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.

 

[BryonD]

Mike said we are the D&D company. Instead they need to brand themselves as the RPG company where D&D is a setting, there primary setting, but they should sell and implement many others.

I want this. But I'm pretty convinced that it simply makes no sense to WotC to go there.
At the end of the day, the profit in the RPGs simply isn't there (by their standards). We are critically important to their brand value as geeks supporting the identity of that brand, but we are financially irrelevant as a marketplace.

If they believed they could make "worthwhile" returns on Player's Handbook 2 or whatever other splat book, it would be out by now and they would be working on the next one.

They recently made some statement to the effect that they do not want to produce books that collect dust on a shelf. That is really quality PR. But it is complete BS PR.
I have a lot of books of all kinds which are collecting dust on shelves. I bet nearly everyone reading this does as well.
Stephen King does not care that I have not read my copy of Christine in over a decade. He wrote it. I paid for it. A lot of people paid for it. He made a lot of money for his effort. The publisher made a lot of money for the effort. A lot of
people got enjoyment out of reading it and "got their money's worth". Everyone wins.

I have technical books, nonfiction books, other games, etc, etc, the same point could be made over and over.

WotC made money on a lot of books that now collect dust on people's shelves. They don't care.
An important side point here is that *bad* books don't collect dust on shelves, they collect mold in landfills.
They made some of those as well.


WotC wants us to keep playing D&D while spending an absolute minimum of low return investment. They want us to be happy fans keeping the D&D brand foundation there so that they have geek cred when it comes time to sell novels, movies, and action figures. So they tell us they are not giving us more product because they love us too much to sell us something that will collect dust.

If I sound negative there, I apologize because I only mean to sound blunt.
I definitely am disappointed with this tactic. But they don't owe me anything. The 5E core alone has added new innovation to my on-going game and that is a great thing. So kudos.
But I'm convinced that PR spin to milk the fan base along is the root of their plan.
They have a great base game right now and they have massive history and brand identity so this is reasonably possible.

Obviously history has shown more than once that this can be fleeting. But only if someone else produces the better new thing.

As long as WotC can tread water without someone else moving the bar, then they will hang in there. But someone could set a new bar any time, and even without that it gets harder to tread water as time goes by. So we will see.

 

[DaveMage]

I think the business model Mike & Co. are attempting is pretty smart. Maybe it doesn't work -- maybe not enough people buy the APs, maybe attrition is too high without more new product, maybe retailers forget to stock it when they aren't reminded by new product in the catalog every month -- but I think it's a sound strategy that's worth a try. In that year three to five period, they can shift gears and release some new material to reinvigorate the line.

When I was with FFG, I wanted to do complete campaigns for non-fantasy games based more on the offline computer game model. You take Blue Planet, for example, and you put rules, setting material and adventures for a full campaign arc all in one book or box. You play it, put it on the shelf (or sell it on ebay), and buy the next one. The successful titles get sequels. Rinse and repeat. What Wizards is doing is pretty similar, except the model is Core Rules + Campaign Book. I hope it's successful.

Greg - (if you can answer) when you worked on Midnight, how was the attrition from the beginning of the line to the end of it?

 

[Mercurius]

And I think that's only half of the story. I would put it like this:

"Yeah, current RPG fans have a script that plays out badly for publishers when those publishers are part of a publicly-listed toy company with unrealistic expectations about the value of a tabletop RPG, a problem that disappears when the tabletop RPG belongs, instead, to a smaller, private company."

Hasbro should sell off the rights/licence out the rights to the tabletop RPG for years 3-5+ to a smaller company. Heck, let the current employees lead a small MBO to do so. It's been established that the value is not seen to be in the tabletop RPG but in the ancillary products so monetise the tabletop game by ditching it while retaining the IP rights so that movies and toys etc... can be made.

In reality, the script playing out badly for publishers really only refers to WotC; plenty of other publishers - Paizo, Pelgrane, MCG etc... - seem to have found their niche and are thriving. It's the big corporate expectations which are WotC's problem and hiving off the tabletop RPG while retaining IP rights is the only way to deal with that.

I think this is exactly right. There is no reason that D&D the TTRPG couldn't be better supported AND successful in this day and age (at least until the "Virtualapocalypse" that spinozajack was talking about) - I think Paizo has proven that with Pathfinder. Now of course Paizo might eventually face the problem of glut, but they've been churning out product for six or seven years now and seem to be doing just fine, with little sign of impending collapse or need to reboot.

It really comes down to prioritization. WotC seems to have marginalized D&D the TTRPG in favor of D&D the brand, perhaps partially due to the impending Virtualapocalypse ("Baby Singularity?"). They still seemingly follow the corporate bottom line of profit margin, whereas a smaller company dedicated to the TTRPG itself would be able to balance that for love of the game itself.

But as long as Hasbro sees value in the D&D brand then they won't relinquish it to a smaller company.

It's also a false dichotomy I think to say, a graphical representation can't be as good as a book or one's imagination. With better / easier content generation tools, that line will also blur until it disappears entirely (brain-computer interfaces).

Depends by what you mean "as good." As realistic and pleasing to a large number of people? Then I agree. But I think the difference is not unlike that of a synthesizer vs. a violin, or a mp3 vs. a vinyl record. For those with the "ears to hear" there will always be a difference, one that is organic vs. synthetic, imaginative vs. simulative, etc. The difference will become increasingly subtle, but it will linger for as long as there are people who remember the more organic version, if nothing else as a felt-sense.

That said, I agree with you that VR will mark the end of D&D as a major recreational activity, for young people at least. After the boom of the late 70s to mid-80s, coupled with the inevitable decline of the fad spike, video games already turned it into a niche hobby and the RPG industry and community has been in denial ever since. But VR is going to turn it into an "ultra-niche" market, like model railroad or stamp collecting or Big Band music, where mainly only older folks are playing, with a slow trickling in of a few young throwbacks. It kind of saddens me, to be honest, but I see it as inevitable...impermanence is the way of things.

I'm not a luddite or opposed to technological advancement, but increasingly I think we have to ask ourselves what is lost in our virtual worlds, whether it is social media, video games, or full-blown virtual reality. I mean, if hyper-realistic VR is a reality then we won't even have to date or have real sex pretty soon - we can all have one night stands with supermodels and actresses (or actors) - heck, we'll even be able to design our ideal VR partner, and best of all they won't push back with their ideas, hopes and dreams (unless we want them to)!

Maybe this is too much of a tangent for this thread, so I'll leave it for now, but I think we're in for some turbulent waters, "interesting times" as Confucius said. As our ability to "create our own reality" increases, so too do the potential corresponding dangers of "de-humanization." Again, I am not saying that we shouldn't go on this journey as I think it is intrinsic to human nature to decide what human nature is, to create ourselves, just that we should do so with eyes wide open. We're going to see some wonderful, amazing, but also terrifyingly scary stuff. There are certain "primitive" cultural artifacts and human capacities that I for one don't see as worthy of "upgrading" or replacing, like the human imagination or physical, messy love-making, or the complexities and heartaches of a real relationship.

You say this as though the D&D department of WotC is being held hostage here. Far from it. They are okay with the current status quo. They specifically are doing what they're doing on purpose. So no... the publishers of D&D have no issues right now at all, so it doesn't matter in the slightest how big or how small a publisher they are.

It's only the fans that are so up in arms and feeling like they're being held hostage here. They want to buy D&D stuff in much higher quantities that are currently available. But you know what? Too fricking bad. It's apparently not changing any time soon... D&D is not going to be sold off to a "small publisher"... and if you play the game, then just play the game. With what you have. You don't NEED three more books of options, there's more than plenty of options available right now to create characters ad infinitum. And if by some chance of alternate reality you've somehow already run through every single sub-class of every single class in the PH? Start running through the sub-classes in the Waterborne Adventures and the Alternate Class Options documents on the WotC website. Plenty of stuff there for you to use too. But if that's STILL not enough for you... then just stop playing 5E. No one will care. If it makes you happier to go back to Pathfinder, or return to World of Darkness, or start in on Savage Worlds, or try out Numerera... do it! Have fun!

But enough with the fantasies of what could happen for D&D if only someone else published it. Or how if only WotC would follow the release model people keep insisting is "best for the game". Cause none of it is happening. Or at least, it ain't happening just because people keep repeating themselves saying they want it. WotC knows. They've known since the beginning. But they're still ONLY going to do what they'll do when they feel the time is right to do it.

Even if you are correct--which I'm not entirely sure you are, at least not in an absolute sense (e.g. I think we will still see some campaign materials and splats, even if never close to the level of prior editions)--why the need to continually go after people that are hoping for more? If nothing else some people are mourning the fact that the old approach to D&D is ending.

On a related note, I've seen very few people that are actually wanting a return to the gluttonous days of 2E to 4E. I for one have been outspoken about wishing we'd see more one-shot adventures, campaign supplements, and various tools, but I'm perfectly happy never to see another "Complete" series or the countless mounds of product that we've seen in editions past. But the bottom line is that many people are disappointed in the lack of product and still hoping for more. If they (we) want to hope, why do you care? Why do you feel the need to wake us up to the cold, hard truth of reality (as you see it)? To put it another way, why do you care how people want to spend their money?

I do realize that there are extremes, and I for one don't understand why people "need" endless splats. But those are extremes. Most people that I've seen, including myself, are more moderate in their desires.

 

[Greg Benage]

Greg - (if you can answer) when you worked on Midnight, how was the attrition from the beginning of the line to the end of it?

Pretty brutal, but it's hard to say how much of it was the d20 life cycle (rather than Midnight specifically), how much of it was lower-quality supplements compared to the core book, how much of it was the mix of supplements we published, and how much of it was the usual declining sales of supplements. It was a "noisy" time in that segment, so it's hard to draw general conclusions. The core book (and even Second Edition) did very well for FFG, but I expect the company lost money on the supplement line. The pre-orders and print runs declined to, really, an unsustainable level, and by the end of the run, the d20 bubble had popped and they were mostly fodder for $5 sales so the inventory wouldn't be taxed as profit. Of course, performance of the other campaign setting lines (Dragonstar, Dawnforge) was worse.

 

[DaveMage]

Pretty brutal, but it's hard to say how much of it was the d20 life cycle (rather than Midnight specifically), how much of it was lower-quality supplements compared to the core book, how much of it was the mix of supplements we published, and how much of it was the usual declining sales of supplements. It was a "noisy" time in that segment, so it's hard to draw general conclusions. The core book (and even Second Edition) did very well for FFG, but I expect the company lost money on the supplement line. The pre-orders and print runs declined to, really, an unsustainable level, and by the end of the run, the d20 bubble had popped and they were mostly fodder for $5 sales so the inventory wouldn't be taxed as profit. Of course, performance of the other campaign setting lines (Dragonstar, Dawnforge) was worse.

Thank you!

Tough industry for sure...

 

[Tony Vargas]

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.

Though I agree with the premise, the groups I was in at the time were happy with each of the supplements you mentioned. Martial Power II had some very welcome content for the fighter & warlord, Monster Manual III had the best take on 'monster math' of the edition, and every 3.5 supplement had /something/ to further optimize some build you were kicking around at the time.

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.

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!).

In a way class/level holds D&D back, in another, it's one of the few things about it that's comparatively new-player friendly.

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.

Agreed on both counts. There are clear paths to improve D&D, including some that have been actively tried, and the D&D community is to calcified to tolerate them. If a designer wants to create a game that's better than D&D, he doesn't dare put 'D&D' on the cover. Conversely, if he wants any capital with which to develop the game, or hopes to sell to more than a handful of hard-core RPG hobbyists, he needs D&D on the cover.

 

[Umbran]

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.

No one framework does everything well. The d20 framework, for example, would not have done the Deadlands campaign I just ended well at all.

So, yes, there is a desire for different frameworks, because not all players like the same things, nor does even one player want the same thing all the time.

In diversity, there is much more innovation and flexibility.

 

[mattcolville]

No one framework does everything well.

It doesn't have to. If it does enough well, and satisfies enough people, then there won't be enough demand for other frameworks, and you'll never see a competing framework at the same level of success.

I think this is what D&D has done. There's demand for other frameworks, but not enough.

 

[Staffan]

Though I agree with the premise, the groups I was in at the time were happy with each of the supplements you mentioned. Martial Power II had some very welcome content for the fighter & warlord, Monster Manual III had the best take on 'monster math' of the edition, and every 3.5 supplement had /something/ to further optimize some build you were kicking around at the time.

The problem is that while almost every supplement has something worthwhile in it, it also has a lot of crap. For example, while Complete Arcane had the Warlock in it which was pretty darn cool, I doubt anyone ever took Fortify Spell (metamagic, gain +2 to checks to go through SR per spell level increase), and I don't think many tables had anyone take levels in the Sublime Chord PrC.

If you follow the game from the start, you can have a pretty good idea of what's what because you went through the books with a few months in between each one. But if you start playing when there already are a bunch of books out, that can be pretty intimidating.

So that's actually two advantages for a slower (but not expansion-free) schedule: there are fewer books out so the threshold for n00bs is lower, and hopefully those books will have less crap in them.

 

[Bluenose]

You can mix together Conan and Elric and Lankhmar and a bunch of other fantasy sources, shake them together, and it all kinda-sorta works if you squint a bit. You can't really mix Vernor Vinge and Star Wars in the same way.

That means you either need two games to cover both options, or you need a toolbox game that allows groups to do their thing. The former fractures the market, while the latter requires considerable work from the group - work that many GMs simply won't have the time or the expertise to do.

And that's before you get into licensing issues. At the time D&D was released, fantasy was small enough, and D&D niche enough, that it got away with playing fast and loose with its sources... and still got in trouble from some quarters. A sci-fi equivalent now that "adapted" material from Star Wars and Star Trek for their game? The moment such a game was big enough to be noticed it would be squashed by lawyers.

You might be able to mix Conan, Elric and Lankhmar, but they're all in the "Sword and Sorcery" sub-genre of fantasy. Mixing in Tolkein's high fantasy, Vance's Dying Earth science fantasy, Arthurian romance and 19th century Horror gives you something that isn't part of any particular genre and won't be identifiable as one. Which is what D&D did, taking a set of skirmish wargame rules, sticking in influences from a huge variety of fantasy that seemed cool at the time to the participants, and created something that wasn't really part of any of those sub-genres but either one of its own or just Fantasy in general. Which is what hasn't happened in SF RPGs, with no game doing the same thing in taking a wide spread of influences and incorporating them whilly-nilly into a rules set that wasn't particularly designed to handle all of them.

Sounds like Campaign Settings. Dark Sun doesn't need the same classes/races/assumptions as Dragonlance, but it shares a basic character creation/action resolution/challenge presentation scheme. Limited by the "loop" in that you explore new settings when you re-start a campaign, but aren't interested in them in the middle of a campaign.

Splatbooks. Add Class X or Race Y onto the base game. Limited by the "loop" in that character death is infrequent, so people aren't creating lots and lots of new characters. Adventures, too, to a certain degree (new board, new enemies).

Doesn't sound much like something D&D would really need...

Thanks for the details, giving me interesting thoughts

Adventures probably fit in the first category too, in that you use one set of rules to play them with some special 'scenario' rules included. Though the analogies aren't exact, because most board games include the full rules as well as special ones for a particular game in a series.