Multi-Edition D&D

[M.L. Martin]

BECMI appealed to all sorts of people who wanted a simpler, faster system, not just kids. Heck, I loved that it scaled to 36th level and Immortal level play, even though I never got a campaign that far. The BECMI Rules Cyclopedia was a fantastic book with everything you needed to play in one nice hardback, something I wish WotC would do someday. Mystara had its faults, but it turned out to be a well developed campaign world.

Actually, it appears that BECMI appealed more to older gamers in some respects. "The players who wanted simplified rules with less structure (like those in D&D Basic) were not the beginners who hadn't yet mastered the intricacies of RPGs but rather the veteran players who had the experience and inclination to 'wing it.' The fact that D&D was filled wit holes and abstractions made it attractive to experienced players who enjoyed coming up with their own field expedients. Conversely, AD&D's wealth of rules covering every situation gave rookies a sense of security; when the game moved into unfamiliar territory, somewhere in those books would be a rule to cover the situation."--Thirty Years of Adventure, p. 190

I imagine something similar is responsible for the success of Savage Worlds among experienced gamers.

Folks don't like the player base being split. They want one official, best version of D&D.

This, I think, is why this kind of scheme will never happen--but it has, IMO, less to do with the fans than with WotC's corporate culture.

WotC places a very heavy emphasis on branding and uniformity--it's why we never got the oft-requested, oft-considered Magic/D&D crossover, because the folks in charge of Magic thought it would dilute the brand. And WotC's foundational success comes from a product that, AFAIK, really shines and makes most of its money in organized play environments based on standardized, uniform rules that are governed from the control center in Renton. (Would any Magic fans care to correct me on this point? Is the game actually a more casual, decentralized experience nowadays?) I think that culture has had a profound impact on their approach to D&D, along with Peter Adkison's decision that the game should be complex. ("D&D has always been complicated, and that never stopped it from becoming popular. Complexity wasn't the issue . . . I believed that what D&D players wanted was a great set of rules. Rules that made sense, while retaining the 'feel' of the original works by Gygax and Arneson."--Adkison, 30YoA, 258)

According to numerous posts by Matt Colville, back when WotC was trying to adopt a multi-level approach to roleplaying, they never considered multiple versions of D&D--instead, they'd produce multiple different roleplaying games, with D&D as the most complex game for the most advanced players. (Only one other game in this grand scheme--the Pokemon Jr. Adventure Game--saw release.)

 

[WheresMyD20]

"Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black." - Henry Ford, shortly before Ford Motor company lost its #1 position to General Motors.

If you try to force all of your customers to buy the product that is most economical for you, rather than selling them the range of products they want, you're in for trouble. WotC let Paizo have the 3e market. Others are jockeying for the old school market. WotC is still only offering 4e.

WotC needs to stop dreaming about some fabled "D&D unity" scenario where all players new and old are all happily playing the one edition that WotC decides to give us. Yes, that would be the ideal business scenario from WotC's viewpoint, but it's not reality. D&D is no longer one game, it's an entire family of games. WotC should wake up and realize if they don't give customers all of the versions of D&D they want, someone else will.

 

[Reynard]

"Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black." - Henry Ford, shortly before Ford Motor company lost its #1 position to General Motors.

If you try to force all of your customers to buy the product that is most economical for you, rather than selling them the range of products they want, you're in for trouble. WotC let Paizo have the 3e market. Others are jockeying for the old school market. WotC is still only offering 4e.

WotC needs to stop dreaming about some fabled "D&D unity" scenario where all players new and old are all happily playing the one edition that WotC decides to give us. Yes, that would be the ideal business scenario from WotC's viewpoint, but it's not reality. D&D is no longer one game, it's an entire family of games. WotC should wake up and realize if they don't give customers all of the versions of D&D they want, someone else will.

And the most important part of this is: they can. They own it all. They can publish any and every version of D&D, and in an era of digital distribution and print on demand, they can do so economically. By creating official D&D licenses, they can have all of those editions immediately and broadly supported.

In the end, though, WotC will probably see reduced revenue as an indication that table top RPGs are dead and D&D will become a brand more closely associated with board games and video games than RPGs -- and it will be a success, because there's value in the brand.