D&D 5E (More) ruminations on the future of D&D

[Tony Vargas]

Certainly WotC did not introduce new material for 4e for two years, but during that time they continued to sell the Core Three and Essentials, as well as maintaining DDI. Given that RPGs are something that has no inherent need for new material, I don't think WotC's lack of new 4e material had an especially big effect on players coming in.

IMHO, RPGs do /thrive/ on a continuous stream of new material - it holds the interest of the exiting players and sparks ideas for their DMs. But, yes, I agree that the dry spell of slowed releases starting in 2010, and none at all starting in 2012 didn't particularly impact adoption by new players. The starter stuff is the same, regardless of the pace of new releases, so unless it actually goes completely out of print, it's there. And, the Encounters program continued throughout and, I can say, anecdotally, remained a consistent draw the whole time.

Conversely, I think the lack of new material resulted in a lot of 'pent up demand,' that should have added to 5e's initial sales, as well.

One might say that the announcement of a new edition may have encouraged some people to wait before jumping in, but by the same token a good many new players join existing groups, and WotC supported organized play with new material through that entire time, for both 4e and 5e playtest rules.

Also 3.5 for some encounters seasons.

 

[Neonchameleon]

But I think @billd91 brings up some good points, that there are different cohorts, different generations in which a group came into the game. So we can look at the largest cohort as being those that started in the late 70s to mid-80s, the "D&D Boomers." Presumably there was another cohort in the 90s, but I think it was significantly smaller (plus that's when White Wolf was really popular, so a lot of gamers were going in that direction).

Indeed. I'd describe the 90s cohort as "White Wolfers". TSR was churning out shovelware at about 5 books per month, but most of the new players in the 90s were playing the younger, cooler game in preference to D&D. (The really huge cohort was the early 80s, of course, with the Satanic Panic - and selling 750,000 copies of the rules per year).

Then we have another cohort with 3E and seemingly one with 4E as well.

We have a large cohort with 3.0 that also includes the d20 glut. For a brief while, thanks to a complete game revamp and the OGL we had a draw of cool as well as an onramp. D&D managed to present itself as cool briefly to the sort of crowd who was finding the FSF cool - and d20 is a whole lot less arcane than D&D (and looks a lot less arcane than it is). It fell away as all such gluts do. There was, so far as I can remember very little such effect for 3.5 - it was the edition no one wanted or asked for and came out to general grumbling - but very decent profits as most people switched.

And then with 3.5, with WoW, and with the end of the d20 glut things fell away. A lot.

4e was meant to reverse the trend. There are lots of reasons WotC messed it up including a murder/suicide derailing DDI - but it didn't grow the base. Pathfinder has muchbetter surrounding values even if I don't care for the game but they're barely in a position to grow the base either. The hooks for starting up just aren't there other than knowing people in the community.

Recent interviews with Ryan Dancey and Montecook help put this in perspective. Mearls in an interview as early as 2010 admitted they drove away their players although they did not mean to. In 2012 when Monte was asked to come work for WoTC again the words "save D&D" again were used. Dancey in his interview estimated D&D was 1/3rd the size it was in 2000.

4E would have brought in some new players but they drove off over half of the existing player base and more like 2/3rds it seems. If 4E brought in a larger % of newer players that 2/3rd part is an even larger%. Even Jonathan Tweet has out right said 4E was rejected by the D&D player base.

Ryan Dancey
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?360842-License-to-Game-An-Hour-With-Ryan-Dancey!-Acquiring-TSR!-The-OGL!-Releasing-D-amp-D-3E!-Saving-D-amp-D!-Indie-games!-MMOs!-Pathfinder-Online!

Mike Mearls
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/issues/issue_271/8109-Red-Box-Renaissance

Tweet
http://frabjousdave.com/creative-colleagues-jonathan-tweet/

Monte Cook
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBmzrQnxf4w

So other than Mearls (and much has been written about his relationship with 4E) you're citing two designers of 3.0 and the designer of the OGL.

Thing is all three of them are right. 3.0 was a major high point - and there's been attrition ever since. How much has anyone seen 5e outside the bounds of the FLGS?

Yeah, I think it is pretty clear from insiders that 4E did poorly in terms of acquiring new players and keeping existing ones. Tthis goes against the view that I've seen floated that 4E only "failed" in that it didn't reach company expectations. But I think it goes much deeper than that, especially given what Mearls, Tweet, and Dancey said. Dancey tends to have a pretty good read on such things and even if he's off by a significant margin--say half rather than one-third--that still means that D&D now has half the players that it did in 2000. That's not simply a matter of not reaching expectations, but actually flopping.

If D&D has half the players it did in 2000 then by my reckoning that means 4e was pretty successful. I've presented Google Trends before on the subject - but between January 2004 and December 2007 D&D lost over half its google searches. This is what I mean by 3.5 haemoherraging people. Even if D&D has only a third of the people it had in 2000 that wouldn't surprise me - and most of the loss was under late 3.0 and 3.5.

Did 4e ever reach the heights of 3.0? Nope. All it did was almost held steady. Which is a pretty huge thing when you compare it to what came before.

Now part of that is Pathfinder, so if we use a broader definition of D&D then perhaps the overall fan base hasn't shrunk. I honestly have no idea. But I think it is safe to say that people who play D&D (logo) are fewer than they were a decade+ ago.

Even counting PF I think the overall fanbase has shrunk quite a lot. The high point was in the 80s when they were selling 750,000 copies per year. I'd be surprised if 3.0, 3.5, or even 4E+PF sold that in total​.

 

[Mistwell]

By younger he meant college age players

Do you have the quote from him? I am still looking for it...

 

[Zardnaar]

Indeed. I'd describe the 90s cohort as "White Wolfers". TSR was churning out shovelware at about 5 books per month, but most of the new players in the 90s were playing the younger, cooler game in preference to D&D. (The really huge cohort was the early 80s, of course, with the Satanic Panic - and selling 750,000 copies of the rules per year).



We have a large cohort with 3.0 that also includes the d20 glut. For a brief while, thanks to a complete game revamp and the OGL we had a draw of cool as well as an onramp. D&D managed to present itself as cool briefly to the sort of crowd who was finding the FSF cool - and d20 is a whole lot less arcane than D&D (and looks a lot less arcane than it is). It fell away as all such gluts do. There was, so far as I can remember very little such effect for 3.5 - it was the edition no one wanted or asked for and came out to general grumbling - but very decent profits as most people switched.

And then with 3.5, with WoW, and with the end of the d20 glut things fell away. A lot.

4e was meant to reverse the trend. There are lots of reasons WotC messed it up including a murder/suicide derailing DDI - but it didn't grow the base. Pathfinder has muchbetter surrounding values even if I don't care for the game but they're barely in a position to grow the base either. The hooks for starting up just aren't there other than knowing people in the community.



So other than Mearls (and much has been written about his relationship with 4E) you're citing two designers of 3.0 and the designer of the OGL.

Thing is all three of them are right. 3.0 was a major high point - and there's been attrition ever since. How much has anyone seen 5e outside the bounds of the FLGS?



If D&D has half the players it did in 2000 then by my reckoning that means 4e was pretty successful. I've presented Google Trends before on the subject - but between January 2004 and December 2007 D&D lost over half its google searches. This is what I mean by 3.5 haemoherraging people. Even if D&D has only a third of the people it had in 2000 that wouldn't surprise me - and most of the loss was under late 3.0 and 3.5.

Did 4e ever reach the heights of 3.0? Nope. All it did was almost held steady. Which is a pretty huge thing when you compare it to what came before.



Even counting PF I think the overall fanbase has shrunk quite a lot. The high point was in the 80s when they were selling 750,000 copies per year. I'd be surprised if 3.0, 3.5, or even 4E+PF sold that in total​.

3.5/3rd ed losing players probably had more to do with the d20 bubble popping at roughly the same time as WoW landing. I don't think there was widespread disillusion with the rules and people probably wanted to fix it. We do have some ideas how much D&D was worth in 2006 and how much Pathfinder was worth a few years later.

3.5 for all its faults real and perceived could also support a monthly splat book, a minis line and Dragon and Dungeon. Over 8 years of course 3rd ed was going to bleed players, 4E started shedding them very early in the editions lifecycle and seemed to plummet of a cliff in 2010. 3.0 was kind of a blip in the D&D radar, 3.5 probably represents more what the brand could sustain as 3.0 was uber cheap and landed at the right time as well and picked up a lot of casual players who would not stay with D&D regardless.

 

[Neonchameleon]

3.5/3rd ed losing players probably had more to do with the d20 bubble popping at roughly the same time as WoW landing. I don't think there was widespread disillusion with the rules and people probably wanted to fix it. We do have some ideas how much D&D was worth in 2006 and how much Pathfinder was worth a few years later.

And how much WotC was raking in from DDI on a much higher profit margin.

3.5 for all its faults real and perceived could also support a monthly splat book, a minis line and Dragon and Dungeon.

Or at least it did for a couple of years. 3.5 lost over half its player interest over time.

Over 8 years of course 3rd ed was going to bleed players, 4E started shedding them very early in the editions lifecycle and seemed to plummet of a cliff in 2010.

You mean that when they tried to rewrite 4e to be a different game people stopped buying? 4e Essentials was a piece of marketing idiocy along the lines of the 4e Forgotten Realms. Realms Fans didn't like the 4e Realms because it was radically changed in design intent. Realms non-fans didn't like the Realms because it was still the Realms.

For a good example of the difference, the 4e PHB had a Portable Hole that was ... a portable hole. Straight out of the Acme Catalogue, you put it on a wall, walked through, and rolled it up again. So what does the Essentials "You must have a hole to store things in because tradition" get called? True Portable Hole.

That sort of approach to what went before is going to go over real well. People who liked 4e frequently got annoyed by Essentials and its sometimes pouring contempt on what came before. But the people Essentials was fishing for weren't interested in 4e because it was 4e.

3.0 was kind of a blip in the D&D radar, 3.5 probably represents more what the brand could sustain as 3.0 was uber cheap and landed at the right time as well and picked up a lot of casual players who would not stay with D&D regardless.

But 3.5 couldn't even sustain itself any more than any other RPG has with the arguable exception of Call of Cthulhu. Sales weren't flat - they were decreasing year on year and pretty sharply so. Which is absolutely normal (it amazes me how long PF has lasted).

 

[Haffrung]

Do you have the quote from him? I am still looking for it...

No. But the context was the PC advancement pace, and how it's intended to allow a group playing weekly sessions over a college year to progress from level 1 to 20.

 

[Hussar]

By younger he meant college age players - younger than the 30-something and 40-something players who dominate online forums and conventions. Still, the massive early 80s boom was fueled by players even younger - 10 to 14 year olds. I doubt that demographic represents a significant part of the D&D tabletop RPG market today.

So younger than you would think judging by RPG forums? Definitely. Younger than the player-base 25 years ago? I really doubt it. There were very few 40-something players back then, and there are craploads today. And there's a reason we see remakes of the Giant series, return to the Tomb of Horrors, etc. every five years or so.

If I had to guess, I'd say the D&D market today is:

10-14: 5%
15-25: 35%
26-35: 30%
36+: 30%

At the peak of the 80s boom, I'd bet on the numbers looking more like:

10-14: 30%
15-25: 40%
26-35: 20%
36+: 10%

But, see, this is all chicken entrails and gut feelings. No one outside of WOTC actually knows the numbers here. But, judging from comments from Mearls and other interviews I've read or heard, I think the number would be closer to about 70% under 25 years old and the remaining 30% over 25, which, funnily enough, lines up with your 80's boom numbers. I think in the 80's boom times though, the numbers would be about 90% under 25. If almost 50% of your demographics are 25 years old or older, you don't make Saturday Morning cartoons.

It reminds me of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Back in the late 80's, early 90's, when TMNT was huge, and getting movies, TV shows, whatnot, guess what the overwhelmingly (and I mean about 75% of the total numbers) demographic for TMNT was. Boys under 5 years old. THAT was the target demo for TMNT. If you look back at what was being done for TMNT, suddenly, it makes a lot more sense in that context.

If 60% of gamers are over 25, then the hobby has a serious, serious problem.

No. But the context was the PC advancement pace, and how it's intended to allow a group playing weekly sessions over a college year to progress from level 1 to 20.

Note, this is based on the WOTC market research they did for 3e back in the 90's when they identified their target buying audience as pretty much all under 30 years old. The over 30 crowd doesn't spend much (or as much anyway) money on the hobby, so, 3e was designed for players under 30 years old. That's why you get the 1 year to play the entire game thing. But, still, this is based on numbers from twenty years ago. What the divisions are now is anyone's guess.

 

[Zardnaar]

And how much WotC was raking in from DDI on a much higher profit margin.



Or at least it did for a couple of years. 3.5 lost over half its player interest over time.



You mean that when they tried to rewrite 4e to be a different game people stopped buying? 4e Essentials was a piece of marketing idiocy along the lines of the 4e Forgotten Realms. Realms Fans didn't like the 4e Realms because it was radically changed in design intent. Realms non-fans didn't like the Realms because it was still the Realms.

For a good example of the difference, the 4e PHB had a Portable Hole that was ... a portable hole. Straight out of the Acme Catalogue, you put it on a wall, walked through, and rolled it up again. So what does the Essentials "You must have a hole to store things in because tradition" get called? True Portable Hole.

That sort of approach to what went before is going to go over real well. People who liked 4e frequently got annoyed by Essentials and its sometimes pouring contempt on what came before. But the people Essentials was fishing for weren't interested in 4e because it was 4e.



But 3.5 couldn't even sustain itself any more than any other RPG has with the arguable exception of Call of Cthulhu. Sales weren't flat - they were decreasing year on year and pretty sharply so. Which is absolutely normal (it amazes me how long PF has lasted).

At the most DDI would have been on around 6 million per year minus expenses, probably a bit less as not everyone would have paid for the full year. Ryan Dancy gave figures of 25-30 million per year average for D&D in 2006 but probably big spikes in between the lean years. 3.0 probably front loaded 2 years revenue in a few months for example (300k PHB sold in the 1st month).

Pathfinder has been picking up increased sales every year at a 30-40% annual growth rate from 2009-2012. 4.4 million in revenue vs something like 11.2 million in 2012. Every year they have apparently sold more CRB than the year before probably by getting more and more of the D&D players to switch and picking up some new players. The main point of Pathfinder I think proves the 3.x ruleset was not needed to be dumped, revised probably but WOTC probably did not want to do that for the 2nd time in a few years.

WoTC was more or less a punch drunk boxer looking for that 1st high all over again and they done the same thing with the Star Wars RPG line, 3 editions in 7 years. 3.x rules for all their faults offers a stable rules platform.

 

[Neonchameleon]

At the most DDI would have been on around 6 million per year minus expenses, probably a bit less as not everyone would have paid for the full year.

That's in 2013 not 2008. And remember that the costs for DDI are low - so the profit margin is huge.

WoTC was more or less a punch drunk boxer looking for that 1st high all over again

You mean when they brought out 5e? Because that's the way it reads to me. 4e was when they decided to try something new. Not looking for the first high so much as an entirely different approach. It was a bold strategy, switching to online.

 

[Zardnaar]

That's in 2013 not 2008. And remember that the costs for DDI are low - so the profit margin is huge.



You mean when they brought out 5e? Because that's the way it reads to me. 4e was when they decided to try something new. Not looking for the first high so much as an entirely different approach. It was a bold strategy, switching to online.

I mean with 3.5/4E/Essentials/5E and the Star Wars books from 2000-2007. The spam em and dump em approach bit them in the ass though.

DDI only provided a fraction of the old D&D income though and even if profit was good its not good for the brand as less people playing=less vibe=less physical books sold etc etc etc. 80 000 users may look impressive but on the dawn of 3.0 they had something like 6 million players was the figure bandied about at the time. I think that figure is a bit exaggerated and not all of them would have been paying customers but it does kind of feed into Ryan Darceys network comments. Basically a smaller handful of D&D fanatics pay for everything and play with their friends etc. But you still have a lot of people playing and networking. They have made 4 rule sets more more less incompatible with each other (3.0,3.5,4E, 5E), essentials I do not regard as a .5 edition as you could use it with normal 4E even if you do not like the direction essentials took.