TSR TSR's Amazing Accounting Department

[Zardnaar]

We'll find out when 6E lands.
I expect evolution, not revolution though. Backwards compatible maybe.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

We'll find out when 6E lands.
I expect evolution, not revolution though. Backwards compatible maybe.

In that sense, 2E sounds like the model. For better and worse, 2E was quite similar to 1E.

 

[Parmandur]

It'll be heralded. And I bet I know when.
But I agree it will be very backwards compatible. You won't have to change (unless your only play is in the AL), but the improvements will encourage you to do so.

The 50th anniversary would be a logical date, abstractly, but abstractions ≠ market realities. If 5E is still going strong, they won't do a new edition at that time.

 

[Parmandur]

That's all true, but I think it misses the competition in the market. 3.X had the misfortune of being in the marketplace competing against a ton of D20 RPGs (which was, arguably, their own doing) as well as the widespread success of MMOs and collectable minis games (things that couldn't be foreseen), both of which took substantial market share from D&D. As I recall, Monte Cook said that 3.5 came out when it did not because it wasn't part of the overall business plan (it was for a few years later) but because 3.0 sales dove faster than they expected. 2E came out right when two big competitors emerged: The White Wolf games and, way more importantly, CCGs, both of which were certainly unforeseen by TSR management. So, in a lot of ways, the fight for market was a whole lot harder. Of course, one might argue that this doesn't account for why 5E has been so successful... to be clear, I don't know either, but I really don't think that things like live streaming of other people's games would be so popular was something anyone thought of in 2012.

Right, 3.5 got moved up, as it was part of the plan: but it was a plan that did not work any time they tried it.

 

[Zardnaar]

The 50th anniversary would be a logical date, abstractly, but abstractions ≠ market realities. If 5E is still going strong, they won't do a new edition at that time.

Well it's 5 years away, it's a nice number for a new edition and 5E would be 10 years old.

Failing that an anniversary cover

 

[Parmandur]

Well it's 5 years away, it's a nice number for a new edition and 5E would be 10 years old.

Failing that an anniversary cover

I could see a 5E Rules Cyclopedia or similar: a concise complete rules set focusing on popular options from the various books.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

My theory with 3.0 was sales were so front loaded they hit saturation point a lot faster.

Could be, but this was definitely a time where the RPG industry as a whole started going down so I don't think it was just WotC.

3.5 is the second worst selling D&D after OD&D, maybe 4E but I suspect that one sold well initially but cratered fast.

I see 3.5 as more of a "we see sales going down and are trying to boost them" situation that didn't work. As I recall this was industry wide. Part of it was the glut created by all the D20 releases but it was affecting other companies, too.

1E, B/X and 5E made a bigger pie.

They did, but I do really think it's hard to conclude a ton from them. Nobody went into each of those edition changes saying "You know what, let's plot a failure."

I keep saying this too, but I really think the overall mix of competition that's out there makes an enormous difference. TSR and WotC was often its own worst competitor by diluting the market and making foolish decisions, but they also faced changing mixes of competition from other products. This was particularly true with 3.0, which started dying out in no small part due to the emergence of MMOs. 2E also had a lot of competition from the rise of CCGs.

D&D can't really sustain a 2E to 4E publishing schedule. Prime example if milking the existing fanbase.

Yeah, it's certainly difficult to sustain that level of publication. The costs are high and it fragments the market. Still, the material that came out for 2E in those days was really, really good as, indeed, was some of the 4E material.

 

[Joe Pilkus]

The insights of that time are quite interesting. As we were merrily playing D&D, we had no idea of the inanity going-on behind the scenes

 

[GenghisDon]

I remember the sheer ugliness of some of the hate that 2nd edition got in my neck of the woods. It broke at least one game group apart because half wanted to upgrade and the other half actively despised every single thing about the new edition - from the artwork to the organization to every minor rule change (and if you really wanted to see them mad, get them started on the loss of the assassin or the introduction of the new bard to the game). I hesitate to think of what might have happened had there been any actual rule changes of the magnitude we expect of an edition shift these days.

(I assume they all outgrew it - Junior High Drama is the second stupidest kind of drama, second only to Ostensibly Grown Adults Who Should Know Better Drama, which is the stupidest of all).

You will not be happy to learn that the hate for many like that only festered over the decades. For all too many, it's as strong today as it was then.

Sad, but true.