The fragmentation of the D&D community... was it inevitable?

[Dannyalcatraz]

Should WotC support more than one edition at the same time? Or will this just make the problem worse?

I think that, with today's technology, having every version of D&D available for sale in at least some digital format is entirely supportable, if for no other reason than replacement/backup of books and modules that are on the verge of turning 40. I don't think WotC could make money producing new product for those older editions, though. Too much would be required of them in terms of staffing.

However, a well thought out licensing or license + royalty plan would let them use that old IP to generate a revenue stream while other (probably edition-specialist) companies produce new products.

 

[Kafen]

WOW, this will teach me to step away from a thread I created for a weekend. Da-yum.

Lot of interesting responses here. Lot of food for thought. On balance, it seems that the majority or posters think that at this point it's going to be really hard for WotC to release a '5e' that keeps most people happy.

So here's a follow-up question, for the people who have gotten this far. It seems to be implied in a lot of responses.

Should WotC support more than one edition at the same time? Or will this just make the problem worse?

That could mean supporting 4e and 3.x (or your old edition of choice) simultaneously. Or it could mean that Fifth Edition actually has a 5a and a 5b. Maybe one that caters to complex tactical combat rules, and one that favors a stripped-down approach.

Anyway, just curious. Because it seems like 'have more than one set of rules' is the logical outcome of the line of thought that 'one edition can't statisfy everybody'.

For me, WOTC burned any good faith I had with them as a company with the 4e license terms issue. I know... No edition warriors need to take my head off, please. It is just my personal experience. I have zero interest in going back to them as a company at the moment. I would not invest money in another product line from them unless something changes in a big way. And honestly, I am not sure what they could do to restore my faith in the company.

To fully answer the first question, I would say that they should support two editions. It would increase gaming materials all around and make both factions happy in general as long as the quality is decent.

 

[Dungeoneer]

So this is how I would attempt to answer the questions I originally posed. It's not a complete answer. If I knew the answers I wouldn't have asked the qeustions.

Was the fragmentation of the community inevitable? The problem I see is one I tried to hint at in the OP. There are just so many little vectors within the overall game of Dungeons & Dragons - games within the game if you will - that it's really hard to get any kind of consensus on what D&D is. I think we pretty much all agree that you sit at a table with one more friends, somebody is a dungeon master, and you roll dice. Everything else seems to be up for grabs.

Some people just like the old-school dungeon crawl - they want to kill things and take their loot. Some people want to tell a story, and combat is incidental. Some people want as many character options as possible, and want a system that allows them to mutliclass to the hilt. Some people are really into Paladins that can only ever be Lawful Good. Some people want a rule for everything and they want to roll on a table to find out what they eat for dinner. Some people think the rules just get in the way. Some people want Wizards to feel different from other classes. Some people just want everyone to have a good time. Some people want to roll for stats. Some people want to tweak their build down to the last digit.

I could go on and on and on.

It seems like 4e has only added to this list (some people really like tactical grid-based combat). More importantly, it embraces some of these preferences and eschews others (running a combat-lite 4e game is tricky). This is really no different from any other edition.

The problem is that you can't design a well-crafted, focused set of rules that also embraces every possible way that people might want to play D&D. Any edition is going to be good at some things and bad at others, unless it just takes a kitchen-sink approach and then it's going to be bad at everything. Game design is as much about what you leave out as what you put in. But after 37 years D&D has a lot of stuff that people want put in. Sometimes these things flatly contradict each other.

In the defense of 4e's designers, I think this is the first edition where someone drew a line in the sand and said "This is what this edition of D&D is about, and we're sticking to it." They gave Fourth a razor sharp focus and built the rules and content to support that. It's an edition with very little compromise.

Of course the problem is that they pretty much left some gamers in the cold. If you don't like a heavy combat focus, or you want more randomness in your game, or... whatever... you got shafted. But you know, what else could they do? They couldn't please everyone, but they could make some people REALLY happy. And that's what they went with.

I don't know if there's a way out of this dilemma for the next edition. I think at best you could make a D&D game which doesn't flat out anger anybody, but doesn't really inspire anyone either. Or you could make another focused game, maybe focused in a different direction, and earn the adoration of whatever people happen to like that direction and the derision of everyone else.

It's a dilemma. I don't have an answer.

 

[DandD]

Didn't TSR try to support the various D&D-versions at the same time and then went under?

Also, saying that prior D&D-versions weren't even more combat-heavy than the curren tone regarding the rules is hogwash.

That's why I never want the return of any D&D-version before 3rd. They were just absolutely badly designed, wrong for any "serious" kind of roleplaying and not fun at all. In just about everything. At least for me and my friends in Europe, where we had that strange alternatives like The Dark Eye...

 

[fumetti]

Also, saying that prior D&D-versions weren't even more combat-heavy than the curren tone regarding the rules is hogwash.

How does one ADD a major combat component--powers, which completely overwhelmed combat play--without removing some other major component and end up with being LESS combat-heavy? It simply makes no sense.

 

[Rel]

How does one ADD a major combat component--powers, which completely overwhelmed combat play--without removing some other major component and end up with being LESS combat-heavy? It simply makes no sense.

I believe what is being referred to is that early editions of D&D were in many ways considered more combat focused because they lacked defined subsystems to resolve non-combat challenges. There was no system for skills as we currently know them prior to 3e. If things like diplomacy or acrobatics or noticing a spy were to be resolved then the DM pretty much had to make something up.

However I think this part of the post...

That's why I never want the return of any D&D-version before 3rd. They were just absolutely badly designed, wrong for any "serious" kind of roleplaying and not fun at all. In just about everything.

...is rather silly. They weren't badly designed in the gaming environment at the time. They certainly weren't wrong for roleplaying (though I don't know what you mean by "serious"). And they were being enjoyed by tons of people and still are so the charge of "not fun at all" falls flat.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

...
Should WotC support more than one edition at the same time? Or will this just make the problem worse?

....

Depends on what you mean by support. In general I would consider support to mean produce new material for:

In that case no, They would be supporting fragmenation in the marketplace and it Erik Mona is correct in his observation that WoTC D&D is the gateway for new players not brought in by active gamers then the new player aquisition would contribute to the market place fragmentation.

Now what about selling in an digital format material produced for older editions of the game?
I see very little downside to selling material for editions prior to 3.0 but I see quite a bit of potential downside to selling 3.x material. The principal beneficiery would be Paizo and they are a competitor at this point.

Now when Paizo releases Pathfinder 2.0 they could revisit the decision.

 

[Dausuul]

Some people just like the old-school dungeon crawl - they want to kill things and take their loot. Some people want to tell a story, and combat is incidental. Some people want as many character options as possible, and want a system that allows them to mutliclass to the hilt. Some people are really into Paladins that can only ever be Lawful Good. Some people want a rule for everything and they want to roll on a table to find out what they eat for dinner. Some people think the rules just get in the way. Some people want Wizards to feel different from other classes. Some people just want everyone to have a good time. Some people want to roll for stats. Some people want to tweak their build down to the last digit.

Reading down this list, I notice a trend underlying most of it: Have more rules for X versus have fewer rules for X.

That suggests that a lot of these different preferences could be accommodated in one system, if the system were sufficiently modular. For example, what if there were a set of "fast combat" rules for resolving minor battles at high speed, without minis and battlemats? Then the combat-maniacs could do everything with the full combat system, the story-gamers could use fast combat for everything, and the rest of us could mix and match as appropriate--fast combat for the typical fight with a handful of grunts, full combat for the climactic showdowns.

Likewise with character options. Essentials has already shown how the core 4E system can be used to build a simpler, more streamlined, less option-heavy character. That could be fleshed out into a division between "advanced" and "basic" characters, say.

The trick, of course, is packing all this into one ruleset, without drastically increasing the cost of supporting that ruleset. (For instance, you don't want to have to make up separate "fast combat" and "full combat" statblocks for every monster.) If they can figure out how to do that, however, the DDI approach to publication will give players and DMs tremendous latitude to customize the game to their own needs, just by clicking a couple of checkboxes.

 

[shadzar]

People are NOT flocking to GW games.

Well of course they are, that is why WotC created their own retail stores like GW has (both pretty much failed), and the WotC store that remains (THE, ONE) is near its headquarters, and the GW stores that remain are run by ONE single staff person.

People are definitely flocking to buy 400 space marines so they can be WYSIWYG. and jumping on the bi-monthly price hikes, and new edition every 6 months.

That is exactly what WotC should do is confuse the customers so much they have to keep buying everything including the magazine (play tournaments for GW games, and you best have the rules errata ONLY found in White Dwarf or bought in additional books) just to get a hint you know what you are doing.

[/sarcasm]

The only thing WotC could do remotely similar to GW would be have a proper online store that people could buy directly from WotC. Unfortunately WotC doesn't really make anything like GW, so there is lots of middlemen with getting the books and such from China shipped to the customer. Which is funny since I can(could) go to HASBRO website and buy the newest Monopoly directly from them. Maybe WotC should be using those HASBRO resources to get things made in a more cost effective way rather than rely on old business partners to do things and they COULD have a store online that sells easier from local manufacturers; but instead their method of online store is DDi, where they will jsut stop making books, and move to the rental model for D&D for all things you can buy that way.

Tokens will disappear from the market soon and some appear printable free online, until they too end up behind the paywall.

No a smart businessman wants to keep as many customers as possible to get as much money as possible and make it look like the customers choice to buy rather than to force them out by doing something that otherwise makes them no longer want to freely hand over their money for whatever you are making, unless you are selling food or a necessity that you will always have custoemrs for.

 

[shadzar]

Should WotC support more than one edition at the same time? Or will this just make the problem worse?

I will come back to the support part....

You cannot make the situation better the direction they are going, as all new thigns will cause even more fragmentation. More fragmentation will mean the number of new players will at some point no longer be greater than the number of old players lost.

It will make the problem worse from a sales POV, and that is all that will be viewed. They will be competing with themselves and find people will not be buying the newest and most expensive products that jsut required people to create. For the gaming community it might cause an upswing and overall market share increase for the D&D "brand". Why use a retro-clone when you can get the real thing?

Which brings us back to the support...

Depends on the level of support. You can no longer work with one Forgotten Realms, and only have what 100 years of play out of old editions thanks to the spellplague? So you have painted yourself into a corner there. Any other setting that has been taken forward would be pretty moot.

The most needed thing would be to have all editions on sale in some form for the core game. Original Red Box return and discontinue and apologize for the 4th edition one. Both on the market at the same time will serve to help no one with the instant confusion that will be had. Rules Cyclopedia would be better for OD&D, but they re-used that name too...so they screwed themselves there. They would have to label the books properly such as 2nd edition did but WotC stopped doing. So the front cover of ANY PHB needs to carry a BIG number on it to tell which edition it is. Make a Rules Cyclopedia for each edition even. OD&D pretty much use the existing one, 1st, 1.5, 2nd, 2.5, 3rd, 3.5, 4th, 4.5*....

From here to support all, you ned to decide direction. 4.5 is the new version they are putting the most effort into, so releasing new material for it with powers or whatever in it should be the most supported same as any 5th edition that may come about to cancel the heavy support for 4.5 when it was the newest product.

For older editions you could make adventures. People have been talking about the Shadowfell adventure being run in older editions as well many other adventures, so people love adventures. When using a standard monster, probably all you should use, refer to the proper RC for each edition and let people get it their, but include the proper monster for each edition. Appendix A What to use from what edition. Most of 1st~2.5 would use the same stuff. NPC you have to write up a bit for them.

Fluff and generic crunch. Many people looking for some kind of realism want to buy a product for things like the recent mining operation thread. Discuss mining conditions in medieval society roman, whatever the focus, have a conversion chart from edition to edition to tell how much money converts too OD&D to 4.5, and give prices for things so that people could use them in ALL editions of the games from one book.

Material that spans editions well sell better, even to those that do not play the game. So that example of a product would be something maybe D&D players buy, but having conversion between all editions possible, other games players might pick it up if they have need and can easily use their conversion methods form edition X to their own game directly from the book.

So if you make things for the current edition so be it, as long as some of those things can bridge and be backwards compatible and you have the core rules for the game out for all editions you should gain a stronger market share, and even people hating edition Y could discuss happily adventure G because they both played it even though they used different editions.

Also to support if you could figure out a price or percentage for each product sold, create an FGL as opposed to OGL. FGL, Free Gaming License, where you CAN use the name, but only to refer back to the Ruies Cyclopedia(s) for the proper edition (like with a bibliography or index of where to find the used copyright parts like "Illithid"), then you could have others support the older editions for you and just collect monthly from what Pretty much collecting royalties on the IP but only allowing the use of maybe a black and white version of the editions logo with something added stating it is form a 3pp and not made by WotC but WotC owns the rights, and again only the names of things like "Illithid" and referring all other information about it to be gotten from the Rules Cyclopedia. People could make items, monsters, adventures.

So many ideas how to support it and the OGL method worked to an extent, you just need something like it where people cannot make their own games outside of what the 3.x OGLs already does.

In the defense of 4e's designers, I think this is the first edition where someone drew a line in the sand and said "This is what this edition of D&D is about, and we're sticking to it." They gave Fourth a razor sharp focus and built the rules and content to support that. It's an edition with very little compromise.

The problem with razors is, when you play with them, someone is bound to get cut.

Didn't TSR try to support the various D&D-versions at the same time and then went under?

No actually. While supporting both version of AD&D and releasing RC, was not what caused them to go under, there were MANY other factors outside of D&D, and when moving to 2nd edition AD&D only supporting too many settings was one problem with D&D that added to the other problems the CEO caused that were bigger and not related to D&D itself but other areas of TSR.


*4.5...whatever you call whatever is after the original 4th edition as in essentials/red box, etc... i jsut followed the same old numbering pattern.