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

[Mercurius]

One other thing that might be interesting is how much Pathfinder outsold D&D 4.0. PF is still a pretty strong brand in gaming stores and they are still diversifying further with card games and a movie. WotC is and always has been the 500 lb gorilla but with 4.0 they gave up their market and will still need to get it back.

We'd have to line them up, year by year - so compare 2008 4E to 2009 Pathfinder, etc, so that we compare equivalent years within edition cycles. I'm guessing that 4E outsold Pathfinder for the first couple years, but then Pathfinder zoomed ahead as 4E started floundering in its third year. Not sure, though.

Angling it as a "return to imagination" is a great idea, although that's a plug for parents, not kids. Kids will hate that (just like they hate anything else their parents like).

Right, and we also have the generation gap thing - "In my day we used to use our imaginations."

But I do think a "revival of the imagination" is in our future, but it might be a few years yet when we get so lost in our virtual technologies that we crave something more organic.

 

[Werebat]

In my day, young teen boys got into D&D because of the boobs. Seriously, flip through a core AD&D book sometime.

Today, of course, D&D has to compete with the internet, which is FULL of boobs -- and not just drawn pictures of them, either. Back in the day, all D&D had to compete with was the occasional Playboy that some generous soul would leave in the dugout of the local little league field.

We live in an age when most people have seen more other people naked than ever before.

 

[evilbob]

We'd have to line them up, year by year - so compare 2008 4E to 2009 Pathfinder, etc, so that we compare equivalent years within edition cycles. I'm guessing that 4E outsold Pathfinder for the first couple years, but then Pathfinder zoomed ahead as 4E started floundering in its third year. Not sure, though.

This website has a good set of data for this:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?353592-5-years-of-ICV2-Rankings-A-retrospective

 

[Mercurius]

This website has a good set of data for this:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?353592-5-years-of-ICV2-Rankings-A-retrospective

The problem with the ICV rankings--aside from being "anecdotal surveys to stores," which I'm fine with--is that they don't include online orders, even Amazon. My guess is that Paizo, due their store, is penalized in the rankings for this. Even so, it looks like Pathfinder took over the number one spot in Q2 of 2011, but was tied as early as Q3 in 2010.

 

[Redthistle]

FYI: It isn't our taste buds that go "bye-bye" ...

... it's the sense of smell that deteriorates by the age of 60 to about half of what it was at the age of 20. Our sense of smell peaks in our 40s.[This is just a response/clarification on non-gaming-related human biology to a comment by Tony Vargas.] Our taste buds, with their concentration on sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami sensations, are an earlier and more basic part of our physiology, hanging in there as we get older far more than our olfactory senses do. What we lose is the richness and complexities of the flavor of the food we eat that we get through our noses. This contributes, unfortunately, to a decreasing lack of interest in eating and nutrition in some elderly.'Nuff said. Y'all can get back to the RPG discussion now.

 

[BryonD]

[Citation Needed]

Wow, irony much???
Tell you what, you offer *YOUR* citation on WotC revenues, and we will talk.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Wow, irony much???
Tell you what, you offer *YOUR* citation on WotC revenues, and we will talk.

I already have on this very thread - although Echohawk has brought up that WotC managed to break their own website when they "upgraded" the forums, so my numbers were out of date.

So not even a shred of irony other than in your call of ironic.

 

[Umbran]

Guys,

I'll keep it simple - we strongly suggest both of you put away the head-butting, edition warring crap.

Clear? Good. Because the amount of effort to be patient with this nonsense is large compared to the effort required to end it with a banhammer.

Go take part in *constructive* discussions for a while - perhaps forever. Consider putting the effort of trying to prosecute an edition into the past permanently.

Thanks for your attention, all.

 

[BryonD]

I already have on this very thread - although Echohawk has brought up that WotC managed to break their own website when they "upgraded" the forums, so my numbers were out of date.

So not even a shred of irony other than in your call of ironic.

Your citation requires a leap of faith regarding the correlation to absolute paying customers.
If that leap of faith were well founded then it would not make sense to abandon 5E. It would not make sense to see those numbers so highly resistant to the announcement, and even rollout, of 5E. It would not make sense for WotC to abandon this great model for their next edition.

It also would not make sense for a company to make their revenue stream so blatantly obvious to anyone willing to spend 5 seconds looking at public data.

You have not offered any actual citations for actual revenue. Because you simply have no access to it. You are making presumptions. And they don't stand up to inspection.

 

[Umbran]

Someone failed to listen, and won't be in the discussion for a while.