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

[Haffrung]

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

Why? The booming boardgame hobby is fueled by the 25 to 40 year old crowd, people who have no problem dropping $300 or more annually on a hobby. Hipsters, educated couples, urban singles, young professionals with kids. The RPG industry would kill to have those 'problematic' demographics. WotC's devs have explicitly cited the boardgame boom and questioned why D&D hasn't been able to see the same growth. I'm sure they know (since they have some very successful boardgames themselves) that the enormous growth in hobby boardgaming in the last decade has not been fueled by 12-20 year olds.

And if the D&D market really is 70% 25 and under, why all the references in the 5E books to Keep in the Borderlands, the 1E PHB, the Giant series, etc? Whey the skinning of the 4E beginner's set to look like Mentzner Basic? Why, after the polling of 100,000+ playtesters, did WotC keep hoary old tropes from TSR D&D?

 

[Rygar]

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.

That's actually a fairly common myth, costs for online only are not cheap. It only becomes cheap when the number of users becomes very large because costs remain relatively constant with online while each customer increases cost offline.

To do online you need...

-Web designers
-Database Dev
-DB Admin for maintainence
-IT to keep the servers up
-Servers
-Electricity and cooling for those servers
-Customer Service
-Offsite storage contracts for DB backups, especially for financial records
-Ongoing development costs
-Credit card agreements and processing fees
-Bandwidth costs
-Then factor in the hidden costs: Legal for the various agreements, HR, any localization, etc.

These costs remain constant up to a certain point in terms of number of concurrent users, while producing offline material scales with each customer as you need physical goods for each. The problem is, you need large numbers of users for those costs to become cheaper than the costs of producing physical goods. With volume as low as DDI had, the profit margin likely wasn't nearly as good as people think it was. It's very likely DDI was costing $1,000,000 to 1.5 million a year to operate.

Also, IIRC, 2013 was when they had their peak number of DDI subscribers from what I've read. So if true, 2008 wasn't all that great.

How do you know that 4th edition was when they tried something new? How do you know 4th edition wasn't designed around increasing per-player expenses such as via DDI being nigh mandatory, miniatures being nigh mandatory (And sold conviently randomized), and Everything is Core making the purchase of all books and DDI nigh mandatory? How do you know that 4th edition's design wasn't based on a directive to make it different from everything OGL'd?

I frequently see the statement that 4th edition was designed to be "New", "A better D&D", but what I'm seeing indicates to me that the design of 4th edition was all about increasing per-player expenses and since Heinsoo has recently used the term "Rebranding" to explain 4th edition's alignment I have to wonder if all of 4th edition's design wasn't "Rebranding" instead of "Improving".

 

[Tony Vargas]

How do you know that 4th edition was when they tried something new?

Well, it /was/ trying some very new things.

How do you know 4th edition wasn't designed around increasing per-player expenses such as via DDI being nigh mandatory, miniatures being nigh mandatory (And sold conviently randomized), and Everything is Core making the purchase of all books and DDI nigh mandatory? How do you know that 4th edition's design wasn't based on a directive to make it different from everything OGL'd?

Frankly, those all sound pretty plausible. We know from an insider that WotC had promised some phenominal revenue gains, and you can't do that without trying some bold (and, yes, mercenary) things.

As it turned out, the development of on-line tools stalled out and those targets couldn't be met.

But, /trying/ to do all that, to differentiate from d20 and appeal to new players and expand the community to extensive on-line play, did result in the game trying a lot of new things, some of which also happened to solve long-standing, seemingly insoluble problems with the game. Class balance, for instance.

So not every attempt to make more money is necessarily going to be bad for the game. 3.5 started out as an early rev-roll to goose revenue, but a lot of folks certainly liked it.

I frequently see the statement that 4th edition was designed to be "New", "A better D&D"

Whether it was designed to be a better game than prior versions (which, really, seems sensible, whatever else you may also be going for, why make a game /worse/), or merely to have a shot at being an improbably profitable one, it was a much better game, in the technical sense of /game/, than D&D had been before (though that's really not saying a whole lot).

It shouldn't have been any great surprise, though, that a game that had resisted change for so long had accumulated a fan base that didn't much care for any technical improvements, but really did like those sacred cows....

since Heinsoo has recently used the term "Rebranding" to explain 4th edition's alignment I have to wonder if all of 4th edition's design wasn't "Rebranding" instead of "Improving".

You have the directive - "Rebranding" perhaps. And you have the motivation of the designer - "Improving," maybe. Not necessarily terribly incompatible.

 

[Eejit]

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?

Well here in the UK Waterstones (the biggest remaining highstreet book retailer) are stocking the 5E PHB. In theory. As with Amazon UK it never appears to be in stock.

 

[Steely Dan]

Well, it /was/ trying some very new things.

Frankly, those all sound pretty plausible. We know from an insider that WotC had promised some phenominal revenue gains, and you can't do that without trying some bold (and, yes, mercenary) things.

As it turned out, the development of on-line tools stalled out and those targets couldn't be met.

But, /trying/ to do all that, to differentiate from d20 and appeal to new players and expand the community to extensive on-line play, did result in the game trying a lot of new things, some of which also happened to solve long-standing, seemingly insoluble problems with the game. Class balance, for instance.

So not every attempt to make more money is necessarily going to be bad for the game. 3.5 started out as an early rev-roll to goose revenue, but a lot of folks certainly liked it.

Whether it was designed to be a better game than prior versions (which, really, seems sensible, whatever else you may also be going for, why make a game /worse/), or merely to have a shot at being an improbably profitable one, it was a much better game, in the technical sense of /game/, than D&D had been before (though that's really not saying a whole lot).

It shouldn't have been any great surprise, though, that a game that had resisted change for so long had accumulated a fan base that didn't much care for any technical improvements, but really did like those sacred cows....

You have the directive - "Rebranding" perhaps. And you have the motivation of the designer - "Improving," maybe. Not necessarily terribly incompatible.

4th Ed was just Heinsoo & Co.'s logical extension of the DDM game to apply to the D&D RPG, nothing more.

 

[Neonchameleon]

That's actually a fairly common myth, costs for online only are not cheap. It only becomes cheap when the number of users becomes very large because costs remain relatively constant with online while each customer increases cost offline.

All of which is true in a vacuum. You list a lot of things there that WotC already had among your costs. In particular WotC had been running Magic the Gathering Online for six years before DDI was supposed to go live. And had experience with the subcontracted DDO. Magic is about ten times the size of D&D, D&D largely being a sideshow as far as WotC are concerned. So most of what you list is things WotC already had.

How do you know that 4th edition was when they tried something new? How do you know 4th edition wasn't designed around increasing per-player expenses such as via DDI being nigh mandatory, miniatures being nigh mandatory (And sold conviently randomized), and Everything is Core making the purchase of all books and DDI nigh mandatory?

First they did try something new with 4e. It's pretty obvious looking at the rules.

Second if you read the rulebooks, grids and minis are mandatory in 3.5. 4e is not a change from this respect. DDI being subscription was a definite change.

How do you know that 4th edition's design wasn't based on a directive to make it different from everything OGL'd?

Even if that is the case that would be doing new things.

What exactly are you claiming that 3.5 did that was new? 4e definitely changed things. So did 3.0 for that matter.

 

[Steely Dan]

First they did try something new with 4e. It's pretty obvious looking at the rules.

Yeah, new does mean improvement, as told by the tanking of 4th Ed, and no, don't blame the weather.

 

[Morrus]

Yeah, new does mean improvement, as told by the tanking of 4th Ed, and no, don't blame the weather.

Bazeebus, Steely Dan. We have about a dozen reported posts from you over more than one thread from multiple people in just the last day. This one might be the least egregious of them, but there are others. You clearly have an ongoing problem here. This isn't the first time, either. Take a couple of days off while we discuss the situation, please.

 

[Desdichado]

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

Actually, that's a bit of received wisdom that's being openly questioned these days in the wake of the cancellation of Longmire, which was the second most successful show A&E had on. Cancelled why? Because the demographic was too old. Too old for what? Too old to spend money on the things advertisers were asking for?

There's been a cult of youthfulness in the advertising world that's finally being openly questioned. On what basis is appealing to younger people better than appealing to older people? Don't older people have more money and free time, and therefore are arguably better customers than poor, busy college students? And on what basis is "over 25" considered "old" anyway? Are advertisers all a bunch of teenagers?

I guess my question is; on what basis is that a serious, serious problem for the hobby? Are the housing or automotive industries in serious serious trouble because the median age of customers for houses and cars older than 25?

 

[Parmandur]

Just felt the need to comment on the pop/jazz comparison: it's more that TTRPGs are like Jazz, and video games are like Cubist painting. Different medium, guys, deeply flawed analogy.