linked to them that focused on one or two unique things that the adventure highlights. Like, publish a boxed set that is a level 1-4 kobold cave, complete with creature cards and pogs and mapping aids and handouts. Publish a player's guide like with PotA that maybe gives a narrowly focused enhancement that features in the adventure - say, a kobold character race and a trapsmith rogue subclass. That's all we need for probably like 6 months. Then do another adventure, maybe a 5-10 orc encampment, similar idea. Make the loops smaller, and you can sell more stuff. Make the stuff super tactile - let me see the blood-stained letter from the dwarf, give me chips that represent treasure, all that stuff sounds juicy for in-person play.

It's more board-game-like, then, but still slower, and with an eye toward making the in-person play experience something really unique.

This is, I think, part of the purpose of the Adventurers League as it's commonly run right now. For example, tonight I will be going to a game store and playing a planned 2-hour game. At the end of the game a form will be filled out for my character, and then I don't have to be there next week if I don't want to. And I can take that same character to any other game store and sit down in another Adventurers League, even in a different adventure, and start playing another 2 hour game (unless the adventure is just far outside my character's level - in which case I can just pick up a different character).

I can also switch up my character all I want for the first four levels, to experiment.

It's a lot of flexibility, and in some ways it replicates the short loop of a board game. There is still some continuity, but it's a lot less than the campaigns I am used to with my home game.

It also gets drop-ins like board games do. Other people playing Magic the Gathering or a board game in the game store will see us playing, and say "Hey, how can I try that?" and they can just pick up a pregen character and start playing for two hours. If they like it they might come back next week, maybe get interested in making their own character and buying the PHB from the store...or not. But, it's the same sort of dynamic as a board game for that player.

Now...if there were a space game being run the same way? A western? A horror game? A spy game? A modern fantasy game? A post-apocalyptic game? Yeah, those same drop-in players might be up for those as well, particularly if the basic rules were the same as the D&D game they already learned to play. But, I think at that level you'd want the games to more often be one-offs rather than a linked series of adventures. It's essentially adopting the convention game format to game stores. I think that could work. I know I'd be up for a two hour game of any of those, provided I could just sit down, pick up a character pre-gen, and start playing for 2 hours with rules which were mostly the same as the D&D rules I was already familiar with.

So if WOTC published Star Frontiers based on the Basic D&D rules, with a stack of pre-gens and five two-hour adventures and a nice set of maps and tokens; and did the same for Boot Hill; and for Top Secret; and Gamma World, etc.. and ran a program where you just played one-offs of those and then they published add-ons for those which seemed to take off, I think it could work.

 

[spinozajack]

My take : VR games are probably going to steal tabletop D&D's lunch money, stick it in a locker, then forget it there all summer until the janitor smells the flies coming out from all the sticky mountain dew residue.

2016 is the year VR is going to take off. And playing D&D just won't really be able to compete. If wizards were smart they would see the writing on the wall. D&D was always meant to be unlimited except by your imagination. But virtual reality worlds are a whole other level. Photorealistic games, where you can swing swords and cast fireballs and fight gargantuan monsters atop flying dragons are going to make table top seem positively stone age in comparison.

Good luck getting a new generation of zero-attention span gamers to hop on board to their grandpa's RPG. Roleplaying can't really compete with full immersion presence. It doesn't need to, it filled its niche during its time and all good things come to an end. Sure, some people will still play it, but developers and companies won't release new rules which produce pennies in revenue compared to making something like a Ravenloft VR Experience. I can't wait. 5th edition is the last D&D I'm interested in playing. It did a good job letting me use my imagination until computer graphics could catch up. D&D is supposed to be immersive, but is stifled by its own tabletop limitations and the problems of a human being trying to run a believable world simulation. They didn't even try to make a sensible item economy in 5th edition, for example. In a VR game, you could easily have a steel longsword break 46% less often, and have a price that varies by design with subtle variations in delay factor and point of balance, all of which affecting combat stats in a physically realistic and also fun way.

I also can't see myself bothering to argue about another edition's rules, I'm finished with that after 5th edition. It's like arguing about a tricycle's pedals not being greased enough, while I can easily step into a shiny Ferrarri over here. It's like a future space man going to the past and getting into a debate with bronze-age shepherds about the nature of the universe.

The big problem with D&D rules is that they're turn-based, which is a pointless limitation for a computer game that is wholly unnecessary. The only thing that will matter in the future regarding D&D are the IPs that its associated with, and how well those are rendered into games, and how successful those games are.

Rodney Thompson is probably realizing this now, how much more intricate videogames are to TTRPG rules, making them quaint by comparison, an anachronism if we're truly being honest. He jumped ship at a good time, before becoming fossilized in a more or less irrelevant and dwindling, market. A market that's probably doomed, and was from the start. It's had a good run though. I hope to play maybe one or two more full campaigns before hanging up my dice bag and moving on to greener pastures.

At a certain point, it's inevitable that most will be forced to admit it's time to put those horse carriages away and pick up a Ford. You can always go up to a farm once in a blue moon, but to get to work, you're going to have to commute like everybody else. And you might not even have a choice. The more people migrate to VR for their fantasy, the less of a market there will be, the less products will be produced, the less players there will be to find, and the futility of it all will finally put it out to pasture.

 

[I'm A Banana]

This is, I think, part of the purpose of the Adventurers League as it's commonly run right now. For example, tonight I will be going to a game store and playing a planned 2-hour game. At the end of the game a form will be filled out for my character, and then I don't have to be there next week if I don't want to. And I can take that same character to any other game store and sit down in another Adventurers League, even in a different adventure, and start playing another 2 hour game (unless the adventure is just far outside my character's level - in which case I can just pick up a different character).

I can also switch up my character all I want for the first four levels, to experiment.

It's a lot of flexibility, and in some ways it replicates the short loop of a board game. There is still some continuity, but it's a lot less than the campaigns I am used to with my home game.

It also gets drop-ins like board games do. Other people playing Magic the Gathering or a board game in the game store will see us playing, and say "Hey, how can I try that?" and they can just pick up a pregen character and start playing for two hours. If they like it they might come back next week, maybe get interested in making their own character and buying the PHB from the store...or not. But, it's the same sort of dynamic as a board game for that player.

Yeah, I think AL wants to be part of that smaller loop, and is part of why WotC still hearts it some brick-n-mortar.

AL might struggle a bit because D&D is always best with friends you know, but a pick-up-group of randos can be fine, and even a way to get a more personal game off the ground, plus, as you point out, it's kind of free advertising.

 

[Gadget]

IMO, the idea of a class should probably be broken up into more, smaller pieces, that encapsulate smaller loops. But then it arguably "wouldn't be D&D anymore," which is fair enough.

Like, what if a class only covered one tier? You could be a fighter or apprentice or acolyte or rogue up to level 5, and then at level 6 you have to take a brand new class (paladin, ranger, assassin, or mage, lets say). Now you have a smaller loop and a natural break-point: you can sell people four 5-level classes in the same space that it takes to give a 20-level class, you wouldn't have to sweat each individual class as hard, and each class is a smaller decision point. It's not very "D&D," but it'd be a better way to turn development dollars into usable game material.

This is potentially upped complexity, but I think clever design can make it so that these are exciting and natural decision-points.



I'm not a big MOBA fan, but more smaller packets with a faster "loop" is a solution I'd look at closely.

This. I think BECMI D&D did something kind of similar, though that exact model would probably not work as well now. If D&D made the 'tiers' concept more discrete and digestible they could really have something. I've noticed a number of character concepts that would really flourish in this more limited format. But Every. Concept. Must. Fit. In. The. Twenty. Levels. Paradigm. Even when many people don't make it to the higher levels, by WOTC own data surveys.

 

[Louis Brenton]

I don't follow Twitter very often, so I would have been unaware of Mearl's tweets on this topic. This article was very helpful. More like this please!

 

[Doctor Futurity]

Also appreciate that we get tweets here, as I have never (and will never, for sake of sanity) join that service.

I don't know if this is intended, but D&D 5E has put me in the position of realizing a threshold of "product interest" that I hadn't really been given time to realize before. The slow release schedule for the new edition is offset by the fact that the core 3 books are sufficiently robust to hold their own for many years of gaming. However, this has created a unique situation where I realize that despite having all I really need in those books right now, I still would like more. This is something that was a reversal on the problems with prior editions, where the output was so vast that a majority of content released never saw use in my game, or even got read.

Here's a water analogy:

D&D 5E is a water fountain providing exactly what I need to drink per day (3 liters), but no more and no less.

D&D in prior editions were like being strapped under a water fountain producing much, much more than that. I was never thirsty, but a lot of water went to waste. And it seemed great at first but after a while it was like drowning.

No particular edition of D&D has provided less than that, so far as I am aware. I entertained the notion of suggesting D&D 5E is not providing enough water (maybe 1.5 liters) but it really isn't....I have yet to explore much of the core rules, and haven't touched any of the adventure modules (hell, only just now finishing Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, and that was a playtest campaign!) so for what I need it's fine.....but there are people out there with campaigns that absolutely need 4 liters, for example, and they are feeling the shortage.

However, I am inclined to agree with the interpretation of Mearls' tweet that the problem is what gamers think they want (a flood of water) is not the reality (just enough). Given that my realization that I had all I needed in 3 core rulebooks and that's perfectly okay, and will keep me going for years without a problem was kind of an epiphany. So while I know I really would like more than what they are offering, I also see now that the old days were in the end bad for the consumer and the publisher....imagine, for a moment, if all those 3E products had been stretched out over a ten or twelve year cycle instead of 5-6 years? I won't compare to 4E....the system by design required a push on products because unlike 3E and 5E it's core rules were largely incomplete for a full D&D experience (yes, YMMV on that but it's how it was for me).

(EDIT: I do think, however, Mike and co. are underestimating that "minimum content threshold." I expect to be wanting/needing a MMII long before they actually consider making one, for example).