Repeating the Mistakes of the Past

[Scrivener of Doom]

I think you have absolutely no idea what "glut" means.

My thoughts exactly.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

There's going to different opinions of "glut". I think 4e hit the "glut point". The Character Builder made it better in some ways (more accessible) and worse (harder to keep crud out). Pathfinder isn't there yet but there's lots of classes and feats I would never want to see at a Pathfinder game.

Of course, WotC can't make money if they only sell core rulebooks and campaign settings, so it's an almost unavoidable problem. Paizo seems to be doing a better job of this, but a lot of their "non-glut" content is only of interest to DMs.

 

[n00bdragon]

A "glut" of 4e material? What exactly would a "dearth" be? For whatever 4e may have done right or wrong flooding its users with a "glut" of material was certainly not one of them. Over its 5 year run 4e released (according to Wikipedia at least) 53 printed products including adventure sites, dragon magazine annuals and a couple preview documents for the new edition. If you want to count only the good hard splats (including campaign settings and the like) but excluding core books that explain how to play the game we get down to just 35, and that's with campaign books being split into a DM centric book and a player centric book and two additional player's handbooks and monster manuals and an extra DMG.

Compare that with the list of 2e books you can find here (get your scroll wheel ready).


To concur with the above posters and can only conclude you have no concept of what the word "glut" means.

 

[Raith5]

I am not sure that questions of glut or WOTC engagement with its community are the biggest issues facing the game now. I think the biggest issue relates to how the game can accommodate radical differences in playing style and gaming sensibility wrought by a diverse array of editions: warlords and healing, sneak attacks, giving fighters powers, etc (and a general uncertainty as to how modularity will work in DDN).

 

[Dungeoneer]

It's been said that history does not repeat itself but it rhymes.
While discussing the failures of TSR in a thread elsewhere I decided to hunt down the long bit of prose Ryan Dancy wrote about the fall of TSR and failures of the company. I found it here.

<snip>

I heard a lot complaints regarding WotC that seemed very similar in the last few years.
The desire to refocus on allowing DMs more creativity is a big part of 5e. The glut of products at the end of 4e. Limited focus on making the game your own. The sidelining of the RPGA. The restrictive GSL that made content generation awkward.

Interesting that less than ten years after TSR imploded from mismanagement, dividing the audience, and poor communication and WotC was arguably making similarly bad decisions.

Thoughts?

To add to the responses regarding 'glut', the 4e glut really came during the first 2-3 years when they actually were putting out a book a month. Then suddenly they cancelled the entire slate and after that releases got relatively sparse. However throughout the process the character builder made it relatively easy to keep up.

I would have liked to see 4e releases more evenly spaced, for sure, though.

To get back to the main question at hand, people blame things like 'too many settings' and 'too many splat books' for TSR's collapse. But the truth is that TSR collapsed because it was a horribly mis-managed company who ran it into the ground with their sheer lack of business sense. It's never struck me that WotC lacks for business sense and their corporate overlords certainly don't. You can argue (and I would) that WotC/Hasbro doesn't understand D&D, but they do understand business.

For all the people pointing to the 5e playtests as evidence that WotC is listening... it only counts if they put what they hear into practice, yes? I'd wait until I see a core rulebook for 5e before I gave them too much credit.

 

[GMMichael]

Our customers were telling us that they want to create and distribute content based on our game?

Funny, I'm working on an RPG based on exactly that premise: adding to the game should be something every GM and player can easily do. If you'd like to help, drop me a message.

(Although I suspect the quotation actually meant, "our fellow publishers want to create and distribute content . . . ")

 

[The Human Target]

Also let's remember that 3e and 4e were both attempts to give fans what they wanted.

And they gathered the input of the fan base in both instances, as they did with The.

But you can never make everyone happy.

And it feels like you can never make a percentage of d&D fans happy no matter what they do.

 

[trancejeremy]

I think the inherent problem with asking fans what they want in a new edition, is that the people who answer are often those that don't like past editions. So the people who did like past editions are left out.

3e and 4e were for people who were unhappy with 2e and 3e. They weren't for fans of 2e and 3e.

So a company chases after new customers while alienating existing customers. Can that work? Sure. But eventually you end up alienating everyone.

And in this case, alienated customers have someplace to go. Pathfinder for 3e fans, various retro clones for 2e/OSR fans. And I think a lot of 4e fans feel alienated by Next. I dunno where they will go, but it probably won't be 5e...13th Age would be my guess.

 

[jodyjohnson]

Then suddenly they cancelled the entire slate and after that releases got relatively sparse.

What 'entire slate' do you speak of?

The retread of the PHB book after essentials? Which got posted a class at a time because they didn't think a retread book would sell.

DMG3? Really? Between Mike Shea at SlyFlourish and Chris Perkin's articles I think we got enough material to give Epic a boost. No need to compile it and sell content we already had for a $40 book.

I'm going to disagree with the notion that being a 'successful' edition means we need PHB 4, DMG 4, Martial Power 3, Arcane Power 3, etc.

Pathfinder is fine with a 'slow' release schedule because your entire 3.5 library is supposed to be compatible. With the Advanced Advanced Players Handbook coming out at only the 5 year mark.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Compare that with the list of 2e books you can find here (get your scroll wheel ready).

This only means the 2e glut was worse. That doesn't mean WotC must publish the same amount as TSR did to hit "glut" level.