D&D 5E So what exactly is Wizards working on?

[Sailor Moon]

What happens when you question this assumption? What if (humor me) the data is correct and a heavy release schedule really did - despite all the BS you can smell - doom 3e and 4e to brief edition cycles? What happens if that is true? What would that say about what you're reading? What would that say about WotC's actions?

And perhaps critically -- what is more likely to be incorrect? Your own views of what is "obviously" true? Or WotC's carefully-gathered professional data?

But it didn't so I'm not going to play the "what if?" game.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

If its as simple as Wizards experiementing with a new support model, then why aren't they talking to the community to help puzzle that out?
Seems like there has to be more to it than that....

Why would they talk to the community? The community is just going to say "Where's our books? You made a book every month during 3e and 4e...bring that back. We were comfortable with that and we want things to stay the same."

The problem is that people like things that are comfortable. They don't want to take risks. They also don't always know what is good for them. Human brains pretty much always assume their situation is the majority situation. They want books, so of course EVERYONE wants books.

Plus, most of these decisions have to be made with business in mind. Which often means making decisions for some reasons that the community would likely get very angry at. Imagine if they came out and said "We think that the entire run from beginning to end of this edition has about 15 splatbooks in it. Once we release 15 books, we will have no more ideas and therefore no more profit. We will have to create another edition and start the process over again. If we release those books at 5 a year, the edition will be over in 3 years. If we release them once a year, then we have 15 years before we need another edition."

Most people would get very angry about "artificially increasing the lifespan of the edition for profit reasons". I can see posts stating "You mean, I can't use werewolves as PCs in my game for another 10 years all because WOTC wants to make me wait until that book comes out?"

I suspect that, right now, they are considering a release schedule that involves them breaking up the amount of material they would have put into one book and splitting that information up into small articles that they can post very slowly over the next year. That way they can keep people coming to their website over and over again. That means customers have reasons to continue thinking about D&D for the next year while simultaneously avoiding product bloat on store shelves.

How they will make money off of that model is anyone's guess really. Which is probably what they are discussing now(or have been for the last couple of months).

 

[Sailor Moon]

Why would they talk to the community? The community is just going to say "Where's our books? You made a book every month during 3e and 4e...bring that back. We were comfortable with that and we want things to stay the same."

The problem is that people like things that are comfortable. They don't want to take risks. They also don't always know what is good for them. Human brains pretty much always assume their situation is the majority situation. They want books, so of course EVERYONE wants books.

Plus, most of these decisions have to be made with business in mind. Which often means making decisions for some reasons that the community would likely get very angry at. Imagine if they came out and said "We think that the entire run from beginning to end of this edition has about 15 splatbooks in it. Once we release 15 books, we will have no more ideas and therefore no more profit. We will have to create another edition and start the process over again. If we release those books at 5 a year, the edition will be over in 3 years. If we release them once a year, then we have 15 years before we need another edition."

Most people would get very angry about "artificially increasing the lifespan of the edition for profit reasons". I can see posts stating "You mean, I can't use werewolves as PCs in my game for another 10 years all because WOTC wants to make me wait until that book comes out?"

I suspect that, right now, they are considering a release schedule that involves them breaking up the amount of material they would have put into one book and splitting that information up into small articles that they can post very slowly over the next year. That way they can keep people coming to their website over and over again. That means customers have reasons to continue thinking about D&D for the next year while simultaneously avoiding product bloat on store shelves.

How they will make money off of that model is anyone's guess really. Which is probably what they are discussing now(or have been for the last couple of months).

It would be rather naive of them to think like this. Share holders don't want to wait 15 years to see a return on their profits if you want to look at it from a business point of view.

Also, Wizards don't know better than we do as to what we want, 4th edition is evidence of that.

If they are dried up with ideas after only a few products then maybe the current team shouldn't have been hired in the first place. Usually companies want a long term plan in place that will generate profit. Of something is planning on dying in 5 years, they are not going to stretch it out to 10. They would just be satisfied with picking up those profits as quickly as possible.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

It would be rather naive of them to think like this. Share holders don't want to wait 15 years to see a return on their profits if you want to look at it from a business point of view.

The shareholders of WOTC know the company's profits will be fine. They sell Magic, which makes WAY more money than D&D. Their D&D plans don't even show up. Plus, I don't even think WOTC is publicly traded at all. It's owned by Hasbro who is publicly traded. Their D&D plans will not affect the stock in any way at all.

Also, Wizards don't know better than we do as to what we want, 4th edition is evidence of that.

Except for all the people who loved 4e, the large number of books sold, and the large number of people I can't convince to play 5e at our local stores because (and I quote) "4e was the best edition of D&D and I can't believe WOTC is trying to sell us this stupid 5e", you'd likely be right. Our local store went from 16 people playing D&D Encounters to 6. The other 10 explicitly stated they were quitting because it wasn't 4e anymore.

They were right that 4e would appeal to a lot of people that 3e didn't appeal to. Our group switched. A LOT of people liked it better. Many of them were from within the Organized Play community. I was a volunteer for WOTC during Living Greyhawk. A large number of people were super happy to see things we'd hope would be fixed for years finally being fixed in 4e. WOTC listened to us because we were the people they had the most direct contact with. We were the people filling their game rooms at GenCon and Origins where WOTC employees actually had the time to talk to customers directly.

Our issues were about game balance and consistency. We wanted every table to be DMed exactly the same and we wanted everyone who showed up at the table to be equal in power and in agency in the game. We voiced those concerns and got a game with greater rules, greater consistency and greater balance.

The fact that there is an extremely vocal community of people who absolutely hated it did not mean that WOTC wasn't listening to their customers when they designed 4e. They just happened to listen to a group of their customers who had different priorities than another section of their customers.

If they are dried up with ideas after only a few products then maybe the current team shouldn't have been hired in the first place. Usually companies want a long term plan in place that will generate profit. Of something is planning on dying in 5 years, they are not going to stretch it out to 10. They would just be satisfied with picking up those profits as quickly as possible.

I believe there are only so many GOOD ideas before you start getting to "alright" ideas. The books near the end of 3e were starting to be stale and kind of boring. I truly think 3e managed to exhaust all the good ideas. I think the number of books released from the beginning of the cycle to the end of the cycle was about the limit before they HAD to release a new edition or end up released "Complete Sock Drawer" as a book.

So, assuming this is true, then you don't want to release all of the books at once because then you have nothing left to sell and all of your jobs go away. D&D is a niche brand. Niche brands rely on good will to prosper. Fans will continue to buy books year after year because they *LIKE* D&D and they have good feelings towards it. If the general opinion of their books is that the last one was stupid and was filled with bad ideas that weren't playtested well enough then no one will buy their next book.

For a company like WOTC who already makes 95% of their money off of a different product, they would rather have a small team dedicated to D&D who releases 2 or 3 products a year that barely make enough money to keep the department open as a labor of love for something they loved as kids than to exhaust all of their good will wringing all the money they can out of it and letting it die.

They have the luxury of not caring so much about how much profit they make on D&D. If D&D breaks even and they can make a movie deal and a video game deal and use those contracts as profits...then perfect. If breaking even on the game means that 10 years from now people are still saying "I loved D&D! It's great. There's an expansion coming out for it in 6 months! And Sword Coast Legends 3 is coming out this year! That'll be awesome. Also, I just bought the new Forgotten Realms novel and the D&D movie 2 is being released in December!" then they are happy. If people are saying 5 years from now "There's another edition of D&D coming out? Yeah, I'm tired of this crap. I'm getting off....WOTC ruined D&D and they aren't getting any more of MY money. Especially after I bought a book a month for 5 years now!" then they will have to shelf D&D and never release anything again. That isn't good for anyone.

 

[Sailor Moon]

Let's do a quick list of possible products.

1: Dungeon magazine.
2: Dragon magazine.
3: Various Monster Manuals. (You can't have monster bloat).
4: Class guides.
5: Campaign setting book.
6: Regional campaign setting books.
7: Spell Compendium.
8: Magic item compendium.
9: Book of feats and backgrounds.
10: Racial books.
11: Short term modules.
12: Arms and Equipment guide.
13: Things to do with your Gold guide.

Some of those would have have multiple books that branch out so you are loaded with books that people would buy. Those are just ideas off the top of my head.

 

[delericho]

During the life of 4E Mearls certainly wasn't pooh-poohing the release schedule...

While that's true, it is worth noting that the 4e release schedule slowed down significantly after the release of Essentials. Which, coincidentally, was about the same time Mearls got the Big Job.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Some of those would have have multiple books that branch out so you are loaded with books that people would buy. Those are just ideas off the top of my head.

True. But there's also a philosophy that says that you CAN overwhelm new players who walk into a store and see 15 books on the shelf and think "Oh my god! Look at all those books! This game seems extremely complicated. Plus, I can't afford all those books. Maybe I'll buy something else instead."

Even if all those books add no bloat to the game at all, it turns people off.

Also, part of the problem in both 3e and 4e was that all of those books trained players to think of the games in terms of rules. When there are 100 different feats, players look at the game in terms of what feat combinations they can use to "win" the game. When there are 5, they can look at them and say "Hmm, none of those appeal to me. I think I'll take a stat bump."

I've found players roleplay more the LESS rules there are in the game. I could see 5e being just as annoying as 3e if too many books came out. It took my players a week just to increase their level in our 3e game because they needed to carefully reread all the D&D books to make sure they were choosing the right options. My 5e players do it in 5 minutes.

I honestly think that releasing information online where it can't overwhelm new players is an excellent idea. Have new players walk into the store and see 4 books: The core 3 and one adventure. Have them buy those books and have fun playing with them. Then, when they eventually get more and more into the game, then direct them to a website where they can find a document with new races and spells like the one that just came out.

And as long as WOTC doesn't release too many of them too quickly, they won't cause the rules bloat that destroyed 3e.

 

[neobolts]

While that's true, it is worth noting that the 4e release schedule slowed down significantly after the release of Essentials. Which, coincidentally, was about the same time Mearls got the Big Job.

I thought Mearls helmed all of 4e. Who was his predecessor?

 

[Sailor Moon]

True. But there's also a philosophy that says that you CAN overwhelm new players who walk into a store and see 15 books on the shelf and think "Oh my god! Look at all those books! This game seems extremely complicated. Plus, I can't afford all those books. Maybe I'll buy something else instead."

Even if all those books add no bloat to the game at all, it turns people off.

Also, part of the problem in both 3e and 4e was that all of those books trained players to think of the games in terms of rules. When there are 100 different feats, players look at the game in terms of what feat combinations they can use to "win" the game. When there are 5, they can look at them and say "Hmm, none of those appeal to me. I think I'll take a stat bump."

I've found players roleplay more the LESS rules there are in the game. I could see 5e being just as annoying as 3e if too many books came out. It took my players a week just to increase their level in our 3e game because they needed to carefully reread all the D&D books to make sure they were choosing the right options. My 5e players do it in 5 minutes.

I honestly think that releasing information online where it can't overwhelm new players is an excellent idea. Have new players walk into the store and see 4 books: The core 3 and one adventure. Have them buy those books and have fun playing with them. Then, when they eventually get more and more into the game, then direct them to a website where they can find a document with new races and spells like the one that just came out.

And as long as WOTC doesn't release too many of them too quickly, they won't cause the rules bloat that destroyed 3e.

While it does happen, it's not as widespread as you think. This has already been explained away in other threads with examples as to why it's not a majority issue.

You have loads of products that do this and nobody gets scared away. Look at legos, various toys, card games, novels etc....

D&D is a niche hobby so most people that play it know what they are looking for. You aren't going to have the general masses just walking into gameshops and coming across D&D and figuring they will give it a go.

Ever try getting started with Warhammer? Ever walk into a Games Workshop store? A whole shop dedicated to the stuff?

Customers aren't scared by products.

 

[Sailor Moon]

I thought Mearls helmed all of 4e. Who was his predecessor?

I thought it was Bill Slav?