D&D General Ray Winninger on 5e’s success, product cadence, the OGL, and more.

[RichGreen]

Great thread – thanks to MT Black for letting me know about it

 

[SlyFlourish]

Thanks for the thoughtful answer Mike, much appreciated and I did get a better feel for your past and maybe potential posts around the subject and that my gut reaction was in the wrong.

Thank you for the kind reply!

In fairness, I'm sure I'm full of biases. I definitely love me some Kobold Press and the fact that I work with them (because of this love but money doesn't hurt) is a bias. Of course, I also get review copies from WOTC and they've paid me for work there too but I doubt anyone would say I'm biaed towards them.

So sure, I have biases all over the place. We all do. But I try my best to be a straight shooter helping GMs run great games and navigate this hobby.

 

[Alphastream]

I think there's a little bit of "post hoc ergo propter hoc" here. We don't know all the factors that turned D&D from a front-list to a back-list market. First, we have only the two extremes of (few products, few product lines and high sales) and (plethora of products in plethora of lines and high sales). We haven't seen the variations in between - how many products and lines per year can the company and the market handle? One data point group we don't accurately have is each person's annual budget for RPG products.

People frequently talk about the glut in terms of 'there were too many settings and we were cannibalizing the market.' What I don't hear is 'there were too many settings AND too many products in each' which I think is more accurate. Would the market be able to sustain one new book per setting per year (a sort of yearbook)? Two products, such as a setting book and an anthology setting book? I don't know - I don't think we've seen enough variety in models to establish a cause/effect relationship, yet.

I'm just reading through this thread. This is a great question. I don't think we know because there are so many factors. The plethora of products in 2E is likely tied to two key factors: that even middle TSR management didn't know when a line such as Planescape was losing money or a specific product type (like Dark Sun flipbooks) was losing money with every sale. Second, that only a very few knew that the reason for printing so much was to keep the company afloat through a bizarre money-borrowing scheme that was doomed to someday fail and destroy the company. Without those two factors, for sure the teams would have been a lot more smart about what kind and how many products to create.

With 5E, the tactic was for sure to not worry about the game and focus on licensing. I've heard that directly from staff multiple times, including in public. This drove a specific approach to the game because no one had a reason to believe it would do better than any previous edition by multiples. When WotC and Hasbro finally noticed what D&D was doing, and drove more products to be created every year, it's hard to say if the slowdown was already starting or if the additional product slowed it (or slowed it further). I bet even inside WotC they can't truly tell. The only thing we can see is that a great rules set with a focus on a few big products per year... that really really worked. But was it the main reason? Or was all of that just the continuation of growth from 4E's working to bring in diverse audiences and spread out to more places (D&D Encounters, for example) and the changing landscape of diversity in video games and other geek circles and then responding to a 5E that was welcome to that more diverse body? It's really hard to tell. When 5E did start to slow, it's hard to say if that was due to anything other than tapping out that audience (though I doubt that - I see hundreds of people every year at conventions who want their first game of D&D), or perhaps too many products overall (look at your FLGS store shelves and see if you can figure out what to buy or just turn away confused/overwhelmed).

My personal guess, just a guess, is there is no shortage of new players to bring in and that has been 5E's key to growth. The next key is to find the next pathways to new players. It is likely better served by big clear marketing storylines (think Storm King's Thunder as 2016's big story (with only Volo's being released earlier in the year), vs the confusion of whether Spelljammer or Dragonlance were the main emphasis for 2022 (on top of Radiant Citadel and Netherdeep) or how Strixhaven was lost in the shuffle of Fizban's, Van Richten's, and Witchlight. The focus is just great marketing and the truth is that while D&D makes great money (comparable to what WotC pulls in via major video game licenses), it is unlikely to be much bigger or to scale, so in the end you do need D&D as the foundation for other media (video games, etc.).

 

[Alphastream]

Really interesting to learn that the big demographic shift was not actually more younger players, but more women! I wonder what brought that on, if it was really just more exposure through live streaming games and such, or if other factors played as big or bigger of a role. Obviously it’s anyone’s guess, but I’m more inclined to assume something in the hobby space must have changed to make it more friendly towards women than that it was just a matter of exposure.

When Ray mentioned this, it was a example, not the sole reason for growth. It is also about younger players. More than half of 5E's players started with 5E and more than half are in their 20s or younger. Gender is just super easy to look at as something that you can double, and was clearly excluded (in various complex ways) and which D&D has managed to change as an approach visibly/recognizably.

 

[Alphastream]

I think they petered out before then, didn’t they?

I did a “Tour of Annihilation” because if it. I ran D&D at 9 different game stores in the area, friends did two more. In ten days straight.

Following Greg Tito's public comments, it seemed that management pulled funding from them, as he expressed disappointment that the events couldn't be held in the way they had before (once the pandemic had lessened, and not for pandemic reasons but rather management ones).

 

[Alphastream]

With that in mind, what kind of profit are writers/designers making the way you outline, forgoing the connection to WotC IP?

This is a good question, but hard to answer. Perhaps the most true answer is that just about no one is making money of consequence. And just about no one can, through any model, cover the costs of a mortgage, kids going to college, retirement, and health care later in life. This is an industry that functions more like a hobby even for professionals. It is seldom one where your products can pay for your actual cost of living. There are exceptions, but those people are kind of special for complex reasons.

To get a bit more to what you are asking, profit is potentially much higher if you publish elsewhere for several reasons. One is that you get that 50% back and get to keep it if you can draw sales. That's the big if. I'll give an example. In some circles, I am relatively well known. However, my sales on both the DMsGuild and DriveThru are just okay. I could never cover my cost of living through them. However, when I wrote Forge of Foes with Mike Shea and Scott Gray, we were able to add our DriveThru products as add-ons. Mike has a tremendous audience, far beyond what I do. Before the crowdfund, my two DriveThru products had about 100 sales each. Via this Kickstarter, I sold ten times that. This was only possible because they are on DriveThru (edit: and it only mattered because of the audience Mike can draw). I can't sell my DMsGuild products anywhere else.

I hope the complexity is clear here. There is no simple answer to your question. On my own, having DriveThru products doesn't really help me greatly. I offer them on my Patreon, on the Mastering Dungeons podcast Patreon, on my Ko-fi page, and I mention them on Alphastream.org and on my videos. I get meager sales from that. But through a SlyFlourish Kickstarter? That's suddenly a huge audience and the profit is relatively huge to my normal profit.

That's the thing. It depends on each creator. If you will have 20 sales, the platform doesn't matter. The more you have an audience, the more you can turn that profit dial way up by being able to sell in a variety of places.

Just as an idle thought, is there any point in doing "loss leader" products on DMsG and use those as advertisements for your main body of work over at DTRPG? As in, "Here's my Caves of Chaos tie-in adventure. If you like that, go that-a-way for more."

Generally, no. You will generally be better off by drawing audiences in other ways. This is in part to the platform not really allowing you to link to other places where you sell. Some companies, such as Evil Hat, have really refined the technique of free products on DriveThru that drive purchases, but it takes some real diligence and experimenting to pull that off well. Jeff Stevens has had success on the DMsGuild with a free preview of a magic item, which showcases his magic items paid product - subscribe to his newsletter to hear about his experiments. As with the first question above, the answer is complex and depends on your audience and what you can do to leverage sales. For most folks, the sales aren't substantial either way and it is best to look at the hobby as a fun place to be, side money to cover gaming expenses, etc.

 

[TiQuinn]

That's the thing. It depends on each creator. If you will have 20 sales, the platform doesn't matter. The more you have an audience, the more you can turn that profit dial way up by being able to sell in a variety of places.

That was a hugely helpful answer!

 

[Iosue]

My personal guess, just a guess, is there is no shortage of new players to bring in and that has been 5E's key to growth.

I'm just going to take this opportunity to note that, IMO, the on-ramp that Mike Mearls and his team built for 5e is tremendously underrated as a factor to 5e's sustained growth and success.

Even if interest in D&D was given an adrenaline shot by Critical Role and Stranger Things, that's not going to translate into more sales if the game is not easily accessible. The Lost Mines Starter Set was a fantastic product that could be played by a new group getting into role-playing for the first time. The Basic Rules PDF did a number of things: it allowed interested players to see the rules without making a purchase, and it provided players hooked by Lost Mines to get deeper into the game by making their own characters. But perhaps most importantly, it took the onus of playing the game off the core rulebooks. You didn't need a DM to get the DMG and Monster Manual in order to play. Instead of being a barrier to entry, the core three books became useful references for groups already playing.

With the 2024 books, they seem to be trying to put some of that onus back onto the core books. They are written with the assumption that the PHB is being read by someone who's never played before, and the DMG by someone who's never DMed before. I'm not exactly against that, and time will tell if that will work for them. But I do question the wisdom of gating the new Free Rules behind D&D Beyond, as well as the release of a new starter set a year after release of the new PHB. I thought that, at the very least, a revised Stormwreck Isle was a no brainer. To a certain extent, they seem to have dismantled the 2014 on-ramp in favor of an attempt to funnel prospective players to Beyond.

The next key is to find the next pathways to new players. It is likely better served by big clear marketing storylines (think Storm King's Thunder as 2016's big story (with only Volo's being released earlier in the year), vs the confusion of whether Spelljammer or Dragonlance were the main emphasis for 2022 (on top of Radiant Citadel and Netherdeep) or how Strixhaven was lost in the shuffle of Fizban's, Van Richten's, and Witchlight.

I agree. The big storylines played a part in the on-ramp as being a clear next step from the Starter Set. IMO, they also played a part in expanding the community by being shared experiences. Even if a group didn't play the big adventure, they could take part in the ancillary media surrounding it. I think it also contributes to the continued success of 5e's back catalog. Even if you didn't get, for example, Storm King's Thunder at release because you were still playing a previous adventure, it stayed in your mind as a possible next campaign.

Of course, this kind of thing is frustratingly intangible and hard to quantify.

 

[Mistwell]

Elsewhere people were doubting that the audience had shifted to 50% women. So I checked and sure enough, "According to Wizards' internal studies of the player population, 60% of D&D players are male, 39% are female, and 1% identify otherwise." That's from 2023.

 

[mearls]

I think the reason for the slowdown with 5.5 is pretty simple - does anyone have a clear idea of why someone playing 5e, or an earlier version of the game, should drop $150 on the new books?

Thinking back to D&D products that really grew the audience:

• AD&D 1st edition, at the time of its release, offered the first hardcover TTRPG books and unmatched art. It was also the first time that comprehensive rules for D&D were gathered in one place. It was a no brainer upgrade.
• Basic D&D ('77, '81, '83) offered a simple, concise set of rules built around dungeon crawling in a cheap, accessible package. It also had fantastic art and gameplay that beginners could pick up with ease.
• D&D 3e offered a unified game system, a contemporary vision for D&D art (even if you hated dungeon punk, it fit right in with Diablo and other hit fantasy games of the era), and unmatched freedom for DMs and players. Remember, half-orc paladins weren't a thing until 3e.
• D&D 5e made the game more accessible, sped up gameplay, and offered a completely free version of the game online. (I'm not counting the SRD - you could use it, but you had to already know what you were doing). It had a multiyear playtest that brought the community together.

In each case, the edition or product made a clear, easy to understand case that fired up the community and pulled in new people.

D&D editions that struggle usually have their root in offering an easy offramp for DMs. They don't offer enough of an upgrade.

• AD&D 2nd edition had better art and was much better organized, but the game didn't provide enough of a mechanical upgrade to make starting over worth it. The game also removed a variety of IP elements to make non-D&D fans happy.
• 3.5 lacked a clear vision for improving the game. It became the default, mainly because the D&D audience was shrinking as players who jumped back in with 3e bounced back out.
• D&D 4th edition tried to aim at MMO players, but in the process failed to make a game that the existing 3.5 audience was happy with.
• It remains to be seen how 5.5 will go, but the early signs point to something like 3.5, with the audience shrinking from a sharp rise of interest that the game failed to hold. It's also not clear that changes to the IP are winning more fans than they're alienating.

In today's gaming market, products that are OK or not demonstrably bad don't pull in an audience. Gaming is glutted with products, and if you can't stand out you end up fading into the background. I think that's where D&D is these days.

It's a mistake to assume that D&D's competition comes from Pathfinder or any other TTRPG. Its competition comes from the entirety of entertainment, plus the fact that a group can play D&D while ignoring WotC's product line. A D&D product needs to punch through a lot of static to stand out. When's the last time a D&D product did that?